I have finally gotten back into school. I am determined to finish it this time. Last time there was so much going on- Job hopping and trying to find something I liked- and I am now settled somewhere I hope to be at for a long while.
I enrolled at University of Bridgeport and they accepted 63 of my transfer credits. I picked Bridgeport because they have an online program and I need all online because I have a full time day job. I also have a friend who graduated from there and she was the one who suggested I investigate their programs. I started one class this semester, Biology, to try to ease back into it. I am loving it.
Last week I met with my advisor to go over classes for fall and she helped me pick 5 classes to think about. I also changed my major to General Studies- Business Administration. She said I needed to pick a discipline and since I tend to take more business and finance classes, I picked business.
She also helped me change my major because it costs less to be only online then it does to go in person. I am paying out of pocket and any savings is helpful. I also applied for a couple scholarships that I hope to get because college is expensive. I am so happy. I am planning on taking 3 classes for the Fall. Labor Law and arbitration, Supervision and Team building and History of Jazz.
I figure if I can take 9 credits per semester and maybe a class or two during the summer, I will graduate in 3 years or less. My husband is also currently going back to school to finish, and our son is looking at colleges that he wants to apply to next year. Soon we will all be college students. My daughter is 3 years away and she already has a few ideas of where she wants to go.
Wish me luck please cause things pop up all the time and this time I really want to finish and maybe even continue for my masters. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
It’s been a little over a year now that I have used my insurance to help me lose weight. It’s been long and slow and I had a few bumps in the road, but I am still going.
I was 42 and hovering around 200 lbs. Sometimes I felt like I looked fine and then I would see a picture of myself and be like “who IS that??”
I have polycystic ovarian syndrome and Hashimoto’s disease. Since my thyroid numbers aren’t that bad, I am not on medication for it. I don’t know if these things factored into me not being able to really lose weight, but I assumed that the reason I was having such a hard time losing weight ( and such an easy time gaining) was because of this diagnosis.
I was getting really frustrated with dieting and not seeing the scale move at all. I would get down like a pound or two after a week of being super strict and then a few days later I would be right back where I started.
I started jogging. I watched what I ate and tracked it, and nothing worked. Finally, I just starved myself for a month. I do not suggest this as a way to lose weight, but for me it’s really the only thing that worked. I dropped 10 lbs in a month but I couldn’t keep going on one meal a day, and the holidays were coming up.
I was able to keep the 10 lbs off for the holidays but I was stalled in my weight loss. A coworker kept telling me to use our insurance because it would give me Ozempic or Mounjaro and it would be covered under my insurance. I finally listened. My insurance uses the Flyte program. Through this program you get a nurse and a nutritionist. First you meet with the nurse.
My first meeting with the nurse was in March and it was not what I expected. She said that they couldn’t start me with the injections, first we need to try oral medication. If the oral medication didn’t work, then we would talk about injections. I was already on Wellbutrin for depression, so she added Naltrexone. From what she told me, Naltrexone is usually prescribed for addicts, but they have found that it also helps with the food noise. It honestly helped me a lot. I was able to stop eating when I felt not hungry anymore. I wasn’t eating until I was full and I wasn’t eating just because it was time to eat. I ate when I was hungry only and stopped when I was not hungry. I lost about 10 lbs. Then I met with the nutritionist who went over what I eat. I don’t eat bad, but she did say I needed to add more protein in the morning.
In June I met with the Nurse again and she added Zonisamide, it’s an anti-seizure medication and she said that with what I was currently taking, it’s been shown to help accelerate the weight loss. Also, since I lost weight, I no longer qualified for Ozempic or Mounjaro because your BMI needs to be over 30. I didn’t really want to take the zonisamide because the side effects scared me, but the nurse talked me into it.
For a few months I had a constant dull headache. I thought it was due to the anti-seizure medicine, and it was just one of the side effects. I decided to use the blood pressure cuff that the Flyte program provided and my blood pressure was sky high. Like 165/110. I thought there was a problem with the cuff because I never had blood pressure issues in my life. Every time I used the stupid cuff, I would get texts and phone calls that if I felt funny or off, I should go to the ER immediately. I felt fine except for the headaches so I didn’t go. I was so convinced the cuff was wrong I called a requested a new one. Finally, I called my Primary care doctor in August. Sure enough my blood pressure really was that high. My PCP prescribed me a low dose of Losartan and told me to stop taking the Zonisamide immediately. I did and my blood pressure is now almost back to normal.
In September I was back to taking Wellbutrin, Naltrexone, birth control and now, Losartan. The entire time this is all going on, I was still slowly losing weight. I ended up losing another 10 pounds by the end October.
It wasn’t just the medication, I also added in more walking and a little bit of weight training because my doctor also told me that in your 40’s when you lose muscle, it’s very hard to get it back.
I maintained the 30 lb weight loss thru the holidays. I had another meeting with a new Nurse in January, and she added Metformin in to help with the last 15 lbs. I tried metformin alone a few years ago for 9 months and it did absolutely nothing for me. I asked my PCP and she said it was ok to add it in, so I did. Now I have a pill box when I never took more than a vitamin and a birth control pill daily.
It’s March now and I am down another 7 lbs. I am 163. I do feel better about the way I look but I also want to start weening off of all these pills.
First, I am going to talk to my gyno about the birth control. I really need to stop taking that. I do feel like that is the reason my blood pressure went crazy. The issue with that is once I hit 40 my periods got crazy heavy and gross. I didn’t want to even leave my house when I had my period because I was bleeding through everything. The pill did help with that. My periods are now light and predictable, but I am old and I don’t think I should stay on birth control anymore. Once I figure out what to do about the birth control, I am going to see about getting off the Wellbutrin.
We’ll see what happens, I am hoping that since the weight loss was slow, it’ll stay off.
Have you tried any of these things? What was your experience?
New Year and I need to get back to myself. It took a long while for me to feel like writing again. To be honest, I still don’t have the desire, but I miss it sometimes. I still write every day but more just for me to figure out my feelings and emotions.
The last time I published anything on here was in November of 2022- A lot has happened since then. I got a new job that sucked. They told me all these things when I was hired and then when I started it was a different story. I stayed at the first one for 3 months and then found another job closer to home with better time off and more pay. That job was fine for about 7 months. Then one of the managers had a temper tantrum and ran around talking bad about me. The other manager agreed with me but wouldn’t stand up for me. So, I found another job.
I have been at this place for over a year now and I am honestly happy. I like the people, I like the place, I like all the benefits. I feel like I want to be here for a while.
I had to stop school for a bit because all the job searching was getting to me. I am a fast learner but learning 3 new billing systems and all the other systems that these places used was a lot. On top of home and kids and everything. So now that I am settled more at work, I am going to look back into finishing my BA. I will eventually.
It’s been over a year since I lost one of my closest friends when she decided to divorce her husband and I guess my family too. She said I gas light her when I was upset because she was excluding me from all these things I would have loved to go to too. That statement from her completely fucked me up for a long time. First I had to google what gas lighting meant and I was wondering if I did and then how and then what could I have done differently. What I have finally come to realize is it was her changing and it wasn’t me. She didn’t want to be my friend anymore and instead of talking to me about it she just stopped talking to me at all. She told me my family was a buffer for her with her family. I didn’t want to believe it but it probably was the truth. She didn’t really care about me or my family. That was really hard for me to understand. I still think about it and it still hurts.
Then I started analyzing all my other friendships. It had me second guessing everything I was feeling. I just never thought I could be so disposable. I thought we were really going to retire and be neighbors on a lake somewhere. Just like we talked about on all the family vacations we took over the years. We were friends for 30 years. I never doubted we would be friends forever.
The good thing is that I am feeling better now. I have reconnected with old friends and made some new ones. I also realized where I stand with some other people who I thought I was important to but realized they didn’t value me. I’ve re evaluated where I am spending my time and with who. I’ll be fine but that was a hard lesson.
This year I am turning inward still. I need to find what makes me happy again and reconnect to life. I feel a little detached and I know it was me building the walls up. I have made some appointments for therapy. The new job has given me amazing benefits and I was able to go back to the doctors and get all my pains checks. I still need to lose weight but everything else seems ok.
My plans for this year are to work on me and go back to school. I want to write a few times a month for the blog. What are your plans for 2025?
Moving forward 