The last week has been quite the ordeal and I've fallen back on my old habits.  I had to go to western Minnesota with my mom to see some really sick relatives.  It's hard to get fresh food up there.  I brought my own snacks, but the second night I just couldn't eat cheese and crackers for dinner and after seeing how my cousin was preparing dinner, I didn't eat that either.  Good thing, because my mom ended up with food poisoning and was sick in the car 12 hours back to Chicago.

We didn't know it was food poisoning though.  We thought it was the flu everyone else had, and I was feeling a little ill myself, my stomach was cramping and I was really feverish.  Maybe it was stress, or maybe a touch of food poisoning myself, but I wanted soda.  I wanted it more than anything I've ever wanted in the world! So I drank 7Up on the way back to Chicago.  It really did make my stomach feel better.  It also calmed my nerves.

Watching my mom be so violently ill I was thinking, if I get WLS surgery, how could my new stomach possibly handle the trauma of that level of retching?  I don't think it could.  I think it would explode or be ripped apart.  And I had to put surgery out of my mind for a few days, and even though there were two calls from my surgeon's office on my voicemail.  I didn't check them.  I couldn't deal.  I don't think I deal with stress very well.

But no one has the flu, thank God.  And now I'm home, back in my safety zone and I can go off soda again and go back to the gym.  I returned the calls to the surgeon's office and they were just calling to tell me my Vitamin D levels were good.