Mindgames

The military likes to screw with you.  Know this.  So, this week has been more than slightly hectic and nothing but pure stress.  Despite this, I've managed not to binge eat or even over eat and I am truly proud of myself.  What is going on, however, is that on Tuesday night we received a phone call stating we will be getting orders to move.

What we don't know is to where or when yet.  Every day we're given just a little bit more information.  At this point, all I know is that by Friday we should have complete details.  I am surprised that I haven't cleared out my fridge of all the food and put it into my stomach.  This says something about how far I've come!

Some things I've noticed myself doing in place of eating is cleaning, focusing on spending time with my son and husband, working on my computer and talking to my mother and my friends.  These are all positive things and they all came to me without thinking about them or thinking about turning to food first before doing them.  I hope that I continue with these habits.

I saw my physician yesterday about my leg.  I was given a 7 day extension on Septra, a strong antibiotic and will be following up again in one week.  I also did some blood work, to make sure that I wasn't becoming diabetic, since this cellulitis has been a problem.  The frustrating part of all this is that I still can not exercise (by walking).  I have found it hard to raise my heart level through other types of movement that doesn't involve the use of my legs, but I am still trying.

I thought that it would be all right to walk my son to the bus the other day because my leg was feeling pretty good.  The walk really isn't that far, just right up the street no more than a three minute walk with a 6 year old who doesn't want to walk more than a snails pace in the morning.  I have to tell you, it felt good to be out and walking again.  When I got home, however, my entire foot and ankle that the cellulitis is on, had become swollen.  So when the doctor tells you to stay off your leg, stay off your leg.

Tomorrow is therapy, looking forward to it.  Hope it's not my last session.  I really don't want to leave this base yet.  Love it here.

Putting Myself First

I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that I actually told myself I wouldn't talk about on this blog; my mood disorder.  I had been avoiding it, because I wanted this journal to be about my binge eating disorder, my weight loss and how I was dealing with all of it. 

I have, in past posts, briefly mentioned my mood disorder without going into any detail, but as time went on it's been increasingly more difficult not to mention it when talking about my binging episodes and how my mood disorder might be affected by it.  What I didn't really consider is that my mood disorder really does play a big part in all of this.

Having spent some time thinking about it over the weekend, I decided it probably wasn't a rare thing that people with eating disorders have some other underlying emotional issues to deal with.  It could be just something from the past that they might have to work out or, in my case, an actual chemical imbalance.  Whatever the case might be for them, or myself, it's there and it needs to be dealt with and addressed as part of the process to fix the overall problem.

So, while I'm maintaining my journal for my binge eating, I might occasionally mention something about my mood disorder.  I'm not going to go on and on about it, or make a big deal out of it because that's still not the point me maintaining this site, but it is a part of who I am so I'm not going to ignore it and pretend like it's not there and it's not a part of the problem.  Plus, I sometimes forget that I'm suppose to be doing this for myself above anyone else and I shouldn't leave anything out.

What I do want to say is that I don't whine about having a chemical imbalance any more than I do about having a binging problem or being obese.  I actively do something about my issues and take care of myself, even if sometimes it takes me a while to get my act together to do it.  I save all my whining for my therapist, because sometimes I need her to help me figure out which direction I'm suppose to be going in.  Though, damnit, she still makes me figure it out on my own most of the time. 

Anyway, my point is, I'm not going to neglect that part of me anymore, so feel free to skip those parts of my posts or just stop reading.  I'm not going to forget that this is for me and my benefit most of all.  I honestly don't even know what possessed me to exclude it in the beginning anyway or why I thought that it might be unrelated to what I was going through.

Dredging Up the Past

Unfortunately, a lot about healing involves actually having to hurt again.  This means talking about things in therapy that I just don't like to talk about.  Once of those things I don't like to talk about is my family and my relationships with just about every single one of them.  I think it would be fair to say that this can be a painful thing for everyone to have to go through at some point so people know what I'm talking about when I say this.

So, family comes up often.  Now, since most of my therapy involves my binge eating, family and my relationship with food comes up often.  You know, every visit.  One of the things I talked about with my therapist was how growing up there never seemed to be a lot of food in the house.  The fridge was never full, nor were the cabinets.  It seemed even worse after my parents were divorced because money was very tight for reasons I wont even go into here because it has nothing to do with this blog, but there was definitely less food in the house after my parents split.

Now, as a child I was always comparing what I had to what everyone else had.  I don't know why or when this started to happen, but I had friends who always had way more food in their kitchens, or toys in their bedrooms or clothes in their closets.  There was even one boy, I recall, in third grade who went out of his way to point out to me that we were poor, his parents bought him way more new clothes for him for the first day of school than mine did and I was a loser.  Thanks for that, Jason, I still remember who you are.  That might have been the start of the cycle, but since I'm not sure, I'm not going to commit to it.

Anyway, as I got older, it always stressed me out there was never anything in the house to eat.  It always felt like this to me.  When I got my first job when I was 15, you can bet most of my paycheck usually went to eating or food of some type, because this is what I believed.  There was never any food in the house.  Imagine going on for most of your life with this thought that there is hardly ever food in your house and that you're really poor and can't afford to keep your fridge stocked.  Stressful for a kid, right?

Imagine thinking this is true up through your adult years and struggling with eating and weight problems because of it.  Yeah, it sucks.  My relationship with food is so unhealthy because of it.  I feel like I can't stop eating at a meal if there is still food on my plate, even if I'm not hungry anymore, because what if there is no more food later?  Doesn't matter that I know there is food later.  It's not like I'm actually thinking this, really, it's just this underlying stress that it always there so when I'm eating, I'm actually stressed out.  Yeah.  When I'm eating.  Normally.

Now, I know this blog is less than two weeks old, but I've gone from rarely thinking about things outside of therapy to keeping a blog on a daily basis and thinking about therapy related things constantly and I came to a startling realization.  We weren't short on food when I was a kid.  Even when my parents split and money was tight, there was always food in the house.  Hell, I never went to school without breakfast unless I chose to skip it, mom always had lunch money for me as long as I didn't forget to ask for it and every damn night that woman had something on the table for me for dinner.  It sure as hell might not have been steak, but it was food and it wasn't terrible and it was usually healthy.  Mom wasn't a health nut, but she wasn't a junk food fan.

She made sure there were fresh vegetables and fruits and most of the meat in the house was usually chicken because that was inexpensive.  So what was I thinking?  Well, the house wasn't stocked with junk food.  Money just wasn't wasted on crap like that, because money was tight.  And maybe we were struggling but we weren't starving and we definitely weren't poor.  There were people doing much worse than us.

What it doesn't fix is years of warped perspective brought on by outside influence.  However, it does give me something to think about as I'm working on changing my behavior going forward.  It also helps me work on playing the blame game with my parents for my current condition.  I'm sure I'll find some other way to do that in the future, but I'm working on one thing at a time.

So, before I go, I would just like to say one final thing.  To the little boy who I never forgot that said hurtful and hateful things to me because you thought you were better than I was simply because you had more money:  I hope you didn't grow up to be that way as an adult.  My heart hurts for you if you turned out to be that type of person.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Ignoring the Warning Signs

Our bodies are very good at telling us that something is wrong, but sometimes we're either not very good at listening or, in my case, I will simply outright ignore it because ... you may have guessed it, I'm fat.  I allow my weight to stop me from going out into public, because I don't want people to stare at me even if this means not treating something like bronchitis or even a simple cold.  So, I confine myself to my house.

About two weeks ago I developed a nasty little infection in my toe thanks to what was either athlete's foot or fungal infection.  By Wednesday of last week it had started healing over, but I had started getting sick woth what I thought were flu-like symptoms which I did not connect to my toe (because, who would?) and still could have been completely unrelated at that point. 

On Thursday I woke up with some minor lower right leg pain, below mid-calf and above my ankle in three specific points on my leg that had small purply-red spots developing.  It was very odd, but I didn't think much about it other than it was where my leg rested on the recliner where I sleep and I was assuming I was developing uncomfortable pressure points.  On Friday the pain was worse, popped some ibuprofen and hoped for the best.  Friday night I developed chills and a fever and had my husband pick up cold medicine, annoyed that I was getting sick in the middle of summer.

On Saturday morning I realized that I was having pain while walking and though I had done things like showered and changed my clothes I had not really bothered looking at my leg.  Pulling up the leg of my pants, it looked awful.  What the hell was that? That was not a leg.  That was a purple swollen gross stump of something and it hurt when I barely touched it.  

Having worked in the medical field for years I had a sneaking suspicion of what it might be, but I didn't want to admit to myself that it might be that.  So, I used an online diagnosing program to help me confirm my fears that it probably was what I thought it was, and it was at the top of the list of three conditions it could be, all which I should seek treatment for within the next 24 hours.  Cellulitis.

I was horrified.  It took the persistent pushing of both my husband and a friend to get me to go to the walk-in clinic on the base to get treated.  Why?  Because I'm fat and I didn't want people to stare at me.  I didn't want to have to sit there and talk to the doctor about my weight because I was too afraid he was going to blame my condition on diabetes, which is another cause of cellulitis, but was not the cause of it in my case since I do not have diabetes.  

Packing up my medications, I went to the clinic anyway because this is a serious medical condition and I couldn't leave it untreated.  It needed antibiotics this time, I couldn't let being obese stand in the way of seeking treatment for an illness. 

The doctor did exactly what I thought he would and ... did his job.  Asked if I had diabetes.  It's his job!  I know this.  I was still annoyed, though, and that's my issue because he's still required to ask questions and do his job.  I assured him that I did not have diabetes despite my weight, explained the infected toe and showed it to him with the newly healed skin and he immediately agreed that it was more likely to have been that cause since almost the entire top of the toe was now covered in new skin.

Despite that, the conversation still turned back to my weight and diabetes.  But, I came prepared.  I very calmly and even somewhat proudly told him that I had gone to a bariatric surgeon for gastric bypass and during the psych evaluation was diagnosed with binge eating disorder.  I was now seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist for binge eating disorder weekly to bi-weekly, a dietitian monthly and my regular doctor regularly.

I went on to explain that I was on medication for my blood pressure and that while my sugar levels had been borderline high when last tested in March, my doctor and I agreed we would wait before putting me on medication for diabetes because I was actively losing weight through healthy eating and exercise and seeing the dietitian and in 6 months we would retest me to see how the numbers looked.  I even told him that I had now lost over 40lbs.  That's 40.  I'm under 420lbs!

What came out of his mouth next though floored me.  He went on to say that when he was going to medical school, he used to binge eat when he was stressed so he could understand, he just never gained the weight.  I must have had a look on my face that clearly said, "Did you just compare your med school stress eating with my lifetime of uncontrollable compulsive eating?" because he quickly followed it up with how he didn't really know much about how cognitive therapy worked but that he hoped I was doing well with it and obviously it was working for me to drop 40lbs and gave me what sounded like an apologetic congratulations if that's somehow possible.

Then he turned around, told me to go back to see my primary physician for a follow up in a few days and to get my blood rechecked for diabetes.  I should also get back to the surgeon for that gastric bypass as soon as I could, as it was my best option for success.  Beg your pardon?  I was actually furious with this guy for suggesting that but thanked him for his information on the cellulitis and the antibiotic and promised him that I would be following up with my primary physician in a few days as he instructed.

When he left the room, I sat down in the chair and I thought to myself, "This guy... thinks I'm going to fail?" That was all I could come up with.  I had actually given him some very good detail about the cognitive behavioral therapy and how much I had learned about binge eating and triggers and how it was helping me with my weight loss.  The fact that he was suggesting the surgery though after all that just made me come to the conclusion that he believes that I'm going to fail.

Well, I have news for you.  I'm not going to fail.  Also, it felt really good to tell you that I lost 40lbs, even if I am still over 400lbs and I didn't have surgery to do it and I did it a little more slowly than other people might have.  I will also have you know, I will not be getting the surgery, even if it means getting the weight off faster to correct issues like my blood pressure and borderline blood sugar level.  You know why?  One binging episode after I have a gastric bypass and I will die and considering I still cant control all my binging episodes yet, that's a problem.  So no, I wont be going to do that and I am happy about it. 

I would like add, that going to the doctors made me realize it's my chance to brag TO a doctor that I am losing weight and if it's a doctor that I see regularly, they'll even be able to open my chart see that and go, "Wow, you are losing weight!"  Maybe they will praise me, because I like praise, and because they are a regular doctor I know they wont say something stupid like, "Go get surgery."

Also, you are a huge tool.

So, I did learn a lesson this past weekend: Self, the outcome was good, even though the experience at the Navy clinic was negative.  When you feel sick, go ahead to the doctors so you can get treated to feel better and boast when you have the opportunity.  Take your chance to pat yourself on the back because you deserve it.