Your age is just a number!

It has been a long few months since my mom died. My leukemia has really been hammered by all the stress!  It showed up in my blood work; my white count was the highest it has been in almost 7 years. My spleen is a little tender from all the blood filtering it has had to do. Won’t see my onocologist until next month so I hope I get a little better. Really don’t want chemo on top of my already crazy life! Really just want to take care of myself for a change instead of everyone else!!!
Spent almost 2 months dealing with my mom’s affairs, including a 5 weeks of sorting, packing and cleaning out her apartment. When I finally got that done, I had to seriously clean up my house and the yard. Uber messy!

On top of that, my loving family members brought home poison ivy oils into my house and I would up with a horrible rash all over my body, including my face with one eye involved. That took about a month to heal up from that! I am super sensitive to poison ivy, oak and sumac so I stay far away from it but my hubby & daughter can roll in the stuff and not be bothered with it. Bummer for me! Had to stay in the house almost naked in front of the fan as sweating was not an option!
So now I am packing up the minivan for a road trip to Florida to see my eldest daughter and stay in our property in Fort Myers for a few weeks. I will be gone until the end of July. While I can do some exercises, it’s just enough without a real gym. I will be hitting the gym again once I get home… couldn’t see paying for membership if I was out-of-town so it will just have to wait. I’ve gained fat and lost muscle mass but I know I can get back to where I was before all hell broke lose in my life!

Irene Patricia "Patti" O’Grady EVANS 1929-2009

My mom, Patti Evans (age 79), lived in a senior housing apartment in my town. I saw or spoke to her almost every day. When she didn’t answer her phone, I drove over to her place. What a horror to peek in the window and see her lying in an unnatural position on the floor. I didn’t have a key and couldn’t get in. Panic! I called 911 and they were there in less than 5 minutes. They got in but wouldn’t let me in. I knew it was bad at that point. A few minutes later one of their staff came out and said she was dead, had been a few hours ago she passed away as she was very cold and stiff. They had a pastor that goes with them on calls like this; I guess it’s a good idea but all I wanted to do was get inside to see my mom one last time. She wanted direct cremation so there would be no last good byes at the funeral with a casket and all that. I had to beg, telling them I used to work in a morgue and did my fair share of tagging and bagging bodies (true story). They finally let me in to say goodbye but even then I only got a moment and couldn’t touch her as they were waiting for the medical examiner to come. Still makes me sad and angry at the same time to think of it!

The funeral was last Saturday, April 25th. We had an Irish wake as her full maiden name was Irene Patricia O’Grady. Her great-grandparents were from Louisburg, County Mayo, Ireland and she was always proud of being an O’Grady. Had bagpipes play "Amazing Grace", one song was "Danny Boy" (her family’s favorite) and another was a vocal version of the "Irish Blessing". We finished the service with "76 Trombones" from her all time favorite movie, "The Music Man" which caused a stir in the chapel. Then we cranked up the Irish music and opened up bottles of Harp, Irish Red and Guinness beer. Yummy food was served and enjoyed by all. The Iowa folks who showed up were a little surprised by it all as the family laughed, danced and sang happy tunes at the funeral. After the traditional funeral folks left, we watched Monty Python’s "The Meaning of Life" on the funeral home’s large screen TV and laughed even more. My mom loved that silly bunch of guys and watched them for decades. It was a fitting end to her service with the skit on death with the Grim Reaper skipping his way to heaven with deceased folks following in their cars.

Needless to say, I will be putting off my workouts for the next few weeks. I have to clean out her apartment by myself and go through all her papers plus her finances to sort out. My hubby can only help move stuff on the weekends but maybe we can get a lot done this next Sat. and Sunday. I’ve been going over there every day, sorting and throwing out bags of stuff. It is all time consuming and emotionally draining. I’m exhausted every night when I go to bed from all the stress. I wish my brothers and sister were here to help but they all live too far away. Two of them didn’t even come to her funeral due to job conflicts. I know they can’t help it but it would have been nice to have all her children there for the funeral.

To all of you who still have a mom on the planet, give her a big hug and kiss for me! Mine was a great mother who loved me for who I was, who always smiled and laughed through life, and she will missed by her family and friends.

FRIDAY, April 3 (HealthDay News) — Weight training did not build muscle mass in octogenarian women but still helped them lift more weight than before, a small study conducted by Ball State University in Indiana finds.

The six women in their 80s worked out three times a week for three months on a machine designed to strengthen the thigh’s quadriceps muscle. MRIs done before and after the program showed no increase in thigh muscle mass, and muscle biopsies showed no changes at the cellular level, even though the women could lift 26 percent more weight at the end of the program than at the start.

The researchers believe the increase in the amount of weight the women could lift came from the boost training gives to the nervous system as it activates and synchronizes muscles. The researchers had similar results in a previous study with octogenarian men, although yet another study with 70-year-old women doing resistance training resulted in the participants increasing muscle mass by 5 percent.

“The message of the study is that exercise is good for octogenarians, just not as good as we thought it would be. We should do all we can to educate people to build up the muscle before 80,” Ball State researcher Scott Trappe said in a news release issued by the American Physiological Society, which published the study in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

Good muscle strength helps older people avoid the potentially fatal trips and falls they are more prone to. Muscle atrophy can often occur in the elderly if they spend longer periods of time immobile due to illness or sedentary lifestyles. Trappe’s team noted that the muscle fibers of the octogenarian women, while fewer in number, were large and healthy looking, and contained much higher levels of the genes linked to muscle growth than young people. This may mean that, by age 80, a muscle has reached its operating capacity.

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Hard to believe that today is my 54th birthday… where did the time go? Seems like it was just yesterday when the TV news was all about the Vietnam war and that Nixon was a crook. Funny how the basic stories stay the same over the years but the names change; now it is the Iraq war and Wall St. execs are crooks.
I went out to dinner and had a salad, steak with really crunchy french fries (yummy) along with a couple of beers then a slice of sugary birthday cake later on. All forbidden foods right now so they tasted extra good! It will be back to the gym and my healthy diet tomorrow. Let’s hope my scale doesn’t break when I get on it in the morning.

My first 2 weeks were the not the best. My mom has had serious health problems and as the only child nearby, I’ve been taking her to doctor appointments and driving her out-of-town for all her tests at a hospital in the next state. Not complaining about helping or anything… I put my family first but the timing has sucked for the start of my contest. Not as much time in the gym as I have wanted and hard to keep my diet the way I like when you have to eat out.

Took these photos right after I got home from the gym yesterday. No glamour photos here… I’m tired, sweaty, messy hair & no makeup. Don’t be expecting some SI photo! I have gained muscle but need to lose more fat so they show up better. I can see how my back needs more depth to the muscle but I’m not sure if that is going to happen by the end of 10 weeks. Can only give it my best shot!

Well, I guess I’m really in all the way for this contest now! It will be a good motivator to keep up the challenge of hitting the gym and eating decent. I gained weight have to recuperate from my surgery in December and I really need to get it off. Maybe it is a good thing to be a little overweight before a transformation contest… I know I’ve got muscles under the fat layer, just waiting to show themselves better! Wish me luck!!!
The bummer is I’m a little distracted from full motivation because my 79-yr-old mom is having open heart surgery next week. I’m worried and stressed about it all. As the only daughter, she moved near me a few years ago so I could keep an eye on her after her series of small strokes. I will be taking her to the hospital (is a couple of hours away) and staying with her through the whole thing. I hate to make excuses before I even begin a project but family does come before bodybuilding.

Florida was great! Low 80s during the day, palm trees & flowers, blue ocean waters… what more could you want? It was so nice to go there for a winter break but it always a bummer to come back to the cold weather. I figure we will do the snowbird thing one of these days and spend our winters in Florida.

Got back in the gym this week. I’m quickly catching up to where I was before surgery. It’s fun to watch muscles grow!

I am going to participate in the Online Bodybuilding Federation’s spring contest. They have 2 categories: bulk & transformation. I picked the transformation. Photos of before and after will be used for judging. If anyone else wants to join in the contest, please visit their website:

http://obfbodybuilding.com/

Just wanted to write a note that I will be offline until Feb 22. My family is taking a winter vacation in Bonita Springs, Florida and man, we are looking forward to wearing something besides bulky (but warm) clothing! We are lucky enough to know someone with an oceanfront high-rise condo with all the extras, including a pool just a few steps from the white sands of the beach that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not sure if the condo bldg has a fitness center of any kind so I will be taking my exercise bands just in case. I’ll try to be a good girl and get in some workouts!
So think of me this next week, lying on the beach getting a tan, playing some golf, doing a little fishing, and generally forgetting I live in the cold and snowy Midwestern state of Iowa. Florida… here I come!

So if you peek at my photos, I don’t look much improved from the last one. I just wanted to post where I am right now so I can see improvements again. Darn depressing to see how I look after being forced by surgery to sit in a recliner for several weeks. I was just getting to where everything was coming together and boom… here I am, working my way back. Nothing to do but jump back in and not dwell on how much I used to be able to lift. It will come back soon! I’m still way ahead of where I was a year ago!!