She looks pretty good on the outside, too.
My physician and I have been locked in mortal combat over my lipid levels. I don't want to take lipitor, and she was preparing the five-point restraints. We came to a compromise: I would have a CAT scan (at one of these fancy places* that doesn't accept insurance) and she would then leave me alone.
I am a "zero." Ha! No lipitor for me.
But something interesting happened on the way to the CAT scan. Since the beginning of the year, I've lost 15% of my body weight. This was no great trick: I just stopped eating so much.** We reduced our portion sizes and the amount of wine we drank with dinner, and I stopped eating when I wasn't hungry. I now weigh approximately what I did when I was on my postdoc 15 years ago. And my cholesterol? The fancy no-insurance place* measured it at 252 - lower than it was 15 years ago. They didn't understand why I was getting the scan.
Of course it could have been a measurement error, but I'll take it for now. Meanwhile, I have to go shopping for new pants. I gave all my skinny clothes to Goodwill years ago.
I am feeling very smug right now.
*I highly recommend the fancy no-insurance place. The waiting room was swanky, I didn't have to wait past my appointment time, and they had coffee, fruit and donuts (irony!) for the patients. The technician showed me each image and explained what she saw on each one. I got a complete copy of my records and the scan images on DVD. I paid for the scan up front, but they filled out the insurance paperwork for me, on the off chance my insurance would cover the (large) expense out-of-network.
**Why did we do this? Despite our steady increase in weight over the years, neither of us were heavy. But I've been on a sewing binge for a while, and last winter decided to make myself some nice pants. Pattern sizes have larger numbers than off-the-rack clothes, so if you wear (say) a size 10, you will probably end up using a size 14 or 16 pattern. I made a size 14 pair of lovely dress pants. It took about two weeks fussing over every stitch, and then they were finally done. I tried them on, and despite the fact that I had chosen the pattern according to my measurements, I couldn't even get the fuckers over my hips.
16 comments:
Sewing pattern companies do not subscribe to vanity sizing. I once mentioned my (sewing pattern) size to one of my SILs who shrieked in disbelief. I could not possibly be a 22!
Well...maybe not in ready to wear.
I was dining out with my friend the other night, and she looked around and remarked "Do you notice how so many Americans are overweight?" It's worse - here in Wisconsin, where it's the law* to serve 3 oz. of cheese with every restaurant meal, we hold the national record for fatness. (Calling it "obesity" doesn't add any elegance; call it what it is.) I lost weight pretty much as you did - but had the glorious, wondrous and delightful experience of actually getting to my IDEAL weight by -- getting my long-desired dentures. I'm the happiest Chopper-Wearer in the country. No more pain, no more ugliness, and THIN! (Ironically, for the first time I can eat everything - but at least I've the sense not to!) Glad to hear about the good news healthwise - very soothing to an admiring Jewish Bubbeh.
*OK, so it's a Blue Law and not much adhered to any more. Most of us eat more than 3 oz. of cheese with every meal anyway.
I recently went with my mother when she went to one of those fancy no-insurance places for her yearly mammogram. I (not having had insurance for the last 5 years and being used to dealing with the NOT fancy no-insurance places) was dumb struck...The woman at reception actually greeted us! They actually had Mom's file! The waiting room was swanky (coffee, water, fruit, and granola bars)! Mom got in for her appointment EARLY!!!!! I too totally recommend the fancy no-insurance places!
Glad that you don't need the Lipitor!
Rachele
Do you have an HDL / LDL breakdown? That ratio is critical. My cholesterol is over 200, but it is mostly HDL (the good stuff), and my dr. says just to keep doing whatever I am doing. It is not informative enough for making treatment decisions to look at just the overall cholesterol amount.
I'm a lifelong seamstress (as a sideline and for fun) but this is exactly why I NEVER sew my own pants...
As for those fancy pants (no pun intended) places- I had my last mammogram in such a place- it had furniture nicer than my living room.
I hate it when I make something that doesn't fit right when I'm done. It's infuriating.
Kudos on the weight loss, though! I'm trying to do the same thing: cut down on portions, any and all snacks, and up my movement. So far, I'm just stabilizing, but I have hope.
Never trust the pattern. Always check it against yourself. Congratulations on the adjustment in size!
I'd also like to recommend the no-insurance dentist. Best dental care I've ever received.
So, um, is that your heart??
Sounds like you've got an "I told you so" moment coming with your doctor. Savor its deliciousness.
LOL @ the underwire in the scan!
Lipitor sucks. My mom has to take it, and can't take the generic brand; her doc says it doesn't work as well for her super-high cholesterol. :-( So she and my stepdad are both on the name-brand shit. They also take CoQ-10 supplements to help offset the muscle cramps/spasms that can happen with some drugs, such as statins and some antidepressants. I take the CoQ-10 along with my Cymbalta, and it works wonders.
And now you have me fearful of learning to sew. [teeth chattering]
Sometimes I really think they just want people to have cancer and heart disease. They kept accusing me of having breast cancer at one point and only the fancy no insurance guys would say I didn't.
If people did't have cancer and heart disease, then all of those fund-raiser [fill in deathly disease here] walks would have no cause. We'll be reduced to Walk Against Paper Cuts.
Plus, the government gives out the big bucks to heart disease & cancer researchers. Offer a lot of money for research in a field, and you get more researchers. More researchers = a higher need for research subjects so the studies may be completed so that researchers can get more grants to sustain the labs. It's bad business to CURE diseases. Best to keep treating them with drug du jour and then studying the effects of the drugs. We don't want to have taxpayer-sponsored pharma bailout package!
Nice job loosing the weight--that's awesome. But being the wet blanket that I am, I will point out that having a clean scan obviously does not mean that one cannot develop heart disease later on with elevated cholesterol. It looks like you received a CT, but the results of a stress test, in particular, become outdated the minute you leave the doctor's office.
If the lipitor specifically is a problem, there are a number of drugs in the statin family--perhaps one would be more tolerable to you. It's been at least a couple of years that some of the cardiology attendings at our institution expressed their opinions to me that pretty much everyone will one day be taking statins like vitamins. Most recently, there was a trial in NEJM that showed a benefit for statins in at least one subset of people without elevated cholesterol.
However, statins do have serious side effects--liver and muscle inflammation most commonly--which most be ruled out in the first few months of treatment with blood tests (but after that it is rare). I don't know, that's just somethings to think about.
I ran across a study that compared heart attack mortality rates between a group of people who took Lipitor and those who did not.
The following was discovered, the folks who took Lipator had much lower cholesterol levels. However there was no difference in heart attack rates and death from heart attacks.
He is what was learned. High cholesterol does not cause heart attacks. Inflamed or irritated spots on the walls of arteries collect cholesterol placks. These build up and block the artery. The rate of build up is not effected by the serum cholesterol levels.
A heart attack starts out as an inflammation of the wall of a blood vessel. The inflammation causes cholesterol plack to stick to the spot and then you have a heart attack. Save your money and skip the Lipitor.
I found this on a blog called Junkfood Science. Here is the link to the article.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/01/reading-evidence-closely-statins-for.html
It makes veryu intersting reading.
Over the past five years I have worked to increase my fitness and watch my diet. As a result I lost twenty pounds (all in my butt!... which is just not fair!), stopped getting backaches and raised my HDL.
While my cholesterol initially dropped, it went back up. Since I have relatives on one side who have suffered strokes... and questionable family history due to adoption on the other side, I do take a low dose of simvastatin.
This past month though I have been suffering from "runner's knee"... apparently I have strong quads and week muscles on the side of my knee, creating an imbalance. Walking down a hill inflamed my knee. My doctor prescribed another exercise (leg lifts). sigh
I also sew. I use the measurements and end up with overly large stuff. So before I make any pattern I create a muslin, sometimes more than one!
If my knee wasn't bothering me so much I would be cutting out a test run on the vest pattern I finally got to look good. It involved making the back dart look like an arrow, not a diamond... because I no longer have a butt there is no reason for any flair at the bottom.
I do have a Deviantart page on my sewing (because of daughter), and I find that lots of young women are asking me questions on getting a pattern to work (often on a coat I made for my daughter to wear as a computer game character... it is the "Enigma Coat"). I am always telling them to get cheap cheap fabric and test, test, test! I found rummage sales and yard sales are good sources for cheap fabric.
By the way, since I will need to go back to work I am back in school. Right now I am at my local community college picking up some courses I wished I took as an undergrad (like biology). Then I will take the GRE and hopefully get into grad school (again), though instead of engineering go into applied math (by the way, sewing involves transforming a two-dimensional medium into a three-dimensional form).
For the next time you sew:
1) take a fitting course at your local fabric store
or
2) make a muslin or two, or three
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