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I had continued to gradually lose weight over Nineteen Eighty-Six, in
fact new friend Daina said she saw me as a walking bean pole, though
I didn't let on that it was an involuntary condition at the time.
Rochelle said she liked my cheek bones, but when I asked her why
she said it was because they were prominent, I didn't bother to
mention it was just the sunken-in cheeks below that made the bones
above stand out. Along with my weight, my hair had started to
thin out as well as my stamina. My hope was, by dropping my Saturday
computer monitoring job, it would help me retain enough energy to
continue college classes and
work. By January of Nineteen Eighty-Seven it was clear that
it would not be enough and, unless I got whatever condition was
wasting me away under control, I would have to give up College next
as I still needed a job to pay for food and fruitless doctor visits.
Starting with headaches months before my bout of walking pneumonia
in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, after the pneumonia had been
treated I had started to painlessly lose weight and become intolerant
of direct sunlight. I had subsequently gained joint pains in my
knuckles and knees by Nineteen Eighty-Five. By the Summer of
Nineteen Eighty-Six an emergency room doctor had discovered I was
having dangerous blood pressure spikes when drinking soda with corn
syrup in it and recommended I switch to diet soda, after I did the
headaches had gone away. After years of small moments in sunlight
leading to longer exposures, I gradually gained a new tolerance to
sunlight, functionally putting that silly problem behind me. If I
hadn't been starting to lose my stamina by the end of Nineteen
Eighty-Six I would have been happy enough with my health
because, lets face it, who doesn't want to lose weight?
Especially when they didn't even have to try!
By the turn of the year, some of my coworkers were complimenting me
on how much weight I had lost over the years and I would smile and
thank them, but their compliments only reminded me of the Burt
Reynolds movie ''The End.'' For those not familiar with it, it
opens up with his character perplexed at the doctor's office as he's
just been told he's terminally ill. He tries to argue with the
doctor that it couldn't be as everyone had been
complimenting him on his recent weight loss! In my case though,
it was more a question of getting a doctor to take
notice rather than discouraging one.
To hide how much weight I had actually lost, and to help me with the
cold of frequently working in the refrigerated room at the grocery
store, I had taken up wearing two to three shirts at a time to keep
me warm. When I had started at this grocery store, I would load the
milk cases four gallons of milk at a time, two gallons held in the
fingers of each hand. But now, two and a half years later, I was
having to use both hands to maneuver a single gallon of milk from the
box into the display case. Where once I would unload a pallet of
boxes a few at a time, now I was huffing & puffing to get a
single box off the stack and to the case were it needed to be
unpacked. Ultimately this reduction in the amount of work I could
accomplish just wouldn't do if I wanted to keep my job and I was back
to my mother's primary care doctor's office to find out what was
going on and what to do about it.
He had sent me to the joint doctor two years earlier for my joint
pains but while I had experienced a brief improvement on a course of
antibiotics, the joint doctor had discontinued it early as he found I
didn't have the disease he had assumed I had. After that
relationship soured I had taken about a year off from having any
doctor check my long term health and so this was my first time
talking to the primary doctor about it. He was of the impression
that one could never lose too much weight, though, and simply
suggested I eat more food. I assured him I had been eating plenty of
food but it only slowed down my decline, not stopped it.
He seemed perplexed by the whole idea of why losing weight would be a
bad thing and didn't have a clue where to start looking into it. He
finally concluded we should start by my having a physical examination
and I should see the girl at the front desk to schedule a day for it.
I left the examination room in a panic. Ever since my thirteenth
birthday my mother had discouraged me from seeing doctors for fear of
what they might find. While I had grown-up wanting to be an
astronaut and planned to get there by first becoming a military
pilot, I had concluded that given my 'surprise puberty', I wouldn't
be able to pass the necessary medical review needed to get in, thus
those dreams were discarded. While I had been successfully seeing
doctors at the emergency room and at their offices during the past
three years since moving to Colorado, none had needed to see me fully
undressed as they did their examinations of my limbs and reflexes.
But now that I had a physical examination scheduled what was
going to happened?
Going to my night classes, I debated canceling that next doctor visit
and go back to ignoring my health issues, but given the struggle of
making it through the night class and then do a full day's work
before returning to my next night class, I realized I didn't have
that option if I wanted to continue with College. While I had been
top of my classes at both the original Business College and now
attending the accredited big brother school, my studies had started
to slide as I was having problems paying attention and staying on top
of my homework due to the fatigue. Ignoring the never ending weight
loss I could choose, but the dwindling stamina meant I'd either have
to pick between finishing College or quitting my one remaining job.
I couldn't afford College without the job so the choice was a
no-brainer. But losing College meant losing my hoped for
destiny as a software developer. Even though it was already a job I
could do for these past many years, being a stutterer without a
degree meant I was never seriously considered at interviews for such
jobs.
I couldn't give up either my job or College if I wanted
to have a future and I only had a year and a half of night classes to
go before I had that degree... So I went to the physical.
The nurse lead me to a different examination room with a table and
told me to undress and put on only the gown and sit on the table
until the doctor came in. She told me to have the opening of the
gown in front and left the room. I did as I was told and sat on the
cold table and waited. After a bit, the doctor came and untied the
gown and opened it up. He burst-out laughing and fled the room,
slamming the door behind him.
I assumed he had left to just regain his composure and would be right
back. But after a few minutes I decided to at least close the gown
to keep warm and I sat there and waited. After about twenty minutes,
the nurse opened the door to walk in with another patient and was
surprised to find me still there. She quickly took the patient to
another room and then came back confused that the doctor hadn't seen
me yet. I told her he had briefly come in but left before he had
actually done anything and I was assuming he'd be back. She left the
room to check, then came back and told me that the doctor was done
and I could get dressed and go home.
That was all there was to a physical examination?
I had always thought they were more involved than just glancing at
the naked patient and then leaving the room. Still, I did as I was
told and when I got to the front desk to find out about my follow-up
appointment, I was told the doctor didn't need to see me again.
As I went to my class that night, I realized this meant that he
wasn't going to address my weight loss & stamina issues and, as
the spring semester had just started, I concluded to withdraw from my
classes while I still could and not get charged for them.
Withdrawing from College, I left my future hopes behind and just
focused on a life of working to make ends meet without any prospects
for advancement.
Yet, with my ever declining health, even that working for the sake
of living goal would soon slip from my grasp.
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