Category Archives: health

the new hunger games

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In this news this week…and pissing me off on so many different levels… is the K-E Diet for the blushing bride-to-be who desperately wants to lose 5, 10 or even 20 pounds in just 10 days…no exercise necessary. All you have to do is have a doctor insert a NG tube (naso-gastric tube) into your nose, down your throat, through your esophagus and into your stomach. The tube will be taped securely to your face and attached to a feeding pump that will slowly drip a unique 800 calories/day formula of protein, fats and water.

“It is a hunger-free, effective way of dieting,” Di Pietro said. “Within a few hours and your hunger and appetite go away completely, so patients are actually not hungry at all for the whole 10 days. That’s what is so amazing about this diet.”

Slipping into a wedding gown for a dream wedding is a moment of truth for most brides, but as many say that there is a real fear that it will not quite fit. That’s how Jessica Schnaider says she felt with a June wedding approaching and 10 pounds she says she couldn’t lose. She was desperate for a quick fix.

“I don’t have all of the time on the planet just to focus an hour and a half a day to exercise so I came to the doctor, I saw the diet, and I said, ‘You know what? Why not? Let me try it. So I decided to go ahead and give it a shot,” she said.

I watched this news report sitting next to my son, Daniel…you know, the kid who was fed by feeding tubes the first four years of his life. The kid who could not, would not take food by mouth for those years for so many different reasons…medical and otherwise. The kid who had to learn how to safely chew and swallow food protecting his airway because his left vocal cord is paralyzed. Yeah, THAT KID! He shook his head, while watching this report, and asked why would anyone do that to themselves on purpose…if they didn’t have to. “That is so dumb!”, he declared. And bad mommy that I am, I didn’t chide him for judging someone so harshly…because he is right. He is so very right. Yeah, Jessica Schnaider, my ten year old son thinks you are dumb.

I get the pressure some women put on themselves to achieve an impossible ideal…sort of…kind of. I get the desire for a quick fix that does not involve sensible dieting and exercising…god forbid a bride-to-be actually WORK AND SWEAT to be physically something she really isn’t…something that her fiance did not fall in love with. I do. Or at least I try to imagine what would drive a woman to do this for no other reason than to be skinnier. Okay, fine! I DON’T get it. Not. At. All.

My precious child was fed by an ng tube for most of the 132 days he spent in the NICU. It was only the last three weeks of his NICU stay that he was able, with great difficulty, to take infant formula by a bottle to satisfy his neonatologists who directed his care. But just two months after discharge he abruptly stopped and refused the bottle…completely. There was no other choice but to resume ng feedings…even if his pediatrician thought he was right: that in spite of his extreme premature birth, his chronic lung disease, his reflux and his paralyzed vocal cord there was no reason why an infant would not eat…would starve himself.

This was our reality.

Our life with our beautiful baby boy was all about feeding him by a tube that was placed in his nose that led down to his stomach and was taped securely to his soft cheek.

Strangers would stare, ask what was wrong with our baby and offer all kinds of unsolicited advice and solutions…because it couldn’t be possible that a baby simply would not eat, would starve himself.

Everything I ever believed, learned or did as a mother regarding nutrition and feeding my children I had to let go of with this experience with my child. I had to accept the scrutiny (and sometimes judgments) of professionals and lay-people alike. I had to be the one to re-insert his feeding tube if it was accidentally or purposely dislodged by my baby boy…sometimes daily…and I had to listen to him cry as I did it. Daniel was fed by ng tube until he was 9 months old when his pediatrician and GI specialist reluctantly agreed to our request for a gastrostomy feeding tube. They would only agree because I refused to give continuous 24 hour feedings by ng tube because of the potential for dislodging of the tube and aspiration of feeding into his lungs. It wasn’t until 4 years later that he was finally able to be tube feeding free. Feeding this child still remains a struggle and I imagine it will always be so for him. I hated the feeding tubes…I despised them…but I remain grateful for them because at one point in his life it was the only way to feed him. Having cared for, cried for, prayed for and supported Daniel on this journey I have to wonder like he did…Why? Why would anyone do this to themselves on purpose…just to be skinnier and prettier in a dress that they will wear for but one day?

ABC

Why?

because I know EVERYONE wants to hear about my colonoscopy…

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Yeah.

I know you all do.

The prep…it was everything I imagined…and more…so much more that I could have never imagined. I do see very clearly why my doctor told me not to leave the house during prep day. Honey, I barely left a small part of the Big Top…except to drink that PEG prep liquid every 15 minutes seventeen times.

Thank goodness vodka is a clear liquid!

No, really. It is.

Between my, er, colon cleansing, my VERY empty, hungry belly, my nerves over the test the next morning and the volume of my clowns slumber, it was a long night…a very long night.

I DID voluntarily sign up for this. In all seriousness, I did because it is recommended for someone my age. Happy 50th birthday to me!

Morning came soon enough and after a stop at the donut shop for Jodie and dropping her off at school, my darling husband drove me to the hospital…loudly slurping his coffee. When you’ve been on a clear liquid diet since Monday night and NPO since Tuesday night you don’t enjoy hearing people slurp their coffee or stopping for donuts on the way to the hospital. Just sayin’. Yeah, I was grumpy. I make no excuses for that and my clowns know me too well to pretty much expect nothing less.

Soon enough I was in pre-op getting prepped in a pretty, pretty hospital gown with slippers just like the ones I wore when I had meningococcal meningitis. Hind sight is always 20/20 and I immediately saw that I should have got myself an Annie & Isabel creation for this adventure of mine…I mean it was a birthday gift to me. Next time.

As my nurse quickly slipped in an IV into my right hand, she told me how she and her husband actually had colonoscopies together…um, okay. I doubt my darling husband and I could have survived the prep together…even in a 3 bath Big Top.

With the IV running it was off to the OR where a lovely nurse and friendly anesthesiologist were waiting for me…and Dr. T. … I hope. Here is where I confess about the breakdown I had when I was 9 years old being prepped for eye surgery because the surgeon wasn’t in the OR and I was afraid the OR staff was going to start without him. I didn’t melt down this time.

The nurse got me, er, in the right position while the anesthesiologist questioned me about my latex allergy and the fact that I do live dangerously eating avocados…hey, I do have an Epi-pen. He injects a dose of versed followed by a dose of fentanyl and the next thing I remember…

Well, the next thing I remember is Zoë sitting next to me…HOURS later. Boy did she pick a great day to come home and bring her laundry for a visit! The rest of the day, and even parts of the evening that followed I can’t recall. Not at all.

Apparently I did have a conversation with my doctor after the procedure where he told me he saw a relatively healthy colon and the hemorrhoids I affectionately named Holly, Zoë, Abigael and Jodie. Hurray for a healthy colon! I also managed to get up and get myself dressed and into a wheelchair which is how my darling husband found me when he was called back to claim me. We stopped at Jack In The Box on the way home…to celebrate my healthy colon no doubt…and I ate something that had bacon in it. I do remember the bacon. Everything else, well, everything else is a lovely, fuzzy, cotton-y versed and fentanyl blur. If you really wonder what it is all about read Dave Barry’s account because it pretty much sums it up…at least what I can remember of it.

In all seriousness, I survived a relatively easy procedure… if you forgive the colon cleanse, the bruise left from the IV site, the gas that is passed and the versed-fentanyl haze that lasted the rest of the day. The good news is I received a healthy report and I don’t have to do that again in ten years or so.

on my calendar

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It’s the start of a new month…April already! On the calendar this week for me is all kinds of fun.

At least Katie Couric made it seem like fun.

I’m looking forward to that nap that she is promising.

This last week’s Focus 52 assignment was all about stacks and stacking it up. As you can see I have stacked up my supplies in preparation for some fun this week…except I forgot the vodka…that’s a clear liquid…right? Oh well. Head on over to Jan’s and check out the stacks.

added benefits

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From the Washington Post:

“In research published online Tuesday in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Debby Herbenick, associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, and her colleague J. Dennis Fortenberry, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University, set out to document the as-yet-mostly-anecdotal phenomenon of exercise-induced orgasm (EIO) and the related exercise-induced sexual pleasure (EISP).”

What? You thought I was running just for exercise?

My apologies to my kids for the TMI factor.