Hello to whoever is following. 2 more things to add to my previous chat. I realized my usually really thick hair is about thinning out at an alarming rate.
I asked my pharmacist to research all the medications I'm on. She finally found that the culprit could be my antidepressant, nortriptyline.
While I was in Rehab, I thought the grief I was feeling over my loss of function and lifestyle was depression. I told my Doctor I was depressed because I kept having bouts of crying. So he promptly doubled my dose of Nortriptyline.
After getting home and eventually noticing that I was experiencing grief, not depression I started weaning myself off of the extra 1/2 dose.
I am communicating with my Doc thru all of this.
I am a retired hairstylist and am having empathy for the first time for all the poor souls I used to take care of with thin fine hair.
I'm at the time of day that the nerve pain starts to get the worst, 3:30 pm and later. This is the time of day that I take the 1 dose of painkiller I have. I only take 1 dose a day because I never want to get addicted, and I always want it to work. It barely takes the edge off but I start feeling a little more human.
Even though I'm now on about 600 mg of gabapentin 5x per day, I still get really bad pain about 1 and 1/2 hours before each dose. My doc (neurologist) is giving me some samples of extended release to see if it works better.
In the beginning of all this when I was in ICU, a doctor came to see me. I think he was talking to me to see if I was a candidate for 1-month long stay at a rehab hospital. He wanted to see how badly I wanted to get better.
My insurance is state insurance that always denies anything of great expense, so the doctors have to fight to get patients in. I'm not sure, but I think that's why they do this.
So, the talk went something like this: Lori, no matter what medications we give you, it is a certainty that you will be back here unless (long awkward pause for lots of drama) you drastically change your diet and lifestyle.
He waited another moment to let that sink in. I'm thinking in the moment of silence, how hard I'd tried to lose weight the previous year with extreme diet change. The doctors believed the reason for my stroke was high blood pressure and cholesterol. Of course, the diet I'd been on was low carbs and plenty of fats. I'd lost about 20 lbs and gained a stroke with it.`
So as I asked the Doctor just what I should be eating, imagine my look of absolute shock when he said things like oatmeal, sweet potatoes high complex carbs. I looked at him like he had lost his last marble. I explained the previous diet I'd been on still feeling a little proud of my weight loss, and as I told him I realized that half and half was on that diet, lots of meat, and not much produce. Then He suggested looking over the website "Nutrition.Org".
Later when I did, I realized that most if not all the food were fruits, nuts, and vegetables. I remember thinking, "that will be the day". I was also thinking, "I will do anything to prevent this again."
So now I eat oatmeal with frozen blueberries or other types of frozen fruit at least 1x per day. I drink unsweetened Almond milk. I now add it to my coffee with no sugar. It's still very good. I eat very low sodium, lots of salads, avocados, beans, salsa and riced cauliflower (for crunch); and sweet potatoes. I'm also not eating any dairy or eggs. I'm actually not missing any of it unless I let myself get hungry and then happen to be around someone else eating those foods.
Because my energy level is not very high, I try to buy bagged salads and keep all food prep as simple as possible.
I am now 50 lbs lighter since the journey to lose weight started. There is more to share but I need to take a break on this for a while.
Please let me know if I am giving any of you ideas or you enjoy reading this. Until then...God bless you all!
With love, Lori