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By my twenty-third birthday I knew I wasn't going to be able to
continue with the way things were going. My weight had somehow
continued to decline and by this time it was clearly eating into my
muscle tissue as I was now having to struggle to lift and place a
single gallon of milk from a create into the display case while
working at the grocery store. Further, I had finally become a target
of politics in the store and I knew I needed to be ready to find a
new job, which was not something I could do with continued declining
health. I had avoided my mother's primary care physician since the
strange 'physical examination' I had with him but I needed my health
addressed now and I didn't know who else to go to.
Making an appointment to see him, I arrived at the office a couple
days later. He made no mention of the physical examination and I
decided to let sleeping dogs lie and not bring it up either. When he
asked me what I was there for I flat out told him that I needed the
endless weight loss addressed now as it was significantly
impacting my ability to do my job. He again felt that all I needed
to do was just eat more and more and I told him I couldn't imagine
eating more than I already was. So he scheduled me for a seventy-two
hour dietary survey. Effectively I was given blank log sheets to jot
down my food intake over a three day period then turn it into the
hospital lab where they would have a computer crunch the numbers and
tally the results 'objectively
stating' how well I was doing with my nutrition.
I filled it out and turned it in and waited a week for it to be
processed. As I did, I relied on a new trick I had figured out
during the Summer to keep me going at work. I had been dragging
through my work days for months and one time I was startled by a
coworker, I got that burst of adrenaline and it helped me get through
the next hour of work. I thought to myself that perhaps I just
needed to get startled more often to get through each day. But
how could I do that on purpose? It occurred to me to imagine
being on foot and chased down by a car. I tried and it didn't work,
then I tried so more vividly and boom, I got that burst
of energy. So by August I was relying on this trick a couple of
times each day just to keep me on my feet and plugging away during my
work hours. Then I'd get home and take a nap before I felt revived
enough to do any personal tasks with the remaining part of the day.
Even my regular visits to Jeff's house had to wain away to once or
twice a week as I simply didn't have the energy anymore and needed
more time resting in bed.
When I returned to the doctor's office to find out about the results
of the dietary survey, he told me that it had confirmed I hadn't been
eating enough during the day and I just had to eat a lot more food.
I was gobsmacked as I couldn't believe this and went home wondering
if this meant rather than eating one whole pizza a day I should start
to eat two, or three? Full steak dinners three times a day? I had
years of people being amazed by how much I could pack away compared
to them. They would have the burrito meal at a Mexican restaurant
while I would have the combination platter, with appetizer and fried
ice cream for desert. How the heck was I going to eat more and
how, in reflection, was I going to be able to afford it?
After trying to eat twice as much food for two weeks, pooing was
starting to hurt all the time from the shear quantity going out.
Even sitting and laying down were starting to hurt as my bones had
little more to cushion them than blood vessels and nerve tissue. I
returned to the doctor and insisted that we needed to assess what was
going on and how to fix it. When we talked about my diet, he learned
that I was drinking diet soda and it was like an epiphany to him:
That was why I was losing
weight!
He told me I should only be drinking sugared sodas. I told him of
the previous year when the emergency room doctor found that my blood
pressure was spiking with my intake of regular soda and had suspected
it was because of the industry change to corn sweetener. That doctor
had told me to avoid corn sweetened soda and, sure enough, I hadn't
had any blood pressure spikes since, nor sudden headaches as I had
been having for years. The primary doctor scoffed saying it was
impossible for anyone to have an adverse reaction to corn syrup and I
should start eating as much of it as I could to help maintain my
weight.
This time I was not going to leave his office with what seemed to me
to be more dubious advice and I assured him I did have an adverse
reaction to corn syrup and we needed to find out what was wrong and
why I was losing weight regardless of how much I ate.
He had me go out to the waiting area for a while as he saw some other
patients and thought it over, then he called me back in with a game
plan. He would check me into the hospital for a few days and have me
on a pre-planned & monitored diet. Everything going in would be
recorded and everything going out would be recorded, too. I would
have some additional tests during those days and by the end of next
week it would become clear what the cause of my weight loss was. I
agreed and then pointed out I'd need a note for the time off from
work. He agreed and I went straight from the doctor's office to turn
in the note at work and let them know I'd have to be out indefinitely
while my doctor performed some tests on me at the hospital.
I then went home and, as my mother was there and in a receptive mood,
I told her of my weight loss of the past few years and the toll it
had taken on me. That I would be out of work while the doctor had me
checked into the hospital for tests to discover what was going wrong.
My mother was surprisingly supportive and told me that she would be
there for me and help me get through this time.
Nothing turns out the way you think it will.
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