DIAGNOSIS: COOTIES

I was a good girl and went to my doctor today. As I’ve mentioned before, I really do like this doctor. He is all of 3 minutes by car from my house and he has always taken his time with me which is probably the number one thing I look for when searching for a doctor. I don’t mind waiting in your lobby if I know you are running late because you take your time with each patient and aren’t trying to process us all in less than 5 minutes. He also treats me like a human being. He discusses my weight, because he’d be a crappy doctor if he didn’t, but I never feel judged and he isn’t inclined to treat EVERYTHING as if it’s a direct result of how much I weigh:

“Well Mrs. V, you probably wouldn’t have that sore throat if you just lowered your fat intake to 20g per day.”

I won’t go into detail about my visit with him because it was pretty standard. He ultimately diagnosed me with a sinus infection and asked me to come back for a stress test for the other symptoms I mentioned I had last week. The past few days I was doing better, so maybe my body is just trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing with all the healthy food and extra activity. I kind of have this whole crazy scenario in my head where the higher ups in the management of my body are sounding alarms and barking orders trying to deal with the chaos my new diet and exercise regime must have caused:

“She’s trying to use WHAT muscles??? She hasn’t used those in over a year!” “And whats with the reduced calorie intake? What is she trying to do to us?? We can’t support this body on that kind of intake! Where are the French fries and Cheeseburgers?!? Can someone please text the fat cells and tell them we are going to have to downsize?

Somewhere in the region of my butt, the sorry little fat cells are melting, two or three have banned together with violins playing their last little concerto while the Titanic that was my ass goes down. I have a rather overactive imagination, I know. I didn’t share this little theory with my doctor just in case you were wondering, I think I might have come out with a whole other kind of diagnosis if I had.

Ok, well enough of that. Essentially, he gave me some antibiotics and asked me to come back for an echo cardiogram and a stress test. I’ll be scheduling that in the next few weeks. The interesting part of the visit happened when I walked into his waiting room.

This particular doctor is from some Middle Eastern country and most of his patients are of Middle Eastern descent. I won’t lie to you, I am pretty ignorant when it comes to middle eastern culture so maybe part of what I experienced can be chalked up to cultural differences and not just outright rudeness. If any of you can clarify, I’d love to hear your opinions, but I’m inclined to think it was just rudeness. Just to set the scene, I was the only non-middle eastern patient in the office today.

So I walk into the waiting room and find it’s very crowded. Every seat is taken, but two of the seats have tiny little 3 year old butts in each of them. The seats in the doctor’s office could easily sit three 3 year old butts comfortably in one chair, so I’m thinking that by the time I sign in, maybe the mom will have asked her two children to sit together so that the nice fat lady has a place to sit. NOT HAPPENING. I turn around and this family just stares at me, I turn to the receptionist and ask if there is somewhere else I can sit (secretly hoping that they might overhear me and make room for me). The receptionist says they only have what is available in the waiting room and that she’ll try to get me in a room as quickly as possible. In the meantime, I know that I have a good two minutes on my feet before my body begins to protest so it’s slightly “panic time” in my head.

Luckily, one of the hyperactive three year olds decides he’d much rather be running laps around the waiting room so I swoop in and ask the mother if its ok for me to sit in his now vacant seat. She gives me this “look” and looks at her husband who is filling out the paperwork as if to make sure its OK with him and then turns to me and says something I can’t understand. Her body language seems to say its ok with her, but apparently they were NOT ok with it.

I sit down and the children immediately start wailing in some other language and the mother gets up and trades seats with them; I’m assuming so they don’t have to sit next to the fat lady? I try not to take it personally, children will be children after all and maybe I’m the first really fat person they’ve ever seen in their lives. Maybe they thought it was catching or maybe they just thought I was gross? I don’t know. What I will tell you is that when a woman came out from the back office, everybody in that damn office started playing musical chairs to make room for HER to sit down. The father filling out the paperwork actually GOT UP OUT OF HIS CHAIR and stood so that this other woman could sit down. Another woman came in (of obvious Middle Eastern descent) and again with the musical chairs making room for her. At this point, I wanted a magazine, but I was seriously worried that if I got out of my chair, one of these men who were now standing, would swoop in and claim my vacant seat.

My conclusion? Unbeknownst to me, there must have been some cootie detection alarm that went off when I walked through the door. I didn’t hear it, but it was obvious everybody else did. I mean, I took a shower, used my bath and body works scrub, and put on deodorant (which honestly a couple of other somebodys in that office hadn’t bothered to use that morning). Heck, I even used a few sprays of my Gautier perfume so I was pretty darn sure that any cooties that might have survived the shower were smelling really good. So what was the problem? Was this a “fat thing” or a “cultural thing” or just a plain “we are a rude bunch of people thing?” I refuse to believe that I have cooties!!!

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Adventures at Gattiland: And other horror stories that define my existence.

I’ve been dreading Saturday all week. Today is the day I have to take my son to Gattiland to see his “girlfriend.” Since we moved about ½ an hour away about a year ago, they don’t get to see each other very often. She is a sweet girl and about the only real friend T has so I want to do what I can to maintain that relationship for him, but uggh! Gattiland?

I hate to admit it, but I really have gotten to where I don’t like to go out in public. It isn’t so much that I don’t like people looking at me. In my 20’s I was SO caught up in what other people thought of me. I would have been mortified if a child pointed out the obvious to mommy: “Mommy that lady is FAT!” I never really held it against the child if that happened, they are just pointing out the obvious. It’s all in how the parent handles it. Most parents should tell their children that what they’ve observed might be the truth, but that it isn’t always nice to point such things out as it might hurt the person’s feelings. Most parents do handle it this way, but I have had horrible experiences where the parents have said the worst things to their child: “yes she is, that’s why mommy doesn’t want you to have too many sweets, you remember that next time you ask.” Right in front of me, not lowering their voice and not caring that I can hear every word they are saying. And that my friends is how eating disorders are born.

Honestly, this isn’t why I dread going out in public right now. I can handle stuff like this whether it’s handled well or not so well. I’m used to people staring or even worse…refusing to see me at all. I’ve always said, I’m the biggest invisible person in the room usually because people either stare or they look everywhere but at you. I am such a different person than I was in my 20’s. I know that despite what I look like on the outside, I am MORE than just my body. People will think what they want to think and there’s nothing I can do about that. If they choose not to get to know me or see me for the human being that I am, then I’m sorry for them. Under my gargantuan surface, I’m a mother who has struggled and sacrificed to raise her special needs son the best she can. I’ve worked crappy hours so that I never had to put him in daycare. I put off going back to graduate school after graduating Summa Cum Laude so that I could make sure he got the services and attention he needed. I’ve tried to be a good wife to my husband. I’m a loyal friend and someone I think everyone in my life knows they can count on. I don’t need other people to validate me anymore so that’s a plus 

However, when I do go out in public, what can still humiliate me is coping with my weakness. The muscular atrophy I’ve experienced over the last year; partially due to the depression I experienced after the break up of my marriage and then exacerbated after my knee injury. What does humiliate me is showing this weakness; having difficulty getting from my car to the building without being too fatigued; not being able to stand for very long; getting out of breath just walking a short distance; getting red in the face or god forbid SWEATING! It is these challenges that have made me want to hide in my home. I don’t want people to see me struggle. The last thing I want to see on their faces is pity…god no…not that. I think it’s because I remember looking at people like myself when I was slimmer and thinking the same thing…how awful it would be to be that fat and that disabled by my weight… and here I sit.

It can get to be a vicious cycle though. If you give in to it, then you wind up staying home, getting less and less physical activity and before you know it, you are bed-bound. I used to wonder how people could let themselves get that bad. At what point do you just never get out of bed again? I’m here to tell you that once you get to a certain weight, it doesn’t take much. One injury can mean even less physical activity and before you know it, you can’t stand up on your own. You can’t take a few steps without having some kind of support. So you stop going up and down the stairs as often, instead having your husband or son bring you something to drink and soon, even when the injury has healed, your muscle tone has gotten so bad that you can’t get out of a chair or out of bed without assistance. Of course, this is depressing as hell and how do we deal with yucky feelings; FOOD of course. So while your muscle tone is declining, your weight is increasing and it just compounds the whole problem.

I realize that I am at a turning point in my life right now. I can either choose to deal with the humiliation of getting out in public, letting strangers see my weaknesses, go to the gym even if I can only do 5 minutes at a time on the treadmill or resign myself to my fate. Unless I do all these things, I WILL wind up completely immobile and I doubt I will live much beyond the age of 40.

I absolutely refuse to give in. I’m a strong woman and I’ve dealt with much harder battles in my life than seeing that look of pity on someone’s face. I just have to tell myself that it won’t be like this forever. I’m making positive choices now and soon, I will start seeing some improvement.

Ok, pep talk done; now to shower and get ready for my fun adventure at gattiland. Just pray I can pass up the pizza buffet.

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