Let Me Tell You Once Again...Who's Fat?

With apologies to Weird Al for ripping off his lyrics for my title. Anywho…

Yes, I am fat. Not chubby, not overweight, not curvy, zaftig, or phat. I am FAT. Like, morbidly obese fat. Like “twomealsawayfrombeingconfinedtoascooter” fat. I’d laugh if it wouldn’t start an avalanche of fat rolls down my belly.

I guess it really isn’t a laughing matter, and I guess you’re wondering why I chose to write about this particular subject when I have several other posts backlogged in my blog folder. Well, I’m bringing it up because 1. I will (hopefully) be getting Lap Band surgery before the year is through and 2. when I went to my gyno appointment last week, I had gained weight. This killed me inside. I usually weigh about the same each time I go to an appointment. This weigh in was showing a 10 pound increase. TEN POUNDS. I was up to the dreaded number: 400.

Yes, I weigh 400 lbs. Writing that makes me feel wretched and ashamed. I almost left out my weight in this entry, but felt I should be honest with my few readers and myself. You wouldn’t think I weighed that much when you first look at me, but my body is really dense (like my mind). My husband doesn’t believe I weigh that much. In some ways, *I* can’t believe I weigh that much again. Did I say again? Yes I did. Once before, when I was 22, I weighed that much. I lost it for the wrong reasons (another story for another day), but I felt great! I want that feeling back again.

So you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, here is another fat ass that sits around and does nothing but eat crappy food and watch television all day.” You’d be wrong. I sit around and eat crappy food and play on the internet all day. Ha. I‘m kidding, of course. My eating habits are fairly normal. I eat less than my husband does, and he’s a skinny Asian bastard (I say this with love). I may not exercise enough, though. I love walking and working out on the Wii Fit, but I don’t think it is helping, and it is getting harder and harder to do those things.

So now we get to the reasons WHY I’m like this. The first time I lost weight, I instilled in myself the eating habits that SHOULD HAVE been instilled in me before. I made myself exercise like I SHOULD HAVE before. No, I’m not laying a “this is all my parent’s fault” guilt trip. Yes, they cooked a lot of fried foods and buttered foods and loaded me with 2% milk, but it wasn’t their fault. I was an active child. The weight just clung to me. Then I got lazy. Then I got fatter. Then I lost weight. Then I got pregnant. No, I’m not blaming my lovely son. I just let myself eat whatever because I was pregnant. And I had cravings. And I didn’t care. Then I popped out my boy, lost some weight, then it all came back again. Fuck.

I have battled my weight all my life. I have been called more names than I care to remember. I cried more days than I care to remember over the teasing and taunting. I have had doctors, nurses, and other people tell me the standard cliché, “Oh, you would be so pretty if you weren’t overweight.” Fuck all y’all and your lack of help. I have had exactly TWO doctors try to help me lose weight. It didn‘t work.

So where does this fat dilemma leave me now? Well, I can go into fat acceptance and embrace the heft until I die like 10 years from now, or I can get the surgery to help me lose weight. I’m opting for the latter. I do not want to be this fat. I can feel it weighing down on me, no pun intended. I cannot sit comfortably in chairs, couches, planes, trains, or automobiles. I cannot walk without breaking a sweat, even on cold days. I cannot buy clothes in regular stores. I’d say I can’t get frisky with my old man, but that still happens and he seems to enjoy the lard. I just hope he isn’t too disappointed when it disappears.

This post is not meant to slander people who don’t care about how much they weigh. I applaud you for embracing the chub. I do as well, but not at this level of heaviness. Even though I am crazy healthy (only medical problems are high blood pressure and asthma…and the mental issues, but they don’t count), I can feel the weight starting to take it’s slow toll. My knees and legs hurt a lot now. I am breathing harder. I have developed a form of sleep apnea, although I don’t need help with it yet (God willing, I will never need help with it). Most of all, I am afraid. Afraid of cutting my life short, afraid of having my son embarrassed about his fat mama, afraid my husband will be embarrassed about his fat wife, and afraid that I will never be able to do the things I want to do in life because I have 250 pounds of extra bulk hindering me.

My consultation appointment for Lap Band surgery is on Monday. I’m praying that the surgeon will see that I am sincere in my efforts and approve me for it, because I really have no other options at this point. Weight Watchers worked for a while. My doctor’s diet worked for a while. MY diet worked for a while. They all failed me in the end, though. Maybe being restricted to a half cup of food at each meal will finally gain me some results.

If it doesn’t, I’ll be dead before I’m 40, and I really don’t want that to happen. Life is fun, even when it is being a bitch.

One Year, Part Three

Note: This is the last and final part of my story. The first part can be found here. The second part is here.

So the months rolled on, and now I find myself celebrating (is that really the proper word?) the anniversary of my mental meltdown. I wish I could say that I am getting better. I’m improving, but I’m not getting better. I still get those days when I have nagging thoughts that lead to me feeling slightly panicky. I take too many pills, drink too much, and stay up too late because this past year has taken a devastating toll on my sleep patterns. I’m getting better with interacting with my family and paying more attention to my son, yet there are times when I completely space out and ignore him. It hurts him, I know. It hurts me as well because I love him beyond all measure, and I feel like he’ll hate me later on. Then there are the faith problems that I have.

I was raised Catholic, but I lapsed from it. In June of 2008, I made a commitment to renew my faith in God. That sort of fell apart several months after my breakdown when I started questioning if there was a higher being, if there was any point to life, if I was just existing for no reason whatsoever. I researched and read and looked for proof of God or a higher power. I studied different faiths, read different books on different religious points of view (and some not so religious), and worried. I finally just prayed. It helped. Like I said in a previous post, my leanings are more towards Christianity than any other religion, possibly because I grew up with a Christian faith. However, I have many beliefs that would not fit in anywhere on the fundamentalist/true devotee Christianity. So I just identify myself with Theological Evolutionists and leave it at that while I work out my problems.

So what am I doing now? I’m trying to live. My son is now in preschool, so I have the morning occupied with getting him ready for school and getting him there on time. I will be turning in my volunteer packet soon so I can have my mid-morning occupied as well. I’ve started exercising more and will be getting Lap Band surgery in the near future to help with my weight and health issues. I’m looking to start school in 2010 to get my Associate’s Degree in Science because I eventually want to go balls out and get my PhD in Physics. Oh yes, I know that sounds insane, considering the fact that something to do with PHYSICS caused me to go crazy, but there it is. However, that’s another post for another day.

I still see Dr. O once a week, but I think I have improved enough to see her twice a month. She has been an extraordinary help in making me realize that all of these things happened for other reasons that just the one that cause me to collapse last September. I have worked through my eating issues and my feelings of inadequacy. I have bawled my eyes out over the family and friends that I’ve lost over this past year to her. She has done nothing but listen and suggest and given me mental slaps to the head to snap me out of stuff. Unfortunately, she can only do so much.

Sometimes the doubts linger. Sometimes I feel the dark creepy thoughts come back. Sometimes all I want to do is cry and rage about what happened to me. Sometimes I just want to give up. Then I look at my son. I look at my husband. I look at the freakin’ DOG. Then I know that I cannot give up. I cannot let this beat me. I will make it end.

I will not continue to be a victim of my own mind. I will live my life as fully as possible until God sees fit to shuffle me off this mortal coil.

Trust.

One Year, Part Two

Note: this is the second part of this story. Some of it is a rehash of what I've already written here, but I just haven't been able to stop writing it out, so it might seem a bit redundant.

So I went home that night. It was painful. I managed to eat a piece of pizza, but it felt like lead in my stomach. I suffered through Sunday. I made it through Monday. Tuesday rolled around and I met with my awesome doctor. I told her what had happened. Being the awesome doctor she is, she hugged me and we got down to the business of finding something that would work for me. We decided on a low dose of Paxil, along with a low dose of Xanax for those moments when I felt really panicky. She also told me about a book that was highly recommended to combat panic attacks/anxiety. I was greatly relieved and rushed to Walgreen’s to fill my prescriptions.

Over the next few days, I felt a slight improvement. The Xanax made me feel weird for a while, but I got used to it. Eventually I was able to go out without being frightened of the world around me. My life started improving. I was seeing my doctor on a monthly basis to make sure the meds were working. This happened right up until she moved. Luckily, she recommended an associate who helped me with my issues. However, I still balked at seeing a counselor/psychiatrist/psychologist. I was feeling fine.

As November rolled around and the cold weather set in, I could feel my usual depression returning due to Seasonal Affective Disorder. It wasn’t as bad as it usually was, but it was majorly exacerbated by what happened at the end of November. My grandmother became ill, and at first I thought it was a ploy for attention on her part (my family has a long history of hypochondria). As the end days of the month rolled on, however, I realized that it was worse than was being let on. Then on Thanksgiving Day, it really fell apart. My grandmother had a major heart attack and went into a coma and was on every machine available. It didn’t look good. The week after, it was said that she was never going to recover, and that the machines would be unplugged and she would be allowed to die peacefully. On December 4, she died. I was devastated.

Surprisingly, the loss of my grandmother did not cause me to relapse. I was able to grieve a bit, all the while planning a trip back to California for the memorial of my grandmother. Since the season was so advanced, we could not get airline tickets for cheap, so we drove. I did not break down on the way there and I managed to take over driving duties for half the way. It was a strenuous drive, but the Xanax helped me to be a better driver and keep me more alert. The two weeks in California were hard and exhausting, but I was so busy that the panic and anxiety didn’t even touch me. It was not until several months later that everything started hitting me again and I realized that I needed another solution.

At the beginning of March, I noticed a significant change in my moods and the effect the medicine was having on me. Then I started worrying about things that shouldn’t be worrying a sane person. Asteroids, super volcanoes, natural disasters, basically whatever you could imagine that would destroy life on this planet. I finally worked through that, but by mid-March, I was questioning the existence of God and anything spiritual or supernatural. It got to the point that I was crying out for a sign or acknowledgment from a higher power. It never came, and I sunk deeper into despair. I neglected my home, my family, and myself. After six months, I finally admitted defeat, researched psychologists, and found a reputable one in my neighborhood.

To say I was nervous about meeting Dr. O was an understatement. I was terrified, and thought that she would think less of me because my initial call to her was one of hysteria and raging tears. However, I found her to be the greatest psychologist on Earth, and just talking to her for the first time helped me tremendously. I still wasn’t sure which direction I was going with my faith, but I felt a deep sense of loss over what I had believed in for so long. It led to several instances of cutting myself to dull the pain and sadness. I told Dr. O these things, and she listened. I talked and talked and talked, and she listened. It was the greatest release of the burden that I had been carrying around for the past six months. After the first session, she suggested I contact my regular doctor to get my Paxil dosage upped. It was done, and I slowly started feeling better. My faith wasn’t restored, but I was calmer and not dreading things that might not and probably won’t ever happen.

To be continued...

One year, Part One

Note: When I set out to write this story, it took me several weeks to work up the courage to put down what I wanted to say. I am still working on it. It is also turning into a freaking book, so I decided to break it up into several pieces.

What does a mental breakdown, an anniversary, physics, and the Large Hadron Collider have in common? They are all related to the story I’m about to tell you. It is the story of how a year ago to this exact date, I had a mental breakdown that nearly killed me, that made me doubt my belief system, that reduced me to a shell of my former self. It is the story of how I struggled to survive my mind completely melting down on me. It is a story of how I tried to shield my family from the worst of it and didn‘t succeed. The story doesn’t have an end, because it is my life and I’m obviously still here, but maybe someday the madness will be laid to rest and I can continue living my life somewhat normally. It starts out like this…

September 8, 2008. A glorious Labor Day in Chicagoland. The day before, the husband and I decided to take our son to the MSI to run around and play since it was (shockingly) a free day. As life is wont to do, a curveball was thrown and my husband was called in to work. Not feeling like going anywhere now that the plans were stuffed up, I settled down with my son to hang out. I started my usual morning perusal of the internet, finally stopping at my main hangout, a message board. What’s this? A post about a machine that is going to replicate the Big Bang ? Is that safe? What the hell does that mean? What is a Large Hadron Collider? That’s what my mind looked like after reading the initial post. Being the curious person I am, I Googled it. BIG mistake. VERY BIG mistake.

What I found was several paranoid diatribes about how it was going to destroy the world, create black holes, it wasn’t safe, etc. I found lawsuits against it, trying to stop it from running. The more I delved into the conspiracies, the more panicky my brain became. Then came the breakdown. “Oh my God, these physicists are going to kill us all….what’s going to happen to my son…..Earth is going to be destroyed because these assholes are trying to play God…….we’re doomed…..oh shit…..” That’s what was going through my mind. That’s what resonated all day. “We’re dead.” “We’re doomed.” “Life is over.” I melted like a giant ice shelf being affected by global warming.

Looking back now, I can see that this was not the whole cause of my meltdown, but rather the trigger point. For months I had been feeling worried, anxious, scared, but had been able to bat it down. Reading about a machine that I really didn’t understand and then reading a bunch of asinine conspiracy theories just toppled my reserve. I cried for the rest of the day. I don’t remember much else, just the crying, holding on to the boy, praying, and eventually cooking dinner. I didn’t eat much; fear can do that. It turns out I wouldn’t eat much for the next nine days, ending with me losing about 14 pounds. Then night fell, and my panic grew…

For thirty minutes before I showered, I sat in the bathroom and cried. I pondered suicide. There was a straight razor in the bathroom that just seemed to be calling to me, urging me to use it, to just neatly slice my veins and be done with it. I picked it up, held it to my arms, then thought about my son and husband. I put it away (in reality, I should have tossed it since I used it to cut myself later on), took a shower, and cried some more. Then I went to bed, but did not fall asleep for the longest time. I was hoping against hope that I would wake up on Tuesday and the feelings would be gone. They weren’t.

Late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I stayed up because that was the launch date of the LHC. I wanted to see if we were going to die. When nothing happened, I went to my son’s room and sat next to his bed for twenty minutes, crying softly and holding his hand. I thought for sure that that would be the end of it with the startup of the machine. Nope. I endured the agony of a complete and utter breakdown until Saturday, September 13. We had gone grocery shopping as normal, but I was a mess inside. I hurried through the stores quickly, thinking that at any minute, something awful would happen. I couldn’t endure the laughter and smiles of other people. It finally got so bad that I begged my husband to take me to the hospital. After dealing with me all week, he was eager to comply. So began my night in the ER.

I arrived there, went to Triage, and told them what was going on. When they came to the question, “Did you think about suicide at any time?”, I hesitated, answered in the affirmative, and hung my head to cry. The nurse patted my hand, upgraded me to a purple band, and sent me back to the ER with another nurse and basically what amounted to a keeper because I was deemed suicidal. I was put in a room with my keeper and without my belongings (I might use my phone to commit suicide) and the nurse told me that a hospital psychologist would be along directly to evaluate me.

After a standard psychological evaluation, the psychologist said she had to consult with the main psychologist on staff (teaching hospital), and that she would be back soon. In the meantime, my keeper had gone home while the psychologist was with me, so they sent a new keeper in. She was very sweet and tried to keep me distracted while I waited. It took a while (it IS a Chicago ER), but in the interim, I got to watch someone die. Not exactly something you want to see when your mind is already messing with you. I definitely felt horrible for the man who died, his family, and the doctors and nurses who worked so valiantly to save him.

After an hour or so, the psychologist came back to tell me what was up. Since I was coherent and capable of responding to questions, they would not keep me. However, I had to see my regular doctor to talk about ways to get me over the panic/anxiety and to find a mental health counselor. Luckily, I had made an appointment with my doctor for three days after this incident, so I was good on that end. However, I was wary of taking on a counselor because I didn’t like discussing these things with perfect strangers, which is weird because I’m BLOGGING this now. But I digress…

To be continued...

The Big Day

My son starts school tomorrow. It is quite unfathomable that he has already reached the age of school-dom, even if it is just preschool. What happened to that tiny baby that I held in my arms? What happened to that little chubby body that was so determined to roll over? What happened to the little boy that absorbed my every waking moment? What happened to that toddler who stubbornly refused to use the potty? All I am left with is a tall, lanky preschooler, who is growing up too fast for my liking. A preschooler who is independent beyond all measure and gets annoyed if I try and help him in any way. A preschooler who is starting to form his own thoughts and opinions on the world, which surprise and baffle me at every turn.

Even though he is very intelligent and wise, I am worried about him going to school. He hasn’t had a lot of interaction with other children beyond soccer and playground romps, so I don’t know if he will handle a classroom full of children well. He also has a slight speech delay and tends to express himself more than he actually understands, which is totally ass backwards from the norm. It causes no end of trouble for some people because he will repeat what he hears or just repeat himself rather than stop and think for a minute and come up with an answer all his own.

I feel like I have failed him as a mother. The lack of interaction with other kids, the fact that he spent most of his learning years with me, and the whole, “I’m too lazy/tired/sad/freaked out to go outside today, dear” that I pulled for so long might have stunted his emotional and mental growth. I worry that they will find something wrong with my baby boy, and that they’ll hand him over to Special Education before they even give him a chance. I worry that he will grow up as I did, shy and scared of making new friends, trying new things, going new places. I don’t want him to be like that. I want him to be independent, happy, free, and above all, fearless of life and what it throws at you.

I know this is just my random neurotic thoughts, but I can’t help but worry. Hell, we’ll probably get to the school tomorrow and he’ll to me to am-scray.

That would be the best and worst thing to happen.