Help Needed

I am struggling to loose weight and I am in desperate need of help with my nutrition. After reporting that I had reached the milestone of 102.5kg, I have now bounced back to around 104kg (although I can be as high as 106, depending on the time of the day).

My nutrition is haphazard at best and I really need professional advice. I am struggling to balance the need to maintain my energy levels (especially now that the volume of training has increased substantially) with the need to loose weight. Ideally, I need to loose around 1kg per week between now and race day without being so lacking in energy that I can't train.

Can you help or do you know someone who might be able to help? Of course, I am prepared to pay for on-going tailored meal plans, but if anyone knows anyone that would be willing to help me out of the goodness of their heart (or at least at a discounted rate), I'd be extremely grateful.

I needed a lot of help a couple of days after arriving at Bethesda in 2001, too. But the help I needed was of an entirely different nature.

28 August 2001 (7 days post accident)

This morning I am feeling heaps better, but I am still very frustrated by this huge swelling. Its bad enough being on my back 24/7, but I can't even move my pelvis off the bed at all and its bloody uncomfortable. I am able to tilt the top half of the bed a bit, but because the swelling is putting a lot of pressure on the wounds around my ex-fixes (external fixators), I can't manage more than about a 20 degree bend at the waist. At least I am able to sit up a little - one small step in the right direction.

The nurses are great here and I have really taken a shine to one or two of them, plus one of the registrars that is looking after me. Adrian, a very camp male nurse, and I get on like a house on fire and he has the most wicked sense of humour. Mary-Lou, the registrar, is also extremely caring and has really taken the time to explain things to Carleen and I and she has the most compassionate bed-side manner. The rest of the staff are wonderful too and this has made my first few days here a huge boost to my moral.

My room-mate, Harry, isn't much for conversation. He is 85 and was run down on a median strip as he waited to cross a pedestrian crossing. He has Alzheimers and is almost completely deaf. Sadly, it seems that he has no relatives to visit him and although he tells the nurses that his wife was just in the other day, they told me that he has never been married. Occasionally we talk about what's on the telly and how good the meals are in here, but we don't talk more ten times a day.

The staff are a quite concerned that my immobility is going to cause me to get bedsores that could be a serious threat to my recovery. In fact, Mary-Lou said that she has read of cases where people have people have died from their bedsores. The result is that they have ordered me a state of the art airbed that continuously pumps air through the mattress to keep it inflated and they can adjust the pressure to relieve pressure spots on my body as they arise - very cool, I can't wait!

Of more immediate concern for the nurses, however, is doing something about the response to the first question from the nurse this morning.

"When was the last time you had a bowel motion?"

"The morning of the accident", I responded.

"Ah", said the nurse, "that would be a problem. I can't believe no one has picked this up from your chart. Do you need to go?"

"Nope. Don't feel like it and don't think that I could even if I did. I can't move off the bed."

"We'll have to do something about that", she said. "And, you're going to have to learn to go on the bed".

What the! How the hell am I supposed to take a dump with Harry in the room and reception right across the hall from my room door. Let alone on a bed pan, lying flat on my back. I could feel my but cheeks (or what was left of them) attempt to clench, but there was just no muscle left - another problem I thought. Besides, how are they going to get a bedpan underneath me. - with a crane.

The nurse returned a while later with some senokot.

"Here this should loosen you up and give you the urge to go", she said as she handed them to me with a glass of water. "Make sure you drink plenty of water over the next few hours too, please"

At this point you might be wondering how someone goes for a week without getting out of bed to go to the toilet. Simple: a) the shock has sent my system into a tail spin and I am completely constipated, and; b) my peeing is on auto pilot as I have two catheters (one indwelling - you guessed it, in my 'you know what' to act as a splint for my torn urethra to heal - and one supra-pubic - that goes through an incision just above where my pubic hair used to finish directly into my bladder to drain it of urine). So, number ones are under control, but number twos are now somewhat of a problem!

I take the laxative, but now I am very concerned about how, when I do get the urge, I am going to get on the bed pan. Just rolling me from side to side to clean my wounds is still a major exercise and it is still incredibly painful as the swelling moves around my pelvis. It will be impossible for them to lift me just to get a bedpan underneath me, let alone find my bum hole amongst all that swelling. Oh well, I guess they have it all under control.

Its now the end of the day and I can feel some rumblings going on and I call the nurse.

"I think that I might need to go to the toilet soon."

"I'll get you the bedpan. I'll be back in a minute."

"No rush, I don't think its coming in any hurry."

She has just returned with a small green oval dish that looks more like something the dog (a Chihuahua, rather than a Saint Bernard) would drink out of than something that I expected to go to the toilet on.

"What am I supposed to do with that?", I say with a smile.

She smiles back, "I'll put it under you if you like." She pulls the curtains and lifts the bed clothes, only to discover just how difficult the task will be. She has a couple of goes, but there is just no way she can get it in position. "I think we need reinforcements. Can you hold on while I get some help?" "Sure, I'm not going anywhere and I'm not entirely sure that I am ready to use it anyway."

When she returns she is accompanied by an orderly and two other nurses and... A CRANE! "We are going to use this to lift you off the bed so that we can get you on the bed pan properly. We put the harness underneath your hips and legs and lift you with the crane. It saves all of our backs and should be best for you." 'Great', I think to myself, 'oh well, any sense of dignity I had left went out the window the moment they started cleaning the ooze off my indwelling catheter anyway, so what harm can being lifted on to the karzee by a crane be?'

"I think that is going to be quite painful." I suggest. But I know that this needs to happen. They begin passing the harness underneath me as carefully as they can, but they can't help but move the swelling so that it pulls on my wounds and I wince in pain. It takes them a full ten minutes to strap me up and hook me up to the crane. "It doesn't look very safe. Won't it fall over?, I ask. "Its lifted people much bigger than you."

They push the button and the crane slowly winds into action. The slack is taken up and they pause, then it slowly lifts me off the bed. The pain is excrutiating as the entire weight of the swelling moves to immediately below my pelivs, pulling down on my fractures and slightly tearing the skin around where my ex-fixes enter my my body.

"Stop! Put me down!" They lower me to the bed. "I can't do it."

"We have to try", one nurse says, "you will get very sick if you don't go."

"I know, but please get the pan under me as quick as you can."

We try again and this time they lift me completely off the bed and I feel the fractures in my pelvis move. "Quick!" I say through clenched teeth and the pan is slid under me. The crane returns me to the bed and by now I am covered in beads of sweat from the ordeal.

"Are you ok?", inquires a nurse. I nod in reply, but its a lie. I am in a lot of pain and the worst thing is I know I am going to have to go the whole ordeal again to get off the bloody thing - and I'll probably have to repeat it every day for the next untold weeks.

"We'll leave you alone now", says the nurse as pulls the curtain behind her. A lot of good that did. Harry is talking with one of the other nurses and I can hear every word of the conversation the nurses at reception are having. They may as well have been sitting on the edge of the bed for all the difference the curtain made. And, by the way, did no one tell them that it is physically impossible to shit while lying flat on your back!

I've persisted for half an hour, but to be honest I can't even manage to engage the right muscles and the pills really haven't made that much of a difference. I call the nurse and they all pile back into the room to get the crane into action to lift me off.

An incomplete mission, but I did appreciate all of the help. Maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow.