You cant chose your genes!

Pretty neat job done! 

I have just been for my yearly breast MRI scan.  My family from my mums side carry the BRCA1 faulty gene, that is responsible for increasing the carriers chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer.  It is the faulty gene that caused Angelina Jolie to have a preventative double mastectomy recently and is set to have a preventative hysterectomy and also Michelle Heaton carries the BRCA2 faulty gene and has also had a preventative double mastectomy.

I am unsure as the whether or not I want to know if I carry it, I need to go and speak with the specialist about the characteristics of our specific family strain and what can be done if I do carry the gene.  Every familial strain differs in severity and characteristics, so I need to understand all of the implications before finding out.  If my chances of survival are greatly increased by knowing and maybe even doing something about it as far as preventative measures go, then I guess it would benefit me.  It is also a consideration if we ever decide that we want to have children. Neither of us are currently convinced that that time will ever come, but you never know, and sometimes, just knowing you can't makes you want something!!

The last time I had an MRI, I had a slightly funny reaction to the contrast dye.  As I felt it going in, my hands went numb and tingly and I got terrible palpitations and dizziness.  I mentioned it this time and they said that some people do experience that sensation.  So, satisfied I wasn't going to die in a giant polo tube, I proceeded to fall fast asleep, only woke up once when the guy scanning me asked me to control my breathing as there was a bit too much movement (must've gone into deep sleep breathing mode!) and then at the end.  I didn't even feel the dye go in and as far as I can tell, no palpitations etc, so I am assuming that was my first ever panic attack the last time! Strange, as stuff like that never really bothers me! I'm normally pretty good at controlling panic in myself.

Managed to shift 2lbs yesterday, as I didn't do any exercise, I was on 1200 calories.  It has been a long time since I have done such a low calorie day and it was pretty tough!  I am not going to be far off again today either I wouldn't have thought, as I will only be riding one tonight so wont burn many calories there.  I made sweet potato soup this morning before going for my MRI, but I am going to have to watch how much I eat as that will be pretty calorific.  I will work it out later so that I know exactly how much I can have!

Sweet potato and lentil soup.

800g of sweet potato grated

100g lentils

2 teaspoons of Garam Masala 

1 Grated apple

1 thumb sized piece of grated ginger
300 ml of milk
1.2l of chicken stock

Basically all whizzed together!  I sort of copied the BBC good food recipe that I found here but didn't have half the ingredients so really just used the recipe for quantity guidance and cooking time.

Sweet potato - 688 calories
Lentils - 353 calories
Apple - 52 calories
300 ml skimmed milk - 61 calories
1.2l of ORGANIC chicken stock - not sure, maybe 30 calories
ginger - ~19 calories

total -  1203 in the entire thing.  Which I am guesstimating at 2 litres.  0.62 calories per ml (totally got this cal wrong the first time! As I have said before, Math is not my strong point!)

So this is rubbish based on my first shitty calculation!:
'So, if I ride for around 45 mins tonight, I reckon I should burn around 150 calories at least.  So I will be left with 468 calories spare.  So that will be about 280 ml of soup for my tea, this is not good news and I may well just have to go over that!! Its way too yummy to cut myself soooo short, will try having it in a cup though, see if that makes me feel any less hard done to!'

The correct figures are that I can have 754 ml of soup for my tea!! That, is schamazing!! I'm hoping that I have worked that out properly this time!!