I never really thought about it.

The night before last I came home and there was a message on the machine.  It was Tony’s primary doctor, and it surprised me to hear his voice – I hadn’t spoken to him since the day we brought Tony home for hospice.  My Mom is trying to get a refund for her Hong Kong trip that she had to cancel when it was clear that Tony didn’t have much time on earth.  Since she cancelled the trip so close to leaving, she needed a doctors note for the travel insurance company to reimburse her.  The last thing that our doctor needed was for me to fax a letter yesterday saying it was okay to provide Tony’s medical information to a third party.

He asked how I was doing, and in my “must be positive to outside people voice” said “everything is okay, taking each day as it comes.”  We chatted for a few minutes and that was it.  But about thirty minutes later, I realized I never really thanked him for his excellent care.  Um, how should I put this.  Tony could be a difficult person at times.  Not in a bad way, but in a stubborn way.  If he felt he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, he would just keep pressing our doctor for answers to get him well.  And if that meant calling our doctor on his cell phone at 10:00 p.m., he did it!  (and yes, we have our doctors cell phone number!).

So I knew I couldn’t say it over the phone without breaking down, so I sent him a text message:

“I didn’t have the strength to say this on the phone with you earlier without crying, but I just wanted to thank you for always listening to Tony and always being there for him – I am grateful you were his doctor!  I will never forget how patient you were with him, and I know it wasn’t easy at times.”

A few minutes later my cell phone rang, it was our doctor, but I was already crying so I didn’t pick it up.  He left me a great voicemail message – I’ve already listened to it about 10 times.

“Hi Biz, I just received your message and I appreciate your feelings in the message and I really appreciate you reaching out to me and thank you, very, very much.  You and Tony were wonderful through all this and Tony is, believe me, he was one of my very favorite patients, so it’s not always easy for the doctor to go through these things too, let me tell you.”

And then it hit me how hard it would have to be to be a doctor and lose patients, and wonder if you had done everything in your power to keep them here as long as possible.  While I see my diabetes doctor on a quarterly basis, I only see this doctor as my primary once a year, but I will look forward to my next appointment in June and give him a hug and let him know that I already know he did everything in his power to keep Tony with me as long as he could.

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I forgot to post my weekly WI yesterday.  The week before I think I was down 3.6, well, I guess I got a bit comfortable, and I gained 2.2 – although granted its my TOM, so I am not all that concerned, but I just want to keep it real:

I thing beginning February 1, I will only WI once a month.

I did take my actual weight:

I don’t have a particular number in mind on where I want to be (hell, I’ve been trying to lose weight on this blog since 2008, so who the fuck am I kidding!) but let’s just say, a number lower than that, and just leave it at that – mkay?

Blog reader Wendy is correct – I need to put the deep fryer back in my basement!  Who the hell fries up blue corn tortillas before work to make breakfast nachos?  Guess that would be me!

Egg beaters with diced ham, baby spinach on a blue corn tortilla with Cabot pepper jack cheese, a bit of avocado and some homemade salsa verde.  I ended up making 8 tortillas, but ended up only eating 5 – look at me, leaving food on the plate?!

I did chest for strength yesterday, then finished it off with a 2.0 mile walk at 8% incline.

I had more lasagna soup for lunch, this time not taking any insulin to make sure that my blood sugar would be high enough to do my after work walk.  No picture, but I am kind of sure you’ve seen the lasagna soup on the blog once or twice before.

In the afternoon I grabbed a cup of coffee, and texted this picture to my DIL Lizz and her friend (my friend!) Natalie – saying this cup makes me happy!

Lizz said, “I need one of those!”  Then I sent her this picture of MORE snowmen mugs – I love the picture of my step-son Joe and Hannah in the background – Hannah was in 8th grade and Joe was a sophomore in high school – even though they are not blood related at all, they sure could pass for brother and sister!  They were so young back then!  I miss those days sometimes.

After work I ended up walking a 5k at 5% incline – my blood sugar was 280 before working out, so I took 4 units of fast acting insulin, and after 50 minutes my blood sugar was at 127.

So on the drive home I am thinking what to make for dinner.  I knew I had chicken, and the kids love chicken fingers, so I thought I would do that with rice a roni and green beans on the side.  I made my light beer batter, heated up the deep fryer while the rice was cooking, and made the first batch of chicken.  And it sucked.  It stuck to the bottom of the fryer basket, the coating never really stayed on – I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

I wasted nearly a whole chicken breast on the first batch.  Hannah texted me that she and Jacob were on their way back from the gym, so I ended up adding corn starch to the batter, but now I don’t really have much chicken left at all.  I had Italian sausage in the fridge, so I just . . . threw those in the fryer too!  I’d apparently lost my mind at this point!

And for the record, no, I’ve never thought of frying up Italian sausage, but it was getting to be nearly 7:45, and I was hangry!

I kept apologizing about dinner to the kids, but all they said was “this is delicious!”

It was a clean plate club all around!   It actually tasted pretty good in the end, but not exactly what I had in mind – oh well!

I got all my steps in and then some!

Alright, time to get this show on the road – I think I am going to stop by Starbuck’s for a protein box for breakfast.  And maybe when I go downstairs to get dressed for work this morning, I’ll take the deep fryer back to the basement for a little vacation.