So we’re all aware that I’m working hard on Jenn 2.0 this year, correct? Well, it’s going reasonably well I think.

Besides changing my general attitude, my hair, and my clothes, I’ve done some serious re-evaluating of myself, head to toe. What did I dislike about myself?

Being blind without wearing heavy duty prescription glasses was a big one on my list.

I had PRK Custom laser eye surgery back in February and many of you suffered alongside me as I went through the first week of agony, plus the weeks and months of uncertainty and the fear that I’d made a horrible, horrible mistake. Of course, now I’m seeing very well, and while I wouldn’t EVER go through it again, I’m finally happy with my sight.

Confession: I had my teeth professionally whitened. They weren’t horribly brown, but they were yellow enough that it bothered me. I was pretty thrilled with the results of that.

Since last Christmas I’ve also been working on my health. It hasn’t been going as well as I’d planned, and it’s 100% my own doing. Sure, I’m down over 30lbs and my clothes are literally hanging on me. It’s been a slow road on that one. See, I have never eaten too much. Eating the wrong food wasn’t even my problem. My problem was that I never wanted to eat, often didn’t, and I put my body into starvation mode. Dumb, dumb move. Guess what happens when you put your body into starvation mode? It thinks you’re in some sort of famine, and stores everything you put in your mouth. It also throws your system into chaos.

I have been fighting cholesterol issues for a couple years now. At first we didn’t get why that was, but when we got a few other tests run and I started seeing a team – yes, a team! – of internal medicine specialists, it all became very clear. I’d done this to myself! What a dumb ass.

But I’ve been seeing this team for months now, and really thought I was getting it all under control. I’ve been eating (almost) as much as they say I need to every day, and I’ve been more active. So imagine my surprise when I went in to get my most recent test results, and found that my cholesterol was even worse! My HDL (good) cholesterol is practically non-existent, which is actually a hereditary thing on my father’s side, and my LDL (bad) cholesterol is through the roof. The ratio is bad. Bad bad bad. Finally we had no choice but to start me on Lipitor. I’ve been fighting going on medication – I hate taking pills. But it’s at a very serious level, and I don’t feel like dying at 43, so Lipitor it is. Frig.

I don’t know that it’s just my diet. Heredity is one factor, and of course I know I’m not as active as I could be, plus I have sustained stress running 2 businesses, and a few personal things have happened recently have temporarily stressed me out (all better now though – I’m happy as a clam!). According to a few studies, stress can affect cholesterol in otherwise healthy adults. Go figure.

Oh, I also had an echocardiogram (ultrasound on my heart) which revealed a somewhat significant heart murmur. But my stress test was great, and the cardiologist said not to worry about it, since clearly my heart can take the physical stress.

Well, I figure it’s better I find these things out now while I’m still young and healthy enough to do something about it. And I am.

Onward and upward. I’ve been a gym member for at least 10 years, and a much-younger-but-terrific friend that I sing with in the larger choir also belongs to the same gym. She and I started going together this past week. I hate to tell you how many years long it’s been since I last used my gym bag. They couldn’t even find me in the system my card was so old! They had to search! No matter, they found me, dusted off my account, and let me in. We had a great work out.

We both had to take pain killers the next day. Oh. My. God. Totally worth it though, right? Sure, that’s right. I wasn’t too happy that J-B saw me in my gym clothes when we went for coffee right after though… scrub that from your mind, will you J-B?? Thanks.

A bit of a rant, if you’ll forgive me… My mother sent me a link to a new cholesterol-fighting Becel (margarine) that just came on the market. It looked like a great idea! But the thing comes in such a teeny-tiny ½lb container that I almost missed it on the cooler shelf when I actively searched it out, and – oh my god – costs the same price as the 2lb container! At $5.27, which is what the 2lb container also costs, you’d be paying $21.08 for the same amount of product. Sorry, but it’s margarine. I’m not cheap, but I cannot justify in my mind spending that kind of money on margarine. Keep your 9% Plant Sterols, Becel.

So Jenn 2.0 is going to take longer than a year. I knew that going in. Yes we have 2 full months of 2010 left, but it’s going to take longer than that for me to be satisfied, if that is even possible (I suspect not). ShaMoo tells me I’m too hard on myself, and that others don’t see me the way I see myself. Of course, being one of my closest friends, she and others who love me probably have some rose coloured glasses on. I hope they never take them off! They are very good for me.

Truth be told, I am happier with myself these days – more than I’ve been in a very long time. I suspect that as I continue to work towards my goals that this will get even better.

Here’s a recent picture of me from Main Street‘s last photo shoot with Leah Kirin… put your pretty pink glasses on first please… ;)

Myopia (near sightedness) with astigmatism (irregular shaped cornea) runs in my family on my mother’s side – every woman, and some of the menfolk, too, have extremely poor vision. I am no exception, so when I was about 9 years old, I got my first taste of being called “four eyes”. My sight became steadily worse until I was in my early 20s, where it found its plateau at around -5.25 for each eye. Bad enough that I can only see 6″ in front of my face before things get blurry. My dreams of being a pilot were quashed at an early age.

When I turned 13, I got my first pair of contacts. Joy! Sure, they were still pretty primitive back then, and took a lot of work (no such thing as disposable lenses at that point) to keep clean and sanitized, but so worth the effort. Life went merrily along, and I got married, traveled, enjoyed life.

Then the Teen came along. Don’t get me wrong; I love my first born with all my heart, but I totally blame her for the changes in hormones that prevented me from being able to wear contacts ever again. She knows this. She’s fine with it too, and even finds it downright hilarious. Where did I go wrong? I know there’s a guilt trip gene in our makeup, because my mother has it down pat. Mine must be latent though, or even missing. Drat!

But I digress.

The Teen is now, well, a teenager. She’ll be 16 this year if she plays her cards right and that means that I’ve been back to wearing glasses for 15 years now. I haven’t taken it all that well. I hate every minute of it, in fact. I hate that the ear pieces have created permanent dents behind my ears. I hate the way they fog up in the cold. I loathe the way they get smeared when I hug someone too close – and I do that a lot, by the way… I’m a hugger – and that I never seem to have a cleaning cloth handy when I need one. I hate having to turn a certain way when being kissed, because I don’t want to catch the kisser with the edge, or if the kisser’s wearing glasses too, clash them together and possibly scratch lenses. (Making it sound like this happens a lot, but as much as I love kissing… we must refer back to the fact that I’m married to a very unromantic man. ‘Nuff said… although one day I may just snap and go on a kissing spree! Uh… I really need to learn to control my inside voice.)

Er… where was I going with this? Oh yes. Sorry.

I started dreaming about a miracle “cure” that would give me perfect vision. When laser surgery first became available to the masses, I wasn’t a candidate due to my astigmatism. Also, it was prohibitively expensive, which also made it out of the question, since I was young, broke, and still wearing contacts, so not all that motivated. That was then.

Today laser eye surgery has progressed to include techniques and radical new technologies that make my sight issues practically irrelevant. Last week I went in to have an assessment done by the doctors at Lasik MD here in Toronto. These folks are the leaders in this technology, and boy do they know their stuff.

I was there for over 2 hours, and in that time, I went through a myriad of different tests. I was scanned, had my pupils dilated, scanned some more, poked (literally), measured, and tested. As intense as it was, they were gentle and described exactly what they were going to do, and I was not uncomfortable or freaked out in any way. I don’t scare easily, so I guess I was pretty easy to work with (or so I was told). My hubby would never have been able to sit through any of that, given how freakishly sensitive he is about his eyes.

As it turns out, while I have extremely healthy eyes (good to know!) I am not a candidate for the Lasik procedure. My pupils are larger than normal (which makes me a bit more light sensitive than most), my corneas are too thin to allow the “flap” made in the procedure, and I have a very high prescription. Bummer.

However, on the bright side, I am a perfect candidate for PRK Advanced Custom Wavefront laser surgery! Dear reader, did you have a flash of dollar signs when you read “advanced custom” in that statement? Good eye.

When I finally got in to the “admin” part of the visit, after waiting about 45 minutes due to the fact that they forgot about me, we got down to brass tacks. The gal brightly slid the quote over to my side of the desk (lest she be overheard by the masses sitting outside her door) so I could have a gander. It’s about double what Lasik surgery costs, at $4000.00 ($Cad). Now, this is substantially higher than I had hoped to be quoted when I walked in, let me tell you. She did immediately say that because they had forgotten about me, and felt just terrible about it, that they were happy to take 10% off of that for me. Score? I guess. It’s not the $2K I was hoping for though!

What is perfect eyesight worth to you?

For me, it looks to be worth $3600 and a week or so off of work. My surgery is February 22nd.