Man, I feel so yucky lately. I think I'm wildy anemic. Also, my digestive track isn't working very well. Pretty much, if I don't take cholestyramine every night, I end up with a horrible case of the runs, regardless of what I eat. It makes me nervous because the doctors told me when I had my gall bladder surgery that I'm starting to get fatty liver disease because of my weight and I am scared to death and that the only cure was to drop the weight.

I'm going to go to a bariatric seminar the first of October. I can't stand how limited I feel by my body. I want to be the busy active person I used to be. I think if I do this right, I can plan to do the surgery by next summer and take the summer to recover and see how it's going. I may move it to sooner, depending on the information I find out at the seminar. I'm looking at the lap band because it's removable and it's adustable and it's an outpatient procedure for most people. I'm worried about how the nutrition thing is going to work for me, but I have a few ideas about that, too.

I'm going to get the uterine ablation to stop the horrible bleeding and anemia I suffer through each and every month. That will at least do something to help prevent anemia after my surgery. I'm also going to talk to Mell and see if we can plan and schedule this somewhat.

Finally coming to grips with the need for surgery, has been a brutal thing. I've held onto the idea that somehow I could pull it out of my ass and I'd magically lose weight. I feel like I failed and I feel so sad about that. I've tried so hard in so many ways to get my body under control, but everything got bad all of the sudden so fast that I had no way to keep up with it. And with gas so expensive, it's hard to justify going to the club even if it is for my health.

The other thing is my dreams have been scaring me. I keep dreaming that I'm going to die. Sometimes, I've even wished for it because I've felt so frustrated with my body. When I wake up frightened, I think What if the kids or Mike found me dead? I think with my recent birthday, I feel my mortality more than I have for a long time. I feel so sad, so desperate and so frantic, but I feel like I have no choices left other than a wheelchair and/or dying. Those are really shitty choices.

Some of what brought this on, is how horribly out of shape I am. I taught first graders on Thursday and I just came home and fell sound asleep on my birthday. I was on my feet all day. I was so disheartened because I could see that I really needed to circulate more than I was physically able to. Mike had to pry me out of bed, to have me read my cards and show me the flowers he bought me. I canceled the job I had Friday because I was dead on my feet. It was special education, too, so I had been pretty psyched about getting to do it and very sad about not being able to handle it.

Next week, I've got four days scheduled and I'm basically going to train a lot at the club to build up my endurance, pound vitamins, prepare food in advance and hope to God, I can pull it off. We need the money so badly and each day I cancel is $100 that we desperately need.

There's a bariatric seminar on Tuesday in Reno, but I teach Carson City 5th graders (my least favorite age group) that day and I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn on Wednesday to do resource room for high schoolers, so a night in town the night before that would be pretty rugged. I also am going to have to run home, grab Russell and then bring him to his allergy shot appointment, so I won't get to go home after working and take a nap, but will be running. I don't want to be out even vaguely late. I am teaching the same 5th graders on Thursday, so I need to keep myself sharp to make it work. Friday, I sub for the auto shop teacher at the high school.

I will be at the club working out this weekend. I also plan to go on Monday. I figure even a little bit of built up endurance will get me through it all and that's what I need. I think I also need the emotional boost of having one place where gravity isn't reminding me of how fat I am. Mike bought me this suit. It doesn't do as great a job of holding my boobs in place as my old one did, but it's really soft and slick, unlike my old one and the zipper makes it a heck of a lot easier to slip into. Once I get the girls lined up into the bra, it's really comfortable, but that initial shuffling of boobs is a pain.