Chapter 5: How Do I Look?
The next few months I spent adjusting to my new routine. Wake up, take blood pressure and pulse, take meds, wait a little while, take blood pressure and pulse, go to work, come home, and do it all again. Every two to four weeks I was making a trip to the lab for blood work. My thyroid hormone levels eventually reached the point where they were only 35 times normal. I know that sounds terrible, and it is, but for me it was a step in the right direction. Now they were able to be measured. Unfortunately, my weight had now dropped to 97 pounds and I was still shaking. I was getting better on paper, but I looked very sick. That’s when I decided….if I’m going to be sick, I at least don’t want to look sick. If I currently was losing control of my inside, then I was definitely going to be in control of my outside. I took a mental inventory of everything I did not like about the way I looked, and attacked them one by one. It was to be the beginning of a total mental, emotional, and physical transformation.
I won’t bore you with most of the details, suffice to say I spent endless nights scouring the Internet for the best products, reading reviews, how-to videos and the like, and endless hours searching drug and specialty stores for exactly what I wanted. You get the idea. It was also at this point that I dug back into my personal library to find my book written by Dr. Murad. I blew off the dust and read it cover to cover - many, many times. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dr. Murad, he focuses on skin care through nutrition, feeding the skin both inside and out. I had never taken vitamins or supplements before, but I thought about what he was suggesting and a light bulb turned on in my head. Hey….I could not only take vitamins and supplements for beautiful skin, but think of this….I’m sure those same vitamins and supplements would be beneficial for someone who was sick. Of course! And there it was! As a nurse, you would think this would have dawned on me earlier, but I was so completely wrapped up in my misery over how I was feeling that I lost my focus. But now it was back!
I began my new adventure into vitamins and supplements. I did all of my research. I compared his suggestions with the RDA. I looked up benefits, toxicities, and side effects. I looked for interactions. I looked up how each vitamin or supplement might affect my disease or any of my symptoms. I made my choices, bought a pill box, and got started. I was getting pretty darn happy with myself.
Except for my weight which, of course, was visible to the entire world. I began drinking Ensure for weight gain, but it did not seem to be helping. I was still extremely thin. I don’t know how many of you with Graves disease weight loss have heard this, but I’m here to tell you it’s very annoying when someone looks at you and makes the comment, “Oh..I wish I was as thin as you! I can’t lose weight no matter what!” I mean….really? Do you really want to look like me? I seriously don’t think so. Here I am trying so incredibly hard to gain back 16 pounds, to get back to my normal self, and you’re admiring the way I look? Now would be the time for a discussion on enlightenment, but we’ll save it for another day.
If only they knew what I truly looked like under my t-shirts and bling jeans. As I said before, I was on a mission to not look sick. When you are 97 pounds, and a woman, I can tell you that you don’t just lose muscle, but also all of your excess fat reserves. You don’t just lose weight in your butt or thighs or belly. No. You lose weight in all of your fatty parts. And when you start out with a 34A, then lose 16 pounds, you can just imagine what happens. This was particularly distressing for me because I have always had a complex about being small anyway. Luckily, Miss Victoria makes all kinds of undergarments to solve this problem. Or so I thought. I had shrunk down to such a size that I could not find anything small enough. So. Incredibly. Depressing.
After visiting all of the stores in my local mall, and searching online, I resolved myself to the fact that a push up was not going to be in my future. Anything that was in my size had either bunnies or turtles or polka dots on it. It was not something I was going to feel like a woman in, and I certainly did not want to look like this for my husband. My hang up, not his.
One evening I told my husband I was heading over to a discount store. I did not tell him why I was going or what I was looking for. I couldn’t. Truthfully, I was embarrassed. He had no idea that I was on this personal mission of transformation, and that this particular issue was seemingly unconquerable. (And I don’t give up easily!) Plus, I was feeling like less of a woman, which is indescribable to anyone unless they have actually felt like that. I arrived at the store and looked for the inexpensive, stretchy fabric, sports bras. Ugh. But this was still not to be my lowest low. I actually felt the need to try them on. So I did. And when I undressed and saw what I looked like from behind in the three way mirror, something all of the other stores did not have, I was….how can I describe it?….shocked, horrified, ashamed, sad, and defeated. I could see my spine and my ribs. I could see everything. I thought of all the pictures I had seen in my reference books in nursing school of emaciated people. I now looked the same. Is this what my husband was seeing? I broke down in tears right there in that tiny, cold, horribly lit and filthy little room in front of a three way mirror that revealed to me the truth. I was still very, very sick….and I looked it. I went home and cried uncontrollably on my husband’s shoulder. I told him everything. This was to be the beginning of a whole new level of love and understanding between us. Everything happens for a reason.
- Dorian A., RN, CHLC
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