The miracle of whey protein

Ok, so it has been since April and I had sort of promised myself that I wouldn't blog again until I was in another place, taken another journey, and could say something that would prove to be new and maybe useful information to someone else.

And so - although I have not traveled anywhere recently - and in fact in the past couple days I have hardly left my house, I have certainly been on a journey over the past few weeks.

For those of you who don't know, I have a disease called PCOS - polycystic ovarian syndrome. This means that I have the joy of having a tendancy towards obesity, extra hair, and infertility - check, check and double check. I have been lucky in the first two catergories in that both are relatively mild but the infertility hit me with a vengence. For the past three years my absolutley fabulous and increadibly patient and persistent husband and I have been going through the basic infertility treatments, clomid, Gonal - F and IUI (pills, shots and turkey basters for those of you not in the know). But as the fates would have it, we got pregnant twice only to miscarry just days later.

So we were faced with the dilemma - do we stop here and move on to the adoption that we know we are going to do eventually OR do we venture in the VERY scary world of IVF - in vitro fertilization. Personally, I did not think that I was up for IVF. I can understand the moral arguements against it and I wasn't sure that I wanted to become my very own walking Orwellian incubator. My husband, the ultimate scientist, argued about cells, cells' potential and the circle of life. I responded with religion, ethics and plain old pain and discomfort (he flat out refused to let money be a part of this decision as he said if there is anything worth spending money on - this would be it - bless his heart). So I talked with family, I talked with friends, we met with the minister multiple times. And after it all, we decided that for us, God would not strike me down for trying to create life, and that at the end of the day we would want to to feel like we had tried everything available to treat my (our) infertility. People have heart transplants and I don't think twice about the freaky science that that surgery involves so although I understand this is different, it is all playing with life at different levels. So, holding onto my husband's hand and praying every night to God, we decided to go ahead with our first round of IVF.

I was worried about the side effects of the medications, I had anxiety about the anesthesia required for the egg retrieval, I was not excited about the pain of the injections but I really did not give a second thought to any potential side effects like OHSS - ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. I was healthy, my husband and I go for a 2 to 3 mile run or walk every day, I eat well, am within normal BMI ranges, and generally consider myself pretty tough when it comes to discomfort and pain. Again, Murphy having his way, the first three concerns went very smoothly - no crazy lady from the meds, anesthesia was fine and the IM injections aren't even hurting (at least when I stab myself, the muscle ache is a different story).

The real trouble with my first round of IVF was my happy little ovaries that made many many eggs. After the anesthesia wore off, I was in pain - and I usually am pretty good - had two screws removed from my knee under local anesthesia in my doctor's clinic office - no tears - no crying but this was unconfortable. After a longer than usual recovery, I went home feeling pretty crummy but figuring that it would get better by the next day. The CNP told me that I would be given an albumin like product during the procedure to help prevent OHSS and also gave me a sheet that explained the signs and symptoms of OHSS aand a sheet on whey protein being useful to prevent this from happening. OHSS basically results in women retaining (third spacing) fluid to the point where they might have to have their abdomen tapped or hospitalized as it can interfere with breathing and other such non-essentials.

So my husband ran to the store for the gatorade, extra strength tylenol and the whey protein powder. I started the shakes right away but was only using one scoop which has 27.5 grams of powder (but only 16 grams of protein). We figured three a day would be enough. The next day brought little relief, I wasn't in as much procedure pain but was VERY bloated and uncomfortable - and when I weighed myself I realized that I had already gained 5 lbs of water weight in one day. Not great. Then that night I was starting to be short of breath (though I denied this vehemently - my poor husband...) but we also realized that I was short on my protein intake by 30 grams a day according to recommendations.

This brings me to the miracle of whey protein. I doubled the scoops per shake today and just this evening I have started to lose water weight by leaps and bounds and am feeling SO much better. The shots still make my legs ache but the actual injection process is OK and we only have 11 more days in this journey until we start another one or we are granted a well deserved break.

In any case, the main reason I wrote this was so that if there are any women out there suffering from OHSS or worried about OHSS, I would encourage them to try the protein shakes but not just to have a shake or two a day but to make sure that they are consuming at least 80 grams of whey protein a day. Who knows if this will be the remedy to keep the OHSS from coming back if I do get pregnant (it gets worse again with pregnancy) but for now I am going to enjoy starting to feel like a human again - not cured but definitely better.

Thanks to all who read this, my apologies to those who don't understand or who choose to judge my decision. I, too, thought I would never be here but until you come to the fork in the road, you really don't know which way you will go.

Iceland Day 8: Heading Home

Ok, so technically I am already home but I thought I would tell the story of the last day for my own closure on the matter.

Iceland Day 7 ended with a bang... After our deCode visit, we went to a lovely reception at the National Museum of Iceland We were able to get a quick tour of the museum, saw a tiny figurine that is thought to either be Thor or Christ.. which I think is a great summary of their Christian and Pagan roots. The museum gives a wonderful walk from the beginning of the settlements in Iceland through to modern day, discussing both lifestyle and religion of the people. It is a beautifully designed museum as well. The reception was lovely, it was good to get a chance to say a final thank you to all the people who had worked so hard to make the Global Health Forum possible and it was nice to get one last chance to chat with our fellow Icelandic students. But I had one more chance coming that I didn't know about...

Following the reception, my plan was to eat and sleep but on our way back to town with Terra, Jaimie and I and Terra found ourselves in a bookstore buying all kinds of Icelandic music and getting to know the staff there who had heard of both Vampire Weekend AND Beirut - fabulous bands, check them out if you haven't already! Then we had a quick meal and a long chat and all of a sudden it was 9PM and we had plans to meet at 10PM to go out... ah well, who needs sleep? So the group (including two of our new Icelandic friends!!) met in the lobby of our fab-o hotel and went out for fun night of chatting and checking out "the scene" in Reykjavik on the weekend. It was a fun night, had good chats, heard good music, great people watching UNTIL.... we decided to try some of the local favorite schnapps, Brennivin, as per our Icelandic friends recommendation. Yep, it is as strong as they say... and we were homeward bound not long after but before we left, we did get a couple very impressed looks from the Icelanders who heard we had survived our shot of Brennivin. Jamie and I stopped for one last meal at Pronto Pizza before turning in at 2:30 in the morning - say HEY! Reykjavik!

Iceland Day 8: Heading home.
The nursing crew was scheduled to meet at 10 for a trip to the flea-market but I wasn't packed - shocker and one nurse didn't show so we delayed our start and then spent our few remaining hours shopping at the main strip in town and checking out the flea-market which is a very different side to Reyjavik and definitely worth the stop. The main shopping street is very fancy in Reyjavik and full of fancy people so it was good to see that there are common folk in Reyjavik too!

One last bus ride to the airport, final check-in, tax refunds, last ditch effort at shopping for the family and sad goodbyes and I was tucked in for 6.5 hours for my ride home. They played this sappy movie "P.S. I love you" which opened the floodgates for my wanting to be back home with my husband and my lovely little life in Minnesota.

It really was a fantastic trip though. I am a geek at heart and I LOVED learning about all the different topics and thought the variety was perfect, albeit not linear. As I have said to my new and my old friends, this trip is going to be to one of those "great weeks of my life". Upon hearing this, a professor questioned me, saying "but you did this without your husband". I replied, "I am a pretty independent soul" and really, I am grateful for that, grateful for this opportunity and for all the fun memories.

Thanks so much to everyone I got to know on this trip, and thanks to everyone else who made it possible, how lucky we were to be in that little piece of the world in that little piece of time.

(and no - I am not BUI, just happy - plain and simple happy -
an attitude of gratitude can take you far.)

Iceland Day 7: Last day of Lecture & deCode visit

Ok, so it is 10Pm and I am supposed to meeting my friends right now to go out and try and see the crazy late night scene here in Reyjavik but I wanted to be sure to blog at least one sentence today so I can say I blogged each day. We had a good final day of lectures, a nice long lunch and then a very intriguing visit at deCode. I will give y'all the scoop later though it might be tomorrow as I don't want to guilty of a BUI - blogging under the influence!
Take care,
-Anna

Iceland Day 6: Lecture Day 3 and NICU visit!

Greetings all,

So this daily blog thing gets to be a little more labor intensive than I am used to, that is for certain. But in any case I have had another amazing day here in Iceland. As I have said to my new (and fabulous!) friends here, I must really like them as I don't usually spend this much time with anyone. We have all had so much of our time programmed, which is great because then we see and do so much, but it is also tiring, at least for me, to not have some alone time. SO! Day 1 of the informatics course and despite my very complete background in informatics, I still learned so much today. I now have a much better understanding of my mom complains about SNOMED because when I think about trying to program SNOMED into an existing EMR, it just sounds like a nightmare. But I also can see that it would be very very beneficial for data collection across different enterprise systems, and so great to start to have an opportunity to collect detailed data that isn't just billing based. I also tried to be a champion for the EHR vendor a couple of times as it is easy for the end user to want want want when the programming requirements are completely unknown. It was great to have some time to break out into groups with the master's students from Iceland today as well.


After class the three nursing students, Tai, Jamie and I were taken by Margaret, a very kind nurse-midwife who works as an NICU nurse right now, to Vokudeild at Landspitali, the only NICU in Iceland. It was a very nice, clean, bright facility. When we arrived we were greeted by Ragnheiour Siguroardottir, the nurse manager. She gave us an information packet, a video to take home as well a sheet with their latest statistics which she had just finished compiling so that we could have the most current data - how very kind! We were all dressed in yellow coats, scrubbed in and then were taken to where the sickest babies are kept. We saw a tiny preemie, a new babe having umbilical lines placed and another babe who had just switched from the oscillator to a regular vent. They have the same exact monitoring equipment as our NICU, the isolettes are also very similar, just a different model I believe, and the NO machine also looked quite similar. They nest their babes just like we do, they have the same snugglies and they cover their isolettes but a little more completely than we do. On the other hand, they intubate their infants through the nose - which I didn't even know was done but definitely has some advantages. They also do not have Neonatal Nurse Practitioners so the umbilical lines were being placed by not one but two doctors with a nurse standing by. Tai pointed out that the staff in the NICU were wearing sandals with socks (not as a fashion faux pas but as a safety hazard...). It was so good to chat with Margaret and Ragnheiour about the differences in their NICU as well as the similarities. My favorite things I saw were the funnel that they used for dispensing a wiff of oxygen to the babes, the warm water beds they use to help transition the babes from an isolette to the cribs and last but not least the kick scooters that the nurses use to get to the cafeteria that is almost a half a mile from the unit. We went back to the Paris Cafe for dinner tonight for a round of hamburgers and wine and beer. The nurses (+1 honorary nurse) spent hours sitting in the cafe talking about all things relevant from Graceland to Roald Dahl and everything in between. It was great to kick back and relax. Ok, it is almost 2AM and I should really get some sleep. Hope everyone is well where-ever on the globe they may be.

-Anna

Iceland Day 5: Global Health lectures 2

Hi all,

SO it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to publish anything intelligent as we only have an hour between lectures and social activities. I just returned home from our party at the University house and the Paris cafe where two very nice nurses were telling me all about how they dig sharks into the sand, let them rot for a couple of days and then eat them... makes them strong apparently :^) In any case, the lectures were amazing again but I am too tired to give any details, just know that I am so grateful to be here, to be able to hear these amazing speakers and also, I am so very grateful for a break from the routine. I definitely needed it.

-Anna

Iceland Day 4: Global health lectures

Greetings all!

I am trying to be diligent about posting every day but today is going to be the weak link as far as my posts are concerned. I woke up late, went to class on time, heard amazing talks that ranged from food safety to women's health in Nepal to weapon's of mass destruction. It was a very interesting and incredibly educational day - I took 26 8.5x11 pages of notes today, all of which I will attempt to summarize here but not tonight. I had a bit of a hotel debacle and had to change my plans last minute and then went out with my friends here for dinner and then a drink after. I met a couple of Icelandics who had studied at the University of Minnesota coincidentally and had a great chat with them learning much about Iceland, politics, gender equality, housing and credit loans and the state of their currency. (I know - what a kill-joy I can be in a bar!! :^) But it was a lively discussion and I learned quite a bit. Including the fact that the currency has depreciated 30% in the past three months so actually we are getting a bargain here! WHO KNEW!! Well that is all for my little post for now. I will add a link to my fabulous new hotel and then I am calling it a night. Best wishes to all.

Iceland Day 3: The Golden Circle

Greetings from Iceland and one very tired tourist. We started our day at 8AM with a 30 minutes bus ride to the geothermal power plant (Nesjavellir) that provides Reykjavik with its electricity and its hot water. It was very interesting to learn how they separate the water from the steam and then dry out the steam further to protect the turbines as the steam passes through to create energy in the generators. The borehole at this facility goes down 3000m and brings up water that is 300 degrees Centrigrade. oh man I am super tired right now and I have SO many cool facts about the plant but I will have to leave those for another day.

The next stop was Thingvellir which is 1. close to the country's largest freshwater lake, 2. the site of the edge of the North American plate and 3. The site where Iceland's first parliment convened. It is quite a dramatic place, you can actually see where the tectonic plates have shifted apart - probably at least 20 feet and there is a huge divide and then the ground is significantly lower on the other side.

From there we drove on to the Golden Falls (or Gullfoss) - WOW WOW!!! This place was amazing - the falls were similar in size to Niagra Falls (at least as well as my memory serves me, but they were falling from ice covered shores so it was amazingly beautiful. Then there was the WIND! I have NEVER in my life felt such a strong wind! It was SO MUCH FUN!!! You could lean hard into the wind and not fall over, you could turn your back to the wind and jump up and you flew! You could hardly hold the camera in your hand to take a picture but it was so much stinkin' fun! We were already running out of time so a couple of the professors and I ran down as most people were already on the bus to a spot where you are literally standing above this chasm where the icy water is rushing down - incredible!

Then we were on to the Geysir (the origin of the word geyser for water spouts) I think I have pretty fabulous photo of me and geysir - it was pretty amazing to see and it is in an area where there are many hotpots bubbling away with scalding hot water. We then settled in for a 2+ hour drive to the Blue Lagoon. The drive there took across a couple different ecosystems and a couple small towns. Some of the landscape reminded me of South Africa with the low growing bushes and shrubs but other spots made me think that this must be what the moon looks like with all the lava fields spotted with patches of ice. It really was a gorgeous drive, I kept pinching myself saying, really, do I really get to be here too?

Finally we arrived at the Blue Lagoon - the infamous mineral hot pool - and I have to say late March/early April is the time to be here, there are no lines, no waiting, no crowds, it is great. There is quite a system to getting your key, your locker, yourself cleansed properly prior to going into the lagoon and then protocols for what to do while in the lagoon itself. But we managed to stumble through, and it was just as incredible as all the reports. The water is an incredible shade of blue, the water is so wonderfully warm and soft and the lava floor mixed with the silicon mud was really quite cool And, we all took part in the mud masks while we were in the lagoon - too bad we didn't bring a waterproof camera - or maybe better that we didn't. Pretty hilarious!

A quick dinner and we loaded up to be brought back home. Whew- it was a FANTASTIC DAY!!! and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be here. Thanks to all of you - which pretty much everyone reading this - who made this possible for me in his or her own way!

Hope all is well for all - all around the globe.
-Anna

Iceland Day 2 - time with the prez

Greetings all,

Today I started the day in true Anna style - I woke up to two alarms and then promptly fell asleep again only to wake up 10 minutes before I was supposed to meet my friends to go to church. I did make it to church in time though - just had to run there up the hills in the chilly wind.

It is a beautiful church with a tall clock tower that sits on the top of the hill above Reyjavik. I regret that I didn't bring my camera connection cord so I will have to post pictures once I get home but it is quite a majestic site, complete with a viking statue fiercely standing out front. It was a beautiful Lutheran service (that is the official "state" chuch) complete with pipe organ and choir in traditional costume and it was confirmation Sunday. Tai and I went up to the top of the tower (via elevator - gotta love Iceland efficiency) and it was amazing view despite how chilly it was with the wind whipping through us. We then went in search of a bargain lunch, but this is a hard feat in Iceland with even the hot dog shop closed on a Sunday.

After our Pronto Pizza we headed back to the hotel for a quick reprieve before our big outing to the official residence of the President of Iceland. After a 20 minute ride from the University main buildings, we found ourselves being welcomed into the official residence of the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. There were no guards, no metal detectors, and we kept our handbags that no one had searched through. Amazing! After waiting for just a bit, we were were individually welcomed (by handshake!) by President Grimsson himself. Crazy!! It was so quick and so casual I was caught a bit off guard, but still lovely. He then spoke to us about Climate Change, the potential consequences as well as potential solutions including, of course, geothermal energy. He is a very well spoken, well read and educated and wonderfully hopeful man and it was a treat to be able to hear him speak. After the speech, he even stood for group pictures with all of the students, even individually if we wished. Very kind! After complimentary wine and hors d'oeuvre, we were allowed to wander around the residence (WITHOUT ANY SUPERVISION!!) to most parts of the home including the basement which has some archiological finds from the very site of his house and the upstairs which is a lovely sunny blue loft style space filled with gifts from heads of state from around the world, including a peace pipe carved out of an antler from former governor Arnie Carlson.

We loaded up back on the bus and returned to the university for a lecture on soil erosion. Fascinating topic. I had often thought about the climate change causing water loss, loss of environment, increasing spread of disease etc but I hadn't thought about how climate change will affect the soil nor how important the soil itself is to sustaining life. More pizza for dinner with a lively discussion about how to enact change, whether it is possible in the US to change mentalities, the need for hope in believing change can happen (yes, that was my input :^) and then the importance and efficacy of global governance was debated. All in all, a fabulous day. Hope everyone is well!

-Anna

Iceland: Day 1

Hi all,

I am happily settled back into the Radisson here in Iceland. It has been a busy 24 hours since leaving St. Paul and I am feeling pretty darn tired but I wanted to be sure to at least write down my first impressions before they become second and third understandings... Thus far, Reyjavik seems to be a very quaint town, amazingly accessible by foot for just about everything AND there are already crocuses blooming and the city lake is full of pink footed geese, ducks and swans. I spent a small part of the day just wandering about the town, watching the kids in the skateboard park, walking by part of the seaport and cruising the bookstore. For dinner, some of the students from the U and a couple elementary school teachers from Miami met up and went to a small pub for soup in a bread bowl dinner and then a tea at a small cooperatively owned coffee house that was playing the very unusual contemporary Icelandic music. I think I will have to hear for quite a while before it makes sense to me... Well I am spacing out already and it is getting late here. Hope all is well where ever you may be.
Take care,
-Anna

Thursday ramblings

So it has been well over a year since I have last posted. Tonight I tried to google myself and found that I simply don't exist. Kind of makes you wonder though, if this is going to be or is it already a social standing written in cyberspace. My response is to start a facebook entry and try writing more in my blog to see what changes things.

Maybe tomorrow I will write something of substance but for now this will have to do. It beats me living out my fantasy of getting in my car and just driving - just heading out and finding a new adventure.... You know, what I will never get used to is this airing of all things private in a public domain. I have no idea who will read this, who will save it, when it might come back to bite me in the butt... which is probably why I have not kept this up very well. I have many things I would like to discuss with the public at large - racism, sexism, poverty, children's rights, sagging, respect, personal responsibility, adoption, apathy, global health, environmental health and the list goes on and on. well... maybe John Stewart can allay my funk for 30 minutes. Good night and good dreams. -Anna