Foggy with a Chance of Fog

I do not understand drug addiction. Demerol, Versed et. al? Made me sleepy and that was about it. If the definition of high is sleeping all day and trying to push thoughts through cotton, then I'm unimpressed.

If you want to be tired and foggy on the cheap, about $20 of prednisone would mess you up for months. Just FYI for those addicts on a budget. Although the moon face and buffalo hump that comes with steroid use are probably why it has never caught on.

Today we are having what I call a 'pajama day' which is code for 'cartoons, as much as the toddler can stand to watch'. Just slowly easing into things whilst detoxing from all the drugs.

Sleep was, ironically, hard to come by last night. They said my throat would be sore, like a cold. In reality, it feels like my throat has been in a fight. The soreness is one of physical battering. I swear I can still feel the scope in my throat and the memory of choking comes with that sensation, which made sleep even harder to come by.

The toddler bag I packed kept her busy. The hubby could have left, as it turns out, and come back later, but they poked around the hospital instead. They had breakfast in the cafeteria and played with everything in the bag. Now that we're home, she's been hoisting it on her shoulders and lugging it around, clearly enamored.

I'm glad I wrote down the contents, so I know what to pack next time.

My weight continues to annoy me. At the moment, I'm gaining weight even though I haven't eaten since Monday (don't worry, I've got chicken roasting in the oven right now). I've decided it must be some residual adrenal crap. Not eating, for me, is adrenal. I don't have any other symptoms and I don't think an updose is necessary, but the complete lack of appetite is not normal.

I'm going to tweak my diet a bit, tweak the supplements, continue to exercise, force feed myself as much as I can and not worry about it. Hopefully if I keep doing the right things, it will even out.

Now to just shake the vestiges of drugs, sleeping too much, not being able to sleep at all and get on with things.

ETA: The hubby felt bad for me and kept trying to take care of me as if I was sick. He was angry on my behalf about everything yesterday. In case anyone feels the same way...I'm not angry and I'm not sick. I'm not looking for sympathy either. I don't need it. I'm fine, but it was a definitely an experience, which is why I'm talking about it at all. I've essentially been banned from Twilight anesthesia and told I shouldn't have it again. That doesn't happen everyday.

Riddle Me This

So I actually weighed myself after the vacation binge.

Didn't gain an ounce.

I just assumed I had due to all the bloatage, but nope.

Zippo.

Ate pie every day.

Double decker ice cream cones.

Cookies.

Bread, specifically to-die-for grilled cheese with brie, bacon and tomato jam.

I made sure to eat only when I was hungry even if it meant skipping meals. I also walked daily. At least a mile, sometimes two. And I took the equivalent of a cold bath everyday in the Lake, which was cold enough to make limbs approach numbness (which I'm guessing revved up the metabolism a bit).

Here's what I don't understand. I can cut carbs to the bone. Exercise intensely and don't lose weight.

Yet, I can maintain weight in the face of a week long sugar coma despite supposed severe insulin resistance.

It just doesn't compute.

Coincidentally, my last bout of weight loss stopped when I discontinued the ice therapy as described in The Four Hour Body. Do I just need to take a cold bath every day? (I don't think I can hack it though.)

Or, alternate theory, did I have a touch of the adrenals? The cramps in the small muscles of my feet and hands are classic adrenal insufficiency symptoms for me. Along with the flank pain. But that has passed.

I'm back to low carbing and interval running (which is going amazing because of the pylometrics I've been doing. FYI if you want to run, do squat jumps first, then run, it'll give you a head start).

Now the scale is being a bitch even though I'm doing all the right things.

So should I be eating pizza, fries and ice cream now?

Why is my metabolism such a strange brand of screwed up? Why can't I just do Weight Watchers like everyone else?

Insulin Poisoning or Why You Really Don't Want Diabetes

No weight loss.

After three weeks of serious focus and effort.

(Barring the ice cream, but even then we split the pint three ways, not a big enough sin to destroy weight loss.)

Excuse me while I take a moment to swear, kick puppies and smash expensive crystal into a fireplace.

I've toned the hell out of what I can tone, but that is worthless. When I taper at the end of the month, exercise will be difficult if not impossible and I'll flab out again.

Toning is not weight loss. Sorry, but it ain't. What I needed was weight loss.

I'll keep it up until I taper and what I do next will depend on the taper.

Dr. Atkins used to recommend a fat fast for seriously resistant patients. I am willing to try it, but not sure how that interacts with the adrenal stuff.

This is when I really wish I could tolerate Metformin or that there was a good pharmaceutical alternative to it that could impact the insulin resistance in my favor. I looked into this last year and while there was a doc willing to prescribe things like Byetta, Wellbutrin and Januvia (sp?) to aid weight loss, I was unimpressed with their efficacy and concerned about their side effects.

(Especially coming off an anaphylactic reaction to Cipro which will forever make me think twice before taking new-to-me medication.)

One of the theories the low carb community has been discussing is the idea that being bathed in so much insulin all the time causes permanent metabolic damage. The evidence supporting this layperson theory is diabetics who develop lipohypertrophy.

Insulin makes fat and if you spend all day, every day jabbing straight insulin into specific sites on your body this is what happens ...

Yeah, think about that the next time you eat a carton of ice cream in one sitting after eating a super-sized fast food meal. Diabetes can be treated, but you pay a price. Gonna be hard to find a pair of pants to hide those lumps.

So in essence, by (formerly) eating low fat, high carb food just like mainstream science exhorts us to do, I have been 'injecting' my entire body with boatloads of insulin for years.

Regaining the weight via carb inhalation while pregnant didn't help. (FYI the doctors told me low carbing could hurt the baby and advised me to eat carbs. I was too afraid of doing anything wrong after such a hard won pregnancy to risk screwing it up so I did exactly as I was told.)

On the upside, I got fat all over, no lumps for me,unless I become insulin dependent. But the question is, how does this impact weight loss? Is tissue forever metabolically altered past a certain point?

I don't know, but I can see how the damage could be permanent.

All the Boringness That's Fit to Blog

Things are steady state around here. The adrenals tried to do me in over the weekend, but the HPA axis was strong enough to power through (plus, there was ice cream). I had one moment where it felt like I was going to pass out, but then it faded away and all was fine.

That would not have happened a few months ago.

The only thing I'm wondering about is why is my skin 'tanning' again? What is up with that?

I have no idea what is going on with the blood pressure. I take the BP pill and don't worry about it. I don't think it's well controlled given that there's this one vessel in my sinuses (I think) that pounds so forcefully when I stand up or bend over that it squeaks. Doesn't happen all the time, but I find it unpleasant.

Who wants a head that could double as a squeak toy?

My dog that's who.

Not my goal in life, you know?

I'm still working out. Energy level is not tanking so badly now. I sometimes even think about doing an elliptical workout or going for a walk afterward, but I don't 'cause I'm lazy. We've (the hubby does these metabolic conditioning workouts with me) shaved 6 to 8 minutes off our time too. And I don't feel like I'm going to have a heart attack until around the ten minute mark, which is an improvement.

Although I did have to stop a bit as the asthma was becoming a problem, but we still finished faster than any previous workout so pffft asthma shmassma.

These workouts are not for the faint of heart.

I got a book on the whole concept called Cardio Strength Training written by some hot shot sport coach that maybe serious sports fans have heard of, but I have no idea who the hell he is. The guy talks about puking, about having to lay down at the end of the workouts, about how you're supposed to love-to-hate the workouts. I hope to not take it to that extreme, but I'm all for getting rid of fat and I'm willing to take a certain amount of pain.

Don't know if I've lost any weight as I'm not weighing myself until the carbs I ate due to the adrenal glands have been purged. Hubby has been calling me Pufferfish due to the carb bloat.

My stomach seems smaller and I have squatted my way into Venus dimples (the link says women with Venus Dimples have just 14 to 20% body fat which is in no way true for me!). My back is nowhere near as fat as my front, why can't the weight loss come from the flab fest in my gut first?

So unfair.

But some progress at least.

Food-wise, I'm eating eggs for breakfast and lunch with no snacks. Not in a disordered eating manner, more I'm just not interested in anything else and hardboiled eggs are an easy way to low carb. See also, cheap food in a bad economy.

I pop 'em on the stove, set the timer for 18 minutes and make the toddler's bfast or lunch. By the time her food is ready, my food is ready and I didn't have to stir it or even think about it.

This coincides with a general feeling of kitchen burnout. I've been cooking a lot lately and I'm just so over it at the moment.

That's it. Relatively drama free on the health front. Other stuff is not going so well but this blog is not about that.

Hodge Podge

Dr. Oz just endorsed the HCG diet so long as you are under a doctor's supervision.

Interesting.

Personally, having used HCG during infertility treatments, I never found it to have much of a weight loss effect.

Instead it inflated my boobs well into the DD range and made every pregnancy test I took positive.

So if you want huge boobs and a false positive on a pregnancy test, knock yourself out. But actual weight loss? I don't know about that. It's probably due more to the 500 calories a day diet than the HCG injections, but what do I know?

Also, for anyone who wants to lose weight without hunger--something Ozzie has referred to several times but without offering a solution--low carb, low carb, low carb. Or Paleo if you want to be more PC about it.

I have lost 1.5 pounds to date. Which is nothing. It's in the bobblehead range of my regular day-to-day weight fluctuations. I won't be impressed until I've lost at least 5lbs and have blasted through to new numbers I haven't seen in years. Until then, meh.

There has to be some physiologic something at play here. It's not me. I'm doing all the right things and have been for several weeks now and nothing.

I want to scream. Especially after trying on the jeans I have that are the next size down. Yikes.

That was frightening.

Not to mention demoralizing.

180 squats. That's how many I'm doing.

Plus cardio.

And naps to support the effort.

And only 1.5 lbs down.

My body does not work.

17 Day Challenge Update

Well the challenge has not gone well. Thank you prednisone, my wimpy HPA axis, and craptastic lungs.

However, the scaled graciously dropped 5 lbs.

Then went up 5lbs.

Then dropped 5lbs.

Ad nauseum.

Scale ping pong.

The dress seems looser, but it's hard to say.

Here are the first pic (left) and the current one (right). I think there's more loose fabric in the mid section. It was not as tight to zip.

Or maybe it's the same. So hard to say!

If the formatting is wonky, sorry. I am not tech savvy enough to get the pictures to show up where I actually want them to be.





I had to enlist the decapitator to take the pic as I didn't fair much better. Here's what I did when I attempted it on my own. No head. No feet. All boob.



If I'm ever single and looking for a man, I guess I could use this pic as my online dating profile avatar. Or I could 'sext' the hubby, but the green is a little Wicked Witch for me (which is actually why I kept the dress, for Halloween. I don't actually like it all that much. If I had the money, this is the dress I would buy.)

So basically, at this point, I'm looking for a girdle or duct tape to kind of suck in all the floppy bits.

It's ON Bitches: The 17 Day Challenge (Includes picture of my fatness)

The toddler's preschool has been steadily extorting us out of money since before school started. Our first week, we were hit up for $100 worth of tickets to some dinner dance, which was kind of a shock.

I hadn't expected the preschool to be constantly panhandling. So far in the first month...

-I spent $50 on dinner/dance tickets
-Spent $40 on fundraiser books
-Bought $10 worth of fundraiser popcorn
-Agreed to let my child play with lighters so the school could earn $20 from a consumer product safety testing company. (Allegedly this money will fund a free Breakfast with Santa, assuming we're not all dead from a house fire.)

And the tuition ain't cheap, either. It's actually one of the higher ones, something I hadn't realized until now.

So when the hard sell for the tickets started, I shared that the only other people we knew who would be willing to shell out that kind of money would be our babysitters, the grandparents.

OH, that's okay, I was told, they can buy tickets and just not come.

Uh, I don't think so. Not in this economy, sweetheart.

So the upshot is, the hubby and I bought 2 tickets and now I need a dress.

In 17 days.

Luckily I kept most of my nicer 'fat' clothes and even shoes. This whole time I've been losing weight? I haven't bought a single piece of clothing due to weight loss.

Therefore, I do have a dress. Pictured to the left here (taken two days ago). Yes, I am missing my head. This is what happens when you instruct the hubby to get the whole dress in the photo, he's very literal.

I need to lose like 10? 15? 20? something lbs to really fit into it well.

The good news is, I can zip it and if I don't breathe at all for the entire night, I might be able to squeak by.

However, for my own oxygenation, it would behoove me to lose some serious weight in the next 17 days.

The bad news? I don't really have anything else to wear if the dress doesn't pan out. The hubby is worried I will actually wear sweatpants and my Winnie-the-Pooh nightshirt as threatened.

So the 17 day challenge is ON. Let's see what I can do if I really focus, shall we?

Assuming the rest of my health cooperates, I mean. If the adrenals or asthma get bitchy, I'm not promising anything.

And no, I will NOT be wearing the orange socks. Those are for if I wear the dress before Halloween. Since the event is closer to Thanksgiving, I'll be wearing my fluffy turkey slippers.

Are you not reading Vogue? Yeah, me either.

Post Game Analysis

Yesterday was okay. Maybe a little too active for me as I hit the wall around 5pm, but some salt and sugar perked me up pretty quickly.

Beyond that, I can fit into the next size down of jeans. They are a smidge tight in the thighs and just a teeny bit tight in the waist. The thigh situation means they are not terribly flattering. Not sure how much more weight I need to lose. Probably 10lbs but 5lbs might do it.

Maybe.

I think I'll wear them around the house to remind me of what the priority is (i.e. not carbs!).

So close, yet so far. The really odd thing is the size above is hanging on me. I'm about 5lbs away from losing my pants if I lift my hands over my head. They've become hip huggers and sag so much, I have to wear heels with them or the cuffs drag on the floor.

The toddler has boogies. Again. Sigh. Is this how it goes in your house? Just a constant merry go round of sick? Or is it really the case that she has my immune system, which kind of functions like that of a gnat without a spleen.

Stupid sick.

On a happier note, I also perfected a recipe for a gluten free low carb pumpkin cranberry muffin. Delish, perfect for this time of year and only 10g of carbs. Gobble Gobble.


And now I'm off to live day 2 of 4mg.

To Oblivion and Beyond

First some general announcements:

1. Per the Queen of Optimism's request, I've added a subscription thingy. I think. Check the side bar and let me know if it works.

2.We fixed the electrical problem and learned we are very, very, very lucky our house did not burn down. Also, very, very, very lucky the hubby is handy.

3.The dog food had a dead mouse in it. New bag. Contacted the manufacturer and never heard a thing. Nice to know they care. (I know this has nothing to do with my health, but it has really been quite remarkable around here lately with all sorts of weird ass shit happening. Also, evidence that I am not crazy, my life is.)

Okay, so let's talk about squats. Namely the fact that, unless I'm having issues with prednisone, my legs don't ever tell me when it's time to stop. Instead they go numb and I happily squat myself into oblivion.

As in I can't walk for a week.

As in I once crawled up and down the steps at a Gloria Estefan concert. (My friends pretended not to know me.)

Normally, I compensate pretty well and don't push it to the max. I have learned when to back off.

However, recently, I did one of my favorite workouts. One I haven't been able to do since before I got pregnant in '07. Not sure if it has an official name or not, but I call it interval running.

I'm not really a runner. I've tried. I run like a hippo with missing limbs. Which is okay, I don't really like running. What I do like is running, skipping, galloping, chassee-ing, hopping, walking front kicks, lunges and walking for a couple miles.

So the workout consisted of walking 200 steps, running 200 steps and then interval running for a mile. Knee didn't even bother me until the very end and all the pain was clearly muscular in origin, which I consider to be good news (unless a ligament blows, in which case, boo hiss).

It was a blast. Nothing better than a chassee spanning 50 feet, no?

Yes, I'm a little strange.

Anyway, I felt great physically. The asthma flared a bit on the stairs, but that was actually a good thing, because once it has its little fit, it tends to leave me alone the rest of the workout.

Plus, my toddler came with (and hubby) and ran with me for a bit, which is awesome as we want her to enjoy exercise.

The problem? My legs did not give me one. single. solitary. hint that I was overdoing it. Nada. Worse, I haven't been able to walk properly since. Major bummer.

My calves are so inflamed, Advil alternated with Tyelnol can't even touch the pain. Hell, I can't even touch my legs, they are so tender. Today, I finally forced myself to do some massage to try and rub out the worst of it. Didn't help at all.

And...Ow!

Also, once again, I'm a temporary single parent as the hubby is out-of-town. How is it every time he's left town this year, it's been an absolute mess at home? I can't squat down to shampoo the toddler's hair right now! Stairs are not only painful, but dangerous as I can't control my legs very well. Fortunately, she's in a mellow, cooperative mood. If she dug her heels in about bedtime, for example, there is no way I could pick her up and carry her up the stairs.

Hopefully, by next week I'll be able to at least do the elliptical or walk the dog. I'd like to do one more interval run before we leave for vacation just so I don't lose ground.


P.S. Did 100 push-ups the other day. I'm building strength but my arms still look like cotton candy gone horribly wrong, which not really the goal, you know? I told the hubby, I'm a transformer in disguise. Under all the fat is a good amount of muscle that no one can see.

Doctors Blame Fat People

I had a recent run-in with a doctor who was desperate to find something wrong with the way I ate.

So they launched into an attack on the ground turkey that is a mainstay of my low carb diet. Okay. Fine. Well, what am I supposed to eat exactly? I try to avoid a lot of red meat. Chicken is dry and gets boring, but ground turkey is cheap and versatile. I use it a lot.

Let's get this straight.

The doc was a specialist.

Who agreed with low carb eating for my situation.

But was seriously admonishing me for eating ground turkey.

Why?

Because it had too much fat. Ergo I was fat because I ate ground turkey. I sh*t you not, this was the logic.

The medical student cowering in the corner, bravely cleared their throat and said, "Actually, no. It's 97% lean."

"It is?" said the doc, taken aback. I'm sure the med student had been marked down -500 points at this point. Poor student. I hope they didn't beat him.

"Yeah," the medical student and I both chimed in together.

"Well," the doc shook his shoulders, irritated, "You don't know what is in it so you shouldn't eat it."

And that was that. Patient schooled...or was I? Either way, I'm still eating ground turkey. The specialist can Suck. It. I mean, seriously, you're going to criticize me for that?

It amazes me how often my food choices are attacked or questioned in a medical setting. Doctors like to make weight solely a personal responsibility issue and negative fat bias is pervasive. I'm fat therefore it must be my fault, end of discussion.

It never has anything to do with all the prednisone or the PCOS and that medicine doesn't know how to deal with either those issues really well in my case.

No, it can't be the science that is flawed. It has to be the fatty's fault.

I've been told I ate too much.

That I don't know how to count calories (ah, yes, the 'you're too dumb to lose weight' argument) and that food labels are wrong so even if I could count, I'm still wrong. Man, us fat people just can't do anything right, can we?

I've been asked if I drink juice after sharing I follow a low carb diet.

I've been told to join TOPs and Overeater's Anonymous.

I even had a doctor who related obesity back to a history of abuse which led to emotional eating. This theory was applied broadly to every patient according to the clinic (so why a diet and not therapy????).

Rarely have I experienced relevant, quality health care when it comes to my weight. I can count those doctors on less than one hand. Which is saying something considering how often I see doctors.

It also reminds me of this post over on Dr. Grumpy's blog where a doctor, flummoxed by a patient who isn't losing weight, demands they write down everything that goes in their mouth. Because they must be doing something wrong.

I commented on that post that I believed, a 100 years from now, future scientists will not look back kindly on the so-called 'science' of weight loss and obesity doctors espouse today. I'm willing to bet the only ones who will stand the test of time are those who are low carb literate.

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure it won't take 100 years to debunk the idea that ground turkey causes obesity. If it does, there's really no hope for any of us.

Confessions of a Former Zombie

1. I have cold sores. I imagine this is a sign of how mal-adaptive my stress response has been. I've been taking Lysine which is a great nutritional therapy for cold sores. It gets rid of them pretty fast, at least in my experience. The only down side, the pills are huge.

2.I've lost 8 lbs in the last 2 weeks eating the following; pizza, Chipotle, chicken parmesan take out,bread, Sprite, Panera, Saltines by the dozen with butter etc....

What's my secret? Hell if I know. I was pretty shocked at the doctor's office when I saw the number on their scale.

I should've had some cheesecake. And ice cream. Maybe then I would've lost 15 lbs!

While my appetite has been reduced and I doubt I was over consuming even while eating junk food, it is usually physiologically impossible for me to eat that many carbs and lose weight. So I guess we can add surprise weight loss to the list of adrenal suppression symptoms.

I actually try not to lose weight when sick. It is not a healthy way to lose weight and my body eventually hits me with a huge appetite to compensate. So I was really trying to keep things even keel.

I am now back on the low carb wagon. There were just a few days there after the stomach flu where nothing appealed to me and I felt I needed to carb up to help my body recover and refuel from the flu.

3. I feel much better with the 5mg of prednisone. Really amazing. I was just dead before, a shuffling zombie. Now I have energy to feel human. The hubby was shocked at how peppy I was today. Neither of us had really dialed into how low functioning I'd been of late.

Today I did all of the following and did not take a nap!

-Mopped the kitchen and family room floors.

-Made banana flax muffins for and with the toddler.

-Made sugar free 'chocolate cake' muffins for myself.

-Put away the clean dishes, loaded the dirty ones. And will probably do it one more time before bed.

-Cooked dinner.

-Played with the toddler, including some vigorous dancing.

-Did two crafts with the toddler.

-Did the bills.

-Ironed the curtains for the family room.

-Worked.

-Helped the hubby with a presentation for his work.

-Threw out more food--unfortunately, the 5mg came a little late for some of the produce rotting away in the fridge.

This is all the stuff that was not happening before. Or rather, these would all be done on their own day, not sequentially and they would be followed by a nap. Today, the heavy lethargic feeling did not thread through my limbs like a psychic vampire. It didn't become too much work to lift an arm. I didn't have to stop and rest either.

So huge ginormous improvement. I hope this is the beginning of a long sustained upswing that lasts for a super long time. Forever would be good.

Hysterical White Female

I signed up for a weight management clinic because the high blood pressure really lit a fire under my butt. Otherwise I would've soldiered on alone because the last thing I want is to go to the doctor even more. That is NOT my dream.

The deal with PCOS is I need to follow a low carb diet which sometimes messes up magnesium and potassium levels (per past personal experience). So I wanted to work with a doctor on losing weight again (pregnancy and early motherhood was not kind to my BMI) who would order the blood work and track those levels. I also wanted to see if there were any good alternatives to metformin now that I'm not trying to get pregnant. I can haz real drugz now! Woot!

Okey dokey. Off I go to see the weight loss doc.

Well, unfortunately, while the doctor is nice enough, I have pushed his 'hysterical white female' button. I am an intense person, a creative thinker, insatiably curious, a fast talker, am well read and I know that sometimes I 'hit' people wrong. It's a consistent issue.

In a corporate setting, with time, people realize I am really good at what I do, I don't play games, I am reliable and helpful but with a quirky kooky flavor. Eventually they come around and I gain credibility. It's hard to achieve similar credibility in a 20 minute doctor visit that makes me talk even faster because I know time is short.

So I had a follow up appointment yesterday with the weight loss guy. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it because my breathing has been dodgy. I'm better in that I don't need to go to the ER, but I'm not stable either. I feel great sitting on my ass, but attempt anything more than that and I hit the wall.

The problem is, a lot of things sound like a great idea while I'm sitting on my ass feeling pretty good. Then I do them and they don't go well. Such as moving some heavy furniture up stairs a couple days ago.

I decided to try the appointment anyway because being on prednisone for a month is not going to help weight loss, I need all the help I can get.

So I got there and couldn't feel my knees. Just was really weak. Then I couldn't breathe well. Then I realized, I hadn't been breathing so hot all day, but had been ignoring it.

Living in 'I'll be fiiiine land'. Agh. Stupid me. I have to get better about this fiiiine shit.

So I sit in the waiting room and enter 'the zone' where I'm just working on finding where I'm going to get my next breath. It's a delicate process. Breathe too deep and I make it worse. Breathe too shallow and I make it worse. I have to find the sweet spot between the constraints so that I don't completely lose control of my breathing. It's a very zen thing, except it hurts.

I finally take my rescue inhaler which brings some minor relief, but by now it's too late. I'm getting tighter. Suddenly my chest and shoulder muscles are heavy and I can't lift my shoulders to breathe--the muscles are fatigued. I truly had no idea I was this far gone. At this point, I'm in the exam room waiting for the doctor and I realize I am in trouble. So I start to panic.

Panicking is never good. Don't ever panic. It makes things so much worse. I am usually so good about not panicking, but I had hit my limit.

I lost control of my breathing rate and basically had an enormous charley horse throughout my lungs--especially on the right side where the scarring and growth are located.

I was really upset about it.

In tears.

I was embarrassed because everyone was watching.

Mortified really.

Afraid I was going to end up back in the ER.

Angry that I had let this happen to me.

Frustrated that I still hadn't vanquished this latest episode.

Wondering if the asthma had damaged my lungs to the point where the coarse 'wheeze' torturing my airways was ever going to go away.

All of this was going through my mind and it made it very hard for me to focus on gaining control. I have not lost control like that in over 10 years--I am the calm, cool, collected asthmatic.

Apparently, however, I looked like a big faker????

Because once I finished the nebulizer treatment they gave me, the weight loss doctor started to play mind games with me. "Do you want to have asthma? What if you could have something else?"

Apparently, I wasn't wheezing enough for him? Or something? I had been wheezing all day but was clearing the 'coarse' rattling gunk that was the root cause with coughing, which is why I ignored the tightness. I cleared my lungs, felt better until the gunk came back. Wash and repeat.

So yeah, I agree with him. When he had his stethoscope on my back, I doubt there was a lot of noise. The gunk that had been rattling around in there irritating my airways went quiet, underground (but it came back out and tortured me at 1 am that night). Of course I was also intermittently holding my breath because it was the only way I could clamp down on the spasms and try to regain control. So I don't know how much wheezing there was to hear.

Regardless of how much I was or wasn't wheezing, who the fuck asks someone to answer that kind of question without disclosing the something else? Because how do I know the something else isn't cancer, you know? Are we playing 'Make a Medical Diagnosis Deal' and I have to decide which door to open? Really? Is he serious?

Play power games much?

Paternalistic dick much?

So I say, "Well I am not qualified to make that kind of decision. I'm not a doctor. I know in my medical records there is a pulmonary function test where my FEV1 is 70% of predicted." I knew this because my pulmonologist showed it to me, explaining she had sent it to the asshole allergist.

"But you also have normal pulmonary function tests."

I just looked at him as I couldn't figure out what to say. I should've clarified that yes, I have had pulmonary function tests when I'm healthy so, of course, there are normal ones. I mean, duh! I was not symptomatic when those were performed so they would not have shown much. They should be taken as a sign of successful asthma control. For some reason, he goes the opposite direction with it.

I suspect he's thinking I had those tests because I complained of being sick when, in fact, they were administered at every pulmonary visit for years regardless of how I felt. (And I hated them and actually their existence caused problems with the asshole allergist--I want to burn the damn things so no one ever sees them. Wait...is that even possible?)

I also should've pointed out he had access to my medical records and could have viewed my recent hospitalization records himself had he thought to do so. I had documented drops in oxygen. I have scarring and now a growth in my lung. The x rays also showed airway constriction. I had visits from three pulmonologists while in the hospital and everyone agrees I have asthma.

What does this guy know that they don't? Particularly given that I have a 6+ year long relationship with my pulmonologist. What is she missing that he is catching in just 2 visits?

Basically, he has decided I have a vocal cord problem which can mimic asthma and tends to have a psychological component. So, you know, I'm making it up and his asking me if I wanted to have asthma or not was a psychological hoop for me to jump through to see if I was emotionally invested in being sick.

You know, there is a power gradient in medicine that favors the doctor and it is ripe for abuse, even among the well intentioned. I am at the mercy of their education, intelligence and character --which all too often I have found lacking. To me, what happened yesterday was abusive. I felt manipulated and discounted. I hate feeling like I have no credibility or power and I feel threatened because this kind of stuff is when they start taking away medications and refusing to listen to me. It's the asshole allergist all over again, only with a slightly more palatable facade of faux sincerity.

I am also frustrated with myself. Obviously I am totally screwing up something as a patient and am too stoopid to figure out how to prevent these kinds of interactions. The other thing that angers me, is I let these nuts convince me there is something wrong with me. Why do I give them that credibility when their logic is so obviously flawed?

Now I don't know if I want to go back. I mean, I do want to go back and confront him on this, but do I want to continually subject myself to someone who thinks I'm a hysterical white female who just needs therapy????

No. Not really.

I am not hypochondriac, but apparently I play one in the doctor's office.

As far as standing up for myself, the doc in question sent me a follow up email inquiring about my food diary. I replied adding the following:

"I have some further thoughts on our conversation with respect to asthma that I will bring up at our next appointment. After that, I would like to confine our work together within the scope of weight loss."

And I've been working on what I'm going to say. His response to the boundaries I set will determine if I ever see him again. Now I just have to convince myself to make the appointment, which is proving harder than anticipated.

Note: This post references 'yesterday' but that's not right. This was all a few days ago, but I wrote it the next day hence the use of 'yesterday'. I'm not going back to change it, but I realized when I published the prednisone post that it made for a weird timeline so I wanted to clarify it in case anyone got confused. Timelines referenced don't actually coincide with a post's publication date.