Tonight, back in Jakarta, I weighed in at 75.2 kg, wearing shorts. On the 12th May, in Bali, I weighed in at 75.8 kg and two days later at 74.6 kg. That was only a week ago so it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been much change. I caught a cold during my last couple of days in Bali and I’ve only just shaken it off. I was not feeling well at all. Today was the first day I went for a serious walk.
Clearly, if I’m to lose this weight, I need to walk on a daily basis and measure my weight at a fixed time each day. Probably just before breakfast. I’ve created a worksheet in Google Sheets to track my progress. I need this sort of incentive if I’m going to achieve my goal, which is to come in at under 72 kg.
Currently the second column in empty because I plan to begin my record taking tomorrow morning. The weight need only be gradual. Given that I’m around 75 kg at the moment, I have 3 kg to lose. If I were to lose weight at the rate of 0.1 kg per day, then it would take 30 days approximately to reach my goal. This is a realistic time frame I think. By the 22nd June, I will hopefully dip under 72 kg.
Oh dear. The hotel room in which I'm staying has a set of scales and for the first time in weeks I stepped onto them. Butt naked, I came in at a shocking 75.8 kg, the most I've weighed since my precipitous weight loss in the second half of 2015. Figure 1 does not show my feet, nor the transparent glass scales on which I stood, but it serves as a visual reminder of my slide toward obesity.
Figure 1
How did it come to this? Well, two weeks in Bali marked a decisive break from my normal routine at home. Meals become irregular and there's a tendency to eat more than one should. I have been walking but clearly not enough. The time has come of course to embrace some dietary discipline, reverse the weight gain and head back toward an ideal weight of between 71 kg. and 72 kg.
As for my thymoma, I've discovered in the process of palpation that I have a small area of my sternum that is sensitive to pressure. I hadn't noticed this before. There is a general feeling of discomfort when I move about while lying down but it's hardly debilitating. I've did bring my "elastic band" for leg exercises but haven't used it much at all. Whenever I have lengthy lapses like this, I find that the affected muscles lose their tone quite quickly and it takes some time to bring them back to full strength. The moral is to not allow such lapses. However, sometimes I feel quite weary and use that as an excuse.
My eyes have been giving some trouble and there is a growth on my left eye that is somewhat annoying. It's benign and has been around for a while but has slowly increased in size over the years. See Figure 2.
Figure 2
It shouldn't be too big a deal to have it removed, by laser surgery I would suppose. It's disturbing to see how far my eyes have sunk into their sockets, the inevitable consequences of old age. Along with diminishing eyesight, my mental acuity seems to be in decline although its hard to quantify to what degree. I try to keep mentally active.
There's nowhere to hide with a thymoma inside you. Yes, I'm back with another of my infrequent posts to this blog. I try to avoid thinking about my inner companion, hoping that it will just go away or at least stop growing. But growing it is and the pressure on my inner organs is being felt. Figure 1 shows an image from Wikipedia of a typical thymoma.
Figure 1
I hasten to add that this is my own diagnosis but there's not anything else that it could be really. The Wikipedia article adds that:
A third of all people with a thymoma have symptoms caused by compression of the surrounding organs by an expansive mass ... Once diagnosed, thymomas may be removed surgically.
There are various stages described by the Masaoka Staging System:
I: Completely encapsulated
IIA: Microscopic invasion through the capsule into surrounding fatty tissue
IIB: Macroscopic invasion into capsule
III: Macroscopic invasion into adjacent organs
IVA: Pleural or pericardial implants
IVB: Lymphogenous or hematogenous metastasis to distant (extrathoracic) sites
One hopes of course that the thymoma is completely encapsulated. I can't really ignore the reality anymore as it's starting to effect my daily functioning. Sneezes really hurt and I have to careful when I move about not to induce discomfort. Deep breathing is also met with discomfort. I need to seek medical help sooner rather than later.
Figure 2 shows how large these thymomas can grow:
Figure 2
My thymoma is a little on the right side of my sternum as shown in Figure 3 (marked with a red circle).
One of the downsides of getting old is that various "barnacles of old age" appear on ones skin. These are technically known as seborrheic keratoses (see Figure 1) and are described as follows:
A benign skin disorder due to excessive growth of the top layer of skin cells, usually found in persons over 30 years old. They may appear as just one growth or in clusters. They are most often brown but can differ in colour and range anywhere from light tan to black. They come in different sizes, anywhere from a fraction of an inch (or centimetre) to an inch (2.5 cm) in diameter.
The telltale feature of seborrheic keratoses is that they look like they have been pasted on the skin or just stuck on it. They may look like a dab of warm brown candle wax that dropped on the skin. Almost everybody eventually develops at least a few seborrheic keratoses since they tend to become more common and more numerous with age. They are sometimes referred to as "barnacles of old age."
Seborrheic keratoses are most often found on the chest or back but can be found on the scalp, face, or neck or almost anywhere on the body. When they first appear, the growths usually begin one at a time as small rough bumps. Eventually they thicken and develop a rough, warty surface. Although seborrheic keratoses may first appear in one spot and seem to spread to another, they are not catching. As people age they may simply develop a few more. These growths may be unsightly, especially if they begin to appear on the face. Source.
What works for me are body scrubs, especially the one shown in Figure 2, that when applied daily keep the growths in check, without entirely removing them.
Figure 2
I'm more than happy with the results but one must remember that not all body scrubs are equal. The ones that work for me have palpable grains of sand (I'm supposing) embedded in the paste and it is these grains that provide the abrasion that controls the growth of the "barnacles". It is a gentle process but applied on a daily basis it works just fine.
Yesterday morning I tested out my mini-trampoline for about half an hour. I was basically just stepping up and down on it, and certainly not bouncing. The exercise seemed innocuous enough. However, I seem to have paid a price. Yesterday evening, I skipped my evening meal because my appetite was gone. During the night I felt somewhat nauseous and didn't even feel like breakfast this morning, although I did eat some toast later.
I think what happened was that the continuous up and down motion aggravated my thymoma. The motion of stepping up and down on the trampoline is quite different to that of walking. It would seem that my thymoma, probably an encapsulated cyst-like object located directly above my stomach, was bobbing about and pushing and pulling against things in a more extreme fashion than normal.
Despite my exercise routine being slow and sedate, it was enough to cause me serious concern. My reaction emphasises how fragile my body has become and how cautious I need to be when beginning any new exercises. My chest still feels sensitive and I have a general malaise.
Scandalous Scales: it came as something of a shock to find that I weighed in at 74.3 kg, wearing T-shirt and shorts on the evening of Sunday, February 13th 2022. As I said in a previous post, it's probably best to weigh myself of a morning. I went to the bathroom, stripped-off and weighed myself again. This time I was 73.5 kg which is still disturbingly high.
For the past week or more, my exercise routine has been disrupted but things have now returned to normal. Today I resumed my morning walk and tomorrow I plan to spend some time on the mini-trampoline as well as practising some shuffle moves, as outlined in my previous post titled The Septuagenarian Shuffle. I'm determined to get my weight back down to about 71 kg. At the moment, I'm heavier than I've been since heading to Australia in July of 2015.
Chilly Winds: recently the family visited the mountains at the back of Jakarta and the temperature in the evening was around 13°C, drastically lower than the balmy temperatures in the lowlands from where I had just come. There was also a light drizzle and gusts of wind that added to my discomfort. We were staying in one of the chalets that were dotted around the resort and separate from the main building where we had just finished dining.
As we headed out into the freezing weather toward our accommodation, a particularly nasty gust of wind cut right through me and a wave of nausea swept over me. My legs almost buckled and I needed assistance to get to our accommodation. When I did arrive I was shaking uncontrollably and went straight to bed where my condition slowly stabilised. For me, this was an unprecedented and fairly shocking event.
I can't help feeling that the reaction was the result of my thymoma not responding well to the sudden drop in temperature that my body had experienced because of the wind blast. This then affected the surrounding organs and destabilised the mechanism that controls my body's core temperature. The lesson learned is that I need to wear proper clothing before exposing myself to cold temperatures, especially where a wind chill factor is involved.
I'm now back in the tropics at sea level and all is well. There's no doubt my thymoma has grown but, whether it's self-limiting or becomes more invasive, only time will tell. As I approach my 73rd birthday, I'm certainly not the man I once was. I'm diminished in many ways but I'm still breathing and ostensibly still healthy and active. However, I need to remain aware of my vulnerability and not impose unnecessary stress on my body.
A meaning of shuffle as a verb is to walk by dragging one's feet along or without lifting them fully from the ground. That's kind of what I've been lately as a form of exercise and, given that I'm almost 73 years of age, the term septuagenarian shuffle seems appropriate.
Why am I doing this? Well, sometimes the weather outside is too hot or it's raining and even if I do go for a walk, the environment through which I'm walking is none too salubrious. My alternative solution has been to put on my wireless earbuds and listen to music while shuffling about inside the house. The first tried it for 30 minutes and this morning I managed 45 minutes.
Of course there's plenty of shuffle music out there that one can shuffle to but it's a little too energetic for someone of my age. I just listen to one of YouTube Music playlists and today I was listening to a playlist that I'd compiled in July of 2019, consisting mainly of fairly sedate songs.
It's not that I couldn't work my up to incorporating some shuffle moves, there are plenty of tutorials on how to master the moves. The following video tutorial has attracted over 16 million views since it was first put up in January of 2017.
The key point is that exercise needs to be simple and executable at any time or place. It shouldn't require specialised equipment. The shuffle is ideal in this regard. It's better when done to music but that's not absolutely necessary. Although I've started out with a slow shuffle of 30 to 45 minutes, there's no reason not to try faster movements that are the length of just a single song like the a-ha video above.
Here is a video of a 70 year old dancing with his granddaughter.
The story accompanying the video is as follows:
Shuffle dancing is becoming a very popular trend across China. The dance originally started in Australia back in the 1980s. Named “The Melbourne Shuffle”, the dance is becoming a modern type of square dance and is turning out to be a popular exercise/weight loss routine for many elderly and middle-age people in China.
Not only is this dance a brilliant form of exercise, but it’s also bringing people of different generations together. Videos have been popping up on social media platforms including TikTok (mainly a younger user base) sharing videos of themselves shuffle dancing with their parents and even grandparents – many of which have gone viral.
