Note: I'm picking up in a rather stream of consciousness food list I started on 7/7 and abandoned when it got away from me - you'll note there are ruminations aplenty but nothing about menus or things I ate, beyond a vague mention of steak and sweet tea.
We have been on somewhat of a roll - very busy, not home a lot (who knew? I thought that was over with Baseball Season!), and I have been eating some interesting things. And less tea. Well, until yesterday, (July 6) when I fell off the Tea Wagon and landed in a vat, but at least I'm thinking about it now. Even BD has noticed that when I drink less tea, I am somewhat lighter. That, and my mom. . .
Mom has diabetes. Dad has diabetes. My brother has diabetes. And yet, we are a family that communicates best through food. Holiday food, comfort food, food you eat watching tv, food you eat when you are pissed. We talk about what we're having for dinner in the middle of eating breakfast. We identify old family gatherings or major life events by what we ate and who made it, and how much or little we enjoyed it. ("Remember the year Daddy and IB got food poisoning at the family reunion? It was the baked beans, or maybe the bbq. . . or was it the devilled eggs? Aunt Nutty made the best chocolate pie that year - but it wasn't anything like that peach cobbler Emma made . .. that was just like Old Mama's . . . " and so forth.) Whenever we eat together, there is always enough to feed whoever is expected plus any unanticipated guests - and then we pack up meals for my homebound grandmother and sickly uncle, and parcel out the leftovers for later. I grew up with the table groaning through family occasions, and all of us falling into post-meal food comas. (Well, mine ended when the kids came along - boy, do I miss those days!) The best memories of my life involve waking up to the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee in the kitchen, with grits bubbling on the stove and toast browning in the toaster, to be saturated with butter and home-made plum jelly. And don't even get me started on the tea, or taking that first sip of Coke out of the can, or pouring a Sprite into the glass, watching it cascade over the ice and sipping it while the bubbles tickle your nose. And that was well before I learned to appreciate the accent of good bourbon, crisp, clear chardonnay, a margarita, a daquiri, a bellini or simply spiky, rich merlot. Yes. We are food people.
We are also diabetics, and we are all overweight, although I am the least so - but I'm catching up.
Lately, Mom's diabetes has spiraled out of control. The spiral commenced in November 2004, when she was advised by her doctor (also her friend and kind of surrogate son, as she used to work for him) that she must quit smoking (her favorite thing in the world) and think of having a carotid roto-rooter procedure, as she was nearly 80% blocked in one of her arteries. She quit smoking cold turkey that night, thinking it would help. I was shocked, myself, that my former nurse, medical-knowledge-saturated mother would actually think that stopping smoking would help her grease-clogged arteries magically repair themselves - and, really, it did stop the narrowing of said arteries, but not enough, and we were all so delighted to see her give up the cancer sticks that nobody said nothin'.
She got through Christmas and the early spring, and then found out that her blockage was no better, and surgery was in order. She had the procedure, and spent a week in the hospital recovering, trying to get over a bad reaction to anesthesia, her sugar going nuts after surgery and the shock of having a 4-inch long scar on her neck - not easy for a 1960's beauty queen, let me tell you. It was shocking, to see her so helpless and frankly ill - mom is a pretty rough & tough lady, very determined and hard headed. She became an invalid, of the bad hair, poor makeup, tottering weakly around in a nightgown, "can you help me get these damn stockings on" and "somebody give me a fucking teaspoon of sugar for my cawfee RIGHT NOW!" type.
Nothing has been right since. She got an infection that persisted past leaving the hospital, which her surgeon explained as a bleed - she had a big, painful lump on her neck. About a month after surgery, she and dad were sitting watching television when she felt wetness on her neck; when she touched it, the scar had burst open and a jet of pus shot out of it. They wrangled an emergency appt with a very good local doctor, who was pissed that his nurse (Mom's friend) had worked these people in when he had a very busy day and let Mom & Dad know that. His tone changed, however, when he saw the wound - he said he hadn't seen an infection that bad in 30 years, and went to work, squeezing about a cup of goo out of it before he sent her straight to the hospital from his office, to receive IV antibiotics - for 4 days. We realized later that she very nearly died.
(In the ultimate idiocy, they tried to sue the hospital and surgeon and were told they had no case because of something an unconnected doctor had written in his notes - way to go, hospital! Damn doctors. . . )
In the process of recovering from that, she has had horrible trouble with the diabetes - her sugar went crazy and became uncontrollable, and she had now ventured into the world of injectable insulin and semi-hourly finger sticks. It sucks. She has gone semi-sugar free - I say semi because Mom just doesn't get the sheer number of things that contain sugar, and yet because of the deprivation she feels now, she can't handle it. Most of her favorite things are gone - no more sugar in her cawfee, no more Cokes or Sprites, no more dessert of any kind because sugar-free tastes like crap, no more fruit, no more starches. Her sugar spiraled up to 400 one day because she had 6 "sugar-free" cookies - upon looking at the ingredients, we identified she had consumed 14 grams of sugar alcohol with her cookies. She was very depressed. One day, she went to Krystal and had a Krystal chick and rewarded herself for her under-200 sugar that day with a small sweet tea - POW! Sugar back up over 400. Her doctor later told her that the next time she wanted sweet tea, she should take 7 packets of sugar and just eat those.
What does it mean for me? I have seen the future. I contemplate making changes, but I resist going there. Food is one of the favorite things we have in life; to measure and manage and take the joy out of it is unthinkable sometimes. It's one of the reasons I like food blogging with Victoria - she has measured and managed every portion and bite very diligently, making sure that she gets x amount of this and x amount of that, all in controlled portion sizes and augmented with protein bars and shakes. . . the comparison I make with my food id out of control is hilarious. (Wait till we get an entry up on our dinner last night - it was quite fun.)
So, the dilemma at the moment is this: do I get myself under control, so that I am not running around at 62 with my sugar at 400, whacking myself with a needle and being depressed because I have to embrace these changes? Or do I get depressed now, deprive now, change now? Neither option is attractive.
1 comment:
--Or that you make it to 62. Sigh. See comments to your later blog.
Just to say--I actually do NOT measure things in the sense of pouring stuff into cups and tablespoons; I simply have a fairly vague concept of overall caloric and nutrition content, and I watch my portions/serving sizes. With the discovery of my syndrome I have had to be more vigilant than I was before on calorie intake (overall amount) and ratio of carbs to protein, in order to keep to my preferred weight. This is simply the result of the syndrome--it has nothing to do with any other physical complaint I may have.
I say this b/c you like to comment about how healthy and pain-free you are compared to me, who has things like chronic back pain, asthma and allergies (totally unrelated to diet I should note), "even though I'm so skinny." You have said things like this a few times and I wonder at its meaning. Are you trying to say that being "skinny" should solve any and all medical or health issue? Have I ever said such? No. And by extension to the above, that if being "skinny" does not solve any and all health problems, then there is no need or point to YOUR cutting down on the things that are making you overweight and diabetes-bound? (There really is more good-tasting *and* good for you food out there to eat than you seem to give the world credit for.) But moderating diet and increasing exercise *will* most assuredly help prevent *certain* things like heart disease and diabetes II, and that is a fact--doesn't mean you'll never get an ache or a cold.
The fact that I have always eaten pretty healthfully and exercised pretty regularly, and been fairly slender (not to say "skinny"--b'c with muscles like these I am not at all "skinny" which to me evokes the sort of weak waif that could blow over--which I was in my past, so I should know the difference), and have ended up getting a syndrome which makes the body want to hold onto every calorie and gain or keep weight, even on a fairly moderate diet--forcing a pretty darn strict one, is simply a cruel irony. (deep breath after that one) It is patently NOT a sign for YOU to throw up your hands on your own diet issues or an invitation to subtly gloat that the "skinny" chick has health problems despite her healthy ways.
ANYWAY, back to the whole issue of the "management" aspect of my diet since the Diagnosis: I have read up on it and on insulin resistance and have taken away that I should try to consume about 1/2 the amount of protein to the amount of carbs I eat, and limit things with high glycemic factors like pasta and rice. And I am trying to cut way down on sugar. These are simply things that people with my condition are particularly affected by--oh and alcohol, too. The body just doesn't deal with them effeciently and in very short and sweet truncated lay-man's terms just converts it right to fat--and the more body fat, the more the already whacked out hormones associated with the syndrome get whacked out. . And yes, that is hard. But I will always have wine and chocolate--just not a whole lot.
If you, Em, do not already have insulin resistance, I will be mildly surprised, but in theory you need not be nearly as "vigilant" as I've just described if you do not, if you simply wish to lose weight, have more energy and feel better. If you are insulin resistant, then you may have to cut back--NO, let us say "re-define your diet" a little more, but listen--if you want to find yourself joylessly measuring things with cups and teaspoons and counting grams of sugar alcohol in order to prevent far more fearsome symptoms--indeed fatal symptoms, then become diabetic--or, if you wish to avoid it, then DON'T become diabetic-- by changing your paradigm from living to eat, to eating to live. And, yes, ALL this is helped, whether it's just losing weight, or dealing with IR or diabetes, by an increase in physical activity. Sorry, it just is.
It's a 12-stepper this---I'm trying to work my way through mine. I've been angry and thought it was unfair, and don't quite understand it all yet, but I am learning to LIVE with it. You seem to acknowledge your problem now and again, but then you also seem to sigh and say you can't or won't do anything about it. Why?
Put yourself in your mom's shoes and ask yourself--or her, if she were able to go back in time knowing what she knows now--and how she feels now--and what she's going through now, would she tell herself that a few packets of Equal might not be all that bad, and that okra and rice need not always be fried to taste "good", that she might try to expand her food horizons and re-define her relationship to it? And then think of the future and your kids--what are you teaching them--by word and action? What are you exposing them to? It's a heck of a lot easier for them to change things mid-stream at their age than it will be 20, 30, 40 years later when they get a bad diagnosis. (Oy, I'm so tired now, I think I'm starting to rave--I'll shut up now, and will just tell you that I say these things to you out of love and concern)
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