Wednesday, January 28

Something weird happened around the time of the tooth-fragment-that-didn't-get-pulled fiasco in December; life at Lazy Lagoon seems to have gone into warp speed. Now it's almost the end of January and somehow I'm still turning the corner into the new year. Tommy continues to go to therapy at Millville rehab--three times a week for two hours. He is improving slowly but surely--more overall strength, better appetite, same salty sense of humor. On Sunday, Tommy's sister Elaine and her hubby Alan visited, and we had a nice, low-key afternoon of reminiscing and comparing notes about Medicare hassles. Although Tommy listened to the conversation, he didn't have a lot to say (my theory is that he clams up when he's confused, which happens fairly often but doesn't last too long).
Meanwhile, there's been a huge change in the way we eat. Since Tommy's stroke, he has been on a low-sodium, low-fat, low-sugar diet, and since he came home in November we have both been eating that way. In order to give him this diet, I began reading the FDA-mandated labels on all packaged or processed food at the grocery store and was floored by how much sodium, fat, and sugar all the "foods" contained. My first question was: What is this "high fructose corn syrup" and why is it the main ingredient in so many foods of other names (answer: it's cheap unhealthy filler, aka junk). As a result, we now eat what I will call "scratch" foods--almost nothing from the cans and boxes that fill those middle aisles of the store--and instead of sugar Tommy gets Splenda and I get Stevia (an herb derivative that Tommy finds bitter). The result is that Tommy's blood sugar has improved so much that he no longer needs to take medication for Type II diabetes (he was diagnosed as "borderline Type II last spring, a couple of months before his stroke). Of course, it surely must also help that he no longer drinks beer. His drink of choice, believe it or not, is now perhaps the healthiest beverage a person can drink: Decaffeinated green tea. Go figure. As for the sodium dilemma, I have discovered that a seasoning called Spike (the non-sodium mix) is great as a substitute for salt. I showed Tommy a photo of the two of us from two years ago, and we both looked like a couple on the road to trouble--fat 'n saggy. So, in many ways, we are healthier now than we were back then.