Motivation, where does it come from & how do you hang on to it? This a question that I have been meaning to think about and write about, if I can get motivated. January is a dark month and a cold month and those two things combined seem to have driven any motivation I may possess into the farthest reaches of wherever motivation goes for a holiday. Probably Bali or a tiny village near the headwaters of the mighty Limpopo River in central Africa. Anyway it seems to have gotten off my island.
I have not uttered these words out loud but I made two promises to myself sometime between Christmas and new years. I told myself that I would reinvigorate this blog. I’m not sure why this has become important to me but it has. It is a matter of great pride for me to write something (hopefully of some import) regularly. As I have said here on more than one occasion I am in awe of Clara’s skill with words and with her ability to find time in an incredibly hectic life to write regularly, articulately and very humourously in her blog. And if my son would start to write in English instead of techno-garble I’m sure that I would enjoy his blog also 
. These two are my motivation.
The other promise I made to myself relates to my health. I live with diabetes and hypertension. Both of these are invisible and both are controllable, by me. All I have to do is lose weight, exercise regularly, eat a far better diet and cut way back on the amount of alcohol I consume. Last year my motivation stayed home and I actually managed to lose weight during the winter, enough weight that people started to notice. My doctor sure did! My BP dropped right back into the very normal range and my bg readings were the best they had been in sometime.I was using a recumbent exercise bike and walking. In the spring I kept it up. I was outside gardening and walking.I managed to keep the weight off over the summer and things were looking pretty good. Good enough that I thought that I could start to eat a bit more than I had been and things that I know are not good for me. Just before Christmas I had an appointment with my doctor and although my BP was still good my weight had started to creep back up.That was enough to make me stop exercising completely. So I told myself that come January 1 I would get off my ass and get back to it. Well here we are on Jan. 23 and I am till telling myself the same story. I delude myself into thinking that hauling in firewood once a week and walking behind the snow blower are suitable alternatives but I know it ain’t so. I walk past my bike half a dozen times a day and every time I think I should park my butt and spend 15 minutes but its not happening and it is really pissing me off. I have to start! So if anyone who reads this sees my motivationwill you please tell it to come home.
Where to start? Every year for the last 8 or so I have had an appointment with an ophthalmologist, named appropriately, Dr. Sharp. He checks my eyes for any signs of damage caused by the type 2 diabetes I live with. That damage is referred to as Diabetic Retinopathy . Checking for diabetic retinopathy consists of dilating the pupil and then shining a very bight into the eye so that the doctor can study the back of your eyeball looking for damage to the retina. Having a doctor look at the inside of your eyeball is much the same as having a doctor study the inside of your ear . You know what is going on but you have no idea what the doctor is is seeing. Three years ago I started going to an optometrist to have my eyes checked to see if I needed new glasses. In his examining room is an LCD monitor Last year he showed me digital images of the inside of eyeballs as he talked to me about retinopathy and other diseases and conditions of the eye. I was fascinated. This year when I went he said that he was going to take a digital image of the inside of each of my eyes so that he could have a very good look at what is going on and also as a record against which future checks can be compared. When I asked he readily agreed to email me copies of the photos so without further ado meet the inside of my right eyeball. – 
A brief geography lesson. The light coloured circle on the right side is the optic nerve and the dark lines emanating from it are veins and arteries. The really important thing about this photo is that this is the inside of MY eye. i actually got see what the optometrist got to see and when he explained what he did not see, any evidence of retinopathy I was thrilled. A large percentage of type 2 diabetics who are 15 years post diagnosis commonly show symptoms of the disease. I am no poster child for diabetes management but I do try and it seems that the trying is paying off. Two weeks after I saw the optometrist I had my annual appointment with Dr. Sharp. To my surprise and great pleasure , at the end of the appointment he announced that there was no need for me to come for an annual examination until such time as there is a change in the health of my eyes. He said to continue going to the optometrist every year that that if he noted any change he would refer me back to Dr. Sharp. Wow!
We returned home after a month away recently. The fellow who kept our yard open while we were gone did a good job but using a truck with a blade he was limited as to where he could put all the snow we have received this winter and it is a lot. This is easily the snowiest winter since 1997. It took me & my snowblower 4 solid days to get things cleaned up. By the end my right forearm was quite sore. Muscle strain I thought, coupled with some “you’re not as young as you used to be” and a little “you’ve been sitting on your ass a lot lately”. Problem explained, carry on and quit whining. So I gave it a bit of a rest, tried mousing with my left hand and it seemed to be getting better. Until Thursday.
Thursday afternoon I had an appointment with my doctor, a regular thing and since it was a locum I didn’t know I did not say anything about the sore arm. We got home while it was still light so I decided to spend a few minutes chipping ice that had accumulated on the back porch. It was cold and the ice was generally not in any mood to be chipped so my efforts were not yielding great results. I decided to quit, sweep off the little bit of ice that had come free and leave the rest for another day. As i swept the broom back and forth (not too vigorously) something in my right forearm went snap, no noise but I was instantly in pretty severe pain. I spent quite a miserable evening. I had a light supper, some ibuprofen, some acetaminophen and tried to find a position to hold my arm in that let me feel comfortable. We debated going to the hospital to get it checked but after some discussion decided to wait until morning and see how it felt. After a night that passed more comfortably then I had expected It was still very sore Friday morning so I called the clinic and yes there was an opening- come right away. So off we went, Val driving with barely 1 cup of coffee in her system. Well it was a medical emergency. Arrived and was taken in almost immediately. Same doctor comes in and I started to explain the problem. He begins to manipulate my arm and press here and there asking the expected question,Does this hurt? Does this hurt?” Then he started running his thumb along the length of my forearm asking, “Does it hurt here? “Is this where it hurts?” He then mumbled something about a subdural whatchamacallit of the anterior thingamajig. Then the really surprising question, “How do feel about an acupuncture treatment?” “Fine” says I and the next thing you know I had 6 or 7 little needles sticking out of my left leg from the knee to the ankle. Each time he would press with his thumb asking, ” Can you feel this?” Then in would go this really fine needle. It didn’t hurt going in, in fact I barely felt it but then he would give it a little twist until I felt something akin to a very slight electrical shock which invariably made me jump. Every time he inserted a needle he would return to questioning me about how the arm felt and where is the pain now and I would try to give him specifics. By the end of 15 minutes or so I had needles in my left leg , one just above my right ankle, one in my skull and another right beside the nail on my right index finger, that one hurt going in. While this was going on he was talking to himself about the spleen and the large intestine and other organs. He explained that acupuncture is all about balancing the forces within the body and some of the history and lexicon of acupuncture.
All in all it was an interesting experience and my arm did feel better when he was finished. After withdrawing all of the needles he prescribed a course of anti-inflammatory medication and told me to rest the arm for a few days. It is now Sunday morning and the arm is still sore but it is getting better.
ps I did tell him I was going to blog this.