If this little 4′ 9″ powerhouse can turn her health around at 76 surely we can too. Nana started her “mid-life” a little taller, a lot heavier and a chain smoker. Raising three kids on a 13 acre farm while her husband traveled 20+ days a month for business didn’t leave a lot of time for self improvement much less any pampering. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t t farmers by any means but we had plenty of chickens to feed, potatoes to dig up and especially yard to mow. Those 3 weeks every month home alone with us and all the animals would have been enough to make me eat my feelings too.
Now everybody has baggage, it’s how you pack it that makes the difference between making the trip or getting left at the bus station. I won’t bore you with the details of the pre-trip but Nana had been packing…and picking up luggage along the way.
Chain smoking, diabetes, heavy ibuprofen usage from rheumatoid arthritis had all taken a toll on her body and she wasn’t getting any taller. By her early 70’s Nana had shrunk to well under five feet, but years earlier had stopped smoking and packed on almost 100 pounds on that tiny frame. Her doctor told her she was going to have to lose weight and get her diabetes under control or she was going to end up bed ridden like her father…wasting away from diabetes and colon cancer in the prime of his life rather than enjoying the Winnebago and lake lot that were waiting on him and my grandmother when he retired from IBM.
20 years and over 100 pounds lost on Weight Watchers later, Nana was well on her way but her overall health just wasn’t getting any better. Her sugar was stable but she was still on insulin. Her pain was managed most days but there were still many pills. She had a new doctor…a nephrologist and he announced a new situation, her kidneys were going kaput from all this medicine. And she still wasn’t getting any taller! We will learn more about Nana’s journey as I continue to write over the next few months but for the sake of time now let’s fast forward.
Nana has taken matters and her life into her own hands. Through hours of research, asking questions, never giving up, never surrendering, she still isn’t any taller but she is off all insulin, taking one less pain pill per day, almost off Nexium and her hair and fingernails look the best they have in years.
As I take you along on my weight loss journey you will find many trails leading to Nana’s. She’s finally getting her house in order after 76 years…I think we can too!
Nana showing off her 10 x 15 plot behind her apartment building with the other old ladies (and one man who only grows tomatoes). She has managed to build a fence, make a gate with the help of a very nice (and patient!) young man at a big box store, gotten her granddaughter and soon to be grandson-in-law to bring used pallets and assemble the only compost bin, and has quite the spread of Swiss chard, green beans, peppers, tomatoes, some rogue blackberries and a mystery plant that I think is a cantaloupe but everyone else is betting is squash. She’s 4 ft nothing, she’s 3/4 of a century old, yet she cultivated the ground and planted this entire garden herself….I managed to stay awake long enough to write a blog post. Let’s all try to be Nana when we finally grow up.
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