Tag: weight


Life Is Never As Easy As It Should Be

25
May

How do you exercise? Doctors recommend it like it is such an easy solution to being overweight or obese. They make it sound like you can just start doing it and do it properly from the first time on. They make it sound like doing it will make the pounds just fly off. They make it sound like when you exercise, all of your problems will go away.

I can’t imagine exercising daily or at all. I walk five to ten feet and my muscles feel the same amount of fatigue that they would feel when I was younger and would walk a half a mile to a mile. I walk five to ten feet and my heart goes from 110-120 bpm to 140-160 bpm. I walk any longer and my muscles will start twitching so much that I feel like I’m a bag of popcorn that is heating up.

I would love to exercise, but I don’t know how to do it safely. I don’t know how to do it without having my heart beat so fast that I pass out. I don’t know how to do it without getting so fatigued. I don’t know how I can do it every day if doing minor exercise generally results in me sleeping it off and feeling like shit for days afterwards.

2 comments » | Rants, Sickness and Health

You Get 99 Dollars, But You Shouldn’t Get 1

24
May

You know how I didn’t want to go to the cardiologist today because I knew that he would say that he couldn’t do anything and that he would mention that he wouldn’t (if he could) because of my weight? I was right. He told me that he couldn’t treat the high blood pressure spells because my blood pressure is still on the low side of normal some of the time. He then said that he wouldn’t do anything and he didn’t want to test anything because he feels that the problem is my weight and only my weight. He said my blood pressure may be going up because I’m anxious, which I never said that I was anxious. I’m not really that much more anxious than normal, so I think that was just a way he could ignore dealing with the problem and shift the blame to me. He did eventually decide that he was going to do one test: an echocardiogram.

He spent a grand total of maybe four or five minutes with me. In that time, he didn’t look at the list of medicines I was on, but was able to say that none of my medicines could be affecting my blood pressure or heart. He didn’t look at my chart. He lectured, listened to my heart, listened to my lungs, lectured, left the room, and came back for a second to mention the ECHO. That was it. He left his nurse, Carol Ann (not joking about the name), to finish up my chart. I don’t know why she was even in there, except that she does his chart-work. (I guess he’s too good to do his damn work.)

I don’t understand how he can get paid (or ask to be paid) $99 for an appointment that he doesn’t even really do anything at. If you get paid $99 to tell someone they’re fat and to listen to their chest, then what does he expect to get when he actually does work? I mean, I know when he does surgeries that he gets tens of thousands of dollars, but what about the rest of the time?

The ECHO was interesting. I had to wait a while (almost 2 hours) to have it done. They only seemed to do 2 people at a time, which I think is weird since they had 6 people to do them. (If you have that many people, shouldn’t you have the same number of rooms?) I’d never had an ECHO, but it was a lot like having any other kind of ultrasound. It was a little different, since they used the Doppler and since you can actually listen to your heart rhythm.

I have no idea what was going on in my ECHO or what the results will be. (They’ll probably be normal or “within normal limits”.) All I know is that (at times) it looked like I had a rat dancing in my heart. It looked like there was a head with two arms (the valves) kind of going up, like it was jumping. There was some clicking sound at one point. It also looked like (on the Doppler screens) some of the red was going back into the blue’s area. Of course, I may have been noticing things that meant absolutely nothing, so there’s no point in worrying about it, right?

Though I was disappointed with the rude attitude of the cardiologist, I was glad that I didn’t run into the lady I had seen yesterday at the Mental Health Center. I wore (after washing it overnight) the same shirt that I had worn to the appointment yesterday. Unfortunately, the shirt sometimes lifts up when I move my arms to adjust my hair. The woman yesterday saw me lift my arms and probably saw about an inch or less of my stomach. As I got closer to the building, she started ranting about how she “didn’t want to see” my stomach. When I looked at her, she (of course) snapped at me for looking at her. I was not surprised that she was the one who went to the intake side of the office, since it seemed like she needed some serious help. I know that my stomach isn’t nice to look at, but it wasn’t like I was trying to show it off. I thought her behavior was a bit uncalled for, though it was slightly entertaining.

Wow, and before I can even finish the post, I get a call about the results from the test today.  It’s normal.  I am not surprised.

Comment » | Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Mental Health, Rants, Sickness and Health

30 Days of Truth: Day 12

27
April

Now, for topic #12 on the 30 Days of Truth meme:

Day 12: Something you never get compliments on.

I would say my weight, though sometimes I get those weird proposals through Facebook.  (Those are awkward and make me uncomfortable.)  I think that is the only thing that seems to lack in compliments.  The only times I get compliments on it, other than the proposal ones, happen when people think I’ve lost weight.  (It’s socially unacceptable to compliment a fat person for being fat, but it’s okay to say, “Oh, you look so much better now that you’ve lost x amount of weight.” Formerly ugly is better than fat, apparently.)

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, 30 Days of Truth, FPS-Related, General, memes, Rants

Two Little Ducks

22
April

I had an appointment with my first rheumatologist yesterday.  He seemed more concerned than he had in the past few times I’d seen him.  Of course, he was still dismissive about certain things, including that the Zanaflex makes me get excessively dizzy.  He said that there was no way for it to do that because it has a half life of less than four hours.  (According to the official information about the drug, it can stay in the system for up to a day.)   He asked me if I work.  I told him no, so he told me, “Just stay in bed longer.  It isn’t like you have anywhere to be.”  Okay, I get that I’m at home all the time, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend hours (or even a whole day) watching the ceiling spin and feeling like I will fall over because I take one pill to deal with pain.  Just because I’m at home doesn’t mean that I want to feel disoriented all the time.

He was happy about one thing.  In the six months that it had been since I’d seen him, I had lost 22 pounds.  He asked if I was exercising.  I said no.  When I got home and told my mom, she said that it was no wonder that I was losing weight.  She said that she’d noticed that I’m not really eating anymore.  The only things that I’ve been eating (regularly) lately are pizza rolls, chocolate, and crackers.  I know that those are all junk, but that regular  junk doesn’t make me as sick as 1 healthy meal.

Oh, my mom found out this week that she has gone back into kidney failure.  We’re not sure if it is from medicine or from her health in general.  She’ll be going back to see the nephrologist that she saw after the 2008 sugar drop issue.  I’m hoping that it can be controlled again, but I’m worried that even if it is controlled, it will continue to be a possibility for the rest of her life.

Comment » | Confessions, Sickness and Health

The Weighty Issues

22
March

We have all experienced some form of discrimination in our lives. I’ve learned, though, that people have this tendency to just accept certain forms as being okay, while they will be ready to “cut a bitch” on others. For example, in Jenn’s entry on weight discrimination, she had some fairly good points, but most people seized on the opportunity to tell her off because she made some generalizations. Oddly, in their comments, they generalized or, in so many words, accused some people of exaggerating what goes on in their lives.

For a little over 10 years now, I have been on a fairly constant stream of psychiatric medication. Now, while I was obese before taking the medicine, my weight skyrocketed on it. In the first year, I gained over 50 pounds. Later, I lost the weight after I had gastric bypass, only to start gaining again after certain medications were added into the mix. A combination of medication-induced hyperthyroidism, the removal of said medicine from my treatment, and the addition of a mood stabilizer [Depakote] at a dose that caused concern for everyone who saw it, except the psychiatrist, seemed to contribute to the regain. I kept telling the doctors that I was gaining weight because of medicine. No matter what doctor I saw, the doctor would say that the gain couldn’t possibly be related to the medicines. They would accuse me of being in denial of how much I was eating, much like this comment. Sometimes, I would doubt myself and think that they might just be right.

When I quit taking Risperdal a while back, I stopped gaining weight. A few times, I would lose the weight, except when I would be close to my period. In the past year, my weight has pretty much stabilized. I have taken 1 form of psychiatric medicine, Effexor, and I have stayed within a limited (20 pounds, which is my general weight gain amount prior to my periods) weight gain & loss range. My eating has stayed about the same, with me only eating more on very rare occasions. So, I would say that that would be fairly good evidence for the cause of the weight gain being related to my medicine and not me gorging on Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos. (I’ve never had either, btw.)
And, as I pointed out in my response to Angel‘s comment regarding any possible studies linking a difference in treatment with weight, there actually has been at least one.  A group of Johns Hopkins researchers actually did a study that was reported on in ScienceDaily.  The study reported that, “In a group of 238 patients, each 10-unit increase in BMI was associated with a 14 percent higher prevalence of low patient respect.”  Now, this might just be something that applies to doctors, but I have a feeling that it might also apply to some people who work in non-medical fields.

I know that when I was at a skinnier weight, my mom had a sales person almost refuse to let her buy a pair of size 12 jeans for me because they could tell that my mother wasn’t that small.  This wasn’t at some high fashion store.  It was at Walmart in a state with an extremely high rate of obesity.  You would think there would be less judgment in a Walmart.  Of course, I’ve written about disrespect at Walmart, when my mom was pretty much laughed at because she asked for assistance and refused to get a wheelchair cart/scooter for her.  (I know that a lot of people have a bit of a preconceived notion about obese people who use scooters, but my mother didn’t have the strength in her ankle to walk and [a month later] had broken the other ankle because of the lack of strength in her bones.)

And for those who say that the cause of the difference of treatment is related to self-esteem, I must say this.  I hate that kind of statement.  People claim that low self-esteem leads to people being more disrespectful, which I think is shit.  I have a poor body image, but my self-esteem probably borders on too high sometimes.  While a person might hate the way that they look, it doesn’t mean that that person is suffering from some great amount of self-hatred.  A lot of us grew up learning that we are more than our outward being.  My shell may be ugly, but that doesn’t mean that I think I’m unworthy of respect.  And saying that a lack of self-respect might warrant a lack of respect from folks who work in retail is utter crap.  If a customer walks into your store, it is your job to be nice to them.  Even if you think they are ugly, smell bad, have bad hair, talk funny, etc., you are supposed to service them in the same way that you would service someone who is more to your liking.  You don’t get to pick and choose who you’re nice to.  As an employee at a retail store, you become the face of the company and you really do not want to represent the company as being snobbish.  Why? Blog entries could be written, tweets could be made, but more importantly, the business might lose (potential) repeat customers and you might lose your job.

None of us will ever know what any other person goes through on a daily basis.   None of us would really want to know it either.  We can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and we shouldn’t judge them based on their circumstances either.

Comment » | +internet friends, General, Internet, Mental Health, Purchases, Rants, Sickness and Health

30 Days of Truths: Day 1

8
March

Okay, I saw this on nimil’s blog, which she got from Jennfur, who apparently got it from Angel, who got it from somewhere. I think I might actually be able to do this one.

Day 1: Something you hate about yourself.

This answer really depends on the day. Some days I’ll hate my quick temper. Others I’ll hate how I have let so many people walk all over me. I think that I probably always hate my weight, so can I say that for today? My weight has been something that has pretty much always been an issue.

1986easter035

That picture is from Easter of 1986, when I was 2 years old. My weight wasn’t really bad then. It started getting worse as the next year or so went by. My mom has always said that my weight sped up around the time I started opening the fridge. She said that I used to eat cheese like crazy as a kid, which I believe since it’s been something I’ve always felt compelled to do.

1987misc031

That’s me at around 3. I know it’s from when I was 3, but I’m not sure at what point it was taken. And the next is when I was nearing 4.

1987xmas005

Those years were kind of hard ones for my family. At three, my mom and I were in a fairly serious car accident. I had a concussion, but my mom had what was basically a severely dislocated shoulder. She had to have surgery to rebuild her shoulder, and she couldn’t really do much in that time. A few months later, I had to go to the hospital for my asthma, and after that my weight started going higher and higher quite rapidly.

img080

By the time I was 7, I weighed way too much, but the doctors weren’t acting really concerned at this point. There was more concern over the control of my asthma and no medical professional suggested that I try to lose weight until around the time I was 10. My grandfather, of course, made the suggestions through his cruel comments.

img041

At 10, I started to a special weight loss program through Huntsville Hospital that was for tweens & teens (along with their parents). Once a week, we had to go to classes with other overweight & obese kids. We’d get weighed. I think that at that point, I was almost five feet tall and 175 pounds. While I was in the class, which lasted about 3 months, I lost less than 10 pounds and I was following the diets really well.

img144

My weight kept going up as the years passed. By the time I was 13, it was at about 225, with my height being about 5’3″. I was on my third or fourth type of diet through a registered dietitian by this time. My weight would go down 1 pound a week, then go up 2 the next.

y2kaftersk8 steph13th007

At sixteen, I was about to head into the hardest emotional time period I had ever gone through. I was already feeling severely limited by my weight. I had never dated, kissed anyone, etc. I thought I was horribly ugly and undeserving of any kind of positive attention. I was also at about 275 pounds and 5’5″ here. I would gain 50 pounds over the next 9 months, most of it within weeks of starting on a constantly increasing amount of psychiatric medicines (started with Paxil, then added Xanax and Zyprexa, and finally added Celexa). I was also a high school student when that picture was taken, and within about 6 months of the picture, I was a high school dropout.

At nineteen, I hit my highest weight (to that point), which was 341.3 pounds. I had gastric bypass surgery that year. I began to lose the weight. And by 22, I was at around 195-205 pounds.

100_0595
100_0831

But a year later, I had already regained much of that weight back. And at 27, I hover between 330 and 345 pounds. (It’s different at every appointment.)

On My 27th birthday

Future Topics:
Day 2: Something you love about yourself.
Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 4: Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 5: Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 6: Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 7: Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 8: Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 9: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10: Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11: Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12: Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13: A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days.
Day 14: A hero that has let you down.
Day 15: Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16: Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17: A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18: Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19: What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20: Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21: (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22: Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23: Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24: Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs.
Day 25: The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26: Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27: What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28: What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29: Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30: A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

3 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, 30 Days of Truth, Confessions, General, memes, Mental Health, Sickness and Health, Who I Was - Past

Gold Digger

22
September

My great and wonderful appointment today was pretty much a waste of time. I spent all night fasting, only to find out that I needed to pay $75 to the retail-ish (looked more like a store than a medical office) office before I could have a test done to find out if I even needed the surgery. The test is to see if my pouch has been stretched, which I know it hasn’t from the endoscopy done in 2009. The only part of the whole thing that is stretched is the stoma (the part that connects it to my intestines) and I don’t think that a capacity test could figure that out. If I couldn’t afford that, then I could pay $30 to see the nutritionist.

I found that funny because according to Medicare:

Medical nutrition therapy services are also covered for people with diabetes or renal disease when referred by a doctor. These services can be given by a registered dietitian or Medicare-approved nutrition professional and include a nutritional assessment and counseling to help you manage your diabetes or kidney disease.

How often is it covered?
Medicare covers three hours of one-on-one counseling services the first year, and two hours each year after that. If your condition, treatment, or diagnosis changes, you may be able to get more hours of treatment with a doctor’s referral. A doctor must prescribe these services and renew your referral yearly if continuing treatment is needed into another calendar year.

Who is covered?
People who have diabetes or renal disease (people who have kidney disease but aren’t on dialysis or haven’t had a kidney transplant, or for people who have kidney disease [but aren’t on dialysis]) with a doctor’s referral up to three years after a kidney transplant.

I haven’t been fully diagnosed with either, but I have been advised to tread lightly when it comes to my kidneys. I can’t have certain procedures done because I might end up with kidney failure. So, who knows?

Anyway, I can’t afford paying either of the charges, so either I’m not going to get the revision procedure or I’m not going to get it done by the doctor I had do the original surgery. Either way, I’m confused, hungry, and tired.

Comment » | Sickness and Health

« Previous Entries     

↑ Back to top