Recovery with a side of doughnuts

Three days in the hospital and one three hour surgery later I was able to walk myself to the same car that brought me writhing in pain to the ER and go home. It was an amazing relief to not be incapacitated with pain and to experience walking again, even though I had very little balance, confidence, or speed when shuffling around in my apartment. Once I withdrew from the opiates that I had been taking daily for several months and actually believed that the worst of this injury might actually be over I found my purpose: I was going to put every bit of my energy into my recovery. I would resurrect and recreate myself into an even better version of my Oprah-self. It was an amazing sense of direction and I was soon walking laps around my dining room table, taking the three flights of steps to my apartment with ease and walking several blocks around my neighborhood. Yet, something was terribly wrong. I was having a lot of chest pain, still experiencing waves of anxiety, and my new walking goal was to make it the four blocks to the Dunkin' Donuts to buy a dozen doughnuts to reward myself when I got home. That little string that I had grabbed onto after my surgery to bring me towards "healing" was fraying at a rapid rate. I soon returned to work and was blazing through my physical therapy appointments. I wanted to feel well and be able to look back on this chapter of my life as just another challenge that I moved through to become a better person. Except, something was terribly wrong.

My orthopedic surgeon decided that my complaints of daily, frequent chest pain were worth a referral to a cardiologist. I soon was told that I had an enlarged heart and fluid around my heart, a condition known as pericarditis, that were causing my discomfort. The cause of these conditions could not quite be determined but four months of oral steriods and a year of pushing my body beyond its limits were likely involved. My resting heart rate was nearly 100 and I often felt short of breath. This too was blamed on my newly diagnosed cardiac conditions but no one ever intimated it could also be a result of anxiety. I wouldn't figure that out for a few more years. I wore heart monitors, had multiple stress tests, and was but on beta blockers in an effort to offer relief and an explanation. I can tell you that this was the chink in my armor that weakened by already threatened defense against depression. I was 28 years old, unable to bend over and tie my shoes, and spending my free time in the waiting room of a cardiologist's office where my cohort were mostly over the age of 75 and lugging oxygen tanks behind them. Who the hell was I and how exactly did I get where I was?

I pushed on, regaining my strength and tolerating a full day of work within weeks. My newfound heart condition had freaked me out enough that I was terrified to walk briskly let alone attempt to return to any kind of workout schedule. You know the formula: dozens of doughnuts, sedentary lifestyle, depression and anxiety = weight gain. At first the weight returned ratherly slowly. I was actually quite pleased initially as my frequent binging did not seem to translate to the quick weight gain that I was used to in my past. I gained approximately 25 lbs. in the next 12 months, nearly halfway back to my pre-Oprah weight. By that point I had stopped my cardiac medicine and my enlarged heart had decreased in size to a somewhat acceptable range. My back pain had diminished to mostly a nagging discomfort whenever I sat or laid in one position for too long, and, for the most part, my life had returned to a new normal. I continued to binge and to gain weight for the next several months as I was settling into the realization that my weight loss and Oprah year were just another epic fail in my life.

Desperate Avoidance

I was entering into a wellspring of panic in which I was willing to endure months of immobilization and excruciating pain in order to desperately hold onto the smallest shred of hope that I could continue to brutalize my body in the ways I'd been doing now for over a year. If I lost the ability to push myself in those ways I surely would return to my formerly fat self. I did not want to be that person at all costs. I took a short-term medical leave of absence from my job and met with several neurologists, sports medicine providers, orthopedic surgeons, physical therpists and rehab specialists,and general practitioners to manage my pain and attempt to decrease the herniation in my discs. I had multiple injections of cortisone, suffered through hours of physical therapy, and took oral steriods and narcotics for nearly 4 months in a row and was still barely able to walk from my futon to the bathroom in my apartment, let alone wipe myself after going to the bathroom.

Emotionally I was becoming as numb as my right leg. There are two occasions that I recall connecting to my overwhelming fear and sadness. One of them was the day when I ended up watching an Oprah rerun of my last appearance on the show as I was bedridden and stuck in the drug haze of my painkillers. I do not have words to describe the sublimely sick irony of watching oneself on TV celebrate a "spiritual awakening" about finally conquering your weight loss issues as pictures of the moments that your life would change forever flicker on the screen and you sit at home barely 6 months later unable to move because of that very "spiritual awakening". Needless to say, I was overcome with grief, loss, and anger and a whole host of complicated emotions watching myself revel in the false persona of my newly thin and revitalized self. The other time that I was overcome with panic and fear was a legitimate anxiety attack that I had one afternoon while steeped in pain and the realization that as time went on my odds of avoiding surgery were dramatically slimming. I was fortunate enough to be living with a roommate who had been a co-worker with me at a summer camp for children and adults with cerebral palsy and had become a dear friend. She was perhaps the only thing making my convalescence at home even possible as she prepared and served my meals, helped me shower and go to the bathroom, and most importantly, was a faithful companion in my darkest times. Thankfully she was with me on the afternoon of my panic attack and agreed to sit with me and hold me while a sobbed, trembled, and thought I was going to die. I'm not sure if I thought I was going to die or wanted to die on that day. Either way I was convinced my life was ending. Of course, it was...my life as I knew it was about to change forever.

A few weeks later my avoidance was to come to a screeching halt as my body made my decision about how to proceed without my consent. My parents had come into town to take me to a surgical consult as I was finally beginning to explore the reality that I may have no other means of recovery. While getting into the car to go to that appointment I twisted my back in just the right way getting into the back seat that my L-5 spinal disc finally ruptured and I was sent into the most excruciating waves of pain and nausea that I have ever felt. That was one wild car ride to downtown Chicago as I attempted to provide navigation directions to my father as he fearfully dodged the traffic and I cried out directions from the floor wells of the back seat where my head had fallen. We made it to the ER where a compassionate security guard lifted me out of the backseat and into the hospital, as none of the ER staff would help me get there. I'm not certain if you've ever spent any time at an inner city urban emergency room or not but I can assure you that my back pain was not the highest priority for the medical staff. As I lay writhing and crying in pain my mother did her best Terms of Endearment impression while screaming at the nurses to tend to me. Trust me when I say that my mother's tactic did not actually endear any of them to me and quite possibly had the opposite effect. However, I was able to clearly and calmy tell a nurse of the source of my pain and the fact that I had just been on my way to a surgical consult with a doctor at the hospital. Morphine was administered. I was admitted. This was not my plan. I was going to have emergency back surgery whether I liked it or not.

It all falls down

I needed more and more creative motivation to push through my growing pain and depression and continue my grueling workout schedule. I devised an "adventure vacation" to Colorado with the intention of doing all of the adventurous physical activities and challenges that  my weight purportedly had keep me from doing in my life. I was successful at asking a loyal, if not weary, friend to join me on this trip to the Rocky Mountains and she even agreed to my outrageous schedule of switchback mountain biking, horseback trail riding, white water rafting, and hiking. Even as I planned for this trip, and all of the glory that I hoped it would bring, I continued to increasingly binge on fatty, sugar-filled foods and push my body to new limits to punish myself for such disgusting gluttony and self-sabotage. I have such sadness now as I look back at how unaware, confused, sad, and angry I was at a time when I was desperate to have the world see me as a successful young person reaching to grab my thin-girl destiny.

The vacation came in the summer of 1997, nearly a year after my Oprah debut. It was indeed a mostly beautiful, fun, activity filled trip which my friend dutifully survived, and quite possibly enjoyed. It wasn't until the last few days of the trip that my destiny came crashing into focus, even if it wasn't visible at the time. There was nothing particularly special about the day or our decision to spontaneously enter a recreational indoor rock climbing facility to add to our growing list of conquered adventures. I recall climbing to the top of the wall with a fair amount of ease and feeling quite confident about my unforeseen skills at scaling. It wasn't until the young man at the other end of the rope holding me up let go of that rope as I was repelling back down the wall and sent me crashing nearly 20 feet to the ground on my back that the experience took a turn. It all happened very fast and my memories of that day have become a flashback of moments in time. I checked all of my extremities and made a quick scan to see if I was bleeding once I was splayed out on the ground and everyone in the facility came rushing to see if I was okay. I determined that I was perfectly fine as I could move unencumbered, there was no sign of blood or brusing, and I wasn't experiencing any acute pain. I even went white water rafting later that afternoon, and horesback riding the next day and was attempting to laugh off the experience as a minor bump in the road in an otherwise amazing, life-changing trip. Funny what we can push through with sheer determination and a keen ability to ignore our bodies.

As luck would have it, I got yet another call from an Oprah producer about a month after my adventure vacation. You guessed it...I agreed to once again be on the show to share my increasing success at trimming my waistline and my "spiritual awakening" about my relationship with my body. More Oprah hugs (I fantasized that we were becoming friends by this point), lots of high-fives, and even a photo montage of from my adventure vacation rounded out my latest, and what would be my last, television spotlight. I particularly recall the photos of myself at the top of the rock climbing wall. I didn't mention my fall and somehow completely forgot to share that I'd become dangerously depressed and was now binging on a weekly basis. I honestly think that I was able to buy the hype that I was an inspiration to myself and now for the dozens of other overweight people following my progress and working towards their own personal renovation.

A few weeks later, I collapsed on a step machine at the gym and could barely get myself to my car and drive home...my right leg and foot felt totally numb and wouldn't bear my weight. I had no idea what the problem could be and initially thought I had pulled a muscle. That same day I went to see a doctor who told me that I was having back spasms and prescribed a muscle relaxer. I scheduled an appointment with a chiropractor, because that's what you do when you have back pain. After a couple of days of chiropractric treatments, and more trips to doctors and a neurologist my MRI revealed two extremely herniated discs in my low back. Four months of extreme pain and a series of medical procedures and medications to avoid back surgery began. Once a doctor told me that back surgery would take away my ability to run or bike for any sizeable distance I was determined to do whatever I could to not let that happen. My overexercising was the only thing keeping me from ballooning up to my former size and I could not live with that humiliation.

Let's try this again

I'd received the call that was my chance to rewrite my personal history and reclaim some shred of dignity that was taken from me in my disatrous international television debut. I would return to Oprah triumphantly to declare that I was finally conquering my fat demons and becoming the thin person that I was always meant to be. I fantasized that the new subtitle under my name would read "thinks she'll never be fat again". The drill was pretty much the same only this time I knew to wear solid, dark colors to highlight my ever reducing body frame and try to avoid being filmed on my right side to highlight my much better profile on the left. The limo picked me up and I was practically giddy when I was ushered into the green room and taped up with microphones for my date with redemption. As before, everything went by faster than expected, even though this was not a live taped show. That was the season when the Oprah show decided to split each episode into two half-hour segments. The first half-hour featured helpful hints about watching your weight and eating well while entering the holiday season and the second half-hour was a live show by Micheal Bolton as he hocked his newest Christmas album. Wierd, I know, but I loved every single bizarre moment of it. I got what I came for...a hug and celebratory scream from Oprah, a before and after shot from my previous show to the current show, and plenty of high-fives and "you go girl's" from fellow former fatties on the show. Oprah even introduced me to Michael Bolton shortly after he warbled "Ave Maria" as I sat in the front row a few seats from the daytime talkshow queen. I even got an Oprah mug. Life, however strange, was good.

Except, it really wasn't at all. I was becoming depressed, even though I wouldn't have known to call it that at the time. Workouts became harder as my body began to ache from over-exercising and I was driven beyond reason to keep dropping pounds even though I began to binge on literally dozens of doughnuts and packs of cigarettes after my 4-hour workouts on the weekends. Suddenly I felt compelled to find my way to my thinnest self and felt ever so strongly that I was not going to be able to do it. It felt like life or death. Looking back, I could not see just how lonely and sad my life had become and how I was beginning to bargain with myself to make this unsustainable workout schedule and my desperate attempt to find self-love and approval by losing weight a success. I would spend my weekend nights alone with a bag of candy, a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of wine, and a blockbuster movie, hoping to numb myself to a growing ache in my heart and a knowingness in my mind that something was very, very wrong. As punishment for these binges, I would extend workouts to sometimes a full day and then reward myself with more candy, doughnuts, and overeating...you see the pattern. I was out of control and working overtime to avoid an increasing tide of bad feelings by either over-exercising or over-eating and doing the other to compensate for the other. I believe it is called a vicious cycle for a reason.