My New 2025 Health Reality

When you're a fat person, you're used to a lot of assumptions being made about you, especially in the medical community.  You're fat so you're clearly lazy, don't exercise and have a feedbag full of burgers, pizza and fries strapped to your face 24/7.  Every time I've gone to a new doctor whether it be a family doctor, gynecologist, vein doctor or whomever, I've had to go into the same spiel about how I lost 226 lbs.  No I didn't have 'the surgery' or now, take Ozempic and the biggest thing when they ask for my list of meds I'm likely on because I'm still fat despite that weight loss, I've been able to smugly say:  birth control.  A look of astonishment always came across the face of the nurse and/or doctor like I was an anomaly.  A unicorn in their midst.  I almost expected them to poke my arm to make sure I was real.  There was also a part of me that wondered if they thought I was lying.  I wasn't and I was effing proud of it.  It felt like a giant EFF YOU to the profession that would attribute everything from a headache to a hang nail to our weight.  I relished the feeling of proving them wrong.  That despite still needing to lose more, I wasn't the typical fat person that they assumed I was.  I'm not saying if you have to be on meds that it is any kind of shortcoming but also, until you've been almost 500 lbs and lost it on your own and had to deal with extreme fat bias from doctors, it was extra satisfying to prove them wrong.

As most of you know, the past few years have been gutting.  The seemingly endless renos over the past four years where nothing seemed to go right with the worst most disrupting ones being the past two years.  The sudden illness and passing of my mom who was barely 66 years old.  The implosion of my family.  The final implosion of his family.  Vein procedures for almost 7 months with restrictions on what I could do strength training wise.  Throw in me knocking on menopause's door and guess what that stirs up a recipe for?

High cholesterol.

My cholesterol has always been 'moderate.'  One of those things in passing mentioned to take fiber (even though I was getting plenty in my diet from fruit and veggies like they DIDN'T listen to me when I told them) and lose weight.  Well, when you're spending 6 months in survival mode trying not to succumb to your indifference at life after your mom is suddenly gone and you start a reno that gets so horribly screwed up that you're actually still in the middle of it starting a new year, your health is not exactly the top of your list.  Am I saying we went off of the rails?  No.  Our usual high cal day added an extra treat or two that we didn't need and then turned into maybe a steak dinner from Longhorn the Friday before or Sunday after.  We still walked 2 1/2 miles 5-6 days a week but strength training was gone.  I knew I was doing myself a disservice but I was used to skating by.

At the beginning of December, I went in for my annual exam.  I decided I was going to keep things as surface as possible.  I wanted to be out and done.  I drank 20 oz of water that morning hoping to plump up a vein or two but my veins were not in a giving mood.  They begged me to go to a lab.  To do what?  If you can't get it, they don't have some mystery wizard who can burrow through my fat to my veins.  Keep stabbin' until you get it.  Eight jabs later and they were finally in.  I don't know why but I felt great when I left.  It was like the happiest I'd been leaving an appointment in I don't know how long...which should've been my first clue.  At the end of the day I got my results.  My borderline high cholesterol was now high at 262.  I burst into tears.  I knew she was going to try to put me on statins.  I awaited her note while I did my research.  I read the horror stories about side effects.  I do not have diabetes or liver/kidney issues and didn't want them.  I read tons of stories about people who took psyllium husk powder (you know, the stuff that's been sitting in my pantry for 6 months untouched), downed green tea, etc and dropped significantly.  The stuff I always said I'd do and didn't for one reason or another.  Literally, every single day I snoozed an email reminder that said *Green tea!  STATINS!*  like I was threatening myself but I didn't listen.  

*snooze*  

The next day I got the letter from her in the portal just before 8am saying she recommended statins.  I went into damage control mode.  I gave her all of the reasons why the cholesterol would jump in the past year or two from immense, soul crushing stress, grief, approaching menopause and the like.  I gave a rousing speech of how this was the kick in the butt I needed blah blah blah and off it went.  I talked to the Mr and told him I didn't want to go on them but what did he think?  He told me that my plan sounded reasonable (as it always does when you're cornered like a rat) and he'd do it with me as his was now higher too.  He said the side effects scared him too and it sounded like trading one issue for another like I thought.  I sent off a note to my bestie asking her opinion on it knowing that she would tell me if I were being an asshat about it.  Initially, I think she could tell I was so against it that I wouldn't listen to anything else other than agreement with my plan.  When the doctor came back with a rebuttal to my protest and that there is no way I should wait for a year to retest if I didn't go on statins because it made it sound like I wouldn't make it that long, I bawled to the Mr.  Then I updated my bestie. She gently gave her reasons why she supported me either way but that she herself was on them for years, had no side effects and it's not a crutch, it's something to help.  She said maybe it was all of the stress, menopause or whatever but maybe it wasn't.  Maybe it was genetics catching up with me or something else out of my control.  She gently put it in a way that made both the Mr and I feel better about the potential of me being on them.

You have to understand, when you have spent as long as I have being able to give a big middle finger to doctors who judge a book by the cover, it hit my failure trigger HARD.  I bawled to the Mr of all of the ways I failed myself.  How I did this to myself and now I was being punished.  Now I would be the cliche all doctors assume you are when you're my size.  (PLEASE know I am not putting down anyone else who takes them, this is how a mind like mine thinks.  What is fine and dandy for everyone else is one thing but having that taken away is an ego hit as ugly as that is to admit.)  I talked to the Mr after talking to him about my friend's email and we both agreed it put our minds at ease.  The doctor said it doesn't have to be forever and that is my intent.  I will be tested every 3 months for lipid and liver function to make sure it's not doing something effed up to the rest of my perfectly normal body schtuffs.  I responded to the doctor's long winded protest to my protest with "I understand.  Call in the prescription."  I had a lot of emotional turmoil to sort out that day.  A lot of feelings of failure regardless of if the reasons why were in or out of my control.  I ultimately had to tell myself to liken it to me being told I've got cancer and refusing chemo. Or the story of the drowning man on a roof.  I needed to accept the help with the intent that one day, if I do what I need to do, I can be done with it.  I know there's a possibility even if I got to goal weight it might not happen but I need something to work toward, right?

So I'm just over a month in.  

I don't know what it's doing right now but I'm hoping for the best.  Actually over the past 2 1/2 weeks it's probably gone up as we ate Vermont so I'd better get to it before I have to build a shelf under my hang to hold up my expanded girth.

We're evolving a plan Gaston style to come up with the best strategy to drop the weight as much as possible and we know strength training has got to take priority this year.  I'm a year into what I believe are menopausal shoulder joint issues and I need to get my body to a point where I am able to distinguish normal muscle function over potential side effects from the meds.  I know I can't just plow into it like I have only taken a few weeks off.  Because of the bathroom stuff, it's been months off so I'm basically a beginner again.  I will begin slow on getting steps/more movement back into the day though.  I've got my floor bike and my routine before vacation was an hour on the bike while I ate breakfast and worked and I would try to get in 4,000 'steps' on the bike so that by the end of the day with our normal three laps I could end up close to 9-10K steps per day.  We'll see how the bod reacts to that this week!  

I've got a ways to go but that's the reality for me now.  I don't need any statin horror story shares as I'm trying to make one of my 2025 goals to rewire my brain to not go to the worst case scenario.

Okay.  

Byeeeeee!

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