THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

It seems like most of my life I have fought the battle of the bulge and I feel as if I have been on the losing side the majority of the time. Looking back at pictures of my youth I think I started to gain weight in 4th grade. That was the year after I fell off of the monkey bars at school crushing three vertebrae and fracturing two. I wasn’t able to be as active as I had in the past and I began to get chubby. By the time I had entered junior high I was the fat girl. I was very self conscious about my weight and the cruelty of kids at school exacerbated my already waning self image.

One memory of the ridicule I suffered is particularly strong. It happened when I was in 7th grade. I would walk to school, so I would enter through the back doors of the building. On this particular day, when I tried to enter, some older kids held the doors closed. I remember they were skinny cowboy kids in their Wranglers and cowboy hats. They were all laughing and pointing at me. Unable to contain my tears I began to cry. One boy started pointing and taunting me by saying, “Look at the fat girl cry! Look at the fat girl cry!” I could still hear their laughter and taunting in my head as I walk around to the front of the building where I bumped into my favorite teacher, Mrs. Jones. She asked what was wrong and between tears I told her the story. She immediately went to the back doors where she caught the offenders. She reprimanded them all, but the damage was done.

By the time I had entered high school I had developed an eating disorder. That summer I had made a vow to myself that I was not going to start high school as the loud fat girl from junior high who never had a boyfriend. Upon returning from the summer with my aunt, I started purging. From there I began exercising everyday and finally I was barely eating. I subsisted on about 50 carbs a day at first. I dropped 50 pounds that first month – going from a size 14 to a size 10. I received so much praise from everyone around me that I was floating. On the first day of high school, when I walked in the door no one recognized me. I think they were in shock. I continued barely eating and purging what little I had in me. I would never eat with my family, so they never saw what I was doing. I thought I was still fat and wanted to lose even more weight so every night I would go running then I would come home and put on a sweat suit and sit in the bathroom with the shower on hot so I could steam the weight off. I was so self conscious at school that I became somewhat introverted and it was extremely painful for me to even attempt to make conversation with the opposite sex.

It wasn’t until my junior year that my mom suspected something was wrong and confronted me. Apparently she had heard me purging several times through the vent in the bathroom. I was so humiliated when she confronted me. I tried to deny it, but I always had a hard time lying to my mom’s face. She immediately made an appointment for me at the University Hospital. I found out later that one of my teachers had suspected I had a problem and had called my mom at home to discuss it with her. Once I was at the doctor’s office I got the lecture of a lifetime. The doctor was almost hollering at me as he asked me what the hell I was thinking and did I want to kill myself at a young age. I think I was in tears when we left. I ended up with a referral to the eating disorders clinic. Everyday after school I had to take the bus to the hospital to visit the clinic lest I wanted to be hospitalized and force fed. I had to bring a list of everything I had eaten and tell the doctor whether I had purged and why. I was weighed in every day. I would be patted down to make sure I wasn’t weighting my clothing. Through all of this, my little brother was by my side. He would meet me at the bus stop and ride with me to the hospital sitting in the waiting room while I talked about why I felt the need to do this to my body. This lasted the rest of my junior year. Then one day I got so frustrated with the therapist, I just walked out and refused to return – that was probably the worst decision I had made at that point in my life.

I struggled with my eating disorder throughout college where I would occasionally binge and purge. I struggled with it when I moved away to DC to work where I began an intensive work out regime along with limited food intake. My meals would consist of coffee for breakfast, coffee for lunch, and dry toast and a small boiled potato for dinner. I felt like my life was spiraling out of control. Eventually it all caught up with me at the age of 30.

That fall I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and I gradually began to gain weight. Before I knew it I had gained 100 pounds. My self esteem took a huge nose dive. By this time I was married and I think I took my frustration out on my husband. I was frustrated because I noticed the difference between the way I was treated when I was skinny and the way I was treated when I was fat. Every time I went to the doctor he would tell me that my only problem was that I was fat. It got to the point that I would have to be on death’s door before I would go in to see him and then I would try to ignore his fat comments. He was a little old man and you don’t know how badly I wanted to say, “So! You’re old. At least I can lose weight. You on the other hand are just going to get older and die!” However, I managed to refrain.

After three unsuccessful years of trying to have a baby, I went in to see an OB/GYN. I had never seen this woman before. When I told her my concerns, she said, “You’re fat. Have more sex.” I was pissed! I never went back to her again. Eventually I found a fertility doctor who told me that although obesity does contribute to infertility, many heavy women get pregnant. I eventually went on to have my daughter.

When we moved to Utah I decided to go back to the OB/GYN that I had seen before I left and who happened to be my mother’s doctor for the past 30 years. When he walked in the room I handed him my medical records. He took them and didn’t even look at them. Then he looked at me and said, “You’re fat. You should go on the South Beach diet.” I tried to ignore him but when I spoke to him about the problems I had with my pregnancy he cut me off and said, “It was all because you were fat.” About this time I was wondering how the hell he knew if I was fat then or not. What I should have done was gotten dressed and walked out, but like a dummy I just sat there dumfounded. I did, however, find a new OB/GYN after that.

A few months later I had been referred to a Rheumatologist by my primary care doctor because he thought I was in a Lupus flare up. When the rheumatologist walked in he looked at me and told me that there was no way I had Lupus because I was too fat and that if I had Lupus I would be skinny because it would eat my body. What a joke. I was so angry. When I told my primary care doctor what he said he was visibly upset.

My experiences with being prejudiced against because of my weight go beyond the medical. I travel often for work. When I was skinny I always had men asking if they could help me with my bags or offer me their seat on the shuttle. Those days were gone once I gained weight. I can be struggling with my bags and almost fall off of the shuttle and they just standby impatiently waiting for me to be done. It is very frustrating.

I finally realized I was in a huge slump this past spring. Why can’t heavy women look beautiful? Resigned to wearing what my family referred to as my leisure suits, I had no desire to buy anything new, so I spent my winters looking like a fat frumpy house frau! I finally decided to check out Lane Bryant. I love that store – it proves that you can be big and look good!

As good as I felt I looked, I still had low self esteem. In the past when I am heavy I don’t like pictures to be taken of me, but recently I let myself be photographed at family parties. A few weeks ago I was looking at those pictures and I realized I had become that fat woman I promised myself I would never be. I had gained a total of 150 pounds over the past 10 years – most of it the first two years. Not wanting to die young like other members of my family and already being at risk for heart disease through genetics, I finally decided I was ready to take the weight off. I joined Weight Watchers last week and as of my first weigh in have lost three pounds. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but at least I am on the path to becoming healthy again and being able to keep up with my daughter. My husband and I have made walking each night a part of our family time routine and our daughter loves it. I know I can do this and I can do it the healthy way. It will take longer to lose it than it did to gain it but I am determined.

NO MORE POLITICAL E-MAILS PLEASE

I don’t usually discuss politics with friends because I know that inevitably someone is going to end up with hurt feelings. I try to live by the saying “Never discuss politics or religion with friends or family.” I only wish that others lived by the same rule. Why is it that there are always those few friends, who have you on their e-mail list, that insist on forwarding you the latest political rumors about the presidential candidates or are in support of various candidates without knowing if I am in support of that person or not? I find myself seriously offended by some of these e-mails.

The thing that irritates me the most is when I have to listen to some uneducated really stupid person talking politics. I don’t consider myself an expert even though I have a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, but at least I am educated enough not to believe everything that I hear - especially when it comes to politics. Come on people, get a clue! Have you ever met a fully trustworthy politician? I am not saying they are all corrupt or liars, but no one can deliver on everything they promise when it comes down to it, but I digress.

My point is that I really wish people would be more sensitive to the possibility that I may not be in the same political spectrum as they are and not forward me those dumb ass e-mails!

GERM-FEST

I love my daughter, but kids really are a big “germ-fest” waiting to happen. All my life kids have been making me ill. Not because I have an aversion to kids, but because every germ they have somehow manages to transfer to me.

When I was single, before I had my own personal germ carrier, I had my nephews. It never failed that every time I came to visit they would be afflicted with some childhood virus. For example, one winter I came out and they had croup. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting croup, it is a loud cough that often resembles the barking of a seal. Most kids (note I said “kids) that come in contact with the viruses that cause croup won’t actually get it. Instead they will have symptoms of a head cold. I, however, am never that fortunate.

I love my nephews and fortunately they reciprocate the feelings. They used to love to cuddle with me, hug me, and even give me kisses (it didn’t help that they were “on the mouth” kissers), and on occasion, cough or sneeze on me. Thus the germ transfer! I knew as soon as I was coughed on, I was going to get croup. Everyone kept telling me that it was only kids who got it, but I knew.

When I returned home my cough had gotten so bad, people at work were throwing cough drops at me over the cubicle dividers. Someone even came over to see if a seal had escaped the zoo and somehow made its way into our office. Tired of being pelted with lemon and honey cough drops, I finally decided I should go visit my doctor, lest I had some highly contagious virus I was unknowingly spreading to my office workers. As I sat in the exam room waiting for my doctor to come in I started coughing so hard I thought I had hacked up a lung. My doctor came in and said, “That’s some cough you have.”

“Really?” I asked somewhat sarcastically.

Then he listened to my chest and as he did he said, “Hmmm. It sounds like you have croup. Have you been around anyone with croup recently?”

I then told him my tragic story of how I stayed with my sister and my croup inflicted nephews who insisted on coughing in my face. He said, “Yep, that’d do it. Although I don’t see many adults with croup, but you definitely have it.”

With that he put his stethoscope in his lab coat, wrote me a prescription for steroids and some cough syrup so I could sleep at night and told me not to cough in anyone’s face. Funny!

To this day I am constantly washing my hands after I have touched anything a kid has touched. I had a co-worker, who also happened to be a good friend, once tell me that I washed my hands too much and that was why I always got sick. He said that when he had kids he was going to let them get dirty and germy so that their immune systems built up nice and strong. Personally I think that if I didn’t wash my hands so much I might be dead from some exotic disease being passed around by kids!

McCALL

This past weekend I went to my cousin’s beautiful wedding on the lake in McCall, Idaho. The first night we had a huge BBQ. I enjoyed sitting on the deck with the imperious pine trees looming overhead and the waves of the icy cold Payette Lake smacking against the shore line, watching the sun set while chatting, and laughing with loved ones. We sat enjoying each other until, in my case, my daughter demanded to go to bed.

In the past going to McCall was like returning to the fold of warmth or going home again, but this trip was different. This would be the last trip where we would have family living in McCall. Although I love the beauty and the relaxation that this place offers, most of my fondest memories are of the good times I had there staying with my aunt and uncle who have been like a second set of parents to me. My uncle recently took a job in Alaska so he and my aunt have been getting rid of everything so as not to have to pack a lot with them. It made me sad to go to their house and realize that the breakfast I was eating at the picnic bench style table with my cousins would be the last we would have there together.

My brother and sister were born in the tiny McCall hospital – which is considerably bigger now than it was back then. We lived in McCall until I was four years old – that is when my parents separated. My mom moved us to Boise, but we spent most weekends in McCall visiting my aunt and uncle or nearby Donelly with our dad and his new wife. We knew we always had family there. In 2001 my dad passed away unexpectedly, so that left my aunt and uncle. Now with their move I began to feel as if there really was no reason to return to McCall. That is until the wedding. As I sat and stared at the lake and surrounding forest watching the sun sparkle off of the water, I realized that it is still a comfort place for me. Instead of thinking about what was no longer there I remembered what was there and the memories that this place brought back.

My brother, sister, and I are all grown with families of our own. I want to give my child and their children the gift of McCall. I am hoping that in the future we can plan family trips to McCall where we can rent a lake house and enjoy the warm sun and cool lake.

"MY" WALMART SUCKS

Walmart sucks! Okay, not every Walmart just “my” Walmart! On any given day at any given hour you can go to the Walmart near my house and it will be packed! This would not normally be a problem if there were an appropriate amount of cashiers working, but there never is. You can’t just run in real quick to grab something because there are huge lines even at the self check out registers! One would think that the management would see the two lines wrapping around the store waiting to be checked out by the two cashiers that are open and maybe call some more people up front or work on scheduling more people, but apparently that is too difficult.

I also hate this Walmart because they are almost always out of everything that is on my list. The only benefit to this Walmart sucking is that I don’t spend nearly as much money as I used to on frivolous items! I just don’t have the patience required to shop at “my” Walmart. I find myself shopping at Smiths, Harmons, and Target. They may be more expensive, but I spend half the amount of time waiting in line to pay. In college I took an Economics class and we learned about the true value of something. This is when you include the price of the product and the cost of your time. I like to think my time is pretty valuable, so the longer I am in line waiting to pay the more expensive the item becomes! Is it really worth it? Most of the time I think it would just be easier to eat out every day!

BECAUSE WE'RE MEXICAN

I grew up in Utah, so I think I am used to everyone thinking I am Mormon. It never dawned on me to discuss religion with my daughter. We never go to church and to be honest I have never really consider it an issue. However, most of my daughter’s school friends are Mormon and go to church. One day I had picked my daughter and her friend up from pre-school. As we drove past a church my daughter’s friend said, “That’s my church. Bella, how come you don’t go to church?”

I tried not to laugh at my daughter’s response, “We’re Mexican so we can’t be Mormon.”

In December of that year, my husband and I were catering the LDS Ward Christmas Party. We were in the kitchen talking to one of the Bishopric when she told him that we didn't go to church because we were Mexican. I almost died! Of course I can laugh now.


I am still trying to get her to understand that you can be Mexican and Mormon or any religion for that matter!

HONEY, WHERE ARE THE.........

Last night I was watching an episode of “King of Queens”. There was a scene where Doug (the husband) walks into the kitchen to ask Carrie (the wife) where the scissors are. She loses it and rips into him. She asks him why is it that, if he uses the scissors all the time and that they are always in the same spot, he feels the need to ask where they are. If she wasn’t there, would he never use the scissors because he couldn’t ask her where they are? I totally identified with this scene. Why is it that once you are in a relationship you suddenly become the keeper of all things and that it is your job to know where everything is? I have been going through this for over ten years with my husband! We have lived in our current house for about seven months now and yet he still doesn’t know where the dishes go on the occasion that he unloads the dishwasher. It is funny that he knows where they all are when he needs to use them!

The other day he called me all frantic because he couldn’t find his new heat resistant gloves that he had bought earlier in the week. I told him that I had no idea where they were and that I had never seen them. I always get the same response from him, “Well, I left them on the… (fill in the blank).” As if he is accusing me of moving them! Because we all know us women have nothing better to do but keep track of everything!

Okay, so I admit that later that day when I came home I remembered that I did move them, but maybe he should put his crap up so I don’t have to move it!

I just get tired of the same old questions every day! “Have you seen my badge?” “Where’s the remote control?” “Where are my keys?” and on and on!

Now, I can’t say all men are this way. My brother is a lot like me and his wife is the one who misplaces everything. It just seems like there is always one partner who can’t get it together!

"SENSIBLE" HEARING

My five year old daughter is quite precocious. It is funny how she can never hear me when I am reprimanding her or telling her to do something. It is funny how the radio is never loud enough when it is her favorite song or the television is not loud enough when it is her favorite show.

One day we were in the car and I had the radio turned down very low when she shouts, “Turn it up! This is my favorite song!”

I couldn’t believe it! My daughter who feigns deafness most of the time could detect her favorite song at the lowest sound level – even I couldn’t tell what song it was. After her song was over, I turned down the radio again and I commented, “That sure is interesting how you can hear the radio when it is barely on, but you can’t hear anything else.”

Sitting in back all smug she replied, “Yeah. It must be my ‘sensible’ hearing.”

MY DAUGHTER THE HYPOCHONDRIAC

It’s funny how kids will emulate others around them, especially when they hear something often enough. Case in point:

Having been diagnosed with Type II diabetes three years ago, I have a tendency to let my sugar get too low. I didn’t realize how often I did this until a few weeks ago while in the car with my daughter. We were driving along when she says, “Mom, I don’t feel good. I think my sugar dropped.”

I started laughing and said, “You are a hypochondriac! Why do you think your sugar dropped?”

She looks at me dead serious and says, “I think I heard it.”

I am still laughing about that one!

DIRTY LAUNDRY

On Sunday I was doing laundry – we are talking about a mountain of laundry – and I had separated it in the hallway. My husband comes home and sees it and asks, “What’s that?”

Of course I reply sarcastically, “I know you probably don’t recognize it, but it is called dirty laundry!” He shrugs his shoulders and climbs over it into the bedroom!

Apparently he has an aversion to dirty clothing. This past spring I went on strike and didn’t wash any of his clothes for over a month. I don’t think he even noticed. He had the nerve to put a load of laundry in one time and then say, “Look, I did your laundry.” How does OUR laundry become MY laundry?

One of my biggest pet peeves is that he takes his socks off in the living room and leaves them there! Right in the middle of the floor! I once asked if he had any whites for the washer. I even asked, ”What about your socks right there?” I got absolutely no reply, so I slammed the washer shut and started it sans his socks. Then the next day he asked if I had seen his socks as there weren’t any in the bedroom. I pointed at his socks on the floor and said, “Right there.” He didn’t like that one bit! I swear he is going to come home one day and find his damn socks stapled to the floor!

LOSS

My mom, who for 37 years had been one of my best friends, passed away at the age of 58. It wasn't as if we had no idea she was dying, it was just that I don't think any of us wanted to believe or accept it. My mom was some what of a hypochondriac - at least that is how it seemed to my siblings and me. Since her heart attack and subsequent open heart surgery twelve years earlier, she insisted that she was dying. So dramatic! Then eight years before she died she told me that she had liver disease and was not eligible for a liver transplant. This played a huge part in my decision to give up a great position with my company and move my family back to Utah. Once I had returned I began going with her to all of her doctor appointments. I remember asking her primary care doctor if she was going to die. His response, "Well, everyone dies. She could die tomorrow in an accident." I looked at him and said, "I mean any time soon." His reply was that she was not going to die any time in the near future. I watched her deteriorate for two and a half years. Then one day her liver specialist called me and asked if my mom and I could come and see him. I still did not believe that she was going to die any time soon. I still remember that day as he placed his hands on my knees and looked me in the eyes and asked, "You do realize that your mother is going to die don't you?" I was stunned. Tears began to form on the edges of my eyes. I think I croaked out a response, but I am not sure. I do remember asking him what to expect. He proceeded to tell me that she would lose her memory, bloat up and eventually she would just go to sleep and then not wake up. That was in the Fall. By November my mom had been hospitalized after a visit to her primary care doctor. He set her up for an in home health care aide, but when the nurse came over to evaluate her, she put her on hospice instead. My mom made one last appointment with her doctor to tell him that she was going on hospice. He was angry. He told her that she was not going to die and did not need to be on hospice. Looking back, I think it was difficult for him because she had been his patient for over 20 years. She was one of his first patients right out of medical school. For weeks, she looked great. She seemed to have a lot of energy. Her memory appeared clear. She wasn't going to die - that's what I told myself. My mom wanted to have her "wake" before she died. A few people thought that was gruesome, but mom wanted to say good bye to everyone. Since Christmas was nearing I told her that we should wait until after the holidays so as not to depress everyone. We scheduled her "Celebration of Life" for January 20, 2007. She was so excited for it. Then one day she came to me and said, "I am so embarrassed." "Why?" I asked. "I should be dead by now. I told everyone I was dying and I am still alive. How embarrassing!" she cried. I couldn't believe that she was serious. I just stared at her. I told her that she was being ridiculous and that everyone would rather she still be alive! Things seemed to be going well until the week before her party. Some of my cousins had flown in early to come see her and they were gathered at the house. My husband was home for lunch. Mom came upstairs and seemed normal until she spoke. Her first words were, "Get the kids quick - before the mountain lions get them!" We all started laughing and just brushed it off. Then a little while later she said, "I have to have sex before I can take my pills." She didn't even realize what she had said. That was Monday. On Tuesday I had let her sleep most of the day. That evening when I went to check on her she was lying on her bed in her underwear. She had vomited all over the floor and on her bed. I started cleaning her up and was trying to get her in some clean clothes and change her sheets when she started trembling and crying. She kept telling me that she was sorry and that she would clean it. Then I hugged her and she cried, "Please don't put me in a home." I would never have done that! I told her everything was okay and I cleaned her up and put her back to bed. On Wednesday the aide couldn't get her up so she called the nurse at the hospice center. She told me not to force her to eat, but just to try to get her to take her liver medicine and keep liquids down. By that evening I knew something wasn't right so I called the on-call nurse and he came right over. He told me that she probably would not wake up from this point on. My mom had signed a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) and had not wanted any means of artificial life support. This meant no IVs, not forced feeding, nothing. The nurse had brought a morphine package with him. He showed me how to administer it orally so that she would be comfortable. The next morning the hospice doctor came over and she said that my mom would probably die by the weekend. What? I think I was in shock. Mom had made me promise to have her party no matter what. So I started preparing for it since it was on Saturday. People started coming to the house and sitting with her and talking to her. The doctor told us that even though she was in a coma, she could hear us. Then on Saturday, an hour and twenty minutes before her party, she quit breathing. My cousin (her namesake) came up to me and and said, "Honey, I think your mom is gone." I said, "What?" Then I ran downstairs. I shocked myself when I let out a huge wail. I couldn't quit crying! Then I panicked because mom had wanted me to make sure I got her rings off of her fingers without cutting the rings. So I took her hand and began to tug. I was frantic because the damn rings wouldn't come off! Then another cousin handed me the lotion and they slipped off. I remember putting them on my fingers. I called my brother and my sister who were both on their way to my house to tell them mom had passed. Then my husband called the SLC Sheriff's department because they had to verify the death since a nurse or doctor was not present. All of a sudden I heard all these sirens blaring and horns honking then the room was filled with EMTs, paramedics, and police officers. I was still in shock when one of the EMTs came up to me and asked me where her DNR was. He proceeded to get hostile and accusatory as he told me that the law required it to be hung up next to her bed. How the hell was I supposed to know that? Fortunately, my brother walked in and several of the police officers knew him (he is also a police officer). At this point the EMT asked if anyone else knew she was a DNR - everyone raised their hand and said, "I did." Mom was very vocal about her wishes. The police officer in charge took down some information and then they all left. Fortunately, a family friend took over. He called the mortuary and made arrangements for her to be picked up, but we had to wait four hours before they would come. In the mean time, everyone started arriving for the party. I hid. I just couldn't tell people she was gone. I didn't want to cry in front of anyone.