April's CR Diary

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May 23, 2005

I'm In Trouble Now...

Or: Why I Do Not Have A Family Doctor.

I considered it alarming when my mother stopped answering my personal emails, instead only writing comments on my blog. Now I'm answering my very own MR's email in my blog. Don't worry, you're not in for "too much information." It's all about health.

Thanks to all for your wonderful comments on the doctor's visit issue. Dani -- I am totally going to give the doctor The Challenge! You're all just wonderful... with bloggiefriends like this, how can I be afraid???

MR sent me some fabulous articles about CR, including one by our very own Luigi Fontana, for me to print out and take to my doctor. I was feeling better already, almost as though MR was going with me, to argue with my doctor while I sat quietly in the waiting room reading fashion magazines. Over the course of discussing the doctors' visit, MR asked me if I have a family doctor, to whom I go for an annual physical.

I think you know the answer. The answer is no.

He was NOT HAPPY.

Basically, he said that I have got to find a doctor who understands what CR is about, else if I get hit by a bus and end up in the hospital, something terrible will happen to me cause of my white blood cells. He is worried. He is distressed. Y'all know I can't stand to stress MR out... I am willing to take supplements, exercise, and stop talking on my cell phone while I drive, if it will help my Orange One sleep better at night.

And it is kinda weird, isn't it, that someone who is so obsessed with her health that she does her RDA's on software everyday and even does the nutritional info for a fictional woman named Cindy doesn't have a family doctor? What???

There's a history. MoMR, get our your kleenex. This one is sad.

Those of you who have been with me for a long time remember in the Women's Magazines entry that when I was 11 and weighed 108 at the same height I am now (just under 5'2"), my pediatrician said I was too heavy and that I should lose weight.

I stopped eating lunch. I lost weight. I weighed 92 pounds.

That was the first bad doctors' office experience. And you know what it taught me, bloggiefriends? That doctors make you sick. I didn't become anorexic... I fixed myself and granted, I've had some wacky times with food before I discovered the life-saving CR religion of low calories and excellent nutrition, but I figured out that my doctor was wrong and that my own instincts were right.

The story goes on. When I was fifteen, I went on birth control pills because I was having menstrual cramps so bad that I would take doses of naproxin sodium that would give an ox an ulcer. But even the low dose estrogen version of the Pill was so strong for my sensitive little body that I would throw up the morning of the first day of the cycle, just like I had morning sickness. I was at boarding school during the year, and I'd go to the school health center and ask if I could sit out just my first class of the morning (8:10 am) until I could stop throwing up.

The school nurse said no. Birth control pills, she said, don't make you throw up.

Now let me put this in perspective. I was what they call a "good kid." No, I take that back. I was perfect. I made excellent grades, was nice to my elders, had SAT scores so good that my father spent five years quoting them to random strangers (I was mortified, believe me) and I never, ever, got into trouble. So to have this medical professional telling me, while I was barfing my guts out, that I was just making it up to get out of class was pretty upsetting.

Did I mention that she was my boyfriend's mom? Ugh, I forgot that part until just now. I dated Jeremy Chamberlin, creative writing major, Michigan native, and son of the ecology teacher and the school nurse.

Wow, have I graduated to much better Mothers of Significant Others. Let's take a moment to thank MoMR for being so darned nice to me. She'd made me feel so welcome in the family, I'm starting to think I'm Canadian.

So my boyfriend's mom the school nurse was saying that I was making it up as I threw up once a month, and I just went to class anyway. Ran to the bathroom to be sick, staggered around unable to eat. Ick. Not good!

Let's fast forward to a few years later. Discussions with doctors about getting birth control. You'd think that women doctors would be really liberated and helpful, but that was not my experience. To judge from the women doctors I went to, it was nothing short of harlotry for a woman to have more than one serious boyfriend before the age of 30.

I finally gave up and started going to male gyns. I had this one particularly good one who referred to me as "The Princess," was about ninety years old, and found my stories hilariously funny. I noticed that I never saw anyone under 65 in the waiting room. No wonder he liked me so much.

He retired, and I went to Vermont, hippie capital of the universe, for a year to run a giant organizing campaign. The doctors there weren't too bad... and the nurses were awesome! I still have a soft spot in my heart for one particular anesthesiologist who managed to get an IV started on me when no one else could. That was a good doctor experience.

But overall, my experience has been that doctors don't know much, and that they often make me feel worse than I did before I showed up. So I've avoided forging personal relationships with physicians of any kind. And I stay so healthy that it usually doesn't matter.

But now MR is worried that I'm going to be hit by a bus... he's always thinking about public transportation... and so I have to find a family doctor who understands CR.

A lot of people have asked me if MR puts pressure on me to change what I eat or be tougher in my CR. I think some folks wonder if someone who is so serious about his own health could be a bit of a pain about mine.

The fact is, he watches me very closely. He noticed today that the cholesterol numbers that show up on my DWIDP seem oddly high for what I'm eating, and that I should figure out if it's another bug in DWIDP, since I'm obviously not eating that much cholesterol. I haven't figured out the bug yet (though I did spend some time checking on my normal workday foods to see if any were entered wrong) but I'll keep looking. He reads my RDAs like they're baseball stats, and he was so worried about my bones that I actually started exercising.

Some people might consider this intrusive or pushy, yet it is the most wonderful expression of love I can imagine. To have someone out there who actually knows things that can contribute to my health and well-being, and who cares enough about me to follow my daily life as though his own life depended on it, is worth more than any gift I can think of. Other women may feel loved when their man gives them fancy jewelry. I know that I am loved when MR worries that I eat too much salt.

Now this doesn't mean that I want MR to cut down on the showering me with fabulous food when I'm in Canada. I expect an avalanche of low-carb Zoned pizzas, low carb pancakes, stews with stems, and breakfast salad for lunch. I will settle for no less. Oh, and I want a whole lot of homemade pickles. I am a vinegar freak, you know.

I am living proof that love is a stronger motivation than fear.

I left a message on the answering machine of the family doctor that my insurance company assigned me to. And I printed out a bunch of articles about CR.

Still, I think I'll look both ways before crossing the street. I don't want to get hit by a bus.

Posted by april at May 23, 2005 6:40 PM

Comments

Posted by: Howard at May 24, 2005 5:46 AM

Posted by: April at May 24, 2005 5:58 AM

Posted by: Laura at May 24, 2005 6:52 AM

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