Life Can Throw You A Curve Ball

Have you found that it’s easy to do things when everything is going right? It’s easy get up in the morning if you go to bed on time. It’s easy to ride your bike when you don’t have a headwind. It’s easy to eat well when you make time to shop, prepare healthy meals and you aren’t restricted in your choice of healthy foods. But what happens when life throws you a curve ball?

My curve ball came at 5:15 on a Thursday morning.  I got up at 4:00 that morning, did my morning ritual and headed to the gym to meet some friends for an early morning run.  It was dark that early, but we were accustomed to running in the dark and I actually prefer that since it is still much cooler at that time of day.  I had worked out the day before and my legs were feeling heavy and sore, so I quickly fell behind my friends as we rounded the corner out of the parking lot and headed down the sidewalk.  I must have been dragging my feet.  I really don’t remember.  But one second I was running along and the next second the sidewalk was jumping up to smack me in the face.

I knew as soon as I started to stand up that something was wrong.  One of my friends heard me fall and came back to check on me.  I told her I was OK and that she should continue on her run which she reluctantly did.  As I walked back toward the gym, two other friends who had left earlier stopped on their way back when they saw me limping.  By then, I’d figured out that my jaw felt like it was stuck to one side and not closing properly.  I told my friends that something was wrong with my jaw and that I’d drive myself to the hospital.

My poor husband was awakened by a phone call at about 5:30.  He later met me in the ER.  When I arrived and checked in, I reached up and realized my chin was still bleeding.  [BTW, I found that the best time to visit the ER with little or no waiting is at 6am on a Thursday morning if you can swing that.]  After a whirlwind of activity between the nurse who cleaned me up, the physician’s assistant who stitched up my chin, the X-Ray, and the MRI, the doctor finally came back in to confirm that my jaw was indeed fractured in two places.  The surgeon I saw the next day determined that by then, my bite was not off by much , so he allowed me to forgo wiring and just said that I needed to eat liquids and very soft foods for the next 6-8 weeks.  No problem, right?

Well, then it hit me.  How could I eat well and get all of the nutrients I need when I was going to be stuck eating soup and food with the consistency of pudding for the next 6-8 weeks?  I couldn’t eat just smoothies all the time.  Well, enter my Ninja!!  I soon discovered that I could blend anything and it mostly tasted good since the flavors were meant to be blended anyway.  Some things were better than others, but I found that I had no excuse to not eat well.  Food looked, well, disgusting at times, but it wasn’t bad.   I blended everything, even my green eggs with turmeric [See my blog post 5 Benefits of Turmeric for that recipe].

One of the snacks I like to eat is an apple with a tablespoon of almond butter so that went into the blender with a little bit of water and Voila! – applesauce!

So everything didn’t seem to be too difficult after all.  But wait…. then there was the business trip.  That made me stop and think.  How was I going to be able to blend everything when I was flying 700 miles north and staying in a hotel room?  Enter my Nutribullet which is a bit smaller than my Ninja, but is still pretty powerful.  I took it in a carry-on bag, bought food at a grocery store on my way to my hotel and blended everything all week long! In the mornings I made smoothies for breakfast and in the evenings I made my dinner and then my lunch for the next day and put that in my mini-fridge to take to work.

So I know I often say that you can always find a way to eat healthy.  It is mostly about intention, planning and preparation.  Well life threw a curve ball at me and I had to put my put my money where my mouth is, so to speak!!

Be Well!!