BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN

Well, I did not really fall off… I just uhmmm got waylaid so to speak. I am talking about my biking here… I can’t anymore recall when it was exactly that I stopped but I think it was sometime last year (around October or November) when my hand started to hurt and I can’t tolerate the pain any longer while lifting the dumbbells that I use while biking. Then, the hand just naturally healed itself at around December but by that time, I figured holiday festivities are already just around the corner and so I shunned the bike and all other forms of exercise altogether (so I’ll have no reason to keep me from pigging out during the holidays hehehe!) And so as part of my new year’s resolution to get back on track with my diet and exercise, I decided to ‘get back on the saddle’ again…the saddle of my stationary bike, that is… at first, I found it a bit difficult and was already breathing heavily after just ten minutes and so I decided to just take things slow and biked for only twenty minutes. After all, today is just my first time to bike for the year after more than two months of no exercise whatsoever…well, I am just glad that I am getting back to exercising once again. Maybe next month, I can find the time and the companions to go jogging again… or maybe even zumba…I need to just take it one day at a time…I can do this!!!

BONE SCANNING

Today, we took advantage of free bone-scanning sponsored by a popular milk brand. It was held at the office clinic and there was a bit of a line but not really so long and it was moving quickly. First, they washed my right foot with alcohol and placed it in a contraption that seemed like a foot spa although it wasn’t wet at all. After a while, I felt it tightening a bit and within a few seconds it gave out a reading and the results showed I was at high risk for osteoporosis???Really now… I don’t think it was truly accurate since even if I don’t take calcium tablets, I take my milk sometimes and even yoghurt. I guess it comes with age and the fact that the sponsor of the event needed to sell their product. So I decided to buy the milk they had on display outside the clinic (with free taste!), both in vanilla and chocolate flavors just to ensure that I would get all the calcium that I need!

SINUS ARRYTHMIA AND UTI AGAIN!?!

Yesterday, I received my results from the APE (Annual Physical Exam) that we had just a week ago and to tell you frankly I wasn’t quite surprised with the results. I had UTI again, with the pus cell count just TMTC (too many to count!) I was even diagnosed to drink some medicines for a week before going back to the doctor again to have my urine rechecked if there’s any improvement. Meanwhile, I searched the internet for some home remedies for UTI and found quite a few I could use – including herbal ones like sambong and banaba which I could regularly drink as tea. There was also cranberry juice, yogurt and Vitamin C. There were also certain foods to avoid like coffee, tea, chocolate (oh no!), peanuts, softdrinks, spicy food, cheese, processed sugar and flour, and spinach (but why???) But most of all, I need to drink 8-10 glasses of water per day, something I really need to monitor because if not, I tend to just drink during meals. So in essence I drink only 3 glasses per day, the others are coffee or choco drinks which do not really count at all! Oh dear, I truly need to make a serious effort to drink water regularly so that I can beat this UTI once and for all.

What got me a bit worried though was my ECG reading that I had sinus arrhythmia - what does that mean? My heart has a cold??? So I immediately searched the internet and was a bit calmed when I learned that it is just a normal occurrence since the heart may experience a regular increase in heart rate due to breathing or any other normal activity. Sinus, by the way, refers to the natural pacemaker of the heart or the sinus node. The heart beats in a normal regular rhythm when we sleep or when motionless. Hence, the term sinus arrhythmia refers to the lack of a regular/normal sinus rhythm or an abnormal heart rhythm. Therefore, it is not something to be worried about though I would rather have my ECG repeated, after all it’s for free, just to make sure that my heart is in tip-top shape.

A SWOLLEN TOE

Last night I found it difficult to sleep coz I had pain in my big toe on the left foot -it’s beginning to swell and I couldn’t figure out why? I had a pedicure last Sunday and it’s already Wednesday afternoon when I felt a bit of pain. Then, around 2am today I was kept awake by the pain so I took some pain reliever meds to be able to sleep and when I awoke my toe was quite swollen already. So I just wonder if this was due to the pedicure why it was only acting up after three days??? I tried to wrack my brain thinking if I somehow stubbed it somewhere but I just can’t remember anything but then again knowing me I guess I probably did since most of the time I would see some dark bruise on my thighs and I knew I bumped it somewhere.

So when I awoke this morning, I just placed a Betadine dressing on the toe and wrapped a gauze bandage around it. Tonight I plan to go herbal and place moringa leaves, since its known to have antibiotic properties. But if things still don’t go well, I guess I may be forced to take antibiotics just to relieve the swelling. As it is I’m already finding it difficult to walk and I guess I may be in for a really rough time if this thing isn’t cured at once.

KIDNEY STONE SCREENING

This morning the office scheduled a kidney stone seminar and screening for its employees and knowing that I once had trouble with my kidneys, I gladly attended the seminar to learn more about it and how to prevent it. The lecturer, a doctor, gave a good briefing – he enumerated very well the food that people with kidney problems must avoid and he gave us tips on how to prevent the occurrence of kidney stones. One statement of his, however, alarmed me – he said that once a stoner always a stoner so there is danger that my stones would keep on recurring if I don’t watch out and true enough after the seminar and it was time for the tests – the results proved positive for me, I had a stone - .04 cm in size on my right kidney. So I guess the treatment I had before did not really flush out everything. But what’s worse is that Jun had it too…the same size and the same right kidney. So I guess that now we really need to watch our food intake together! Otherwise, we’d both end up having difficulty peeing or worse, having our kidneys taken out with an ultra-expensive operation!!! Anyway, the doctor did not altogether ban any kind of food, what he emphasized was to eat certain foods in moderation since they do have a tendency to form stones faster (like calcium rich and uric rich foods) AND THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT TO ME --- DRINK LOTS OF WATER!!! The size of our stones is not really much reason for us to be alarmed…I guess it just gives us a wake-up call to every once in a while watch carefully what we eat.