Recipe for a Day on the Couch
Or, why you should listen to your body even when (or precisely because) I do not.
Prep time: none.
Cook time: varies.
Ingredients: one living human body combined with many heavy boxes, PA equipment, wooden shelving, and obstacles. No particular ratio. Results will inevitably vary.
Serves 1.
Yesterday I was to have a work meeting, but it got moved to another week altogether.
Aaaah. A day with no meetings. How should I use it?
The first thing you should know about me is that I can be single-minded.
The second thing is that I am terrible at gauging the passage of time.
So, if I’ve taken the leap and decided that a task needs doing, I’m all in, and I won’t stop until I’m done, no matter what else needs to be done, however long it takes.
The third thing you should know is I’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which some doctors think is a catch-all diagnosis when they don’t know what else to call it and the other possibilities have been ruled out.
That’s me.
Oh, the fourth thing: I’m a parent of two young adults, one aged nineteen, and the other twenty-two. I’m also a writer—mostly a poet. I write to get through things.
In 2014, when my youngest son was in sixth grade and my oldest was just starting high school, my throat felt noticeably larger. A few dozen diagnostics and one surgery later, I learned I had Hashimoto’s (autoimmune) thyroiditis with an incidental finding of micro-papillary carcinoma.
At the time of my first consult, I weighed 192. I thought I’d never let myself get above 200. It just seemed this impenetrable barrier, and once breached there would be no return.
In the eight years since, I began to develop other symptoms, ones that should have gone away with my thyroid problem dealt with. Nope.
The thyroid is an undervalued gland that is critical to our metabolism. Without it, and without the replacement hormones, one could literally slip into a coma and die.
Hypothroidism runs in my family. Even my son has it. Because of that “tiny baby cancer” as it was called, I’ve been on cancer-suppressive doses of replacement thyroid hormones for many years now. Finding a dose that keeps me in the right zone— a sweet spot that is neither so much that I’ll be kicked into hyperthyroidism, which carries with it its own risks, nor too little, which would trigger the pituitary gland to produce too much thyroid stimulating hormone and possibly trigger any lingering thyroid cells to turn into cancer—has been tricky, and sensible doctors disagree about what that looks like.
Meanwhile, I started noticing an increase in pain and fatigue, to the point that I’d have to have rest days (like today) after doing normal things, like taking a walk, housework, or setting up for an event. I thought I could solve it with better sleep, more water, and vitamins; then pregabalin, gabapentin, amitriptyline, and now duloxetine.
My weight went up to 224, which I bring up not because I’m vain but because adipose tissue stores excess estrogen and that estrogen can cause all sorts of trouble like insulin resistance (aka Type 2 Diabetes, or prediabetes), and can lead to postmenopausal bleeding and/or polyps, and of course at the root of all that, inflammation, which is a function of an overactive immune system, and which can cause widespread pain.
Turns out, my body is a big ol’ soup pot of inflammatory factors, and therefore I struggle with chronic pain, which I deal with in the usual ways.
I’ve had a few fun little blips on this journey, in addition to being given thorough workups for various other autoimmune disorders, like being referred to an oncologist for multiple myeloma (nope), and getting multiple MRIs and a lumbar puncture for multiple sclerosis (nope) and idiopathic intracranial hypertension (nope again). The one thing I have for certain is chronic migraine, which I’ve lived with since I was in my early twenties and which can be severe and vomit-inducing. I now take a prophylactic migraine med, propranolol, twice a day. I also take magnesium and B2.
So what gives?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I find it a fun topic to write about.
I’m that person who actually enjoys MRIs, *stayed awake for my D&C and polypectomy, and woke up during my colonoscopy to watch my colon on the monitor as the GI moved his tiny camera around inside me.
With all of the negative/non-specific test results, I decided take a novel approach: attempt to lose weight. I figured with less adipose tissue there would be less inflammation, therefore less pain.
This was inspired by a desire to avoid losing any more organs.
Recently, about the same time that my doctor prescribed a glucose monitor, I also learned the hard way that I have gallstones. I also had a bout of postmenopausal bleeding, which resolved after the D&C but in all likelihood was caused by unopposed estrogen production. So, I cut out nearly all fats and sweets. (Sure, I binge-eat fruit, like an entire bag of clementines, but that’s better than a box of chocolates?)
I’m down fifteen pounds from where I was. And my **migraines have stopped.
So, if I’m tackling the root of the inflammation issue, why am I still out of commission today? The easier question to answer is, why was I moving those boxes yesterday?
I had day with no meetings, a task to be completed, the time to complete it, and the motivation: a book delivery was coming.
(Did I mention I’m also a publisher? I’m executive director of Inlandia Institute.)
Yesterday I could feel my blood sugar dipping from lack of food, my head starting to hurt, and I was intermittently dizzy. My body thrummed. I knew it would rebel today. Even knowing these things, I just couldn’t make myself stop until I was done.
Later, in the kitchen while my son was washing dishes: I thought you were going to ask me to help?
I didn’t plan that far ahead.
Welcome to my life.
*I stayed awake for the D&C because I was afraid of general anesthesia. After my thyroidectomy I wound up being rushed by ambulance to the closest ER for the worst migraine of my life, which I later found out can be a reaction to anesthesia.
**I have been tracking my migraines for some time and I was generally getting them about once a week, with the usual prodrome and postdrome, so to have them gone is kind of a miracle that I’m currently attributing to cutting out sugar, but who knows?
In honor of this new space and what I’ve titled it, here is a poem I wrote about soup.
Falling In, Falling Out
The soup pot stirs, my hair dips into the broth,
Tendrils warm against my neck like a whisper.
I lean again to listen: the potatoes tell me what their eyes have seen.
My own, threaded by a needle of light, squint against, resist.
Poor leeks, you have been abandoned; jilted cousin to the onion,
No one will kiss you. I will kiss you. My mouth rounds and takes you in.
Mushrooms bob amid the murk, buoy up the blooms of wilted spinach.
The green swish in the bowl as my hands raise it toward my head &
I dive in; the splash as my body’s displacement sends spray
To the ceiling. What muscles it takes to swim laps among the murk.
What love does to a bowl. Bowl me over, row me around.
No one will love me more. This, what the leeks say.
On my back I do the deadman’s float. The sky is a ceiling crackled
With grieving, the loneliness of a backyard dog.
Step out, stand alone in the kitchen with me.
The bowl is an ocean only I can drown in.