Mandated Weigh-Ins

Not for me, thank god.  Well, actually I have a personal mandated weigh-in every morning, but that's a private affair, I hate hate hate being weighed by someone else.  

Anyway, the weigh-ins in question are for G.  I took him to the vet for routine shots today, and he has lost two pounds since the last time he was there (January), bringing him down to 67.5.  G!  This is not good!  I try to keep him around 75, but he still hasn't entirely rebounded after his scary hunger strike last summer, when he went from 77 to below 60 in just a few weeks while I was out of the country doing research.

And now I have been designated as That Owner, that needs to have someone else looking over her shoulder to watch out for her animal's welfare.  I used to measure his food out, but since I've been building him back up from last summer I just fill a huge bowl and let him eat as much as he wants (although he still has specific feeding times, I don't leave food out all day for pest control reasons, but I never take the food away until he loses interest on his own).  He also gets peanut butter for a bedtime snack, instead of the little dry tidbits I used to give as the evening treat.   I swear I do not neglect my G!  This animal is my best friend in the world, hands down, no question, and it doesn't bother me if that sounds pathetic.  If you knew him, you'd understand.  He also gets a lot of credit for the fact that I hung on long enough to make another stab at recovery.

I had to leave him for a few days over spring break while I toured grad schools, and he of course didn't eat then, which could partially explain the loss.  Also, we've had lots of stormy weather lately.  He has major storm anxiety, and won't eat when he's nervous.  All logical explanations, I am really hoping nothing internal is going on...we'll just have to keep an eye on it.  I'm going to have to leave him for more than twice as long this summer, and I'm already worried about the effects on his health...

I almost forgot, the vet tech made an unsolicited comment: "We could throw you up on the scale too, hyuk hyuk, put you both on the bulk-up program."  Um, or you could not.  I'm having extreme body issues this week, so it felt halfway validating to have her make a comment alluding to the fact that I should gain weight, but the other half was just depressed by the reminder that people are constantly evaluating each other's weight.

In Which I Do Not Appreciate Randomness

My weight has gone up a ridiculous amount over the past week.  Despite the fact that I have made no changes to my food or exercise habits.  Arrrggghhh.  I can handle gain if I have some cause with which to correlate it, but this whole phenomenon of my body randomly deciding to lipidify itself is unsatisfactory.  

It could be a reaction to what I lost during my travels over spring break; it's possible that just a few days of restriction shocked my system back into starvation mode, which is never good for the metabolism.  I can't blame my body for being vindictive, we've had a pretty abusive relationship for a large portion of my life, and I probably deserve whatever it can dish out to me.

Granted, I am still a ways from the "goal weight," and know that I am going to have to weigh this much (and more....) sooner or later.  I am just frustrated that it happened without me even trying. I feel very gross.  But not completely flabby, in a way, it's just like my torso is too thick and inflexible.  Does that make any sense? And I think I have more arm fat, if I clamp my arm against my side I think I can feel the flesh smoosh (hat tip to Lisa for the term).  How in the world am I supposed to lay off the exercise or increase food when I am already at risk of spontaneous inflation even without curbing the lingering disordered behaviors?

EDIT:

I just had a disturbing idea.  Yes, I am 22 years old and I have to ask a 6th-grade health class question on the internet: At what point in the menstrual cycle does bloating occur?  

!!!

I had not figured the whole Becoming a Woman thing into my schedule this week...

Painful Scene

I try not to make assumptions about people based on their physical appearance.  I swear.  But sometimes you look at someone and just know.  Sometimes it can be attributed to intuition, and sometimes it's just so obvious that the only possible crime is no assumption but denial.

So there is This Girl.  I would guess she is about a year younger than me, just because I have no memory of her from freshman year.  I have seen her around the science side of campus almost daily for a couple of years now.  She started out slender, became skinny, then gaunt, and now she's just scary.  Scary as in I have no idea how she makes it to class in the morning.  Scary as in I want to follow behind her and hold her backpack up so its weight doesn't crush down on her frame any more than necessary.  Scary as in she acts completely oblivious to the fact that she looks like walking death.

Keep in mind that I attend a large, preppyish university in a region where women are still often encouraged to be demure, dependent, and delicate.  In other words, we're a breeding ground for EDs, and it's not uncommon to see gaunt, hypoglycemic people around campus, either haunting the coffee shops, sitting in the library with their sugar free gum and diet Coke at 1:00 in the morning, or puffing along at dawn and dusk in the Skeleton Crews of joggers in their Sofees and sorority t-shirts.  This is part of the landscape, unfortunately.  But This Girl still stands out, I cannot emphasize my disbelief that she's able to get out of bed, much less attend classes, etc.  It's ironic that the human body sometimes surpasses our expectations the most when we are subjecting it to the worst abuse.

Still, at first I tried to tell myself not to assume things.  Maybe she's just thin, maybe she has cancer, maybe I should mind my own disordered business.  Then one day I was not far behind her on our way into the chemistry building, and I overheard her wailing into her phone: "And then my mom made me sit there and eat a muffin!  In front of her! Who does she think she is? I wish she had just beaten me, I wanted to die."  The cancer hypothesis suddenly seemed much less likely.

That was last year, and this semester is the worst I've seen her.   Body invisible within her clothing, face reduced to nothing but eyes and cheekbones.  Usually I see her in/around the lab building, but today G. and I were out walking, enjoying the afternoon sunshine after the past few days of storms, and I saw her crossing the street towards downtown. 

This was possibly the saddest scene I have ever witnessed.  She was trying to exercise.  But she couldn't.  She would take a huge breath, kind of jog/trot for about four or five steps, and then have to quit and go back to walking.  About twenty paces of walking, then another four-step attempt to run, then another failure.  Hand to chest.  Slight pause. Look up at the sky.  Praying?  Cursing? Able to form a thought at all, or just channeling sheer will?  Then back to the another truncated attempt at jogging. The cycle repeated again, and again, and again, until my eyes were too full of tears to watch her anymore.

It reminded me of an experience I had back when I was around 13, at the absolute rock-bottom.  I had always been a good softball player, not to brag, but I was typically the starting first-baseperson. Ever since the age of four, I lived for that game.  But at spring tryouts that year, after a winter living inside my vortex of ED, I wasn't even a shell of the player I had been the previous year.  I managed to get a hit, but couldn't make the run to first base, I literally couldn't.  Tried, and fell, got up, few more steps, and face planted in the dirt again, my legs just couldn't do it.  One of the most humbling experiences I've had, but one of the most important too, because it was a big eye-opener for me, and ended up being a turning point in realizing I truly had a problem.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the hell out of anorexia?  This afternoon, watching that girl's syncopated progress down the street, I was literally shaking with rage and sadness, and that got G. nervous and upset too.  In case you have forgotten, Cammy doesn't cry under normal circumstances.  It's amazing how intense my indignation and frustration become when I am able to observe the disorder from the outside, instead of the distorted view from within.  Fuck you, ED, on behalf of everyone that you have ever deceived and destroyed.

"A World That Had Been Refashioned Anew"

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known.  We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed.

~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Perfect description of how I often feel about the ED and recovery.  The old patterns don't seem optional, and it's so easy to procrastinate making changes while holding onto the delusion that someday we'll miraculously wake up "cured" and normal, if we can just hang on that long. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that.

Life should come with a warning label: "Proactivity required."

Week in Review

So, not much blogging this week. On Tuesday I realized I had a major midterm on Thursday, which I had previously been unaware of. Oops. Read your syllabus, Cammy! So panicked studying has occupied most of the week. But, there were some events of interest:

1) The neighbor that lives on the other side of my duplex was broken into on Tuesday night, and the intruder beat the hell out of him. This happened around 8, police came, took a statement, left by 9. They found the guy's car and confiscated a pistol from it (according to my neighbor, who told me about it the next day). Then the psycho came BACK around 12:30 and threw rocks through my neighbor's windows. The neighbor packed up and left, and has been stopping in once or twice a day (always accompanied by someone else) but isn't sleeping there.
Which leaves lil ole Cammy to hold down the fort against psychoviolentstalkerguy! Apparently it's not random, the guy had a beef with my neighbor over a girl, but he doesn't seem like a particularly rational individual, so I've still been concerned. Luckily, G. is belongs to a pretty intimidating breed of dog, and anyone who has spent time in the neighborhood has seen me walking him. Also, the policy have been cruising by about every half hour. Anxiety, anyone?

2) I was scheduled to have a bone scan on Tuesday. I drove 30 minutes to my appointment, waited for an hour. They started my scan and the machine froze, waiting another 20 minutes for them to figure out what happened and reboot it. Then, halfway through the procedure, someone from the office came in and told the tech to stop the scan. Apparently since I made the appointment myself (even though I had a referral from my physician!), insurance wouldn't cover it. Apprently they cover the procedure but only honor the referral if the doctor's office calls to set up the appointment. I fail to see the logic, as long as they've got a referral I don't see how it matters who the receptionist talks to on the phone about whether to come in on a Monday or a Tuesday?
Anyway, they stopped the scan, deleted what they'd done, and sent me home. I was much more upset that I probably should have been; I called my momma sobbing and everything. I am a scientist, I value data, and I could SEE my scan on their monitor, yet I wasn't able to get any readout from what they'd measured. I got to glimpse my carbonated vertebrae, without any verdict on how much the density has declined since my last scan (2 years ago). Plus I felt like an idiot, but I had done exactly what my physician told me to do in order to set up the appointment. Argh! My doctor called in a new appointment for me immediately, and I go back in two weeks to be re-radiated.

3) I feel like I'm stagnating in therapy. And honestly I've got so much on my mind right now, I have not been trying much in terms of moving forward with things. I'm doing a good job of staying stable at the current point. The trips over spring break were tough (I did well on the last one but still restricted pretty severely on the trip home), but I've rebounded. I am so consumed with the grad school decision and basically steering the course of my career that I have kind of lost interest in contemplating the ED, it's so much easier to just follow my set patterns without thinking about them. I know I can't let this slip by the wayside, because my world is going to change drastically over the next few months, and I cannot let the disorder throw me into a tailspin, I have too much else on the line.

Success, for Once

So, I did well, much better than last week.  I still cut lots of calories today, but I was far better on a relative scale.  I had breakfast, for one thing, which made a big difference all on its own, even though it was less than what I would have had at home.  Lunch was very light, but I had a damn good dinner.  It was a lecture/banquet, so I couldn't order my own food (!).  But what they had was good. (I am a scientist, you know, but I am utterly clueless as to how the shrimp gets INSIDE the chicken before they cook it...).  As soon as I tasted the green beans I could tell they were cooked with butter, but I ate them anyway.  

So in a nutshell, yes, ED was still riding on my shoulder all day, but this time it wasn't crushing me.  Anorexia can kiss my ever-growing derriere.

The interview went well.  Love this prof, the school is really nice, and he officially offered me the position.  

That's the good news.  The bad news is that the interview went well, I loved the prof, the school is nice, and he officially offered me the position.  This makes my life very difficult.  I have it narrowed down to three options, but it is going to be so incredibly, indescribably hard to decide.  For once, there is something more urgent to obsess about than my calorie budget.  In a way this is good for me, but I am so uber-stressed, this is going to be probably the most important choice I have made in my career so far, and will pretty much determine the direction of my career in the future.  Eeek.  Eeek.  Eeek.  Stress. Stress. Stress.

I will have all day to contemplate (a nice euphemism for "obsess about") this on the drive home tomorrow, so I should try to sleep now.  Overall: I am keeping with my goals so far, the main challenge will be not to fall into ultra-restriction while sitting in the car all day again tomorrow.

All Drived Out

I am here, EXHAUSTED.  My drive was extra-long, due to a one-hour delay for construction aond then another extra ~30 minutes because my dashboard GPS 1) Tried to tell me to take an exit that DID NOT exist, resulting in me missing my turn and having to drive 12 miles to the next exit to turn around, and 2) Took me off the interstate, meandering around some backroads, and then back onto the same damn road I'd started from.  I had Google maps directions that made the same mistakes, they probably get info from the same database.  Argh.  

I did meet my eating goals for the day, woot Cammy.  Not sure how I feel about this, besides sleepy.  Well, sleepy but in that jittery frustrating way of being worn out but too caffeinated to sleep.  I rarely consume caffeine (not on purpose, at least), but road trips are an exception.  Jitters beat falling asleep at the wheel.  I did cut calories due to the fact that my ass was planted in the driver's seat for almost 10 hours, but nothing as drastic as last week.  I was able to get in a fair bit of exercise this morning, and some here tonight, enough to keep me sane, at least.  Although if I had any sanity to "keep," then I wouldn't need to exercise in order to hang onto it, interesting paradox that I'm too fatigued to ponder.

Tomorrow, the interview!  Thanks so much for all the supportive comments on last night's post, y'all have no idea how much it means to me.  For now, I am signing off but wanted to share today's Indexed post, I think it definitely applies to ED recovery:

(Image credit to the ingenious Indexed blog)