My doctor gave me a heart attack today

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

He’s keeping up with me pretty strictly because I just started on a new blood pressure medication, which apparently can eat holes through your liver if you don’t watch out. Anyway, four or five weeks ago when I was in, I weighed 266*. Part of his prescription for me then was to walk briskly 45 minutes, 4 times a week. This I have been doing fairly well.

In all honesty, I’ve been doing it 3.5 times a week because the regularity of every other day is easier for me to maintain. But that’s beside the point. Thing is, I’ve been doing it, which for me is a minor accomplishment in and of itself. So I’m pretty eager to see what I weigh several weeks later. My shirts are fitting better in the neck, and on some days I can actually hit hole 4 on my fat belts, which is down from hole 2 at 266.

I’m there for a very early appointment, so early in fact that his nurse isn’t even there yet. So my doctor gets my chart and walks me over to the scale. I get on and he starts moving the counterweights.

  1. Pooh, not as much as I’d hoped. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn denim.

  2. Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have had sesame chicken the other night.

  3. Crap! I guess all the keep-warm food I ate when the power was out has taken its toll!

  4. Huh?

  5. This is where I was like 4 months ago! He double-checks the number from last time. 266.

  6. You’ve gotta be shitting me!

  7. Stunned silence.

  8. Lots more stunned silence, tinged with fear.

  9. He doesn’t even bother moving the big counterweight over to the 300 mark. He looks at me, I look at him. “Any chance this thing is broken?” sez I. I step off. He steps on. He shifts the counterweights around a bit. “Yeah. This thing’s way off. Let’s go take your blood pressure.”

Thank you, God.

But … now I don’t know what I weigh. :frowning:

  • Yes, that’s a bunch. It’s considerably more than the 249 I had gotten down to a while back, but it’s still a lot better than the 309 I was for a while. So ease up, 'kay? :wink:
2

laughs
Fun thing to have happen, I’m sure.

I hope you have better luck than I am. Am still at 300. :frowning:

3

And just how WAS your blood pressure after that little episode?

4

Is there a GNC within driving distance? They usually have an electronic scale out front.

5

Knead, that would have been a page-turner if it had been in a book. Funny! If you want to get a really accurate measurement of weight, go to a large supermarket or a feed store and ask the manager if they have scales that you can weigh on. Their scales are checked by the government.

I used to weigh 300. I had a gastric bypass. It was the best thing that I’ve ever done for myself. I lost 150 pounds. Now I can kiss and make love at the same time.

6

How tall are you, Knead and Zoe?

7

:smiley: Surprisingly normal, actually. I was very pleased. So was he.

First thing in the morning or in new shoes, I’m 6 feet tall. :slight_smile:

8

“First thing in the morning”? What difference does the stiffy make?

9

You’ve obviously never seen my stiffy.

:smiley:

10

But now we want to !

11

I guarantee it’s nothing special. He only uses it only family get-to-getherers.

12

How to adjust your typical, doctors office, beam-style patient scale:

Before making adjustments, ensure that the scale is on a hard surface, as thick or even medium soft carpet can throw off measurements (by the weight driving the device down sufficiently to impact some part of the mechanism).
Make sure that no part of the scale touches anything else – the most common problem is setting the scale too close to a wall or obstacle.
Visually examine the scale for obvious damage – a 500 lb. patient does not do pretty things to one of these scales – such damage indicates a need for repair rather than adjustment.

The components involved:
The balance beam has a pointer on the right end, and several movable weights with marked positions.
The frame of the scale has a fixed pointer, usually within an opening, that provides a reference to the pointer on the beam.
The adjustment mechanism is a large, separate counterweight on the opposite end of the beam. It is mounted on a long captive screw, which can be turned with a standard screwdriver through a hole in the left end of the beam. Turning the screw moves the counterweight left or right.

Checking the scale:
Set all weights on the beam to zero.
Hold the beam at zero, and gently release. The pointer should move up and down, evenly around the zero mark, and smoothly stop at zero. If it does this, it is most likely accurate.

Making the adjustment:
(Remember how many total turns you move the adjustment, and in which direction, so you can return the device to it’s original settings if necessary.)
If the pointer ends up slightly high, move the counterweight slightly right. If the pointer ends up slightly low, do the opposite.
If the pointer is pegged at the upper or lower limits, move the counterweight much more in the appropriate direction. Note that extreme adjustments are so rarely necessary as to suggest another problem, as detailed above. In such cases, return the adjustment to the original settings to facilitate repair.
Repeat the procedure for checking the scale after making each adjustment – it is not possible to adjust on the fly.

As a final check, after all adjustments, use known weights to check accuracy. Note: Many more items have accurate weights printed on the label than you realize. This is particularly true in a doctors office. Also, a surpising number of people know their weight within a few pounds. Combining 32 lbs. of office supplies, and Mr.'s Thin & Thick, one can check both accuracy and linearity within reasonable bounds.

13

:o

Holy sh!t, did I actually say that? In two and a half years around here, I think that may be the first time I’ve ever said anything suggestive about my genitalia.

:o

14

Wow, after two and a half years and 4000 posts? That must be some kind of record. Some of the newbies are leaping to the genitalia after barely a dozen messages.

15

If KTK’s stiffy is that big, they will need to leap…

Oh dear, now I’ve done it.

16

Munch, dude, I was afraid you’d been consumed by that gas tax paper you were writing! Glad to see you’re still with us!!

17

Don’t sweat it. Last spring, upon breaking my ankle in a motorcycle accident, I was simply shocked, stunned and majorly depressed to discover that the electronic scale a the hospital clocked me in at … are you sitting down? … 328 lbs!!!

JEEZ! I knew that I had been looking a bit thick in the neck, but not THAT bad.

Anyway, long story short, I spent the whole summer on crutches and thus not able to pop in to Starbucks for the triple mocha and scone every morning - my food was being delivered by Safeway.com and trust me that moving around vigorously on crutches for 15 weeks is one HELL of an upper body workout.

The result? Between the injury and healing, major forced change of diet and forced exercise, as of Labor Day, I had “slimmed down” to 245 and was back into pants 10 inches smaller than the previous spring.

I went back up to 255 by Thanksgiving, but am now back down to 250 again, having gotten back on program again after the holiday. I’ve got a ways to go, but this is by far the largest amount I’ve ever lost in my life and this is also the longest I’ve managed to keep it off.

Good luck to your continued progress.