I’m going to try not to cry this time
by Zoeyjane
So, besides the fact that I got to see a slew of medical professionals during my awesome seven-weeks-and-still-kicking cold, I see my doctor every month.
My medication’s not quite right. I’m a little too up, when I should be level. A little to frenetic, when I should be still. A little crashy, when the whole world should be peaceful.
It happens.
I’ve accepted that I have multiple conditions that are each hard to treat and that all I can do is either stop trying – did that, got the breakdown, not doing that again – or keep trying.
It’s all about chemistry and finding the proper balance of equation, but it’s more complex than ninth-grade science class was.
So, I keep going back. And he asks, every time, what I’m there for today. Like we don’t both know.
And he waits for me to volunteer how well my dishes are getting washed and whether I’m showering, or if I’m too busy watching entire seasons of television shows I’ve already watched.
Inhale-inhale-inhale-next episode-play.
And how’s my attention span? So, when you say ‘touchy’ what does that mean? How many nights would you say you’re not sleeping, now? Okay, and when you do? Oh, well, you know the recommended amount of sleep…
How am I doing with the rules? Oh, you let your daughter take a bath, without washing the tub first? That’s really great, Terra.
It took a while. But I’ve accepted that this conversational mambo is necessary, if only so that there’s one person – someone who can have an actual long-lasting effect – who sees the whole picture, all at once.
So, I go back, every month.
But now.
There’s a note on my file and every person who works at the clinic can see it, on the left-hand side of my folder, written on my patient contact form, right under ‘allergic to sulpha’.
Blood pressure and weight to be taken upon check-in. Inform Dr. X if patient is less than X/X X lbs.
This is, to me, the equivalent being known as the person who pees the bed. This is like, being the mother of the biter. This is ridiculously shameful.
If I go below those Xs, it’s recommended that I’m referred for certain out-patient therapies. Not because my eating disorder is acute, or because I’m so far-gone that immediate treatment is required, but because I’m an old-timer, and old-timers are the ones to watch.
Old-timers stay okay for years and then spontaneously start to spiral and the next thing you know, they’re barely walking and their kidneys are failing. Old-timers are the recovered heroin addicts, who just want one more dance with dope, but have lost their tolerance.
I haven’t accepted this part – that I’m not strong enough, all the time, to not see that mirror and think any of a mixture of thoughts.
Like
thesepantsfitsowellthankgodbuttheyshowalittlehipboneandIshouldkeepthathidden
or
three-digitsjusthree-digitsifIcanjuststayheretheneveryonecanthinkI’mfine
and
whydoyoulooklikethatyou’resofuckingweakeatmoreeatmoreeatmore
my personal favourite, where logic meets insanity
goddamnyoulookgoodyoucanseeverysingleribinyourchestyoudistgustingfreaklookatthatrollhowcansomeonebethisfatandweighsolittle?
A charmed life.
So, last time that I went in was just after I’d gotten sick, after I’d literally not been able to eat and after I’d been able to eat, but I just didn’t feel like it because I. Don’t. Need. To.
Maybe you do. But not me.
(logic, meet insanity. insanity, logic. you guys have nothing in common. talk amongst yourselves.)
But I knew I’d be going in, soon, so I carb-loaded over the course of three days. I ate all of the salt that I could stuff in my body and chocolate and cake and scones with Devonshire cream and jam and two loaves of bread and I drank litres of water. And I retained it all. So that, even though I’d lost seven pounds during the initial ten days of being sick, and even though I was having heart palpitations and black spots swam in front of my eyes when I stood sometimes, I managed to only have lost one pound since my prior appointment.
He put his hand on my shoulder, my doctor, and he said that this was a good thing. That I was making progress.
I don’t hear applause….
The appointment before that, I ended up crying before I left, sunglassed. He said he didn’t mean to make me cry, and I knew that, and he said that he was just concerned, and I knew that, and he said that he just wanted to see me feel better and be better and that maybe doubling my mood stabilizers would help because when you’re flying a little bit and not sleeping, it’s pretty easy to not eat.
But I cried.
Because it’s pretty shaming, to be 30 years old and have your doctor walk you to to scale that’s visible from the waiting room, ask you to take off your coat and your shoes and stand backwards, so you can’t see the number NO PEEKING.
As if I don’t have one at home.
It’s pretty awful, feeling micromanaged and so small and so broken about one little thing, like whether you starve yourself or not, when everything else is better than it’s ever been.
So tomorrow, I get to go in and dance around my sleep cycles and my need for door-shutting and explain how many times I couldn’t hear my daughter talking to me because the hockey game was on and there was a puck moving around on the screen.
But first, I get to stand on the metal plate and have my body betray me.
So, I’m going to try not to cry this time. Because yeah, I’m skinny. And yeah, I’m too skinny. And yeah, I know better.
But I’m trying to be. It just doesn’t always work out so well.
