My WoMan-I-Festo: Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones...

...but words can break my spirit


I've been thinking a lot lately about words and language, how we use them and the effects they can have on other people.  We use words to express ourselves in good situations and bad ones, to share feelings of love and affirmation, to vent anger.  And, unfortunately, sometimes we use our words to hurt people, either intentionally or not.

I have been noticing the words people are using to describe the changes in my appearance since my shrinkage started to become really noticeable.  Affirming, positive and sometimes humorous words and phrases are coming at me from all kinds of people.

"I can't get over the transformation."

"You look like a different person."

"You're wasting away to nothing!"

"You're becoming a skinny-minnie."

Even my father, The Fatophobe, jokingly called me a "bag of bones" at Christmas, and that was 10 pounds ago!

All of these are wonderful affirmations of my progress, and I am grateful for them.  I'm grateful to have had the chance to pursue the weight loss surgery that is already improving the quality of my life even before I've reached my goal weight.  I'm grateful that God uses doctors and technology to improve people's health and that He has used them to improve mine.

But I can't help thinking about the other times when words have been hurtful and insensitive, simply because of what I looked like.  Every fat girl has heard the lament from some well-meaning friend or relative, "You have such a pretty face...", the implication being that the rest of us is somehow unacceptable because of our size.  Every fat girl has experienced the embarrassment of ridicule from peers and classmates who make jokes at her expense.  Every fat girl has gotten the message loud and clear, at one time or another, that she is unpresentable, unworthy, unacceptable because of her fatness.

Our culture is relentless in the way it hammers away at women's self-esteem, chiseling and chipping off pieces of our confidence by bombarding us with images of pencil-thin, anemic-looking supermodels and portraying their protruding bones and angular bodies as the ideal of feminine loveliness.  In a world where countless millions of people are starving to death through no fault of their own because they have no food, droves of American women are choosing either to starve themselves, or to eat and then force themselves to vomit after every meal, in hopes of achieving some unrealistic picture of what female beauty is supposed to be.  Even in the plus-size catalogs I receive, the models displaying the clothing have very few curves to their bodies.  Can anyone besides me appreciate the absurdity of all this?

A friend and I spoke last week and she said something about me getting skinny.  I responded that I'll never be skinny.  I have way too many boobs and hips to ever be skinny!  Becoming less large has been a blessing, and I am so thankful for the journey.  And yes, if I am being honest, in most ways I do think I look better (although as I shrink, some lines, wrinkles and crinkles are showing up that aren't making me happy).  The changes in appearance are secondary to the fact that I feel better and I am becoming a healthier person.  But I will not apologize for the way I used to be, or rather, used to look.  It is all a part of what makes me me, my history and the journey of becoming who I am ultimately going to be.  I view my life as a work in progress;  I am in a constant state of becoming.

This is my WoMan-I-Festo.  I will be who I am  becoming, whatever size and shape that happens to be, and I will not be ashamed.  I will affirm other women and encourage them in whatever state they find themselves.  I will be an advocate for the broadening of our definitions of physical beauty, as well as an increased emphasis on the importance of non-physical beauty.  I will focus on wholeness and health in my body, mind and spirit, as I strive to nurture the bodies, minds and spirits of the people around me.    



   

The Four Horsemen Of The A-Puke-O-Lypse

The Vomit Brigade brought in reinforcements this time...


Today started like any other day with the exception of a 6-month checkup with my family physician, affectionately known as Dr. Awesome.  It was no big deal, just time to renew a couple of maintenance prescriptions.  My blood pressure today was low, even for me.  I have to reiterate that, even at my heaviest weight and largest size, my blood pressure was never a problem, always running in the low-to-normal range. One of the fat-lady bullets I managed to dodge, to the surprise of lots of people.  I will admit, somebody at the size I was usually would have hypertension, but I never did.  Today's reading was a personal record, though, at 107/54.  I texted The Hubs with my numbers and told him, "I think I might be dead!"  The only time I can remember a lower reading for myself was 90/60 following an outpatient surgery to remove a cyst on my back over a decade ago.  (The nurse was scared to let me go home with a reading that low, fearing I'd konk out on the way to the car!)

I had not seen Dr. Awesome since just a few weeks after my weight loss surgery and he seemed impressed with the amount of shrinkage that has happened so far.  He had a medical student with him today as well, and after telling me that I was "wasting away to nothing!", he told the student doctor, "This lady is a product of bariatric surgery."  We went over the typical question-and-answer portion of the checkup and he renewed my prescriptions, after which I scheduled my appointment for the annual physical (all except for the lady-parts stuff, that is the domain of Dr. FancyPants).

After my doctor's appointment my cousin Judy and I were planning to spend some time together, so I went to her house to pick her up, and we left for a nice, lengthy ladies lunch together.  We went to a place she goes to frequently and where I had never been before.  We were seated in a nice booth near the lovely fireplace in the restaurant, which was especially pleasant today because the temperature here never got above freezing.  Remember this mention of the cold, it will be important later.

We ordered our lunch, and we ate and talked and laughed...and I started to feel a little uncomfortable in my belly, like when I've eaten a bite too much, or eaten too fast.  I prayed silently that this would not be another clumping episode, stopped eating and got a to-go box for my leftovers.  I didn't really eat any more than I usually would, and what I ate was tasty.  But something, somehow went horribly wrong.

I excused myself and went to the ladies room because I felt queasy, but nothing much happened in there of the sick variety, and I started to feel a little better.  So we left to go pick up her daughter Katherine from school.  We went a little ways and waves of nausea started, along with sweating, and just as I finished asking, "Is there a place around here to pull over..."

The Four Horsemen of the A-Puke-O-Lypse came galloping forth.  This was not a small episode of clumping-related illness.  I puked like a rock star.  Like a drunken frat boy on a Sunday morning.  Like a champ.  Like I have not puked in years, maybe even decades.  I puked up way more than I had eaten at lunch.  All over me, all over the car, all over.

God bless Judy, she pointed out a place as quickly as possible where we could pull over.  And thank God, there was a change of clothes in the car.  But imagine, if you can, a 48-year-old grown woman changing clothes on the side of a busy roadway in sub-freezing temperatures, shielded only by a car door in the back and my cousin holding up my jacket like a curtain in the front!

No, this is not a pretty episode, and Yes, it is funny, so it's OK to laugh.  Even I can laugh about it.  Misfortunes like this are the stuff sitcom episodes are made of.  In all seriousness, though, I think I may have eaten something last night that didn't agree with me.  When I went to bed last night my stomach was very noisy and a little crampy, and I noticed that my back hurt, a common symptom in the past when I have had stomach flu or food poisoning.  So I am attributing this unfortunate episode either to a little virus or a little bite of something that might have been past its prime.

And this, my little friends, is why it is always good to keep trash bags, a change of clothes and baby wipes in the car at all times.  One never knows when The Four Horsemen of the A-Puke-O-Lypse may ride forth.

The Foods I Miss And Why I Miss Them

Probably not the reasons you would expect


A Facebook thread among my family just minutes ago got me thinking about the foods I miss, and the people who made them, who I miss even more than I miss the foods themselves.  I wrote about some of my bread memories and stories here in one of my earliest posts right after I started the blog and the weight loss journey prior to surgery.  I come from a family of wonderful Southern cooks on both sides, and I married into a family of other wonderful Southern cooks.  So to say that food has been an important part of my life would be more than fair!

What surprises me these days is that, while I do miss certain foods, I don't miss them as much, or for the reasons, I might expect.  What I really miss is the people who made them, and the warm memories I have of the times I enjoyed both the foods and the people.  My eating habits are so radically different now that a lot of the foods I am thinking of would probably bother my stomach or make me feel queasy.  It's not the food...it's the cooks and the memories that I miss the most.

Mama was a wonderful cook.  She didn't cook fancy, gourmet food, just tasty Southern fare.  Every Friday of my childhood I remember her making a cake for the weekend, and her warnings not to slam the door or make a lot of noise for fear of making the cake fall.  I think that might have been a ploy to get a few minutes of quiet more than any real fear of a collapsing cake!  She had a couple of mainstay things she would make to take to "Family Night" at church, a covered-dish affair in the fellowship hall where the entire church would show up, food in hand to share with everyone else.  Mama's usual dishes were either a brown rice casserole (which didn't contain brown rice at all) or her famous baked beans with bacon on top.  I was the "official taster" for the beans, and they were always delicious.  Mama also made banana pudding, from scratch, in a double boiler, with the most gorgeous meringue on the top.  And I miss her fried chicken in the electric skillet, her Swiss steak in the CrockPot, her chili in the Revere Ware Dutch oven and her rump roast with potatoes, carrots and onions in that old beat-up aluminum roasting pan...the stuff of my dreams to this day.  But if I had to name just one thing that Mama was known for making, it would be her cornbread.  It was legendary.

Aunt Ruby made biscuits every morning for over 4 decades, and they were the biscuits I judged every other biscuit by my whole life.  I remember lots of times spending Friday night at her house and she would often make us pancakes on Saturday morning.  Simple, but such a treat!  And always the best breakfast I could ask for.  The Hubs has always said that Aunt Ruby's potato salad was his favorite of any potato salad he ever ate.  I never liked potato salad, so I'll have to take his word for it.  I'm glad he has that wonderful memory of her, since she doesn't cook anymore.

Aunt Martha was a great cook too, and she loved her sweets.  Aside from Mamaw, Aunt Martha was the only person who made apple stack cake.  One year my brother went and spent the day with her to learn how she made it, and he has made a few of them.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that baking session!  She also made a Fresh Apple Cake with homemade caramel icing that I have the recipe for.  But I could never hope to make it as good as hers was.    She gave me lots of recipes for gooey desserts, one of which was Banana Split Pie.  Aunt Ruby also shared this recipe with me.  For years I made one for Thanksgiving at Aunt Ruby's.  It's a no-bake dessert that needs to be refrigerated, rich and very sweet, and a little dab will do you!  For several years at Christmas, she would make little individual loaves of banana bread for everyone to take home.  I will never forget working one Christmas night at a television station, all alone in the building, warming her banana bread in the microwave, smearing it with butter and crying with gratitude for something from home when I was stuck at work on Christmas.

"Mamaw" Allred was my next-door neighbor until I was nearly 17 years old (when we moved because a construction project razed our neighborhood), and very much a part of our family.  She and Mama and ladies from her church used to make hot tamales in the fall every year to sell by the dozen as fundraisers.  Lots of churches and groups still sell hot tamales.  Oh, my word, how those tamales warmed my body and soul on many a cold night!  Boil them, enjoy the smell and fidget waiting for them to be done, then smother them with chili and prepare to hibernate like a big old bear!  "Mamaw" Allred also made what she called hot tamale pie, which was similar to chili with hot tamales.  And she made peanut butter potato rolled candy which was ridiculously sweet and good.  But my favorite thing of hers was Baptist Pound Cake, a rich, dense, almond-flavored scratch cake.  It has to be started in a cold oven, and it develops a crusty layer on the top that is about as addictive as anything I've ever eaten in my life.  She gave me the recipe and, after a few attempts, I became good at making it myself.  She loved that and congratulated me for being able to make it because it was a recipe that Mama never mastered!  It's been many years since I made one, but maybe next year at Christmas I'll whip out the bundt pan and bake some cake to give away.  The world needs love, and it needs Baptist Pound Cake.

As much as I loved eating these foods, it's less about the foods themselves and more about the people who made them and the memories of times I spent with them.  Everyone I've written about here is gone now except Aunt Ruby, and Aunt Ruby doesn't cook anymore.  I miss the tastes and aromas of these foods, to be sure...but what I really miss are the conversations shared while the stove warmed the kitchen, the laughter as the flour flew through the air, the loving way the recipes were written down and the advice never to cook when I was angry because the dish would turn out bad.

Proverbs 17:1 reads:
Better is a dry morsel with quietness,
Than a house full of feasting^[a] with strife.

So, it's not really about the food so much.  It's about the love.  Yes, our bodies are nourished by food, but our souls are, too.  I am grateful for the cooks in my life and my family who have nourished me, both body and soul.      

Size Matters...Or Does It?

Why the label inside a pair of pants can be misleading


After last weekend and the disappearance of The Hundredth Pound, I decided it was time to do a little shopping.  As I mentioned before, The Hubs had given me gift cards for Christmas and, while they weren't burning a hole in my pocket, I was curious to see what I could find in the retail world, especially clothing-wise.  I had some free time between hospice and chorus practice, so I hit the mall.  I don't know if I wasn't in  the right mood for shopping, or I wasn't looking in the right stores, or the prices were upsetting me (well, the prices definitely weren't making me happy).

Trying things on in a fitting room, I was able to see my body in a full-length mirror, something I don't have at home.  I found some jeans that fit, in 2 or 3 different sizes, but they didn't fit the way I wanted them to, and for what they cost I wasn't going to settle for something that fit but didn't flatter.  I have always been really short-waisted.  The good thing about a short waist is that it makes my legs seem longer, which is cool.  Unfortunately, the lower-rise jeans that seem so popular now just don't look or feel like I want them to.

Another thing about the full-length mirror is that I was able to see all the scars on my abdomen from not only my weight loss surgery but also my gallbladder removal and my appendix/ruptured ovarian cyst surgery.  My middle looks like a battle zone!  Combined with the loose skin hanging there now from the weight I have lost, it is a pitiful-looking belly indeed.  It's part of the process for a lot of weight loss patients because of the amounts of weight we are losing.  And it's OK.  It's not like I was ever hoping to wear a bikini anyway.

After leaving the mall empty-handed, I grabbed a quick bite of chili and went to chorus practice.  Seeing everyone after having a few weeks off was great, and it felt good to blow some of the rust out of my voice.  I told one of my music fraternity students I sounded "craptacular".  The spring concert season promises to be challenging musically, and I hope to continue to rehab my voice as we rehearse.

After chorus practice was over, I decided I would try shopping again, this time at the Walmart near my house.  I will confess that I am not a label or brand snob, and if I can find something to wear that I like, I don't care where it comes from, or how much or little it costs.  And at Walmart, I hit paydirt!  I found jeans, with pockets (we all know by now how important pockets are to me!) that have a rise high enough to sit at my waist comfortably and don't give me "muffin top".  I purchased a few other little items as well but the jeans were definitely the big score of the night.  And the best part is that they are a size L/12-14, according to the label.  I should save the size tag and make a scrapbook page around it because those are numbers my body has not seen in decades!

I realize, of course, that the labels in clothes are misleading at best, because every manufacturer/designer has a different set of criteria by which they set their garment sizes.  A size 14 in one clothing line might be a size 18 in another, and jeans, dress slacks and dresses are all sized differently as well.  So I know I can't get too hung-up (or cocky) about the size label on my latest jeans.  The only true gauges are the scale and the tape measure.

My Seven-Month Surgi-Versary And An Epiphany

A Date That Will Live In Gratitude...


Seven months ago today I had my weight loss surgery.  The world was a different place.  It was warm and humid even before sunrise when we arrived at the hospital for registration and pre-op festivities.  The Hubs and my brother kept me company in the pre-op holding area before they took me back for the operation.  Dr. Williams came back to chat with me before the procedure and I asked him if he had slept well and if he was in a good mood.  One does not want their insides cut up and messed with by a sleep-deprived, cranky surgeon, after all.

Today, on my seven-month surgi-versary, I am most grateful to report that I have lost a total of 100 pounds.  I've been hovering close to that mark for a couple of weeks and obsessing a little bit over it, thinking, "Is it ever going to happen?!"  Again, God's timing is always significant, and always best.  I had hoped maybe by New Year's Day that hundredth pound would be gone, but it didn't work out that way.  I suppose it makes sense that it should be on a surgi-versary.  I'll for sure always remember the date this way.

In the Christian calendar, January 6 is Epiphany, traditionally observed as the day the Wise Men arrived to meet the Child Jesus and His mother.  In modern parlance, we often refer to an epiphany as some sort of major revelation.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has the following as part of the definition: 

(1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something 

(2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking 

(3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure

 Or:  a revealing scene or moment

So I suppose it is only fitting that this 100-pound milestone epiphany should fall on the calendar date of Epiphany, which happens to be a surgi-versary as well.  It is indeed a revealing moment.  This journey is teaching me that I am not beyond hope, not beyond redemption, not too old or too tired or too anything else to reclaim health, strength and a better quality of life.  God is indeed The Great Physician and, while miraculous, spontaneous healing sometimes happens, He often uses human doctors, nurses, therapists and other specialists to accomplish the healing we so desperately need.  I am roughly 2/3 of the way to my goal; the journey is not over.  In many ways it is only beginning.  

Combining Old And New

Returning to some of my old routines (the good ones, that is)


My surgical sabbatical from some of my volunteer activities is about to come to a close.  And I finally feel ready to resume some of the things I used to spend time doing.  After surgery and during the first months of recovery, I lacked energy and motivation to do much of anything other than heal.  I returned to my chorus praying every second that I would be able to sing again, that the breathing tube inserted during surgery had not damaged my throat, that I would have the energy to make it through rehearsals...that the surgery I had pursued in order to save my health had not ruined my voice.  Because my voice has always defined me at least as much as my size has.  My other activities needed to wait a while because returning to my chorus took all the energy I had.

And that worried me.  Singing taxed me for a while in a way it never had before.  My voice always feels a little "brittle" returning to chorus in the fall after having the summer off and not being as active vocally.  This past fall concert season that brittleness seemed to last longer.  I was afraid that I might never feel ready to go back to some of my other activities.  I was scared that my empty, queasy stomach, swinging blood sugar levels and moodiness might never stabilize enough for me to feel "normal" again.  I went ahead with surgery in order to feel better... but I have to admit that for a while I felt worse than I had prior to surgery, and I was terrified that it would never get any better.

Thank God that hasn't been the case!  Time, some patience, some trial and error and a lot of support have helped me to heal.  Now most of the time I feel really good, hormones and intestinal issues notwithstanding.  Next week I am returning to hospice, Lord willing and knock wood.  The Monday afternoon spot at the front desk came open and since this year's extended unit of CPE was filled, I volunteered to cover the front desk on Monday afternoons before chorus practice.  It will be good to be back there, and eventually I may get back to more regular patient visitation.  For now, covering the front desk is where I am most needed, and that's probably where I most need to be as well.  It will provide me with a sense of purpose without taxing me too much physically.

My cousin Betty who passed away shortly before Christmas had been transferred to the same hospice where I volunteer, and her daughters both told me what a special place it is and about the wonderful care they all received there.  My friend Ellen's mother spent her last days there back in the spring as well.  It is time for me to return to my service there, and I finally feel ready.  

I'll answer phones, make coffee, fill the snack baskets and greet visitors as they come and go.  I will have the chance to listen to those who need someone to talk to.  I'll be able to get some of my reading and studying done there.  And with gratitude for all God has done for me, I'll say a quiet prayer for each family and the loved one they are there to see, as well as the staff who care for them.