My Guest Post!

Hey everyone, I had the honor of writing a Guest Post for my friend Al’s amazing Blog, True Sailing is Dead.  Check it out here!

In Sickness and in Health.

Hello world…it has been a while.  I don’t have much to say.  My daughter’s depression/panic disorder was the worst thing we had endured this year, until my husband got sick.  He already has multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis, both chronic.  Now he is battling some kind of pancreatitis/bile duct blockage (more tests need to be done) and was in the hospital for 2 weeks.  He is home now and it looked like he was improving on a soft liquid diet (mostly Ensure) but today he took a turn for the worse.  I am worried.  I am trying to give this to God.  Please keep us in prayer; thank you.

Time.

This morning found me thinking about time.  People waste it, use it, write songs about it, take it for granted, and it’s the one thing you can’t get back.  I cannot believe that I am 38 years old; I still feel like a kid most of the time.  With my own children, I find I have to remind myself that I am the adult. 

What are your thoughts on time?

Couch.

Still recovering and discovering how comfy my couch is.  Today I was a bit bored, so I started reading “An Inconvenient Book” by the great Glenn Beck.  Call him alarmist, apocalyptic, dramatic…I love his radio and Fox News shows.  He is funny, informative, and I have yet to disagree with anything I have heard him say.  So far, this book (a Valentine’s Day gift from my rockin’ husband) is fabulous.

Here is my “Stuck on the Couch Survival Kit” for those of you keeping score at home:

Tissues, remote, phone, antibiotics, ginger ale, CeraVe Lotion, Paula’s Choice Lip & Body Treatment Balm, Rise Above Plastic Sigg water bottle (filled), reading glasses and laptop (the pink thingy sticking out near the Sigg).

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hello world!

More to follow…

Deprivation.

Happy Black Friday! I awoke at 7am only to think that the poor people who work at Kohl’s had been working for over three hours.

Yesterday turned out to be an amazing day, eating disorder-wise. As many times as I have read Geneen Roth’s books, OA books and literature, etc., I never made the connection between my Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and deprivation until yesterday…the biggest eating-day of the year. Praise God!

What did I learn? I learned the true meaning of Geneen’s powerful saying, “For every diet, there is an equal and opposite binge.” What this means for me is this: after being raised with a mother who monitored every bite of food that went into my mouth, criticized me for it, and reminded me on a daily basis that I was fat led me to believe that I wasn’t good enough. Food was comfort, and being deprived of it through psycho monitoring made it something I had to sneak. I had to eat it when I can, where I could. This meant skillfully skimming a few chips off of the top of the bag, a few cookies off of the top of the box. It meant that family gatherings became a refuge where I could eat as much as I want. And then, as I mentioned yesterday, there was the refuge of Melissa’s house, where I could have whatever I want from their plentiful and delightful selection of snacks.

I have tried nearly every diet out there. They don’t work. This isn’t a situation in which I will find the “right” plan if I just keep trying; they don’t work because they depend on deprivation to work. The binge cycle goes as follows: I go on a diet. I stick with it beautifully for a while, usually 2-16 weeks. I lose weight, I feel good about losing weight, and I ask myself why I couldn’t stick with this before? Then, the inevitable happens. I haven’t eaten as I wanted; I have been eating as someone or something else dictates I should. My brain feels deprived, and I binge.

Nutrition was a hobby of mine for many years. I know what to eat, I can tell you the fat and calories for way too many foods, and I am well aware of what overeating can do to a body. This is not a matter of lack of education, willpower, or control. This is an eating disorder, and to be honest, I have only recently accepted it as such. When you have a mother telling you that you are fat and have no self-control for 24 years, it is hard to believe anything else. My eating is disordered, and unlike a smoker, drug addict, or alcoholic (whose disease has the same roots as mine), I cannot quit my drug of choice. I have to eat. I have to balance my food so that I don’t allow myself to become deprived with eating the correct amounts of food to avoid further overeating.

So here I am, 38 years old, having to dig back to what it felt like to eat normally, and I cannot remember. Here is why.

I was born on September 11, 1970 to a 19 year-old girl. She gave me up for adoption, but the good folks at the hospital noticed that there was something wrong with my eyes. It seems I didn’t respond to moving objects (um, hello…what newborn does?), so they classified me as “Mildly Handicapped” and sent me to a foster home. Two couples were skipped because my parents said they would adopt a Mildly Handicapped child, so they got me (clearly God had a plan here) instead. My parents met my foster mother (who called me “Monkey”) and they said that she really loved me and took excellent care of me, providing my parents with handwritten lists of my daily schedule, likes, wants, needs, etc. I was tiny; at 3 months and 19 days, I weighed only 11 lb 5 oz and was 23″ long. I remained tiny and am only 5′1-1/2″ today. By First Grade, I only weighed 40 lb. This upset my mother. I remember vividly the ways she would encourage me to eat, rewarded me when I did, and yelled at me when I didn’t. She loved me and was frustrated, I understand that. She would weigh me every night after my bath: 40 lb. One day, I dropped to 39 lb. In her frustration, she spanked me. I couldn’t understand why she was so angry; I decided that not eating was bad. But then the inevitable happened.

If you look at little girls (and boys) in 2nd/3rd grade, many of them are chubby. I’m not talking obese; they just have a little flab because their height and weight have not evened out. This happened to me at the same time my mother miraculously became pregnant with my baby brother Nick (after having adopted me, and 5 years later, my brother Mike). Clearly she was embarrassed by what she considered to be her “fat daughter,” because she joked to anyone who would listen that “Trisha and I got pregnant at the same time.” I look back at pictures of myself back then and I look normal. Not fat by any stretch of the imagination. It was humiliating to hear my mother say this over and over, but she seemed to think it was funny. I was confused; not too long ago, she had spanked me for losing weight. Now I was hungrier and growing and eating, and she wasn’t happy with me either?

When you are a child, often all you know is to please your parents. My mother was a loving, affectionate woman. I knew she loved me, but I also knew that no matter what she said, she did not accept me just as I was. I had to be what she thought I should be in order to win her approval. I tried so hard, but I was HUNGRY, dammit. If I wanted a second helping of something, I was bound to hear “are you sure? You don’t want to get fat, do you?” Wait…so now I was fat? And fat was bad? How fucking confusing.

By the time I reached puberty (I needed a bra in 5th grade), I was developing curves and I liked the way I looked. My main goal in Junior High was to be popular; if my mother wouldn’t accept me, I would find it in my friends, especially boys. I was fortunate to have some great girlfriends, but most of my friends were boys, and most of them were just friends. My heart was broken for the first time in 8th grade when my boyfriend unceremoniously dumped me over the phone and the next day I caused quite a scene, crying in the halls, my friends shooting him dirty looks, my cousin (female) slamming him up against a locker. No worries, though; I had a new boyfriend a month later. This pathetic pattern played itself out for the rest of my teenage years and into adulthood, when my first husband decided he didn’t want to be married anymore and I started dating my current (wonderful) husband just a few months later.

In any case, parents take note: If your children don’t get approval…unconditional approval…from you, they will get it somewhere else. When I say unconditional, I mean flaws and all, fat or thin, loud or quiet…however God made them…let them know it is okay. If those flaws may cause them harm, guide them gently toward making different decisions, but don’t let them know what you are doing. Let them think it’s them.

My journey continues today. Just for today, I will eat when I am hungry. I will allow myself to feel hungry, and then I will eat. I will stop when I am satisfied. A new start. Thank you Jesus.

Thankful.

I know, it has been a long while, but that’s not such a bad thing. Coming out of Bill being sick in September led to working hard throughout October and November, which paved the way to my getting officially hired by the awesome University of Phoenix! Praise God!! I am so impressed with them; this training was hardcore and they really prepared me well. My first two classes begin on Monday and I am so excited.

So today is Thanksgiving and I am thankful for Jesus, who has gotten me through a very rough time recently. As I have written before, when Bill gets sick, I go on auto-pilot until he is well, and then I crash rather than rejoice. I crashed hard last month: so hard that I visited my doctor for antidepressants. I took one and had such a bad reaction to it that I vowed to find a way out without drugs. A friend of mine recommended a book that took me through my symptoms, and I began using the recommendations. This was nothing short of a miracle. I feel so much better, I have gotten much of my life back and that feels great.

My binge eating disorder has also taken an interesting turn. Today would have been my 2 year abstinence anniversary, but things got crazy and I used food as a drug. Food is so freakin’ reliable. My body is so sensitive to what I put into it (which is why it went loopy with the antidepressant) that I can get a rush from certain foods, relaxation from others…all to the extreme. For example: caffeine is a problem. In small amounts, on certain occasions (very hit-or-miss) I can have a little and I’ll be fine. Unfortunately, there is also the risk of having panic attacks, which I HATE.

I am thankful today for the connection that God revealed to me: I binge for many reasons, but my latest revelation involves bingeing out of fear of deprivation. My entire childhood revolved around my mother’s obsession with my weight. (Oh yeah, I just remembered that I haven’t written about my mother yet…that’s another long-ass future post. For now let’s just say she was obsessed with weight and psycho about attempting to control mine.) I was able to eat whatever I wanted when she wasn’t looking, whether that be at parties (family gatherings were great, because she was often occupied) or raiding the pantry at Melissa’s house (they always had great snacks) across the street.

This took me to today, where I finally realized that it’s okay for me not to stuff myself on all of the wonderful goodies in my house. I cooked for Bill’s parents, my father bought us an apple pie, and everything was great except for the mashed potatoes to which I accidentally added too much evaporated skim milk (they were a bit too loose). All of this food will be here tomorrow. I can have some if I want some. Right now I am focusing on eating when I am hungry, eating what I want, and stopping when I am satisfied. For all of you normal eaters, this may sound like common sense. For me, it has been a living hell, and I am going to fight this until I reach a healthy weight.

More to come, I’ve got me some laundry to hang. Happy Thanksgiving!

Not a Slacker.

Really, I have been busy getting the hang of my new job. Despite the hard work, long hours, and drama, I love it! I feel like it is what I was meant to do. I love teaching. I have always wanted to teach college, and I have always wanted to work from home. I praise God for this opportunity and I pray it becomes a permanent position.

Bill is doing better, which lead to my meltdown last weekend. I was so deeply depressed, crying, contemplating which doctor to visit for help first…it was bad.

When Bill is sick, I have to hold it together. When he gets well, I can let down my guard, but instead of a sense of relief, I fall apart. It is hard to fall apart and not let my children see it, but I have gotten very good at it, as evidenced by a recent Dr. Phil show discussion I had with J. The guest was depressed and she dumped all of her shit on her teenage daughter. J commented that she never knew if I felt like that. I’m glad she doesn’t.

I have made a commitment to my health, to get back on a healthy plan of eating again, and back on my regular workout schedule. It is all part of my decision to be a participant in my own life. By the grace of God, I will be okay. I am okay.

This week, I had the pleasure of getting together with my friend Renee, who I haven’t seen in over 20 years. It was awesome; it was like finding a long-lost sister. Nicely done, Facebook! I also went to lunch yesterday with J, which was wonderful. I love spending time with my daughter; I get to hear all of her thoughts and opinions on the world in which we live, and boy do we laugh. She is so cool. I wish I were as cool as she is now when I was her age.

I will write more this week…gotta run for now.

Chronic.

No, this has nothing to do with Rap music. I just thought the pic would lighten the mood a tad.

Chronic diseases suck. They suck in so many ways, I’m quite certain I could fill a whole blog with all of those ways and then some. They suck for the person with the disease, and they suck for the people who live with that person.

I’m not writing this to complain; I’m writing this to educate and maybe vent a little. My husband has two chronic diseases, Multiple Sclerosis and Ulcerative Colitis. Both of them suck on their own, but together they enter an entirely new realm of suckdom. Add to that the fact that chronic illnesses are usually pals with Depression (and my husband didn’t miss out on that one either) and you have a gang of dirty, rotten scoundrels.

I have looked, but have yet to find a support group for the family members of people with chronic diseases. I would love to have someone to talk to who really understands. I am blessed with wonderful friends and family, but they really can’t know what it is to actually live with this crap.

My husband is somewhat “blessed” when it comes to his MS. He is one of the MS people who doesn’t look like he has MS. Physically, he does very well. His disease affects him in several ways, namely headaches, fatigue, cognitive problems and mood swings (no doubt related to the depression, which is one of the top MS issues). For those of you who don’t know, MS comes in many forms, the two most common being progressive (where people get progressively worse at a fairly steady rate) and relapsing-remitting (where people will have an exacerbation followed by periods of remission at unpredictable intervals). My husband has the relapsing-remitting kind. In a nutshell, MS eats away at the protective myelin sheath that covers our nerve cells. The body views this as an injury-type-thing and surrounds the nerve cells with a lovely scar tissue blanket that hardens, thus the sclerosis part. Get a few of these on your brain, spinal cord, etc. and you’ve got the multiple part. Poor nerve cells basically get destroyed and they do not regenerate, so your body begins to act wacky.

I grew up with MS, as my good friend G was diagnosed when we were in 10th grade. Her mother did a wonderful job educating me on the disease; so much so that when my husband was diagnosed, I simply looked his neurologist in the eye and calmly (this clearly alarmed the poor doc) asked, “What do we do first?” I guess the more normal reaction is to break down. Sorry doc, but I know what MS is and I know what it does.

As G has said, “I feel crappy everyday. To what degree of crappiness I will feel that day, that is the question.” This is where to know this is one thing, but to live with it is another. My husband is not the subtle type. He has to work hard to not look uncomfortable. He has to be told not to discuss what he is feeling in front of the kids, who cannot be expected to handle it.

I give him credit for all that he does. He works a full-time job and a three-nights-a-week part time job. Neither are stressful, thank God. He says the hardest part is being away from home.

Now all of this MS shit would be enough, but my husband also has the lovely UC. UC sucks worse than MS, according to him. For those of you keeping track, UC leaves ulcers in the colon, leading to an angry, confused waste disposal system. This affects the entire gut; he gets intense pain that ranges from feeling like being punched in the stomach and having the fist left there to horrific gas pains that won’t go away. It is draining and frustrating. His MS specialist informed us that like MS, UC is an autoimmune disease, when the body’s immune system attacks itself. So they are, in this case, very much related.

My husband has had several UC flares since his diagnosis last November. I cannot imagine how uncomfortable he is. I cannot imagine what it is like to have chronic diarrhea, or the loss of sleep from having to go to the bathroom all night long. I made him stay home for two days last week; it was a fight to do so, but his body needed to rest and repair itself a little.

So where do I fit in? Why do I need a support group? Because I am the one who is at the other end of these diseases. He lives with the diseases and I live with him. I live with his mood swings. I am the one who feeds him and has to take the brunt of his frustration that he can no longer eat the shitty, overprocessed crap that he has been consuming for the past 37 years. I am the one who can’t cook anything that isn’t “bland” because he is so used to high-salt, high-fat, artificially flavored crap. I am the one who has to break the bad news that most people with UC cannot consume dairy, anything with fiber, or high-fat. Yup. I’m the battering ram. The bad guy.

I ask him what he would like to eat. He gets frustrated. He says, “I don’t know.” So I make him something that should agree with him. He complains that “it’s missing something.” I get frustrated. I want to tell him to go make something for himself if he doesn’t like what I make.

I am a good cook. My old friend K used to compare me to MacGuyver: give me three ingredients and I’ll come up with something delicious. So my husband has an advantage, because I can actually cook him things that fall within the recommended dietary guidelines for UC, and for a normal person, they would taste good. But it’s not good enough for my husband. He wants to be able to eat like crap and have no consequences.

It’s like having a teenager. I hate having to be his “mother.” I get stuck with the attitude and rebellion, and the stress. I am so tired. Emotionally drained. I just want to run sometimes, just get some peace, but I know that all of this will just be waiting for me when I get back, so what’s the point?

All of this directly affects my binge eating disorder. I caught myself in a binge the other day. Yes, after nearly 2 years of abstinence, I fell off the wagon. That made me angry. It was so completely natural, falling off. I just binged. It was simple, I did not think about it. There was no emotion involved. I was hurting and I needed a fix. I want to eat a certain way, but that means fixing separate food for the boys in my house (my daughter will eat anything I eat unless there are sweet potatoes involved), which is a giant freakin‘ pain in the ass.

So I binged. I got a nice sugar high. Sugar is like a drug for me and I am definitely addicted.

It felt really, really good. I had energy. All of the fatigue that my reaction to his diseases slammed on me faded into brownies and marshmallow fluff oblivion. I had energy. It was wonderful. I stopped feeling guilty that my husband with two chronic diseases has to work two jobs so we can get out of this stupid mountain of debt. I stopped worrying that he will get sicker or that he will die from all of the strain on his body. I stopped feeling sad about the stupid choices I have made, and I stopped feeling helpless to help my husband.

Then the fog cleared and I realized I had fallen. That sucked. But I got back on. One Day At A Time, like the show from the 70’s, like what we say in OA when things suck. We only have to get through the day, and not worry about tomorrow. I do what I can to support him. It isn’t an easy balance.

I love love love my new job and I pray that I get hired permanently after this mentorship period, but it is a lot to work and keep the house in order. This is the cry of nearly every working mother, and I am no exception. My only plus is that I have no commute, which believe me I don’t take for granted. I hated driving to work in the morning. I was fine once I got there, but most mornings it was so utterly stressful, some days thoroughly exhausting. I am trying to get everything done, plus work, and I am tired.

If there were a Fairy Godmother to come rescue me, I would ask for the money to get out of debt so he could quit his second job. It is the only thing holding us back. I would then ask for a vacation, a little chance to breathe. Of course, I would ask for a cure, too, because chronic means “tough shit, you have to live with this until you die.” But there are no Fairy Godmothers, and there are no cures.

Joyously Busy.

My goodness, I can’t believe a week has gone by since I last wrote. Within that week, my kids went back to school, I prepped for the classes I am teaching, I lost almost 5 pounds without trying, started new and excellent habits, and have fallen into a schedule of sorts.

I miss having the kids home, but the silence during the day makes it easy to get my work done. My students have their first assignment due tomorrow, which is also my 38th birthday! I will be very busy grading their papers and, God help me, mastering the online gradebook. Very exciting.

I have learned a great deal this week. One major thing is that I am blessed with people who love me, and though I do not take that for granted, I often fail to recognize it adequately. An old friend called me a few days ago and I was so moved by her words of how I had affected her life. It took me back to when my mother was in the hospital and people would call her and tell her what an impact she had made on their life (which of course sent stupid me into a brief fit of hypochondria). Then, my good friend Tony stopped by. Tony and I worked together at my previous job, where I was a teacher and he was the building engineer. His wife had been a teacher there for many years, her last being the year that I started, so it was great to have gotten to know both of them. I learned a great deal from Tony, who has lived an exciting and diverse life, and has wonderful testimonies to the hand of God in it. It was simply wonderful to see him!

Another thing I learned is that Geneen Roth is right when she says “The way you eat is the way you live.” I had been living in binges. My new habits include doing a little at a time. My house is clean. And it’s staying clean. I am having no trouble keeping up with the laundry. I do a little every day, and it’s working! I have been inspired by Flylady.com, though I don’t follow it 100%.

I bought a planner today to help me keep track of things in my classes. I simply cannot remember everything, try as I might! I am in awe of my students. I have 40 between the two classes, but 5 have not checked in yet. Everyone must post a short bio and some of them have brought me to tears. So many people trying to better themselves for their children, many single mamas, a few awesome armed forces folks. It’s a great group.

Please pray for me as I begin the process of grading their first assignment, and the next one they have due on Saturday. I need it.

Bill and I are leaving in abour 15 minutes to meet S’s teacher. I can’t believe he is in third grade already.

Now, onto losing 5 pounds. I did not try to do this. In the past, it usually took me a month to lose 5 pounds when following (insert diet name here). I have been trying (not always succeeding) to eat when I am truly hungry. I eat what I want, I am mindful of what I am eating, and I stop when I am full. I have also started exercising again after taking about 2 weeks off. I love to work out, which is a blessing, believe me I know it is! I had to start back slowly; at 200 pounds, there is danger in bouncing! I love Leslie Sansone’s Walk At Home workouts. Next week I will add my strength training routines back into my workouts; this week it’s cardio time to get my muscles a bit conditioned for the lifting.

I want to get to a healthy weight. I don’t know what my normal weight is at this point. I am trusting God to get me there, and I am doing what I can. I am also enjoying a little cake, ice cream, and brownies while I’m at it. A girl’s gotta live!

Yes, I am busy, and joyously at that. Life is good, and I am learning to let go of the notion that the other shoe is going to fall (as it has many times in my life) and just allow myself to appreciate God’s blessings. Thank you, Lord.