I’ve always enjoyed classes or subjects dealing with numbers (math, science) way better than hard classes (English, history). Some numbers in my life…

Family: I am the oldest of 4 girls, there are 6 years between me and our youngest sister, there are 22 people in our immediate family, 12 are my parents’ grandkids. The oldest of our kids is 14 years older than the youngest. I was in the delivery room for 7 of the 12 births.

Scale: I started daily weighings way back in my zoo keeping life when I joined Weight Watchers. Back then, every 0.1 pound down was reason to celebrate. How I achieved the weight loss was not the most mentally or physically best practice but I was thin! I still weigh myself daily, but the focus has changed and as a Registered Dietitian my understanding of the number is more realistic. I don’t let the number affect my mood or define my self-worth anymore like it did “back in the day”. I don’t worry when the number goes up a bit. It’s more of a self-check for the day, a chance to remember to pay attention to how I’m feeling.

Scores: For each WOD (workout of the day) in CrossFit, we us an app to enter our scores. The score is usually a weight lifted or the number of reps completed and/or the time it took to complete a list of various exercises. When I started and for quite a while after, I would obsess about my score compared to everyone else. It affected my mood – good or bad. I kept trying to keep up with everyone in the class and never gave myself a break. On a few rare occasions I would not be the bottom score or I would Rx a WOD (complete it as written) instead of scaling weights or reps. But for most of my scores I am not very high in the list – still after 3+ years. After this latest surgery and my 3rd ‘restarting’ at CrossFit, I have been working on changing my focus. I won’t stop trying to improve and learn new skills. But now I’m trying to see my scores as a tribute to me and the fact that at my age I am doing well, even with this recent setback.

Statistics: I don’t remember everything I learned in my grad stats course but I do remember liking the course. I pay attention to stats like 1/8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, 2% of cancers are neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) like mine.

Blood values: Now I have more numbers to follow… monthly bloodwork to track how the well the medication is working. 1 – Cromogranin A is a tumor marker value. 2 – Serotonin which is produced by cells in the GI tract for everyone, but the NETs like to make more than necessary. Both of these are values to help approximate how active the tumors are in my body and show trends. Trending down is the goal or at least staying where they are now. I won’t get to WNL (within normal limits) but if the medication is working the numbers won’t go up to much from where they are now. 3 – CBC (complete blood count). I’m not sure what they are watching here but it’s lots of numbers. Some specific value in it, or maybe a couple values, are needed in order for me to be cleared for the giant needle. I saw someone refer to their monthly shot as a butt dart (hahahahaha – ouch!). This will be my new term too.

Waiting for the results of these tests every month causes quite a bit of anxiety. I check the portal daily until they are posted. I’m not sure what changes are okay and when to worry. There’s not enough to have trends yet and I’m due for a CT scan to look for changes in the tumors which will hopefully help me understand the blood values. My anxiety is reduced by workouts, but then my low WOD scores cause anxiety… makes my head ache..