MAJOR SCARY WAKE-UP CALL – NO CHOICE BUT TO BE HEALTHY NOW

Yesterday was a great day but it ended on a very scary note. I will get there toward the end of this Blog (I will do the day as it unfolds as per usual) but I will say I got a HUGE wake-up call.  One I cannot ignore.

Jamie and I were a LITTLE more sensible food-wise today. It isn’t really that we ate healthy, but that we ate half as much. For both breakfast and lunch we ordered one meal and shared it between us. It was a much more sensible approach.

Breakfast To Share

Lunch To Share

Much of the day was spent indoors watching shows at the Edinburgh Festival. We got “hooked” and are going to see three more shows today.

The shows were short. They were only about an hour each but they were all very good and all quite different.

The first one, called “The Door” was the best and basically had us in tears. It is the story of an Officer facing prosecution following his actions in battle, which basically stemmed from his realization just before the battle that he no longer believed in the Iraq war. He shared his “realization” with his special unit of about 8 people, shattering their confidence and, potentially, resulting in the death of a soldier. He is in a room with one of the soldiers involved who is there to act as a witness of the events that occurred. What unfolds is a gripping account of the truth, and the realization that things are not what they appear. As the officer and soldier come to understand what really happened you cannot help but go on their emotional journey with them. The two actors were outstanding and I simply couldn’t stop crying.

The second show was called “Lockerbie: Unfinished Business”. It is the story of one man’s quest for justice after his daughter Flora was killed on the plane. It is presented as if the Father is giving a lecture on his experience and fight for the truth. His grief shows through and you get caught up in his undeniable pain he is in as he attempts to remain a professional presenter. This is ultimately a message play though. It is substantiation of what the real father has uncovered to show that the wrong man, indeed the wrong country, was convicted. It is hard to watch this show and not feel that it is undeniably fact that they got the wrong man. It is, of course, one side of the story…but pretty strong evidence is presented.

After these two shows we went to Catherine and Angelo’s for a healthy dinner (except for maybe some chocolate cake).

Yummy - Good Portion Size
Healthy!

That's salad - blurry salad

Chocolate Cake - Yummy
Not So Healthy...But YUMMY!

I stepped on their scale before I left to discover I was up 13 pounds! We had just finished dinner so I will give an allowance of 3 pounds for that but still…up 10 pounds!

Yes, it is possible the scale isn’t accurate but I know myself and I know what I have been eating…it is accurate.

Following this, not surprising, revelation, Jamie, Angelo, Joni, Catherine and I went out to see a comedy show about a “Reasonable Man’s” journey into the world of fetishes. It really was quite good.

Can you see my face is bigger? Even the cigarette in
my mouth is chocolate!

We ended the night, (or at least we thought we did) by stopping into an old Scottish Pub for a pint. It was one of the things I really wanted to do while I was here and we did it  :-)

Love The Urinal Trough

After bidding goodbye to Angelo, Catherine and Joni, we decided to walk home along the waterfront. It was about a twenty-minute walk.

This is when it got scary.

In order to explain this I have to state that I was once a severe Asthmatic. I would take inhalers about ten times a day to control the Asthma even though I was being told that more than four times a day could result in serious health issues. The bottom line was I couldn’t breath unless I took it more often.

When I began to lose weight in 2004 the need for inhalers decreased and eventually disappeared. I have not used an inhaler in about five years. Even though my weight has fluctuated a lot in those five years, it never went back to where it was, I never consistently ate as much processed food as I used to, and the Asthma never returned.  I have become so confident that I have often, foolishly, gone on vacation without brining an inhaler. Fortunately, this time I did bring one.

I have been getting signals I stupidly chose to ignore over the past few days. Feeling brief moments of breathing difficulties, but did nothing.

As we walked home it started getting progressively more difficult to breath until it felt like it was getting almost impossible to breath. My breaths became very wheezy and very loud. Jamie started to get scared.

At first I wasn’t really worried. I told Jamie, truthfully, that I had been through this over a hundred times and I just had to get back to the flat and take my inhaler. He kept saying we should stop and rest but I insisted on continuing. The sooner I got home the sooner I would have my medication. I did not want any delays.

As we progressed it was getting worse. The feeling of my chest tightening started to make me worry about things like heart attacks. As a younger person this would never have occurred to me but when your older…it does.

I reached a point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it home. We saw a Holiday Inn and Jamie ran in to get them to call me a taxi. The lady there was great and called one but it was going to be five minutes. She kept coming  outside where I was leaning against a post to check to make sure I was ok while Jamie ran up the street to try and wave a taxi down sooner. Of course we ended up with two taxis’ s at the same time but one of them got me home, I took my inhaler, and returned to normal almost instantly.

I will never know if it was too much processed food or environmental factors here. Perhaps it was a bit of both, but I do know I was sent a very clear message. I can no longer eat the way I have been eating.

It is exactly one week before I return home. In that time I will allow myself two more indulgences. I will have Fish and Chips once in Edinburgh and once in London, but that is IT! The rest of the tine it is 100% health 100% of the time.

My inhaler will be with me at all times now.

There really is no longer a choice.

Be healthy,

Alan