New Lows, Updates and More

 

I just thought I would take a moment to reflect on the weight loss journey so far. I had kind of given up on the Providence Weight Loss Clinic for a long time, because it felt out of reach. I was struggling to make the scale move in any meaningful way. Before the start of the year I had gotten up above 600 pounds and things weren't going well at all. I felt hopeless.

The real motivation came with the idea of needing to get that wheelchair so I could get out. I had recovered from my falls and my broken foot. I was doing a bit better health wise. I got on Monjaro for my diabetes and started doing protein shakes for breakfast because I was feeling nauseated eating breakfast. I also began doing a seated work out every now and then. These things combined helped me get down to 569 in March so I could qualify for the chair.

From there the weight just continued to come off, especially as I worked with Physical Therapy on a strength building program to help improve my ability to walk. The Wheelchair was never and is not the end goal for me. It's a tool to make walking therapeutic, reduce the risk of falls and help build up strength. From there I've just continued to lose weight and it's felt amazing.

I'm hoping that now I can get a revision of my Gastric Sleeve I got when I was 725 pounds (after being 850 at my high and losing down to that to get approved for surgery that time) and get a gastric bypass to continue this momentum and get down to a healthier weight. I'm 40 now and I've got heart failure, diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea. I've dealt with a TIA in my past and Endocarditis. I need to be at a healthier weight to help prolong my life.

I can do this, I will do this, it just also feels a bit surreal at the same time.

1/11/25 Revival, Renewal, Resetting

 

It has been a while since I've sat down to put fingers to keyboard like this, to write in a longer form about my journey in any sort of meaningful way. Looking back at my previous blogs, it's been three years and on here specifically 8 years. So much has happened in all of that time and yet it feels like little progress has been made in a forward direction. But, before I get ahead of myself, for those who don't know me, I'm Kelindel and this is Thinking Thinner where I take you along on not just my weight loss journey, but my journey through life, wellness and health in general. I am not a professional by any means, I am just someone who is going through their own struggles and wanted to share them with you all in the hopes that maybe you might find some comradery in seeing someone else going through the same struggles you go through.

I intend on talking about not just weight, but health in general, from physical to mental health because I believe that it is important to understand that this is a journey that is not just about numbers on a scale. I'm not looking for some magical number. I'm doing this journey to get healthier and along the way I am challenged by health issues that are affected by my weight, or that will affect my weight loss journey. Likewise mental health will play a key role throughout this, affecting motivation and more. The importance of both can not be underestimated here.

I am restarting the blog as a bit of a resetting point for me. I used to be 850 pounds at my highest. I was, thankfully, never fully bed bound and through some hard work with an incredible team I was able to lose one hundred and fifty pounds in order to get a bariatric surgery, gastric sleeve specifically, that brought me down to 550. I came up again to around 580 where I've maintained for the last several years, going up and down at various points, but generally staying around 580. I am more mobile than I've ever been, though I am still largely home bound. I can walk short distances and get out to appointments in cars rather than requiring a stretcher. My quality of life improved drastically. But it's not enough for me.

In the time since all of that happened, we had a pandemic and I fell into a rut. Also my  health started to take a bit of a nose dive. I got diagnosed with diastolic heart failure. It is relatively mild. It only goes below 50% ejection fraction if I am pretty sick. I got a series of infections over the course of 2 years that culminated in a bad case of endocarditis 1 year ago. It was bad enough that I was pretty sure I was going to die. There is nothing like that to be a great motivator to get your life in order.

Of course, other issues reared their head, from low testosterone issues and then also being diagnosed with an auto-immune condition known as Sjogren's Syndrome. These all help to make it harder for me to move and be active. I also had several falls, including breaking my foot in two places that laid me up for two months. This was incredibly frustrating and I am surprised my mental health didn't suffer more. I think if it wasn't for a whole new mindset that I had gained, post the endocarditis where I had learned to let things go more easily and be more mindful, I would not have been able to.

That really speaks to the idea of needing to reset when things go wrong. You stumble and it hurts, but you keep going. There is a concept in therapy of failing upwards. It's likewise called in gaming, failing forwards, where you make a mistake, but you keep going and it's always progress towards success. That's how I tried to view those setbacks. They were setbacks, but they were on the road towards my success.

This week I was speaking with  my therapist. I was growing listless and bored and disconnected. Things that I usually did weren't interesting to me. He proposed that perhaps I was getting burnt out on electronics. I considered this for a bit and then started reading more and then resolved to spend more of my day than I had, trying to be active. I can't stand for long, so I have started to incorporate a seated exercise program for 15 minutes after breakfast and once I am able it's going to become 15 minutes after lunch as well. Since implementing that I'm already down to 575, a loss of 8 pounds this week. Some of that is going to be water weight and what not, but I have noticed my stomach is more pliable, it's not as taut. It's a good sign.

I'm resetting things, restarting my journey and I hope you will join me on it. If you are going on your own journey, please share where you are, your thoughts and how you are doing below.

Thoughts on Recovery (Trigger Warning: Abuse/PTSD/Mental Health) 9-25-17

As I sit down to the computer, I realize it has been far too long since I last updated this blog. There are a couple of reasons, though I think that perhaps the biggest one has been shame, because I've gained back some of the weight that I lost. I felt horrible about that and I didn't know how to convey or share that with you without feeling like a failure.

I also was going through a depressive phase when my writing trailed off that helped contribute to the lack of posting as well. When one gets to be depressed, it can be difficult to find the will to do things that we would normally do or enjoy, and writing was just something that I couldn't bring myself to do, even though I consider myself to be a writer before just about everything else.

It's funny, looking back on it, my last post was also on mental health issues, discussing my PTSD and topics related to that. This post is going to be no different I am afraid. For those who were hoping for more on the weight loss journey directly, I apologize. However, I ask you to stay anyway, because this is related tangentially. For you see, I realized at a certain point that in order to continue with my weight loss journey and to become the better me that I wanted to be, I had to first see about addressing my PTSD and depression, to help both become more manageable. I had gotten to the point where I could physically do more about my condition with the help of my surgery, but now I had to get to where I could emotionally do it as well.

Around the time of my last post I was just joining up with Integrative Trauma Treatment Center here in Portland. It's a wonderful place and I managed to join in just as they got put on Medicare/Medicaid roster, so I was one of their very first clients. My therapist, Jack, has turned out to be a great guy, very helpful for me through this process.

I am not going to go through a step by step of everything we did, but there is something I do wish to touch on and that is the EMDR that we did. EMDR is a form of therapy that relies on rapid eye movement and helps to trick the brain so that you can access repressed memories, emotions and beliefs to process them out. The way that Jack likes to describe it is taking talk therapy and then doing the work of months and months of talk therapy, but compressing it down into weeks instead.

I was skeptical at first of this form of therapy, but I've been surprised about how effective it has been. I am by no means cured of my PTSD, but nothing is going to ever do that. But what it has done is helped to lessen it's impact on me. My flashbacks aren't as frequent and I can frankly discuss the fact that I was molested and the details of it without freaking out. It's uncomfortable for me, but I can discuss it. I can have people touch my neck while I am getting assistance in the shower without tensing up and freaking out which is a huge step for me. As long as I'm not having a bad day, from exceptionally bad nightmares/other factors infringing upon things, I'm... pretty decent as far as the PTSD is concerned, thanks to the EMDR. There is still some more outlaying things to do, but we've done so much work that I'm seeing a marked improvement.

The EMDR has also been helping me to process out a lot of the negative self talk that I do. I had lots of little anxieties and those inner voices telling me I wasn't good enough, I wasn't worth anything, I wasn't valuable. Another aspect of the EMDR is taking those phrases and processing them just like a memory to find what causes them, where they come from and to try and understand why I am telling myself those things so that through that understanding it loses it's power on me as I gain fresh perspective on it. That has also been helping.

Of course, this has had a side effect of me coming to start to question so much about my personal identity. Who am I, what am I? I've always been identified, to some degree or another, by my depression, by my PTSD, by being a survivor of childhood sex abuse. And while that will never leave me, I find that it doesn't have to define me either.

One of the difficult things I've been dealing with is my sexual identity. I've had a grand total of three girlfriends in my life; two of them long distance relationships. Part of this was anxiety, but part of it was simply the confusion of my life. Growing up, I hardly ever considered sex or sexual situations. When confronted with them, they didn't really interest me that much growing up, or when asked to put myself into the situation horrified/scared me. This led to my being called gay in high school, because that is what high school is like and constantly taunted with sexual situations/iconography.

I finally made up a fake girlfriend from back in my home town just to get people to shut up, though I doubt anyone actually believed me, but at least it got some people to back off somewhat, so there was that. But it started a trend of my feeling like I had to pretend to fit in among other people. So that is what I did, I pretended and those women who I thought were aesthetically pleasing I copied the comments of the 'normal' people to try and fit in, even though I had no desire to engage in anything sexual with them.

It's not that I've never felt sexual desire, I have, but it has been in the context of the relationships that I have had. And each one of those has been born out of a friendship first before ever becoming something romantic. I may not have acted fully on those desires, but I had them to some degree in that context. Sexual desire is just not something that comes naturally to me. It's why when I was losing lots of weight and was suddenly horny all the time I freaked out. I wasn't used to it or my body feeling like that. Even during puberty it wasn't that bad.

And it's not like I'm aromantic. I am a romantic person at heart. I always have been and I probably always will be, at least unless I become too jaded by life. Man of La Mancha is my favorite musical and I love the concept of the romance and intellectually it is something that I wish in my life with the right person, but that is the crux of it, the right person. It wasn't until earlier this year that I had heard the term Demisexual, but when I did, at the time it clicked for me and I began to feel like I identified as that, but at the same time, I have this lingering wonder, what if I'm not? What if it is just my lack of self exploration, my previous inability to even address these issues that has put me here. I just... don't really know for sure.

Ever since I started talking about this side of things with my therapist I've been having weird dreams of myself being attached to a female figure at times, and my therapist thinks it's my brain contemplating the idea of dating. He keeps thinking it's that and I don't know what to think. I hadn't even thought about that. One of the ones had to do with LARPing with several people and me being accused of being a bad LARPer or using people for me own RP edification and then abandoning them. My therapist got dating out of it, I don't know. I'm not even sure if I'm near ready for that sort of thing. I'm not even sure if I would recognize it.

I've no good internal radar for if someone likes me. Hell, I'm not even sure if I can differentiate the idea of if I would like someone as more than just a friend or if it is platonic affection that I feel half the time. I do know that my therapists thoughts has me questioning things now and trying to analyze these dreams more, but I just don't know. This is a topic that I really need to give some more time with and sort through.

And that's the thing, if it weren't for the EMDR, my therapy work, I wouldn't even be able to contemplate issues like this. They would simply be lost in the haze of my anxieties and hang ups. Sure I've got new issues to deal with here, trying to sort out who I am, my identity and desires and wants and other issues, but I'm able to do so from a healthier place than I was able to do so before.

Likewise, I am going to be able to better focus on my weight loss as we wind down this therapy, because my head is a lot more clear, I'm not prone to as much of the depressive states that I have been, so I should be able to avoid the binge eating from mood swings and can instead devote my energies to getting better.

I've got a lot of work left to do, both with my mental health and with my physical health, but I am getting at it, chipping away at the issues bit by bit, day by day. First one, and then the other, then I'll probably be back to work on the first again for a bit before moving right back to the second. It's a cyclical thing, working on this, but I'm getting there and it's going to work out. I just have to stay positive.

2-9-2016 Living with PTSD (Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse)

I sit here unable to sleep again and I realize that it has been far too long since I've written. I apologize for that. Things have been rather crazy here. My PTSD has steadily felt like it is getting worse. I had several periods where I almost had to go to the hospital for it. At one point I had chest pain and did go to the hospital for that. It wasn't a heart attack, but may well have been a panic attack owing to my increased anxiety and stress. Lucky me, while I was there I fell and I broke my back. Specifically I have a compression fracture of the first lumbar vertebra.

It isn't as bad as it could be, though we actually didn't find out that it was broken until 5 weeks after my fall at the hospital, as my size makes it difficult to x ray me. Needless to say it has somewhat impeded things and I've, in my stress, not been as careful on my diet as I should have been. It is no ones fault but my own, but I am trying not to beat myself up. It happens and I am still losing weight, I just need to get better about it.

I am down to 529 pounds. Overall that's 320 pounds down from October of 2014. It's an incredible amount of weight lost and I am looking forward to seeing it go down further. Despite this, I have a hard time feeling satisfied or encouraged by it. I have a hard time acknowledging and accepting my successes as successes.

Internally I am constantly telling myself of all of the things I've failed to accomplish. I've been trying to work at recognizing when I get into these patterns and stopping them, but it is a daily struggle. Quite often, I don't notice when I am doing it and it can go on for some time, the internal negative reinforcement. As such, it tends to get rather deep seated and difficult for me to break out of it.

One of my friends said to me that I was a very charismatic person and it just struck me oddly. I have never really ever felt charismatic. I feel incredibly awkward with people and struggle to relate or even to look them in the eye. My internal reflection of myself tells me that I'm bumbling and foolish.

Part of it, I think, comes down to a general negative self image that has developed over the years for a variety of reasons. I've been talking about it with my new therapist and we're going to be working to address it. However, when one feels like they have wasted so much of their life and don't feel much hope for their future happiness, it can be difficult.

I do want to clarify that this is me speaking from the emotional side of things. Intellectually, I understand that it isn't. Thirty is quite young and people are doing a lot more later in their lives. There is so much that I could do and the potential that I feel like I've wasted could be what helps me do those things I've wanted to accomplish in my life later on. But the emotional and the intellectual wage an internal, eternal war.

Those who have known me for a while know that I'm somewhat of a hopeless romantic. My favorite musical has always been Man of La Mancha and I've always been drawn to the romanticized idea of a knight in shining armor. I've always wanted a relationship, to be with someone and find love. Sometimes this had led me into some truly awful relationships that only served to further exacerbate my emotional insecurities, though mostly my hopeless romanticism has been on that first aspect. The hopeless part.

I am a survivor of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. This occurred when I was young and for a good many years I repressed it and didn't acknowledge it. I was completely and utterly asexual for a good part of my life and though I wasn't aware of it consciously, it had instilled in me low self esteem, I never went after what I wanted, strove to meet my potential.

When High School came around, I joined the theater department, something that I had always loved doing. Because I was so asexual, I was often accused of being gay, or teased about it. I didn't watch or look at pornography and for reasons that I didn't understand at the time, it terrified me and made me extremely uncomfortable.

I felt ashamed of how I was. I had no idea what was wrong with me at the time, all I knew was that I was different. I invented a story of some girl from back home, where I had used to live and sleeping with them to get people to stop talking about me. I embraced this joking persona that I was the worlds greatest lover while inside being deeply unsettled with all of the talk.

It was my sophomore year of high school when I first began to remember what had happened. I was coming home from a late rehearsal and on the bus ride home I remembered. I can't remember what triggered it, but I came home and I curled up on the couch and I cried and I kept asking myself what I had done to make my abuser do to me what they did.

I can't even begin to emphasize just how much self loathing and shame that came with all of this. I spiraled into depression, my PTSD came to the forefront and I've struggled with it ever since. It's been 15 years of my life that I've understood, yet perhaps never fully come to grips with what I've gone through.

Human touch is a very basic thing, it is key to so much of our experience as a species and it is key to the forming of relationships, of building bonds between people. I have a very difficult time to this day with that. At first it manifested its self with people touching my neck. When someone touches it I begin to feel hands wrapping around it, squeezing, choking off my air. I'm present, yet I'm also not present. Emotionally I am a child again, my world is dominated by my abuser who though I don't see them there, I -feel- them there, suffocating me.

With the help of some friends who i trusted in college, I slowly got better about this. If I was prepared, I could endure it in limited circumstances. With the help of alcohol I was able to enjoy one of the most basic forms of showing affection that humans can do, sharing a kiss. Looking back on college, I can't think of a single kiss that happened that didn't involve me having alcohol in me in some way so that I could get out of my own head and forget for a time.

Anything beyond that? I freeze up at the very idea. I think that that is part of why I never pursued any of the crushes that I had in college except that one time when I was very drunk (and that didn't last too long.) How could I form a relationship with someone when the idea of being close to someone, touching someone terrified me? It still terrifies me. And I know that a relationship is about more than the physical, but it is that vulnerability that makes it so difficult, that I don't want to open myself up for that. The only relationships I had after that one ill fated one have been brief affairs online in which I had the distance of the computer and phone to pull me away from that.

The idea of sex isn't one that frightens me like it did before. I can enjoy pornography now, unlike when I was much younger. Despite that, however, the idea of -me- involved in it, when I think about it in any serious way and not in the abstract, gets my heart pounding, I can feel my chest tightening.

Since my disability, I've required help with bathing. I am making progress on this and am able to do more and more on my own. Yet there are some days when I just can't use the help that I have. Even caregivers I've had for a while, who know about my issues, I sometimes can't tell  or trust near me.

I stray swipe of a cloth that gets too near a more intimate area and my whole body begins to shake and terror begins to fill me again. I feel like my life has become this weird dichotomy where I can be mostly naked around my caregivers now, but even in a non sexual situation where I am getting something done that is clinical with someone I know, I have a violent reaction. I've been left sobbing afterwards and even then the shame of what I am going through makes it so that I can't tell them what is happening.

Some of them think I am aloof, because I'll throw on music or throw on a youtube video during times when we have to apply baby powder (to prevent yeast infections in my intimate areas). It's not because I am trying to be rude, it is because when this is happening, I need to distract my mind. I need to be able to focus on something else so that I am not reliving what I went through.

And what is depressing for me, as a hopeless romantic, is that givena ll of this, I can't help but wonder, how am I to ever find love? How am I to ever find a fulfilling relationship someday? Before my memories came to me, from a very young age, I always wanted to have a family, have children. I want these things, but I just don't see how in my life I'll -ever- be able to have those things.

And even if I somehow manage to become stable enough to have a proper relationship, I am not sure when, if ever I get off of disability. My physical issues are being worked on, but it is a slow progress and the emotional aspect, with my PTSD is something that I just don't when, or if I'll ever be better enough to do more.

My new therapist is trying to work on the peripheral anxieties, wants to help me build the tools I need before we go addressing my PTSD. As he said, once we open that box, we aren't going to be able to put things back in it. And to be honest, that terrifies me as well. I am not even sure how i wrote all of this. Perhaps it is that same emotional distance that I mentioned. Right here and now I can imagine that I am not talking to people.

There are more things and this is a complicated subject. I can't speak for others experiences, but I can speak to my own. Each of us is different, has our own story and I'm not sure what compelled me to share this, share mine. Perhaps it is because it is three am and I can't sleep again and was in a self reflective mood.

photo credit: Teal #awareness #ribbon cover for PTSD, sexual violence, rape and ovariancancer Facebook/social media cover, free to copy/distribute. PTSD info: http://tiny.cc/ptsd via photopin (license)

10/26/2015 Changes (Trigger Warning: Suicide Discussion)

Boy are there a lot of changes so far. Sorry for the long delay in posting on here about the surgery. Things have been busy with recovery and follow up appointments. First the news about the surgery and then we'll get into the bulk of the topic I wanted to discuss today.

The surgery was a resounding success. The doctors called it one of the easiest sleeves they have ever done, despite my size. Very little in the way of  complications and I was off of meds rather quickly. In fact things were going so well that for a while I was wondering when the other shoe would drop. About 2 weeks in it happened. I ended up getting a UTI. I didn't have a catheter during the surgery (that I know of) so it wasn't from that. It was probably from infrequent urination from not drinking enough. I did end up having a catheter from that one which... sucked. I had some bad reactions to the liquid meds so I ended up taking solid pills there after and it was fine. But I ended up with a second UTI about a week after the first which had a different bacteria causing it. That's all taken care of though.

On the weight side of thing, I'm down to 569 as of the 8th of this month. They expect me to be down another 50 pounds by the 12th of next month (potentially) so things are on good track there. Physically I've been feeling a lot better, being more flexible and the like. I've been getting more headaches but that side of things is going well.

What I wasn't prepared for is the sheer emotional side of things. I was riding a high for a good long while, but about 3 weeks in I had a severe crash. Those of you on my facebook may have noticed my talks about profound sadness and the like. Things got really bad and have been really bad emotionally. My mood is all over the place. At times I'm perfectly fine and happy go lucky and then without a moments notice I've been crying.

The good news is... I'm not feeling quite as terrible as things were in college. I've not been dealing with the same level of suicidal tendencies I was there. I've had the occasional thought crop up, but I've managed to push them aside pretty well. Still, because there have been such things, I've vacated my room of all medicine except my daily medication containers. I have removed the bulk of the meds to prevent any rash emotional decisions in case I get worse. I don't think anything is going to happen. I really just mention it here because I wanted to take a moment to encourage anyone who even has the occasional thought. Talk to someone, it can help. And if you have the occasional thought, consider removing the things that could potentially be an avenue for you to do something. Remove sharp objects and lock them away in a drawer, similarly lock away your medicines. If you make it harder to get to, it acts as a physical barrier against a terrible thing. There is help and contacting a crisis line can be beneficial.

Needless to say, I've been dealing with a lot of this. My therapist is coming over a lot more and I've started going in to see a therapist in my doctor's clinic and my doctor is putting me in contact with a psychiatrist to deal with med management. Right now I'm just trying to take it one day at a time. We are focusing right now on getting it to where I can sleep as poor sleep and nightmares make just all the physical and emotional problems worse.

What also isn't helping, the last big change that I wanted to discuss, is that I feel like I'm going through a second puberty. As a warning, this could develop into TMI things so if you haven't been scared away by my sharing yet, well this is your last shot to look away.

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Okay so the first thing I noticed is I am getting harrier. It isn't so much effecting my arms as it is my legs, especially my thighs. But also, mostly in the groin area. I mean dear god it snuck up on me until I was finally like, what the hell, it's a forest down there (hence the picture with this article). I mean, I've never had issues with it in the past, but today for the first time I thought, 'shit, I need to shave down there too'. At the very least, I think I need to give it a trim.

This has also come with it the -other- aspect of puberty and that is the fact that my libido has felt off the charts. I mean, I've always been a romantic and longed for love, but those who knew me knew I've always been painfully shy and all of that so rarely acted upon things. Right now it feels all a lot more intense and it's been a bit rough at times. I've found myself being flirtier with people, which then is making me feel super awkward.

Also I don't know if this is what is going on, but my testes have been getting in the way a lot more. It could be that weight loss has just stopped... pressing them in with my fat and keeping them in place. Or maybe they are just hanging down lower, but I've gone to sit a couple of times and started to smash them. I've become increasingly worried about hurting them. I may have to, as soon as I can, switch back to briefs just to keep things nice and snug and secure.

I think it all comes down to testosterone. My body was used to making testosterone for a man who was about 850 pounds a year ago. In a year I've lost almost 300 pounds. Even if my body adjusted gradually through a lot of that, I've lost over 80 pounds in the last month alone. My body is producing a lot of extra testosterone than what it is used to pound for pound and that could be causing these effects. I'm not sure if it will even out or when it will even out, but for right now, it's making things awkward.

There just have overall been a lot of physical and emotional changes. Some are definitely for the better, others are requiring more work to get through, but they will be got through I think.

photo credit: Bosque en Acadia via photopin (license)

9-16-2015 POST SURGERY UPDATE!

You read that correct and if you follow my facebook you know that I had my surgery! I am now the proud owner of a smaller gastric sleeve. Apparently the second surgeon that they wanted to have there just in case, wasn't needed and he just operated the video camera through the entire thing (I have not seen the video). The physician assistant who saw me in the hospital told me that everything went very well and seemed to go by the book. They repaired a hiatal hernia while they were in there and I was out pretty quickly.

This was my first real surgery. I don't really count my wisdom teeth being taken out or the little procedure on my toe as surgery. So this was an entirely new experience for me. I ended up going in bright and early and got there at 5 o'clock.  They took me into the shot term stay area where they took my vitals and got me ready for the surgery and all of that fun stuff. I also got the most adorable red socks and it was awesome. I love my red socks. I then was taken into the surgery room and there were a lot of people in there and I remember getting put on the bed and then pretty much from there I was out.

The next thing I knew I was in my hospital room and they almost immediately had me drinking fluids. They also gave me this little cup of ice with a sponge on a stick to rub around in my mouth to moisten it. I called it my water popsicle stick. I was in and out a lot on the first day, but they had me sitting up fairly soon. I also ended up getting woken up all the time, but it all ended up being okay.

Next day I was on protein shakes and they gave me some tomato soup and by early afternoon I was on my way home. All in all I was in the hospital less than thirty six hours. Apparently I was a model patient and the surgery went through fine. I went into this expecting there to be a tone of complications, but so far, knock on wood, there are none. I ended up sleeping that afternoon when I got back and then woke up middle of the night. I went back to sleep and today I am back in the swing of things.

I am surprised at how well my pain is controlled, it isn't so bad. It flares up and I have a hard time moving, but i'm able to get up and walk around the house slowly and I am able to do most of my drinking okay. However, they want me to take in 195 grams of protein a day and I figured out in order to do it it will take 12 hours of just drinking protein shakes at a rate of 1 oz every 15 minutes (the rate they want me to drink). For those who are curious why they want me at 195 grams of protein a day, it comes from a calculation of my body weight x .3 and the result is the grams of protein I should have. As I lose weight this number will go down, but for now that is a massive number and I am not sure I can do it. I also need to get in liquids like water as well. I can get a lot of this from the protein shakes, but I need some on its own as well.  It's going to take some work to balance out.

The other big thing that I am struggling with is my pills. I can't swallow any pills bigger than 5 millimeters in diameter. I tried to swallow my aspirin which is 7 mm in diameter and it hurt for the next hour or so. (in fact it still hurts, it's part of what prompted this retrospective). I'm going to have to cut up a lot of pills. In the hospital I tried eating a bit of this pudding of a flavor I don't know what it is with all of my meds chopped up and ground and mixed into it, but I couldn't tolerate it. The taste was really off. I think it was a vanilla or tapioca, which I can't tolerate anyway. We ended up picking up some sugar free chocolate pudding and those pills I can't just cut into a smaller size to take, we'll try grinding up in bits of that and see how it goes. Next step beyond this will be seeing if the doctor can find us liquid versions of any of these. Thankfully, in time my med needs will be going down and thus I won't have as big of an issue. But what was already 20-25 meds a day, when you consider more than half of them need to be cut in two (or more. my iron supplement is in quarters) that's a lot of pills I have to swallow.

In time my stomach size will grow until it is about the size of a tennis ball and when that happens, I'll be able to take in a bit more pills and things like that and my rates of eating will increase until i'm on a more normal schedule. But for right now, for the next 4-6 weeks, it's going to be a lot of careful balancing the whole way through. There are no regrets though. This was what we needed to do, this is what I needed to do. Perhaps it's just a trick of the imagination, but there are parts of my skin where already it seems like it is starting to shrivel up and become looser. I'm taking in next to know calories at the moment and that is going to pay dividends early. Just can't get too attached to this rate of weight loss.

photo credit: three day's in hospital with the not so little one... via photopin (license)

9-5-2015 A Letter to Fat Shamers (Warning: Language)

Dear Fat Shamers,

You are right. Oh how right you are. I am fat. I am a lard ass. I am a fat ass. Hell, I'm just a plain old ass. I've let myself go, my body has gone to all sorts of hell. My weight has gone up and down so many times you would think that it had a yo-yo sponsorship. I can't help but get out of breath when I walk even a minimal distance to you.

I am disgusting. I know it, I see it in the mirror every day. I know how hard it must be for you to look at me. I have a hard enough time looking at myself and I only have to deal with that every now and then. I get it in just bits and pieces, what will fit in the mirror or what I see when I look down. I haven't seen my feet in years.

It's all my fault. You are right, it is all my fault. I let myself get this way. I am the master of my own destiny and I should have had the self control to stop myself from getting this way. I didn't need to eat the extra food. It's just SO EASY. I'm doing it to myself. I should know better. Those commercial's, they aren't for me. They are for you, for those who can handle it. I should know better than to pay attention.

I'm sorry for getting in your way. The world wasn't built for me and I know that. On the plain I should buy more seats. Or better yet I shouldn't even be on the plane. I know, fat people, we just sweat more, we stink more and we shouldn't be an inconvenience to you and the other people on the plane who have paid for it. How dare we? You are right though, when I do go out I should get a beeper, just to let people know when I'm backing up. I've never heard that one before. You are both witty and insightful.

I know you care for me. You only say this because you want to help me. If I just acted better, you wouldn't have to treat me like the human filth that I am. I know what trash I am. When I wake up in the morning I remind myself of it every day. Of what this is doing to my friends and my family. The pain that what I am, of who I am is causing them. I see it when they drink themselves to bed every night. I see it when they smoke to get away from me. It's my fault. I've done this to them.

And I know, I know that because I am fat, my opinion, my words aren't worth a damn. I mean why should it? I've already proven just how shitty I am. You've shown me the light. And even though I am three or even four times the person that you are, your opinion is worth twice as much, because you've got it all going for you.

You've never had to deal with the things I have.

You've never woken up with a great weight on your chest, being unable to breath.

You've never been in such great physical pain that sometimes it's a wonder you can even move.

You've never had every mistake thrown in your face day in and day out by people who don't even know you.

You've never had everyone look at you WHENEVER you eat like you've KILLED their favorite pet.

You've never realized that no one will ever be a worse critic than yourself.

You've never fought and failed and then had to try and fight again.

Your life is SO FUCKING EASY that you have enough time to come down from your ivory tower to tell ME how messed up MY life is as if it is some new god damned revelation.

You know who fat shaming is for at the end of the day? For you and this uncivil culture we have that acknowledges bullying is wrong, yet somehow thinks it's okay as long as it's against the socially unacceptable. You know, that article you read about that guy who farted in the face of that kid who was a brat to his mother, because he's a real hero! He's putting that kid in his place, bullying the brat who needs to change his life, to get him to change it! Or how about that guy who posed as target customer service to troll and insult at all of the people who got upset when Target removed gender from it's toy and linen departments. He was great, getting at all of those intolerant jerks! It's all in good fun and funny, so it's okay! Lets cheer them on! You are there just trying to have a laugh, or point out how stupid they are, point out their faults and maybe that will fix them. Maybe you will really fix me and my life. Because obviously...

 I'm the one who has that empty life.

I'm the one who is wasting my life.

I'm the one who is wasting everyone's time.

You know... some days, you actually have me believing it.

And I know you are sitting to yourself thinking that I don't get it.

Or you are sitting there wondering where the talk of incivility comes from given my cursing?

The thing is... I do get it. I do know.

The point is that you don't know ME. The -real- me.

You -may- well be trying to help.

But you aren't.

Food addiction is REAL.

My pain is REAL.

My life is REAL.

I deserve as much respect as anyone else.

Before you go casting those stones, imagine how you would feel if someone did this to YOU. Without knowing your story.

photo credit: SHAME! via photopin (license)