Crazy few Weeks

April started with a bang for me, when I made a somewhat unplanned decision to challenge myself to a 72 hour fast. When I started, I initially was going to challenge myself to do it on nothing but plain water and tea, but very early into it, the plain water was leaving me with horrible cotton mouth and I knew that would lead to me drinking less water, so I decided to allow my Skinny Mixes water flavoring. They are sugar-free and I have tested my blood sugars with them and found they don't have any affect on my blood sugar, so I wasn't super worried about them. A few things surprised me about this longer fast. One, was that physically, the hardest part was the first 24 hours. My hunger pangs typically kick in around 19 hours, but I find, once I make it past 24 hours, I don't have a lot of hunger. That, and seeing my body get into deeper ketosis, helped me to continue through and make it the full 72 hours. I felt pretty good overall, my mind felt sharp and my body felt lean. I didn't necessarily do it to lose weight, mostly because that loss is very temporary, but I did hop on the scale just to see. I had been around 173-174 before that then at 72 hours I weighed before eating.

You would think that would motivate me to stay on track, but I will say my weekends have not been clean. I got my first rejection where my art is concerned. I submitted 3 pieces to a gallery, and spent money on framing my pieces and the submissions cost too, and sadly, they rejected me without explanation. I'd like to say it rolled off my back, but I let food comfort me that weekend. I think I mentioned my super strange armpit rash that's been haunting me for the past couple years. If not, here's a quick story. In winter of 2024 it showed up. It is so ridiculously itchy. My doctor gave me an anti-fungal cream, which didn't help much, but it eventually went away that summer. It returned in March of 2025, and thinking it was a yeast infection, I tried every natural or over the counter thing I could think of and nothing worked. I had it checked out again and was given a strong steroid cream which worked, but shortly after stopping it, the dreaded itch came back. This time (mid-March 2026) it came back along with so much achiness all over my body, it feels like a chore just walking my dog 25 minutes. Anyway, I saw a dermatologist at the start of May and they weren't sure what it was so they took a skin biopsy. I got the preliminary results last week, and they are inconclusive. The top two differential diagnoses are a rare inflammatory condition called Pityriasis Lichenoides or Lupus. Lupus makes a lot of sense with my Raynaud's and PMLE, but the dermatologist wants another opinion before they make a diagnosis, so they are sending it to a specialty pathologist. I should know something next week. That same day that I had the skin biopsy, I got my oil change and new wiper blades put on my car. My younger son (he's 21) is just learning to drive, but we have been at a standstill since he crashed my husband's car through our garage last fall. Since he had just had the engine replaced 2 months prior to the accident, and mostly all the damage was cosmetic, we decided to keep the car despite the insurance deeming it a total loss. But now, the insurance won't cover the same damage again if he crashes again. So my husband doesn't want to bring my son out driving and my car is a stick shift. So as my husband and I were driving to dinner that night, I said I think we should replace my car with something newer, an automatic, so I can take my son out driving and my son and I could share the car since he only works part time and I work from home. My husband agreed, and we decided we would start looking that weekend. Then around 9:45 that same evening, as I was just slipping into bed, we heard a massive crash! It shook the house. Some teenager was on his phone and speeding and didn't see my car parked in the road and smashed straight into the back of it. Here's hit it so hard that it pushed my car about 30 feet and up a curb, with the parking break engaged. My car is a 2007, so it was starting to have some issues anyway, but what a crazy turn of events, just mere hours after we decided we were going to get rid of that car. My insurance declared it a total loss, so we will get some cash to put toward a newer used car.

It feels really odd not to have a vehicle. I have found some I like and we'll be going to see some cars in the near future, but until then, I feel a little stressed out. Fortunately, since I work from home, it's not urgent for me to replace it. In light of all this, I have been letting the weekend eating slide, with carbs. It is something that I will want to reign things in at some point, so I don't get back up to where I was before all this started. Then my joints would really be hurting! I don't have any problem eating clean during the week, and fasting and exercising, but the weekends just feel like a party in my head. I think, once I know what my final diagnosis is, I will feel a big relief, not knowing is the hard part. So that's my story for now. Not the shining example of health and fitness, but not where I started from either. I'm still here, still wanting to make more changes and turn things around. I don't ever give up.