I was just reading over my last blog – which seem to be few and far between – and in doing so I have managed to make myself feel like such crap that I want to hide under the desk until I no longer feel hunger pangs. Needless to say, the whole diet program that I was on in January did not work out. We’ll just call it NS for short and in truth I would only recommend this to someone that has no taste buds. I started out with a bang and gave the program my all….. I followed all of the rules and ate only what I was supposed to, when I was supposed to. I kept up with the journal too……. for the first 2 weeks. After that, it became annoying to try and log what I ate and how much 6 times a day….. seriously, who has time for that?? I think the program would have been alot easier to follow had the food not tasted so bad. Half of the time I had know idea what I was eating, and when I did have an idea it was that I was eating dog food. My opinion (after my donation of $300 to NS) is that you can’t make foods forbidden. Like ice cream for example. I don’t eat it all the time, I don’t go crazy when I do eat it but when I told myself that I can’t have it…….EVER or at least for a month, I found myself standing in front of the feezer wistfully staring at a carton whilst I drooled. Same goes for pizza. I love pizza and just because NS advertises that they provide pizza as part of the meals, doesn’t mean that’s what it actually is and that you would get any kind of satisfaction from eating it. All of these diets talk about eating x number of times a day so that you’re never hungry – what malarkey. I don’t eat because I’m hungry….I eat for other unknown (to me) reasons. Bottom line, it didn’t work – for me. It’s a shame that I had to waste that much money to find that out. So, on to the next one. Maybe I should just skip the “I tried every diet in the book” phase and jump right to the surgical procedure. On one positive note, I did lose some inches and a couple of pounds. This was encouraging and I think that if I had stayed on the program, I may have lost more weight – but the food was just soooo gross that I couldn’t do it to myself. That and I knew that by making some of my favorite foods “forbidden” I would only binge on them later at some point. In other news, I had to stop exercising and my whole world pretty much came to a halt when I found out that I had to get surgery right away…… on me bum. Yep, that’s right – surgery on the ol keester. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t directly on my cheeks, but close enough to be a pain in the ass (I have so many puns right now in my head it’s just not right). Since by butt surgery, I’ve been pretty bummed out…….. ba dum bum ching. Ok, sorry – that was uncalled for. Anyway, maybe some other unlucky soul out there in this world has heard of a medical condition called a pionidal cyst. It’s a cyst that forms on the bottom of your tailbone. It’s congenital (you’re born with it) but most people don’t know they have it until between the ages of 16-25. My lucky discovery came about when I was 16 and my father was on vacation. Suddenly, within a matter of days, there appeared this walnut size lump on my tailbone. It hurt like hell and was VERY uncomfortable. I had to go to the hospital, of course, so every nurse and doctor and general lackey in the place could look at my ass and exclaim what a sight it was. I had to have it lanced there (I keenly remember NOT getting any local anesthetic for this) which hurt like hell and then I was on my merry way. The cyst didn’t bother me again until I was in my early 20’s. Then, once again, it grew to the size of a golf ball (this may be a slight exaggeration of size, but when something bigger than a pore starts growing on your tailbone, it feels like a bowling ball). I went to the doctor to have it lanced again and this guy actually used anesthetic. He told me that most people have this cyst surgically removed, so I looked into it. What I found were accounts of people who had suffered through the recovery process only to have the damn thing come back later on. So, I went on with my life and tried to ignore the little bump on my ass. And then it happened…… at work one day and within a couple of hours, the thing was the size of a walnut again. Let me take a minute here to explain exactly what a pionidal (I’m quite sure I have that spelled wrong) cyst is. It’s when a hair follicle grows in instead of out and it forms a little sac around itself. After awhile, the follicle becomes agitated and the sac fills up with pus and bacteria. No, this is not pretty so if you’re easily grossed – skip out now. Most people do as I did and just have the cyst lanced (they make a small cut and drain out the pus) and life goes on. However, in my case in this particular instance, the sac of pus broke open on the inside. So all that fun stuff spilled out into my body and got all of the surrounding tissue and muscle infected. I know, the nerve. When I went to the doctor this time, he told me as much and he told me that I had to take antibiotics for the infection. When he came into the room I was already belly down on the table with a cloth over my ass (I assumed the position as I had done this a few times before). No big, except that bigness (walnut size) of the area would not go down until the antibiotics kicked in. He also said that I had to have the cyst removed right away or bacteria would just keep forming and draining into my system. What kind of surgeon does this?, I ask. A butt surgeon, he says. We both had a chuckle and then moved on. I had the surgery a week later and let me tell you, the recovery has (I am still recovering after 5 weeks) been one of the most difficult and definitely the most painful experience that I have been through in awhile. It’s been hard on me and hard on Chuck who has had to change my packing every day for the last 5 weeks. My wound has to heal from the inside out, so there was no cut and stitch during my surgery. And now, I am left with a hole that I have to slowly let heal…… very uncomfortable. If anyone has one of these cysts, and it doesn’t bother them – don’t have the surgery. On the other hand, I had to miss 2 weeks of work and I have a desk job where I sit all day. So going back to work wasn’t fun either. If I would have known what this process would be like when I was younger, I would have had it done then when all I did was lay around and do nothing all day anyway. Quite literally, a pain in the ass.
