Ok, if you haven't read the Twilight series, READ IT! Stephenie Meyers is the best author I have read in a long time. And these are supposed to be teen books! I just downloaded the fourth and final book in the series to my kindle, but I figured I would update my blog before I disappeared from the face of the earth for the next three days. Only 4 months and 9 days until the movie comes out!

So now I am working a shift that makes me work every Wednesday and Sunday. All in all, it's not a bad shift, but I have to miss Wednesday night dinner with the girls every week, so I rarely see that crowd now. And working on Sundays makes it nearly impossible to be as involved with Discovery as I would like. I finished the program in July. It was awesome. I have all of these new goals, and I have a mission. But now I am sponsoring Joey for the program. He starts on August 15, and I don't have enough PTO to take off the whole shift, so I have to find someone who might be willing to cover me for a few hours or more so that I can be there on Sunday for him when he finishes the first session. We will see how that goes. I think I am going to have to make some phone calls and beg some people.

I am so excited to see what he gets out of the program. Rachel went through the first two sessions over a year ago, but she agreed to go through the third session with my class. It was great. She opened up her heart again, learned how to trust strangers, and has allowed some of her barriers to come down. This is good, considering she has had some issues come up. She has been able to reach out and ask for support from people, which she has never been able to do before. We recently found out that she has a congential defect in her ureter from her right kidney that causes her to have almost perpetual kidney infections on that side. She has only had symptoms that were recognized as UTI's for the last several months, but apparently has been having UTI's for many years, resulting in some damage to her R kidney. We are looking for a doctor that can perform the correction procedure within a timely manner. She seems to be managing fine right now, but she was not coping well with idea that her R kidney might be severly damaged.

I started the hCG diet that I wrote about earlier. My doctor basically gave me a good bill of health. My hormones are at a good level without causing me any more PVCs, and all of my infections are under control. My lab values that were too low or too high, have all come to either normal or close to.

I didn't realize that for the first two days of this diet, you have to force yourself to eat high-fat foods to capacity while taking the hCG, in order to fill the "normal" fat reserves that get depleted during normal dieting. That way the 500 calorie diet is "more comfortable" because your body isn't trying to fill those reserves with restricted calories. Well, I gotta tell ya, I can't wait to start not eating. the hCG makes me not hungry, and then to eat heavy, fatty foods is just disgusting. I start the "normal" low cal diet tomorrow. I will be on this diet for a total of 6 weeks. Everything I have read about it gives me hope. I am sure I will be writing to tell everyone how it goes.

Don't forget to read Twilight!