i've been in pretty good shape most of my life; exercise has ALWAYS been a part of my regular routine. then at 42, i got pregnant....with a litter of two.
but, ohhhh, i was going to be one of those women who exercised right up until the day they give birth. you know the ones i'm talking about of course. but then, at around say, 4 or 5 months into it, i was taking a ballet class (with righteous optimism, i'd bought a pre-paid card of 20 classes), and had already accepted that jumps weren't going to happen anymore, was at the barre, doing a port de bras (french for 'leaning backwards w/ your arm in the air') and realized i was stopped, by my belly, from going back more than 5 degrees from vertical. yeesh. fine. FINE. so there are other exercises. i can always walk.
but no one told me about the hip issue. 45 extra pounds sitting on top of 42 yr old hips doesn't make for a walk in the park. or up the hill. my office is one block from armadillo grill, a regular on our lunch circuit. at about 7 months into the pregnancy, i realized i couldn't walk the 300 ft, even with nachos as an incentive, so while my staff all strolled down the street, i drove my, sigh, minivan the block down to the restaurant and back.
by month 8, it was starting to look they would have to wheel me from room to room to see patients. fortunately, i went into labor before it got that bad.
ok, so my plan was start exercising as soon as the babies were born, right? yeah, right. i always scoffed at those stay at home moms who complained that they didn't get dressed until four in the afternoon b/c they were so busy, then i discovered that dressing by four was a day of over-achievement.
three-plus years of over-using a couple of weird muscles to do dentistry and pick up kids and not exercising the other 98% of them has led to chronic pain and muscle spasms. now that the boys are somewhat self-entertaining, i've been able to commit to a little gym time. one of my patients, it turns out, is a personal trainer who works out of a gym a few blocks from the office. his name is raymond desmarais aka the marquis de sade (french for 'you want me to lift what?!? how many times?!?). however, for all my whining, the improvement is amazing. it was about 2 weeks into it that i realized i wasn't in pain anymore. not just not sore from the workouts, but no neck/back/shoulder pain. yippeee!
raymond's still the devil though.
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Interesting blog.... I found it today because it is linked from your practice website. So if you want to know who I am, just ask your staff who called today in the morning trying to find a dentist that DARES to work on Fridays (in an ideal world, we would only need to see the Dentist from 9 to 5, and from Monday to Thursday... but of course, in an ideal world, THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR DENTISTS!!!)
ReplyDeleteSo, as I wondered the web cursing the entire dental profession (sorry! Not personal) for not having a decent emergency service in the Raleigh Area, and cursing my dentist of 15 years for not being more useful than telling me "wait for the antibiotics to work".... I found your site.
I called, they tried to book me today, they could not, and they told me to call my dentist to get a higher dose of antibiotics. Well, at least a better idea. I admitted to self-medicating by doubling the amoxicilin from .5 gr to 1 gr every 8 hours (yes, I am wild!) and reporting that while I was waiting for them to call me back, that overdose had actually started to work... *** Relief ***
Now, feeling better and with the rush of endorphins released by pain having nothing better to do than perk me up a bit, I kept looking on your website. Oh, there's something here, let's see, there is a blog.... uhmmmm interesting... let's click!
It was refreshing. Somebody that can speak openly and had no problem saying the word "ob/gyn" (well, except for GW Bush who talked about them professing their "love" for their patients. I guess he was not thinking love, maybe lust, kind of falling into the silly idea that men go into Gynecology just to save on Playboy subscriptions?... But whatever, he had a way with words that the country would not forget, be you a Republican or a Democrat, we probably all agree he messed up with the English language hahahaha, even himself admitted it!)
But I digress... I really enjoyed reading your blog. Maybe you should write more often on it. I found it refreshing, open and sincere. Just letting your thoughts flow into the pages without giving it much thinking. Seems like an useless exercise, but it is actually a nice window into somebody else inner self. I enjoyed reading it very much. I could see somebody that has something in common with me. And we all love ourselves so much that for sure, we like the others that look like us (there goes the theory that diversity makes life richer!)