WhitneyTo Be or Not To Be a Mother -Part Three
March 19th 2007 17:03
I was still seeing the doctor for my asthma. The breathing was much better as long as I severely limited my food groups and used the Asthmacort inhaler. I was O.K. with that. I was so thrilled that I was breathing again. That I was sleeping through the night without being awakened before dawn gasping for air. And the nutritionist at the doctor’s office was trying to devise menus that would allow me to rotate in different foods. Too bad my body was not cooperating. At that point the only way to maintain my breathing on a comfortable level was to eat very few foods. Basically that included turkey, fish, vegetables, yams, oils and limited quantities of non-peanut nuts. No fun foods. No fun period.
So on the one hand I was so happy that I could breathe again. You have no idea how panicky not being able to breathe can make you feel. Or maybe you do. But on the other hand this stress eater was having a very hard time not eating the foods that took the edge off having to deal with a home life she’d grown to hate. Foods like ice cream, cookies and pizza. Yup, basically anything with taste was a big no, no. And I needed those things. Every time something bothered me I needed the ice cream and cookies. One after the other I’d stuff them into my mouth. At first I’d feel so good. The taste, the sweetness. Heaven. And while after ten or more over-sized sandwich cookies I’d start to feel sick and disgusting even that was a distraction from dealing with the kids, the laundries, the meals and anything I didn’t like but knew I had to do. Because I always did what I was supposed to do. Now I had nothing to take that edge off. Nothing but air. It was a hard choice but that not breathing thing was definitely scary so I decided to stick with the program. And breathe.
There was another benefit. Sort of a secondary windfall so to speak. You see by not eating much I was losing weight. A pound a week. And like most other women I thought this was a very, very positive thing. As a matter of fact after a couple of months I could wash my jeans in hot water and then slip them on right out of dryer. No tugging, no swearing, no cursing my pear-shaped genes and most of all no sucking in my stomach to avoid the painful clipping of my flesh as I struggle to zip them up. I was lean and mean. Well at least lean. And at less than 100 pounds, I was seeing numbers that no scale had displayed since I was puking up my guts during my pregnancies.
Of course while I was proud of my svelte figure everyone else around me was expressing their growing concern. At one point even my teacher pulled me aside to find out if I was seeking medical attention or to suggest that I should - and to remind me to make that appointment on a Saturday since nothing short of death would be an excuse admissible for missing a lesson. The final straw was having to listen to an hour long lecture delivered by my mother about the dangers of anorexia.
Talk about sucking the life out of my weight loss joy…but since I was beginning to feel like a character from Stephen King’s novel “Thinner” I decided to broach the weight loss subject at my next doctor’s appointment. “Doctor I’ve lost 10% of my body weight and my teacher told me I’m starting to resemble the skeleton hanging in our anatomy class. Everyone is worried. Do you think something is wrong?” The doctor looked at my chart and then looked at me and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. According to my records you’ve only lost a few pounds.”
Huh? I was confused. I’d read the scale every time they weighed me. I knew I’d lost almost ten pounds. What was he talking about? “I think you’re mistaken..” I began when I saw the shift in his eyes. Not that he had ever been that kind, gentle Marcus Welby, M.D type, but at least he hadn’t been this angry man with the vein throbbing in his temple staring me down. “I know what your starting weight was. It’s written right here,” he said, showing me the incorrect number in my chart. Apparently he was more concerned with being right than caring about the bag of bones his patient had morphed into right before his very eyes.
The thing was I’d been 104 pounds (keep in mind I’m only 5’ tall) for the past ten years (again except for pregnancy and post-pregnancy) having been perhaps a wee bit fanatical about maintaining that weight. But as I sat there, across from the doctor who I’d come to because I needed his help I knew I had no choice but to agree with him. And apologize for my mistake. I needed him. What other choice did I have? So I did what I knew I had to do. Besides he was a doctor and I was just a housewife and a mother. He was probably right. I said I was sorry. He left the room and I went home.
So on the one hand I was so happy that I could breathe again. You have no idea how panicky not being able to breathe can make you feel. Or maybe you do. But on the other hand this stress eater was having a very hard time not eating the foods that took the edge off having to deal with a home life she’d grown to hate. Foods like ice cream, cookies and pizza. Yup, basically anything with taste was a big no, no. And I needed those things. Every time something bothered me I needed the ice cream and cookies. One after the other I’d stuff them into my mouth. At first I’d feel so good. The taste, the sweetness. Heaven. And while after ten or more over-sized sandwich cookies I’d start to feel sick and disgusting even that was a distraction from dealing with the kids, the laundries, the meals and anything I didn’t like but knew I had to do. Because I always did what I was supposed to do. Now I had nothing to take that edge off. Nothing but air. It was a hard choice but that not breathing thing was definitely scary so I decided to stick with the program. And breathe.
There was another benefit. Sort of a secondary windfall so to speak. You see by not eating much I was losing weight. A pound a week. And like most other women I thought this was a very, very positive thing. As a matter of fact after a couple of months I could wash my jeans in hot water and then slip them on right out of dryer. No tugging, no swearing, no cursing my pear-shaped genes and most of all no sucking in my stomach to avoid the painful clipping of my flesh as I struggle to zip them up. I was lean and mean. Well at least lean. And at less than 100 pounds, I was seeing numbers that no scale had displayed since I was puking up my guts during my pregnancies.
Of course while I was proud of my svelte figure everyone else around me was expressing their growing concern. At one point even my teacher pulled me aside to find out if I was seeking medical attention or to suggest that I should - and to remind me to make that appointment on a Saturday since nothing short of death would be an excuse admissible for missing a lesson. The final straw was having to listen to an hour long lecture delivered by my mother about the dangers of anorexia.
Talk about sucking the life out of my weight loss joy…but since I was beginning to feel like a character from Stephen King’s novel “Thinner” I decided to broach the weight loss subject at my next doctor’s appointment. “Doctor I’ve lost 10% of my body weight and my teacher told me I’m starting to resemble the skeleton hanging in our anatomy class. Everyone is worried. Do you think something is wrong?” The doctor looked at my chart and then looked at me and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. According to my records you’ve only lost a few pounds.”
Huh? I was confused. I’d read the scale every time they weighed me. I knew I’d lost almost ten pounds. What was he talking about? “I think you’re mistaken..” I began when I saw the shift in his eyes. Not that he had ever been that kind, gentle Marcus Welby, M.D type, but at least he hadn’t been this angry man with the vein throbbing in his temple staring me down. “I know what your starting weight was. It’s written right here,” he said, showing me the incorrect number in my chart. Apparently he was more concerned with being right than caring about the bag of bones his patient had morphed into right before his very eyes.
The thing was I’d been 104 pounds (keep in mind I’m only 5’ tall) for the past ten years (again except for pregnancy and post-pregnancy) having been perhaps a wee bit fanatical about maintaining that weight. But as I sat there, across from the doctor who I’d come to because I needed his help I knew I had no choice but to agree with him. And apologize for my mistake. I needed him. What other choice did I have? So I did what I knew I had to do. Besides he was a doctor and I was just a housewife and a mother. He was probably right. I said I was sorry. He left the room and I went home.
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