“I Do The Impossible”–Finals

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Today was the last day of CrossFit Cedar Park’s “I Do The Impossible” challenge. It entailed doing the same workout that we did 8 weeks ago to see if, and how we improved. Although my team ended up coming in last, I have to say that I am really impressed and overjoyed with my results. Here’s how the workout turned out:

Exercise	8 Weeks Ago	Today	Delta
1RM Deadlift	315#	435#	125#
1min Thrusters	20	24	4
1min Pull Ups	20	24	4
2min C2	523m	530m	7
Triplet*	4:15	3:09	1:04

*3x{5 burpees, 10 push ups, 15 squats}

So, I improved in everything. Yay!

I think that the best part of the day was listening to everyone talk about what goals they set and what was actually accomplished. It’s pretty amazing.

Thanks again to each and every CFCP coach that had a hand in this awesome challenge. It as worth every second.

Measurements

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Big Dave asked me to come in today around lunch time to get my measurements done for the IDI challenge. Also, we wanted to see if we could maybe knock another goal off my list (snatch).

First, the measurements. I have to admit, I knew that I was losing body fat because of how my clothes have been feeling, but I was really surprised when I saw the results of my measurements. I will scan the paper and post it when I get it, but in a nutshell, here’s the skinny (no pun intended):

	8 Weeks Ago	Today	Delta
Overall BF %	22.6%	16.8%	5.8%
Weight	217lb	215lb	2lbs
Lean Mass	167.96lb	178.88	+10.92lb
Fat Mass	49.04lb	36.12lb	-12.92lb
Legs			+2″ each leg
Arms			+1″ each arm
Waist			-2″
Hips			-1″
Chest			-1″

I will fill in the blanks when I get my sheet back from Dave. I would say that the goal to “have a downward trend in body fat” is blown out of the water. If I divide by 8, that means that I shed .72% every week. I’ll take it. Additionally, take a look at the lean mass and fat mass. In 8 weeks, I gained almost 11lb in lean muscle and lost close to 13lb in fat mass. Whoa. Thank you, Mathematics!

In addition to the above, Dave helped me to get my snatch technique headed back in the right direction. In my last post, I was somewhat frustrated with the fact that I felt like I lost my technique on the snatch. Well, we did some work today and I was able to get passed my current PR of 155#. Although not a huge jump, a PR is a PR (now 160#), but more importantly, I started dropping under the bar again. This is only the beginning.

Last but not least, is my goal to run a mile in under 9 minutes. From my post a few weeks ago, I totally crushed that one.

Aside from my goals, I have also felt the following during the past 8 weeks:

Solidification of what I need to do personally as far as diet goes in order for me to lean out. FINALLY.
PR’d “Fight Gone Bad” by over 40 points. Maybe 300 is just around the corner? =)
Experienced increased recovery time both during AND after working out.

And so tomorrow morning is the “I Do The Impossible” challenge finals. We will do the same workout that we did when the challenge began. I am curious to see how I will do. All I can say is that I am slightly leaner and [thanks to work] meaner than I was 8 weeks ago.

I think that this challenge was absolutely fantastic. Even though I didn’t hit all 5 of my goals, I am absolutely blown away by the amount of progress that was made. The funny thing is, that it’s largely attributed by just adding more green veggies into my diet. To be completely honest, it’s not that hard… like… at all.

I will continue to eat this way and hopefully continue to loose a bit of body fat every week. Perhaps in another 8 weeks, I will be even closer to where I want to be. This challenge has really given me the jump start that I needed.

Paleo works.
CrossFit works.

You just need to do it right and be smart about it. Might I also add, that I was able to get all of this accomplished while traveling for work 3 out of the 8 weeks of the challenge. Yes, folks, it IS possible to eat well while you are traveling. It’s really no excuse. Additionally, I ate a cheat meal or 2 every week and STILL lost body fat. I was skeptical, but the calipers don’t lie.

Thanks to all of the CrossFit Cedar Park coaches that helped the 30 of us though this past 8 weeks. I know it wasn’t easy for you at times, but the differences you are making in people’s lives are nothing short of amazing. A big, big thanks to Big Dave Tillman for looking at everyone of my meals, day in, day out and helping me stay motivated with my goals. Also, a shout out to Mike Fio for being an awesome coach in my day-to-day work outs. You guys rock.

Get Under the Bar!–IDI Update

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“I Do The Impossible” has just 1 week left. While I am ecstatic that I have indeed made progress and decidedly met one of my goals, I am getting bit dismayed with the fact that there’s one week left in the challenge, I have to go away for business, and I have 3 goals left. Here’s an update on my goals:

See a downward trend in body fat percentage – I am pretty sure this one is working. I have not been measured at all during the challenge, but all of my clothes are looser, so I am guessing this one is going well. Exactly how much of a difference there is from 7 weeks ago, I will not know until I am measured again.
Run a sub 9 minute mile – accomplished with a time of 7:28. Awesome!
PR on Snatch – My current 1RM is 155#. V opened the box up for me today to try and work on it, but well, it didn’t go very well at all. I am getting stuck between the shrug and getting down under the bar. At this point, it’s strictly a technique thing, but I don’t know what to do to break that barrier. Clearly I don’t practice this movement enough to be where I need to be on it. If I could just figure out how to make myself get under the bar quicker, I would be a monster. Then again, if the Queen had balls, she’d be King, so there you go.
Get 10 butterfly kipping pull ups in a row – I would say that this one is coming along, but it’s still not there. I am starting to understand the motion that my body has to go through, but making it happen in a cyclical, repeated fashion is still taking some time. With one week left in the challenge and being away on business all next week, I doubt this is going to happen.
PR on dead lift – My current 1RM is 445#. Given that my back is still healing, I am not even worried about trying this one. This was a silly goal to put down and I don’t think it’s going to happen for a long time. It’s not impossible to me, I just want to take my time working back up to it.

I am frustrated.

I fee like I spent so much time worry about goal #1 that the rest have pretty much fallen by the wayside until last week when it dawned on me that there were like 2-3 weeks left and I haven’t been working on crap. The fact that I have had to travel for work for close to 1/2 of this challenge has made things difficult as well. It’s been hard to nail down time for Dave and I to work together on this stuff.

On the positive side, I managed to accomplish the goals that I actually used to perceive as “impossible” (#1 and #2). The rest, I think, will just take time and practice. They will eventually come. Will they come in over the next week? Most likely not, but I am not totally ruling things out. Maybe I’ll get lucky and a light bulb will go off for the brain-body connection.

WODs So Far This Week

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Monday 2/21/2011

Again, this will be short. I haven’t been sleeping well, have some stuff to do, and need to get these down for future searching.

20 minute AMRAP (“Yak”)

15 back squats @ 95#
8 step ups (4 each leg) with 95# barbell
10 burpees

I got 5 rounds plus 4 step ups. The step ups with a 95# bar on my back were somewhat scary and really just sucked the life and motivation out of me.

Tuesday 2/22/2011

5x 500m Time Trial – Each time must be within 10s of the last run. If not, penalty is a 1 minute hand stand hold.

Times were: 1:50, 1:48.6, 1:51.3, 1:52.8, 1:50.9

I think I gamed this one a little too much out of fear of getting a penalty, like I am 5 and getting a demerit. Instead, I focused on keeping a consistent pace on the rower, which, by my times, looks like I accomplished.

Wednesday 2/23/2011

400m run
50 double unders
25 sumo deadlift high pulls

Time: 19:46

The last run may have been a power walk. My mental goal for this one was to do it in under 20 minutes. It was starting to look bleak after minute 16, but somehow, I got it done. My double unders are coming along quite a bit. Now, it’s just a question of having the lungs to keep going. Most of the times I stopped it was because I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was just gassed. The SDHPs were really tough. I had to constantly remember to pop the hips.

What Have I Been Eating

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Wednesday, 2/9/2011

7:10am: Breakfast @ Hotel Restaurant: 3 eggs with bacon, spinach, and mushrooms. Hot tea.

11:10am: Lunch @ The Apollo Diner: Greek gyro salad with Asian slaw

5:00pm: Dinner @ The Airport: Greek salad with Jamaican jerk chicken

————————————- BACK IN AUSTIN ————————————-

Thursday, 2/10/2011

11:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms and spinach with hot tea

4:45pm: Lunch/Dinner: Hamburger salad with paleo mayo and red hot

9:15pm: Dinner: Ground beef with tomato sauce with a bag of broccoli (DNF)

Friday, 2/11/2011

9:10am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms and spinach coffee with heavy cream

2:20pm: Lunch: Chipotle salad with barbacoa & guac.

5:45pm: WOD: Strict ring pull ups in sets until failure. 2x{5kb c&j, 10 goblet squats, 5kb snatches, 10 goblet squats} untimed.

8:10pm: Dinner: 1/2lb Rudy’s Brisket with pickles. Side mixed greens salad.

Saturday, 2/12/2011

6:45am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, greens drink

8am-11am: WODs: Operation Get Some; didn’t place

1:00pm: Hamburger salad with paleo mayo and red hot. 1 square of 88% dark chocolate for dessert.

7:30pm: Dinner from Tino’s: Greek salad with gyro meat, beef stew meat (skipped the potato). Lots of veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and mousaka).

Sunday, 2/13/2011

10:30am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with onion, mushrooms and spinach coffee with heavy cream

1:45pm: Lunch @ TerraBurger: Hill country burger with fries. YUM!

8:00pm: Dinner: GF pasta with meat sauce, broccoli, mozzerella, and parmesan.

Monday, 2/14/2011

9:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms and spinach coffee with heavy cream

11:00am: V-Day Snack: 3 bacon roses (rolled up bacon)

3:15pm: Lunch: Chili from TerraBurger and large mixed green/spinach salad

7:00pm: Dinner: Red/Gold beet salad with balsamic reduction, stuffed chicken breast with asparagus, dark chocolate covered strawberries

Tuesday, 2/15/2011

8:40am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

1:20pm: Lunch: Spicy chicken breast w red peppers. Large mixed greens and spinach salad.

5:45pm: WOD: "Gwen": 95#

7:30pm: Dinner: Spicy chicken breast w red peppers. Entire bag of broccoli.

Wednesday, 2/16/2011

8:50am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

2:00pm: Lunch: Spicy chicken breast w red peppers. Large mixed greens and spinach salad.

5:45pm: WOD: 4x{7 dead lift @ 185#, 800m run}: 21:48

9:30pm: Dinner: 8 slices of buffalo with large mixed green and spinach salad.

Thursday, 2/17/2011

9:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

1:30pm: Lunch @ Chipotle: Salad with barbacoa.

5:20pm: Dinner @ Tino’s: Combo (chicken/gyro) salad. Avoided the dairy as best as possible.

Friday, 2/18/2011

9:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

1:40pm: Lunch: 1/2 a buffalo steak with large bowl of cabbage.

5:45pm: WOD: 3min work/2min rest {pull ups, push ups, dumbbell thrusters, double unders, sprints}: 41, 60, 20, 70, 5 = 196

8:00pm: Dinner from Rudy’s: 1/2lb lean brisket, 1 rib, large mixed greens and spinach salad.

Saturday, 2/19/2011

8:50am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

1:00pm: Lunch @ 24 Diner: Chopped salad with chicken and shallot vinaigrette.

8:00pm: Dinner @ Plucker’s: Potato chip app, monster basket (1 left, argh), brownie dessert

Sunday, 2/20/2011

Slept in, missed breakfast

11:40am: WOD: Mile Time Trial: 7:28 (w00t!!)

12:20pm: Brunch: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

5:00pm: Snack: Shake – egg protein, greens, water, coconut milk, 2 strawberries

8:40pm: Dinner: Stir fry with chicken, whole bag of broccoli, and celery.

Monday, 2/21/2011

9:00am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

1:45pm: Lunch: 1/2 buffalo steak with large mixed greens and spinach salad.

5:45pm: WOD: 20 min AMRAP {15 back squat, 8 weighted step up, 10 burpees} @ 95# – 5 rounds + 4 step ups

7:45pm: Dinner: 1/2 NY Strip Steak with grilled asparagus and large mixed greens and spinach salad.

Tuesday, 2/22/2011

8:10am: Breakfast: 2 eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and bacon. Coffee w heavy cream.

Red and Gold Beet Salad with Balsamic Honey Reduction

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Here’s an appetizer that I made on Valentine’s Day. I have had this in a few places and thought it was delicious!

What you need:

1 red beet
1 golden beet
Arugula
Honey
Balsamic Vinegar
Goat Cheese
Parmesan Cheese

How you do it:

Cook the beats.

Peel them, half them, and place them in a pot so they are just covered with water.
Place over medium heat and cook until fork tender.
Remove the beets, let them cool, then cube them.

Make the balsamic honey reduction.

Place about 1/2c of balsamic vinegar in a small pot over medium heat. Add 2-4 tablespoons of honey depending on how sweet you like it.
Reduce until it’s about 1/2 of it’s original volume. Pay close attention here as this might boil over if left alone for too long.

Make the Parmesan crisps.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 325F.
Take about 1/2c of Parmesan cheese and make 6 nicely spaced piles on the cookie sheet.
Cook for 8-10 minutes until just slightly browned.
Remove from stove and let cool to become more rigid.

Assemble it!

Find a nice plate.
Put a good handful of arugula down.
Sprinkle some cubed beets around.
Flake some goat cheese over the top.
Using a fork, dip the prongs into the reduction then drizzle fancy little lines all over the place.
Take 2 Parmesan crisps and lean them up against each other anchoring them in the bed of arugula.

Stuffed Chicken in Tomato Cream Sauce & Asparagus

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I made this dish on Valentine’s day. I loved it… V, not so much. At any rate, I thought I’d post it in case anyone was interested. Incidentally, if you want to make this a “paleo” dish, just don’t use the Parmesan.

What you need:

2 Chicken Breasts
Spinach
Sun dried tomatoes
Mushrooms
Garlic
Fresh Asparagus
Parmesan Cheese
Tomato Sauce
Heavy Cream
Olive Oil
Butter
Coconut Oil
Salt
Pepper

How you do it:

1) Make the filling. Start by chopping up the spinach, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes.

2) Get a large pan going over medium heat. Add about a tablespoon each of butter and coconut oil. Throw the mushrooms in.

3) Cook the mushrooms until they look like this:

4) Add about 1 tablespoon of minced garlic. Cook until it starts to brown.

5) Add in the sun dried tomatoes and cook for a minute or two.

6) Add in the spinach and cook until wilted.

7) Add in a good handful of Parmesan cheese. Season also with a pinch of salt and some black pepper. Mix it up until the cheese starts to melt. Cut the heat off.

8) Transfer the filling to a bowl and let it chill.

9) Using a fillet knife, insert into the top of your chicken breast and make a pocket. Make the hole just big enough to stuff the filling in. Stuff as much filling into the pocket as you can, then season the chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, and black pepper.

10) Add more butter and coconut oil to the pan, again over medium heat.

11) Place chicken in. Cook 3-4 minutes each side until nicely browned. Place in oven (375F) for about 10 minutes or until the juices run clear.

12) Remove chicken from pan. Add about 1/2c of tomato sauce, then place back on med/low heat. Let the tomato sauce reduce a bit, then add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream. Stir, then place the chicken back into the pan and coat it with the sauce.

13) I plated this with a bit of diced up cherry tomatoes and some roasted asparagus (olive oil, salt, pepper, then placed in the toaster oven on 400F for about 10-15 minutes).

WODs for the Week

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I have been behind on the blogging a bit. Life’s been busy and I have been taking down time wherever I can get it. The baby’s almost here and work has been kickin’ my butt lately. This will be short.

Tuesday, 2/15/2011

I could not believe how sore I was from “Operation Get Some”. I was barely able to walk when I got into the gym that night. I started warming up and I felt a bit of loosening start to occur. As part of the warm up that night, Fio had us do some shoot throughs. On one of them, a felt one of those “you’re about to really tweak your hamstring” twinges, so I took a little break, got a lacrosse ball, a pull up band and did some more stretching. I stretched through Fio’s skill session on the clean and jerk. Then, I decided to give the WOD a try once I didn’t feel like I was going to pull my hamstring anymore. The WOD was:

“Gwen”

15 – 12 – 9 clean and jerk. Pick a weight to be used for the entire WOD. Touch and go at the ground, no re-gripping. If you stop/re-grip at the ground, that’s a penalty and you have to start over. No dumping the weight. If you dump the weight, you have to start over.

Mean.

If I were not feeling sore and tight, I think I would have attempted 135#, but I didn’t really want to temp the fates. I did a few PC’s with 75# and it was super light. I decided to go with 95#. Although the weight was somewhat light, this was still really challenging.

Wednesday, 2/16/2011

I was the only one that showed up for class on this day! It was nice. Fio and I got to spend a little quality time. It happens so rarely. This WOD was nasty, particularly as we all know my feelings on running. It was:

185# dead lift (Rx was 275#, but I was not really interested in doing that with my back yadda yadda)
800m run (FML)

The deads were OK but I still started to feel a good bit of fatigue in my lower back, so I am happy I kept the weight sort of light. The runs were agony, but Fio came along on all of them which, I felt, really helped me to keep some semblance of a pace and not let up. All in all, this took me 21:48.

Friday, 2/18/2011

3 min pull ups (41)
2 min rest
3 min push ups (60)
2 min rest
3 min dumbbell thrusters (20)
2 min rest
3 min double unders (70)
2 min rest
3 min 100m sprints (5)
2 min rest

This one was fun! The dumbbell thrusters were BY FAR the hardest part of this workout. They were just miserable. I really thought that I would make up reps on the double unders, but man, by the time I got to them, my shoulders were protesting hard. My total for this one was 196.

Sunday 2/20/2011

There are only 2 weeks left in the “I Do The Impossible” challenge and I think I am doing well the “loose body fat” goal. My pants are looser and I can see the progress on my belt, so that’s awesome. One of my goals was to get a sub-9 minute mile. My last few time trials were all in the ~10 minute area, so I thought that a 9 minute mile was a pretty good stretch.

I remember the conversation that I had with Dave about this. It went something like this:

Me: I want to set some goal around running. I hate it and kinda suck at it and we’ve never really been friends.

Dave: Ok, what do you think is a good mile time?

Me: Well, my last few times, it’s been about 10 minutes. I’d be happy with sub-10.

Dave: I think you can do sub-9.

Me: Well, if you think so, but I don’t know.

So we set the goal to be sub-9 and, yes, I had some SERIOUS doubts about that.

Back to the point. Being that we are 6 weeks in, I decided that I wanted to see where I was at with this goal. I used mapmyrun.com to see what the distance around my block was and it was, to my surprise, exactly .33 miles. I got some clothes on, got m phone and went out on the front porch. I warmed up a bit, got the timer app up, then just went.

I went like an angry mob with guns, knives, pitchforks, and rabid dogs was chasing me. I was SO afraid of missing this goal that I ran like my life depended on it. It hurt and I wanted to slow down and quit numerous times. What kept me from doing that was knowing that if I saw 9:01 on that timer, I would feel awful. I wanted to see 8:59 on there at the very least. Funny how much of a difference 2 seconds can make as part of a mental state. As far as I was concerned, a time of 9:01 was the same as 20 minutes. Didn’t count… might as well have walked.

At one point I remembered that scene from Fight Club when Ed Norton is running out of the policy station and he says “I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped batter acid. Then I ran some more…”.

When I got back to my front porch after the third lap around, I nearly fell up the stairs, and completely forgot where I had stashed my phone. After a few seconds, I found it, collapse on the outside futon, and hit stop. When I looked at the time, I was confused. Also, I couldn’t really breath… but I was so confused and happy (let’s call it conappy) that I wasn’t sure if I can run enough laps… maybe I measured wrong… this couldn’t be true.

Yes… 7:28.

This has NEVER. EVER. EVER happened to me in my life. I am amazed.

Operation Get Some–Thoughts After Competing

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It’s clear that I am NOT a competitor, nor am I a competitive person. Let’s start there. Competition makes me feel like a loser, mostly. Usually, people don’t compete in something unless they have some feeling that they have it in them to win. There are things that I feel that I could compete confidently in, but CrossFit is not one of them as you just don’t know what the events are going to be.

I surprised myself on the first and second WODs. After WOD #2 I was actually in first place (I think… that’s according to HB) due to my 215# split jerk (the highest of the day), but I quickly lost it on WODs #3 & #4 as they were more metcon based and I just don’t have the lungs for them.

Here are the WODs and how they played out:

WOD #1

300m row
10 back squats @ 185#

Immediately followed by…

WOD #2

3 minutes to find your 1RM on shoulder to overhead.

My time for WOD #1 was 6:02 and I put up 215# on the shoulder to overhead. 300m is a good distance for me on the C2. I can pull hard pretty consistently, and if I am careful, I won’t gas myself out. This was the only WOD that I was happy with my performance on.

WOD #3

This is where I totally lost it and came in dead fucking last out of everyone that came out. It was a 12 minute AMRAP of:

3 burpees
6 air squats
9 KB Swings @ 1.5 pood (I did 2 handed snatches as KB swings still don’t feel so hot on my back)

I managed to get 10 rounds plus 1 burpee. Horrible. I guess trying to compete while sick isn’t the best idea, eh? I felt like my chest was going to explode. There was also lots of coughing and hacking. After this WOD I was pretty discouraged and didn’t even want to go through with the next.

WOD #4

At this point, my attitude was horrible. Mostly of “screw it, whatever, I want to go home'”, much like a five-year-old that takes the kickball away and stomps back to his house because he’s losing. More so, the WOD was something that there was no way in fucking hell that I would ever even have a chance at, so, whatever. You gotta know when to fold â€˜em, right? The WOD was:

800m run (to the end of Cherry St. and back)
50 games style push ups

My time here was 6:37. At least 2 minutes slower than the people that I needed to keep up with. Guaranteed that even had I ran the hardest I could have run, I still would have lost. The odds of me doing that with a chest cold… – 1280371471324.

You may have read my post on running at some point. If you haven’t, take a minute to see why I have such negative feelings surrounding this activity. Those feelings combined with the fact that I really needed to place on the last WOD to stay competitive meant something along the lines of “fuck you, fatty, you’re done” in my head.

So, V says to focus on the positives. Let me see if my pessimistic ass can find any.

I did pretty well on WOD #1. I didn’t come in first, but was at the very least had a time that was competitive with the rest.
I came in 1st on WOD #2 and split jerked more then everyone else. Yay for me.
I participated and didn’t quit even though I felt like chewed up, spit out dog shit and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep before even arriving.

Maybe there are more, but I can’t think of any.

I have been thinking about whether or not I would like to do something like this again, and it’s hard to say. I went into it promising myself that I wouldn’t think of it as a competition and that I would just have fun and focus on getting the activity in. That worked great while I was staying with the rest of the pack.

As soon as I started to slip away, I was that fat little 6th grader back on the school court yard with everyone else leaving me in the dust and it felt absolutely horrible.

It took me a good 5-10 minutes after that last WOD to flush the feeling of “loser” out of me, but eventually I did and remembered that these are all my friends and don’t think the horrible thoughts that those 6th grade bastards did.

Take it or leave it, right or wrong, those are my thoughts.

The weekend

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Friday Night (2/11/2011), I was still feeling pretty sick. I felt that, if I did the WOD that was on the site for the day (Nicole, 400m run, pull ups to failure for 20 minutes) that it would not be good for me.

Dave told me to come to the clinic and we’d find something for me. It ended up being pretty easy going, but fun still. I did the following:

Strict ring pull ups in sets until failure. I think I got 6 or 7 sets of 1-3. No idea on the total.
2x{5 kb clean & jerk (each arm), 10 goblet squats, 5 kb snatch (each arm), 10 goblet squats} untimed

Saturday was “Operation Get Some”, an event that Wladi and Carson planned. They did a fantastic job and everyone had a lot of fun. Mostly. I wrote a separate posting about that, as I have… well, let’s just say “issues that I should probably see someone for”.

After OGS, we got home and ate lunch. As we were settling in to relax for a bit, I got a call from my Grandmother that she was headed to the ER as she had been throwing up all night and was starting to get chest pains.

V and I met her there at the ER and she was very quickly admitted. The doctors did some tests and quickly determined that she had atrial fibrillation. She had never had this before.

Anyway, they gave her a few different drugs to get her heart rate under control as it was in the 170s and 180s, peaking even near 200 at times. That’s very scary and very dangerous. They also did a few other tests like blood work, cat scan (to check for clots), cardiograms, etc and all looked good.

Once her heart rate was under control and she was feeling better they decided to admit her overnight to the ICU. The drug that they put her on has to be monitored closely as it can lead to low blood pressure and low heart rate. They were very clear about why they were putting her in the ICU; not because she was unstable, but because people need close monitoring on that drug.

The long and short of it is that she ended up being able to go home yesterday (Sunday) after just 1 night’s stay. The cardiologist believes that the stress and nutrient depletion of throwing up for 12 hours straight led to her heart entering into this abnormal beat pattern. Once they slowed her heart rate, her heart went back to a normal pattern by itself pretty quickly.

She’s got a few follow ups to make but she will be fine.

The question now is, what the hell did she do to make herself throw up for 12 hours?! That sounds like a stomach virus to me and from what I hear, her neighbor’s kids have both had that sort of thing on and off. Whether or not it came from them, who knows. I am not trying to place blame. It very well could have also been from something that she ate. Whatever it was, I hope it doesn’t happen to her again.

Sunday was mostly a wash. We stayed in bed late, then got up and ate breakfast. We had a house painter come over to give a quote which we happily accepted. After that, we went over to Costco and Whole Foods for groceries, then I headed to the hospital for a visit and ended up bringing her home. By the time I got home, there wasn’t much left in me for a lot. I made dinner and got a lot of stuff prepped for our Valentine’s dinner today. Speaking of which, here’s what’s on the menu:

Appetizers

Red and Gold beet salad with arugula, goat cheese, and balsamic honey reduction.
Parmesan crisps.

EntrÃ©e

Chicken breast stuffed with spinach, mushrooms, garlic, parmesan cheese & covered with tomato cream sauce. Side of roasted asparagus.

Dessert

Chocolate covered strawberries (choice of dark or milk chocolate).

I am very much looking forward to sharing a romantic dinner with V. Life has been very busy lately (I know, I know, just wait) and we haven’t really spent lots of quality time together.