This is the story of how I came back to life. About 6 weeks ago, I wrote in my journal about giving up. About losing my faith and believing that all that was left for me was a not so gradual decline into death. I told God (no I wasn't raised to try to tell God what to do but I was that low) that if He had any more plans for me He had better get on with them. My mother had the faith of a giant and instilled the faith of generations of women into me. It was not easy to admit that I was losing that. But my condition was such that it was just a simple matter of common sense to see that I wasn't going to last long and that the journey to the end wasn't going to be much fun.
Now this is a story of hope and triumph and victory over obesity, illness, premature death and loss of faith and hope. It is about learning to be my own advocate, do my own research and take charge of my health and my life. But to give you an idea of what a miracle this has been, you have to have a clear picture of where I started. I know it will sound crazy. I know that some will not believe how bad it was or how good it is now but that isn't my problem. I am writing this blog in case anyone, any one person, might be helped or encouraged or inspired by what has happened to me. I make two promises to whomever may be reading this. I will blog at least once a week, usually more, and I will be 100% honest. I will try to figure out how to do an occasional youtube video but I'm a total newb at that so give me a chance to figure it out. I will post before pictures that I took on August 23 when I started this journey and I will post during pics every few weeks and eventually, I'll post after pics although "after pics" is a bit of a misnomer since I don't believe this is a journey with an ending. This journey is how I've chosen to live my life from now on. But once I reach a healthy weight, BMI or whatever, I'll post something we will call an "after" pic;o)
So, let's go back a few weeks. The following are word-for-word excerpts from my personal journal. I am usually a very private person and NOBODY would ever see this but, as I said, if it helps one person...
July 30, 2013
"I'm not sure what the catalyst was but I've just sorta stopped living. NOT suicidal; not stopped caring... Just don't have any hope of anything ever getting better for me personally. ...I need hope and I need it now. Whether there is life after death or not, I am not done with this one; or at least I don't want to be. There are so many things I don't want to leave this life without having done/seen/experienced. Sort of a bucket list but SO much more important. ...Mostly I don't want to die with THIS being the mom/grandma/example that my kids and grandkids are left to remember."
"I don't DO anything with my days anymore. I just vegetate. I have physical issues; real, medical, painful, frustrating, physical issues. I am in serious pain All. The. Time. So I don't do much which makes me weaker. So I sit here weak, in pain and feeling helpless and hopeless, getting weaker and more hopeless every day."
"Here is my pathetic daily routine:
Noon - wake up and take meds. Sit in bed for an hour while meds take effect so I can make it to the bathroom and then back to bedroom loveseat. Harmoni brings me coffee and breakfast from the microwave. I then get on the computer and play a couple of facebook games in three different profiles so I can feel "busy." I also watch a few shows on Netflix or Hulu while I knit. Knitting is my therapy. It keeps me sane. Sort of.
Harmoni will later bring me lunch. I will make it to the bathroom a couple more times in the day and once in a while even make it to the kitchen to get my own sandwich or can of something for dinner. If it has to heat for more than a couple of minutes, Harmoni will bring it to me.
Once a week, I go to Walmart and ride the 'electric chair of shame' because I can't walk through the store. This is the store I used to work at so it is especially humiliating. I stop at the Post Office and a couple of places to pay bills where Gini or Harmoni will run in for me since getting in and out of the van is so hard for me.
I go to bed around 3 am and might get to sleep before dawn. I sleep very poorly and am still exhausted when I wake whether it is 9 hours later or 3 hours later.
The end. That is my day. Every day."
Wow is it humbling to write that in a public forum. Those who don't know me personally can't imagine how amazing it is that I would share that with anyone. ANYONE, much less everyone. Now for a few facts. At the time I wrote that stuff, I was a 51 year old mother of 5, grandma of 9, married to a sweetheart of a truck driver since 1987, in small town Oklahoma. I am 5'6" tall and weighed 340 lbs. I have Myasthenia Gravis which is an autoimmune disorder, and the tumor in my chest that often accompanies it, as well as a history of blood clots, bone on bone knee, completely trashed shoulder from tearing the rotator cuff several times and not getting treatment leaving it with scar tissue, arthritis and bone spurs, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, high cholesterol and Paget's disease of the bone in my pelvis. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia years ago but the pain and fatigue of that little joy-pill was so buried in the pain and fatigue from all the other stuff that I forget about it. And to kind of top it all off, I had started having some pretty scary symptoms of congestive heart failure. I didn't realize it at the time but that is often a complication of Paget's.
So now I think you have the pathetic picture of where I was a few weeks ago when suddenly, very suddenly, everything changed. EVERYTHING changed. I have tried most of the diets that everyone else has tried from Atkins and Weight Watchers to tracking my food and activity on Sparkpeople. Sparkpeople was by far the most helpful. I highly recommend it for the tools and fellowship available no matter what path to health you choose.
Now on to the POSITIVE stuff because, trust me, nowadays, my life is a very positive place! I'll make this part brief and then just get to posting the progress blogs. I started a blog on Sparkpeople and I'm going to start by reposting those here to bring you up to date and then I'll take it up from there with current blogs. So when you see a blog that is dated September 24 but the title says it is August 25 - Day 3, you won't be confused hopefully.
So what happened was this. I got on Netflix like I usually did. For no clear reason at all, since I am NOT usually a viewer of health or food related documentaries, Netflix "recommended" Forks Over Knives and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. VERY unlike myself, I watched them. And then I watched Hungry for Change and Vegucated. I then read Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Clean by Dr. Alejandro Junger. I also looked up every bit of research for and against a plant-based diet, The China Study, Veganism, Raw-food living and Clean eating. I have ridiculed and condemned vegetarians and especially ethical vegans my whole life. I grew up eating fat-fried everything. But I knew by the end of the first documentary that God himself had led me to this path and that I could abandon it at my peril. I KNEW it. It was a really strange feeling and almost beyond description. You will just have to trust me that it was different from any path I had ever entered upon for weight-loss. I actually felt, REALLY felt for the first time that it was "all about health dummy!" Weight loss was to be looked forward to but definitely secondary. It was an immediate transformation the likes of which I have never before experienced. I haven't had a single moment of doubt since.
So that brings us up to where my Spark blog began so I'll let that tell the story for a bit and then start up again with current blogs. Sorry this first one was so long. They won't usually be this long. If you've read this whole thing, thank you for joining me. I'm enjoying the ride more than I can say.
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