Catching Up and Moving Forward

Well, now that I've done my requisite amount of moping over yesterday, let's get on to today's blog.

Yes, yesterday was in fact Day One of my vacation, well, my four-day vacation, I have to go back to work on Friday. I spent the day, up at the crack of dawn and on the road, to go visit my doctor.

Now, I knew this wasn't going to be fun. I don't like my new doctor under the best of circumstances, and, well, I'm no fool. I have a set of scales at home. I knew that in the past three months I hadn't lost any weight. Zero. And I've been totally frustrated by it my own damn self.

So I got to the doctor's office at the appointed time. And soon started what I'll call "The Same Thing Happens Every Time." A nice lady meets me at the reception desk and asks can she help me, I say yes, I have an appointment this morning, and she asks my name. She then asks if I've had my surgery yet. A little deflating, to be sure, especially when I have to answer, smiling through clenched teeth, that yes, I've been post-op over a year. She then asks for my insurance card, the same insurance card I've given them every three months since October of 2004, to copy for their files. Then I get to wait.

And wait.

Then the nurse comes and gets me, asks if I'm taking calcium and vitamins, doesn't wait for the answer, weighs me, and takes my temperature and my blood pressure. The weight is in front of me, but unless - this is every time, remember - I ask, she doesn't tell me my temperature or blood pressure. She also doesn't tell me what my weight was last visit so I'll know what degree of stink-eye to be expecting from the doctor.

I'm then led into an examining room where I sit on a table on a piece of tissue paper and twiddle my thumbs for approximately 20 minutes. Not a magazine, not a radio - no graffiti, no exciting window view. Then Mr Doctor comes in, says hello, looks at my chart, punches some keys on his laptop, and waits for a screen to appear. When it finally does he reads it and says, "And you're....Elizabeth?"

This is the degree to which my doctor knows me.

All that happened yesterday, and when I did acknowledge that I was in fact the person on his screen, he asked how I was. "Well, apparently, stuck," I answered.

"I see," he replied. And that was as friendly as he was willing to be on this day. For that "I see" wasn't said in a pondering way. It was said in a "shame upon thee" way.

He then immediately began to preach.

He asked me what I was doing wrong. I was very honest and told him about my diet, what I'd been eating and how I'd changed the things that he told me I might be doing wrong since last time. I told him about adding the protein drinks, and that I'd been doing regular exercise the first six weeks of my time away from him, but when I continued to see no results, I got discouraged and have been doing very little lately.

And he preached.

He preached about the exercise, and he preached about the diet. He preached about the diet because - he didn't believe what I was telling him. His words, not mine: "And as for the diet, if this is what you say you're eating, you're either fooling me or fooling yourself."

And it all went downhill from there.

I'm not going into the sordid details, but he ranted and raved at me for about 20 minutes. He told me that it was so common for people, when keeping a seven day food diary, to lie about what they write down. Now, I've done several of these diaries, and folks, I don't lie about my answers. I have no need to, because I want to know what I'm doing wrong, see if I can correct it, and get on with the business of being a smaller me. And I can attest to this by the fact that every time my nutritionsit has looked at mine, she's seen things in it she didn't like and we've discussed it. And save for the occasional lapse, I've changed it.

His suggestion? Less food.

Which, hell, is fine with me, because I don't care about food anymore anyway. It's just that everything I've read and heard tells me that if I keep starving myself, I'm going to hoard every calorie I get, and the weight will never come off. That's basically why my surgery buddy TT kicked my ass some months ago. "That's what you eat? Good God, no wonder your hair's falling out again!" That's when I started back on the Orange Crapius twice daily.

Anyway, when I mentioned this "not eating enough" theory I'd always believed, Mr Doctor said, "Not true." "Well, I can eat less," I replied. What I wanted to reply was, "Why don't I just stop eating altogether and then you won't have to deal with me anymore," but I thought better of it.

Mr Doctor then said really the only thing he could do was send me for an upper GI to see if I have what's called a fistula, which to me sounds like a balled up hand with fangs, but in actuality is a breakdown in the workings of the surgery that can cause stalling of weight or even weight gain. "I think it's unneccessary and I'm sure you don't have one, because you don't have the symptoms (being hungry and not getting full), but just to prove you don't have one.... And I'll call you, but I'm sure that's not your problem."

Thanks, doc. Send me for a test I neither need nor can afford just so you can prove yourself right. He scheduled a test for me - tomorrow at 9:15. Another day of my vacation wasted, getting up at 6:30 and driving 2 ½ hours so I can find out that, well, I've just been lying about what I eat.

I looked at him finally and said, "Well, I just don't know." And he replied, "I don't know, either." And we stared at each other a minute, and that's how our visit ended.

I drove home, dejected and angry with myself. I should have kept exercising. I should have done something (I actually refused to eat in the 24-hour period before my appointment) to have made myself lose at least a pound for that bastard.

Then I realized. Yeah. That bastard. And my anger shifted its focus.

I'm nothing to this man. He didn't perform my surgery, he didn't get the big surgery fee from me, he has no stake in me or my happines and well-being whatsoever. I'm simply $67 every three months as far as he's concerned - I'm not worth his time. And that just pisses me off.

And so I moped last night, and this morning got up, picked up the phone, and canceled the test for tomorrow. I don't want it; in fact, I'd rather have something be wrong with me and not know it than to have him be able to say he's right.

Fuck him. Right in the eye.

On a brighter note, I got home just in time to prepare for Halloween at the Poderosa. This is the first time since I've lived here that I've actually been home on Halloween. I had no idea how many kids I'd have ringing my bell, and I was worried sick that the 3 bags of baby M & Ms and 3 bags of baby Snickers I'd bought wouldn't be enough, and that I'd end up the night handing out dryer sheets, cans of soup, plastic cups, and paper clips.

In the 2 ½ hours alloted for trick-or-treating here in town, I had a total of two doorbell rings. Four kids at the first one, and one at the second.

And now, two things struck me about this tiny cross-section of Halloweeners.

First, all five of my treatees seemed to be between the ages of 13 and 15. Second, they all had the same costume. They were all dressed like kids walking around the neighborhood asking for candy.

Oh well. At least I still have my dryer sheets and soup. And paper clips. I was really hoping I'd just have one more kid come by so I could make his or her day by handing over 5 ½ bags of candy.

That would have made me happy.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Day Two of vacation was spent paying bills, doing laundry, going to the grocery, getting a pedicure (oh, lawks a mercy, I deserved that pedicure), and cleaning my kitchen. I deep-cleaned my floor with some Pine-Sol. I had intentions of getting Mr Clean, seeing as how he's a friend of Mr Peanut's, but the Pine-Sol had something written on the bottle that made it impossible for me to refuse. "Poderoso Aroma A Limpio." No idea what it means, unless it's "The Aroma That Will Have You Limping Around The Poderosa," but it was enough to make me pay 2 cents more.
* Kudos to LilyG, who not only gave me a Halloween acro, but was clever enough to do it with the word verification letters after I was dumb enough not to give any letters to acro with. That's why she's running our country, you know.