Health Updates

We have both bad news and good news about health in the Chatlien household.

Normally, my boy is as alert and happy as he looks in this photo. Not the last few days.

We took Smokey back to the vet Saturday. The problem isn't his hip. He has a loose kneecap, which is causing bone-on-bone pain. To make things worse, the pain medicine the vet gave us Thursday is upsetting his digestive system. He woke me up twice Friday night, desperate to go outside and poop. After the second trip, I lay in bed at four in the morning thinking, "This is what it would be like to be the mother of a young child. Except I wouldn't be doing it at the age of 49-7/8 or having to do the bathroom runs in the front yard." But Smokey is worth a few lost nights of sleep. The vet gave us a different kind of pain medication, and we're feeding him rice and ground turkey for a few days, so we hope his system will settle down.

We have to go back in a week and see how well he's doing on his leg. If the vet has to do knee surgery, it will cost $1,100 and have a very long recovery.

I'm continuing with my new way of eating, and I'm astonished by the results. My allergies are still improving. This is August, which means ragweed season. Usually, I have to switch to Claritin with 24-hour Sudafed to survive ragweed season. For a couple of days this week, I didn't take anything--and I didn't have problems. I'm slowly losing weight, and my body just feels cleaner and healthier. I'm sure that all the vegetables I'm eating have something to do with that, in addition to cutting out white sugar and white flour. I think I'm taking in so much more in the way of nutrients than at any time in the past. I'm not having any kind of cravings either.

Yesterday, after taking Smokey back home, we went shopping at a farmer's market. I forgot to take my camera with me to the market, but I did make use of it after we returned home.

These came from the farmer's market, along with another yellow squash and another zucchini. 

Ah, here's where some of the squash and green beans went. I'm just sauteing them in olive oil here.

Here I've added onion and an orange sweet pepper.

Here I've added stewed tomatoes that are seasoned with basil and garlic. I also added some oregano.

Voila--lunch. The meat is some leftover steak from a restaurant dinner the other night. I ate only half of a 9-ounce piece of meat and froze what was left until today.

Tomorrow for supper, I'm going to make a stir fry with the rest of the green beans, yellow squash, and zucchini, plus the onion and green pepper from the photo and some cut-up chicken breast. We'll serve it on brown rice.

I wonder if I would have made these changes years ago if I'd known how much better they would make me feel day to day.