HAPPY GOBBLE GOOBLE

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I want to wish everyone a wonderful, safe and joyful thanksgiving! 

Things I am thankful for this year….

• having a home
• having my health finally return
• having friends and family who love me
• having a fantastic boyfriend
• being employed
• furthering my education
• my pets
• my memories

Enjoy the feast if you are blessed to have one and take a moment to think of those who do not have what we do… and take another moment to remember those who we’ve lost…

love you dad… miss you like hell today…

Tipping point

I think I may have hit my tipping point today….

I headed up to the student health center to get a quick check up (one of the cat’s has been sick and I had a rash on my hand that I wanted to make sure was nothing serious) and of course they weighed me when I got there…

And I’m depressed to admit over the last year I’ve just assumed I’d be around the 240-245 mark… and well lets just say New Orleans did me in because I tipped the scaled at 252…

First time in my life I’ve been over 250 and I’m a tad bit heart broken… so that’s it… Thanksgiving will be the last hoorah and then I’ve GOT to get this under control…

I know with the stress of school and work that it will be tough but if I continue to let myself go then the stress will only get worse…

Steve asked me while we were away this weekend what a goal date would be for me to drop the largest chunk of the weight I wanted to lose… I reluctantly named July 4th but I didn’t name the amount of weight I would want to have off by then… I would rather like to say that I want to be able to run a sub 10 min mile by July 4… We’ll see…  I know that I can do this… Its a matter of conquering my psychological issues to master the physical ones…

Support on this journey is more than welcome….

ragin cajun

Can’t wait to come home and upload some of my pictures from this trip. Sadly didn’t get many of the food but we did take the swamp tour and see some great surprises. And bourbon street is a creature all its own! Look for the picture post in the next few days.

a weekend away

I may not have any posts up this weekend… my new power cord from best buy still hasn’t arrived (after 2 weeks – geek squad and I are not ok right now)… and I will be a bit preoccupied because I am headed to ~~~~~~~~

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I’m heading down to help present a symposium at the Gerentological Society of America’s annual meeting where my boss and colleagues will be presenting some research findings… It also happens to fall on the ONE YEAR anniversary for me and Steve… hard to believe its only be a year hahah feels like 10… but we’re excited to get away for a weekend and have a little time to see some sights and get to eat good food…. (ok the food part is mostly me)

I will try to take lots of pictures to share upon my return…

Also a wonderful happy 25th birthday to Steve as well… my fabulous boyfriend is a quarter century old today!!!!

Letter to the Editor

I was published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette yesterday… just a letter to the editor… For a class I am currently taking we were required to write a letter to the editor regarding something surrounding health or health care that sparked our interest… if the letter got published we would be awarded 5 extra points…

Awesome I thought because I spent 2 years in high school as the editorial editor of my school paper and I also had a guest column published in college that stirred up quite a bit of controversy (if you have more questions about this please email me directly tallieterp at msn dot com)….

So I looked and looked for an article that I thought I could really identify with and then I stumbled across this one…

http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/10305/1099311-51.stm

Regarding how to share the bad news of a medical diagnosis with loved ones…. But as I finished the article I was left thinking, why was nothing mentioned about what happens when you choose to keep it all to yourself, or when you choose to lie about the diagnosis…??? and moreso, why do we seem to be glorifying those in the media who admit that they keep these things from family members… don’t get me wrong I LOVE Mondo on project runway but I was so upset when I found out he had kept from his family that he was HIV+ for 10 years…

So I wrote this back… and 3 hrs later got a call saying that they would like to publish it… just a small victory in my mind… but its something…

Denying grief

While I was glad to see the topic of how to share the news of a medical diagnosis tackled in “Why It’s So Hard to Share Bad News — Fear, Anger, Uncertainty Drive Behavior” (Nov. 1), I was disappointed in what the article left out. It did not mention any effects on the immediate family members. By not telling those in your life about your diagnosis you are denying them their right to grieve.

When I was 16 my father told me he had a kidney infection. A little less than a year later, he admitted that it was cancer. Weeks before his death the truth came out that the original diagnosis was terminal cancer with a year to live. I lost precious time with him thinking that nothing was really all that wrong.

Maybe he thought he was protecting me, that I would have acted differently had I known the truth. It should have been my choice to decide if I wanted to give up time with my friends to be with him. His decision denied me that.

Illness affects everyone that it comes into contact with. Patients have the right to decide what information to divulge to others, but when it comes to immediate family, especially children, I just suggest that you ask yourself, are you really protecting them or are you protecting yourself? In the end, the ones you leave behind are the ones left with the consequences of your choices.