Now that your caught up

now that your all caught up on the beginning and what started the ball rolling i will be doing daily updates on my progress and what i am doing in most aspect even the small thing I really hope that this will help others realize they can always do something to help themselves

The knee (cont)

so i head up to the hospital and go into the waiting room and i sit alone waiting for my call eventually it comes but everything is eventually anyways right?. so i finally go and before i know it im out, and waking up in a room surrounded by people i have never seen before that was a little freaky still not able to move but able to look around. so as i come around i realize im in recovery a nurse comes by gives me some more perks and morphine, its interesting watching them bring in others and watching them one kid across from me was still sleep but when they went to move him onto another bed he got violent took about 6 nurse to hold him down but he kept fighting so i wondered if i did that too eventually i get moved into another room and my mom arrives with roger and we hang out for a bit doctor comes up tells me what i should and shouldnt be doing blah blah blah they bring a wheel chair and say see ya later. so i was in the hospital for a total of about 6 hours. i wheeled myself to the doors go up walked out.

so we head home i get home and my lovely wife had moved my bed so i could still have computer access while i was laid up in bed, seeing as i was going to be there for a little bit but i could stillg et up and walk couldnt bend my knee much and needed alot of support but i managed it was awkward sitting in bed and trying to use a mouse with my right arm going across my chest. so i didnt do much for that week. but i had everything i needed.

by this time i was getting more and more depressed about my being out of shapeness. also being up to 255 pounds my highest yet, it just kinda ate away at me like a termite on a house just slowly but surely.

i consider myself fairly lucky though most people i talked to had about a 6 months wait just for a mri and 9 months for surgery. i dont get how things can speed up and slow down like this

The knee

So after quitting smoking i was going to work on getting into shape i waited a bit cause everyone said you will cough up a lot of stuff from your lungs after wards, so waiting i ended up with a cold so this set me back a little longer, as i waited this cough out my left knee become progressively more and more painful i waled with a horrible limp i could not carry my newborn daughter and i couldn't play with my son. i think this hurt most of all it was pain sharp stabbing pain no matter what i was doing it hurt. so after a 3 week wait i finally go into my doctors office asked the normal questions what did you do? do you remember? does it hurt when i do this? and really he knew it was going to hurt i think they do it for fun, so he says well there's definitely some inflammation in there so I'm going to give you some Oxycontin for the pain ill give you some anti-inflammatory to help but they take about 2 weeks to be fully effective so im going to give you a injection. that hurt like crazy i had to bend my knee which was painful as it was, and he stuck the needle under the knee cap from the bottom about 2 days later it felt ok for a couple days then back to normal.

so he tells me i need to go for a MRI, and that they would call me with an appointment so now im thinking how long do i have to wait, well they called the next week for the appointment and to my surprise it was in one week which our wait times are normally horrible in canada, but this time it worked out it was at 3 am not a winning time but still it was a time it was quick i wasnt about to complain, so i get to the MRI waiting area i see all these signs about metal and i get nervous cause really who knows i might have metal inside me from a childhood accident  and my mind starts flashing about metal being sucked out by a gigantic magnet, so i walk in and as im getting onto the table my pants rip up the side (at this time i was wearing pyjama/comfy pants) from about mid-calf to about mid thigh . awesome.  so the girl that was working the machine tells me ithe machine gets loud so if you want i got headphones to help. she puts them on and low adn behold the most poppiest dance music is playing, so i get ready to hunker down and wait the 1 hour they told me it would take so i closed my eye adn waited i paid close attention to my breathing, have you eve realized how gard it is to not move until youve been told not to move at all?
so the machine starts and man is it loud but happily its louder then the headphones knocking and banging and all sort of other sounds 15 min later its done. i ask why and it cause people cant sit still and also if the have an emergency come in that needs a MRI asap
soi head outside and forget about the rip in my pants until i get there and it is cold out 330 am winter time canada enough said

i started my 2 week wait for results
this goes by i call the doctor and i am told i need to come in for an appointment only thing is i need to wait yet another week. so again waiting .
i finally get in there and im told its a torn meniscus and will most likely need surgery but i need to see a specialist being refered again....
2 days later specialist calls come in for appointment tomorrow and i agree so i go meet him and a more with the poking and proding and the bend this way do this do that after 2 months of my leg being tense and flex trying not to move the knee i have a doctor telling me just to relax let it go limp and it hurt he can see im in pain, so he says he thinks he can do surgery explains it how it works what he does and i dont think he gets the point of me saying i dont care what you do i want to be able to run ever since this injury ive put on 20 pounds from sitting and doing nothing i want to play with my son. bottom line so he agrees says ill call you to confirm but how does next week look?

so in i go....... to be continued

Quitting Smoking

now im not really sure when i decided to quit i only remember the way it happened now i had been smoking a pack a day for about 10 years, and yes since i was 15 i know this because when i was 16 my dad passed away and thats when i started smoking in front of my mother, but besides the point. i do know it was shortly after my daughter was born maybe about two to three weeks after she was born first week of october. i had been thinking about it alot and was always nervous about doing it cause my wife would have to put up with me and 2 children and the way quitting smoking is demonized on tv to help sell stop smoking aides. so there i was i woke up a monday morning and got ready for work and just kinda decided today im going to see how long i can go without smoking now normally i would chain smoke in the morning about 2-3 smoke on the drive to work and 2-3 before i would go in to startwhich works out to be 6 smoke in 1 hour tops but i made it i made it through until shift start and i kinda carried on from there



i was never really overly aggravated or irritated did it happen i bet it did but it was never enough for me to blame any of it on smoking. people would always ask how i did it, and i say i just did i always carried a pack of smoke on me for about a month after quitting and i think that helped if anything it helped my willpower. when i wanted to take a break and have a smoke i just made myself busy convinced myself i was too busy to smoke. i think thats what did it,that was a major help know that they were there and i could have one vs not having anything and stressing about when i was going to get one, i even continued to let people smoke around me in my car ect. i didn't hide from it and now 10 months later i am pretty much smoke free, since that monday i have had 4 smokes total  i had one each day after that monday and 2 in a row when i needed to calm down due to high stress at work .

but for anyone thinking of quitting i say go for it i can breathe better i smell better and coming up at the one year marker I will have cut my chance of a heart attack in half vs a smoker. i have saved a ton of cash if we go with a pack a day at 10 dollars a day for 9 months 1X10X30X9=2700 that is an extra 2700 dollar in my pocket

the beginning

So i'm just starting this blog as more of a motivational tool for myself and others feeling the same way, this all started actually almost a year ago when a good friend Rob, ran the Race Around the Bay. I followed him through out his training, and to see his personal motivation to always push harder and faster and to do it all on his own free will was a lot of motivation for me.
 so i hope i can motivate also

just going to do a quick catch up here on some progress so far
October 2009- Quit Smoking
Dec 09- found out i needed knee surgery
Feb 09 knee surgery
to current i am going to start from the beginning this is more of an intro post