Friday, March 2, 2012

A drop in the bucket, it's the number that matters

So why do I hear good things when my sister comments that I've lost a lot of weight, or that my doctor makes me get weighed because I've lost a significant number? I hear, "you're in going in the right direction"

This last week I went to the hospital. My Primary doctor drove me there. Thirty minutes and a tunnel ride (each way for her). She had to stop for gas, and kept asking me if I wanted something to eat or drink. She waited with me at the hospital until I was checked in.

She took me to a private room in the hospital, talked to my supervisor about me going out of work and filling out FMLA paperwork, she then took me to employee health and filled out the paperwork. She did all of this because I was supposed to go inpatient to an eating disorder facility.

The key word is supposed to. The next day, when it wasn't communicated to me I would only be on a general unit until a bed became available, I declined admittance. It was only later, when my doctor was speaking to me strongly, that I realized what had happened. I felt horrible. My primary and my other doctor worked very hard into Monday night to make the hospital stay happen.

I told her I was quitting treatment and she said I was practically doing it anyway because I wasn't following treatment recommendations and I was refusing weigh in. At that point she didn't care what I did. She just said with resolution to have someone drive me home, to take a high dose of the sleeping med, and lay flat on my back. That, if I didn't sleep, to meditate.

The silver lining in the experience is that, before I fell asleep, I got a call for an interview, for a job I know I'm going to get.

The next day I did let her weigh me. I comitted to following this minimum recommendation of what to eat. She told me to be in bed by 9:30pm everynight, and to snap out of it.

Now I'm waiting for my primary doctor to return to her office, so she can clear me back to work. She's been sick, which puts me on impromptu bed rest until she returns. I'm starting to go crazy because I've been out for so long. And there was the brief moment where I thought I lost my journal, with all me ed thoughts, forever, out into the world (i was able to locate it by back tracking the day I was released). At least I've had the opportunity to pack and write my paper.

And I'll look sick when I return to work, which is also good. Well, not good, but at least validates me being out for so long. The negative part is the last 3.5 days of the week I'm going to have to play catch up for the time missed, finish my paper, and packing, and move. Sigh.

I realized something in the mist of struggling to follow the minimum. I'm not hungry for food anymore. I'm hungry for the number. I'm hungry for the pounds to go off my body. This is the first time I can honestly say I have an eating disorder.

It's as a friend tells me it's not wise to move out on my own when I'm struggling like this, and my fear that my doctor will not allow me to be her patient anymore, that I know I have a problem. In regards to the doctor I know I need to get a gas card, something, to at least give something for her effort. There's nothing that can replace all she's done for me. I'm scared she won't release me and will make me go PHP. This will put a kink in all my plans.

There's the fear, if I don't go back to work this next week, I'll lose my job. I'll lose the other job opportunity. All because of my eating disorder. Which is hard because, really, I'm more thirsty for the number.

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