Getting Back on Track

All of us would love to have the time to do what we want to do, but life doesn’t work that way. Something always comes along to distract or divert us from our goals and wishes. Sometimes it’s finances, sometimes it’s illness, whatever it is that interrupts our lives, it throws a monkey wrench into our schedule and forces us to do things that were unplanned.

The last five months have been that for me. Going into this summer I knew things were going to be a challenge, but I didn’t realize it would be so much of a challenge.

For starters, I started a part time job at a Planet Fitness. Just doing that increased the hours I work from 40 hours a week to between 52 to 60 hours. I knew it would affect the writing of my blog and my exercise routine, but at the same time with some adjustments I felt I could still do both.

On the positive side, the perk of a free gym membership as an employee was encouraging. Plus it was my first step toward entering the exercise world and coming into contact with others who enjoyed fitness as much as I.

What I didn’t expect was the other things which were to follow.

One thing I knew would be happening this year was the fact that my wife and I wanted to move and buy our own place. We started looking at places around the area. Of course that took even more time and I had to decide to take a few weeks off from exercising to look at homes.

Then our landlord came to us and told us that with the market the way was, they decided to sell their home and we would need to move sooner than we were ready.

I had to change gears completely and instead of buying a home which would take longer than a month to close, I had to find an available home to rent. Basically I had to drop everything besides work and concentrate all my free time efforts in finding a place to live.

We did end up finding a nice place. Actually it was in the same building as a condo we put a bid on, but we are still renters. We decided the time was not yet right to be homeowners, so we are going to wait a year to look again for a place for our own.

Of course moving to a new home means moving all of our things. That is a chore that is both time consuming and wearing on the body. I moved us over a two day period. The first day I moved all the small stuff by myself and the second day, with help, moved the furniture.

Unfortunately I ended up setting myself back a bit physically because of the move. I had had some shoulder pain ever since I had received the first of my Covid-19 vaccination shots about a month before. After completing the move though, my left shoulder was in absolute pain. I could not in any circumstance move my arm above my head without doubling over in pain.

Eventually I went to my doctor and found out I had an inflamed rotator cuff in my shoulder and needed physical therapy. I also learned that it was going to take a few months to heal.

At that point regular weight lifting was out of the question. There were several movements I was unable to do at all and others were painful.

So from June to September I dealt with this inflamed rotator cuff. Eventually gaining back some movement.

Just as I felt like I was able to move forward and try to exercise again I had a very odd thing occur. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like a Charlie horse in my shin.

I had a long day driving and just as I was nearly back to work pain set in my left shin that felt just like the Charlie horse pain I have had in my calves from time to time. I couldn’t do anything but rub it until I got back to the office. When I tried to step out of the van and walk I found that I could barely lift my leg without pain and had to slide my foot across the floor to get around. I finished my day at my full time job and called my part time job to let them know I wouldn’t make it in that night.

Fortunately it was Friday and I was not scheduled for either of my jobs for the weekend so I was able to rest the leg. The next week my leg started improving and I spent it limping at both jobs.

I still have no idea what happened. Maybe it was a sever muscle spasm or maybe something happened with a varicose vein which I have in that part of my legs. Whatever it was, as it healed it left me with a black and blue foot for a couple weeks. It was as though the blood pooled in my foot from whatever happened.

Just as my leg was nearly healed I thought about the old saying that things come in threes. Almost immediately one of my teeth started hurting. After a week of difficult pain I finally made an appointment with a dentist. Of course it was abscessed, so after a week of antibiotics the tooth was extracted.

You would think having the tooth pulled would be the end of the issue, but I still had a day of agony ahead. Since I had some blood clots years ago before I lost my weight I ended up taking a blood thinner which the doctors say I have to stay on the rest of my life. Three days before any procedure, like a tooth extraction, I need to stop taking my blood thinner so I don’t bleed excessively. I did that. It didn’t seem to matter this time. Instead of bleeding for two or three hours after the tooth was pulled, I bled for 20 hours. That was a long miserable night that evening and I missed work once again the next day.

So that has been my year. It hasn’t been horrible. I know many people have had much worse times. But it has been a year of annoying things getting in the way of the progress I want to make. These annoying issues have also taken away the time that I would have rather been doing, such as writing my book and these blogs. Hopefully I am nearly clear of all these issues and once again will focus on what I need to focus on.

Even though I haven’t been able to exercise like I want, I have been able to maintain my weight and not gain it back. That is because I still after four years count my calories. Now I allow myself to eat more than I did when I was losing weight but I know my limits and count my calories in such a way as to maintain my weight. I am still within five pounds of my lowest weight and I’m satisfied with that.

Recently I started exercising again and now this is my first blog in a while. I guess the biggest thing I have learned these five months has been that even though things can get out of hand for a while, if you have a little patience and hold on to your goals, eventually you can get back on track. The key is never give up on your dreams.