We all remember dates, times, markers in our journey. Where we were when the space shuttle Columbia went down. Where we were when we heard the President had been shot. In my case, that president was Reagan. The day we watched the Berlin wall come down. The day those planes hit those towers and changed everything.
But the thing that changed me the most wasn't a national event. It was a choice by a teenager that damaged a family. My family. In February of 1985, my then 15 year old sister sat in the car in our family garage and ran it for several hours with the garage door closed. My younger brother woke up with a belly ache, and when my mom went to the kitchen to get him something to help, she heard the car and found my sister on the floor of the garage.
The next weeks were filled with mourners, well wishers, family and friends. There were phone calls, the ever present stream of food that people bring to the bereaved, the retelling of the events, the choosing of the casket and clothes. We wrote an obituary, we made scrapbooks. We packed a suitcase of her favorite things to save, and over the months that followed, we cleaned out her room.
It was shattering to the 13 year old girl that I was to see my parents grieve in such a powerful and personal way.
My parents weren't those sensitive new age parents who sit with you and coax you through your emotions. That was something they'd never learned to do from their own parents. My dad threw himself more fully into his work, which wasn't much of a stretch, and my mom struggled to make sure we knew that she loved us and needed us, and she spent years blaming herself. I'm not sure she's stopped doing that, but she's learned to live with the ache, to celebrate the life that her family has gone on to lead.
We all feel that way with a loss as acute as that one: we never stop loving the person we lost, but some days we can't remember what she looked like. Some days we're angry at her leaving. Some days we just feel melancholy for no reason. No one ever forgets, we all just sort of compartmentalize and move on. Death is part of life and all that.
It's like an old clock that sits on a shelf, mostly there for decoration. It doesn't really run anymore, and it collects dust. Sometimes we dust it off and try winding it up again to see if we can get the pendulum to swing again. Sometimes it just rings on its own.
Today was the day when the clock started making noise on its own again. Riding to work, listening to the radio, every story seemed connected to 1985.
For the first time since 1985, the Kansas City Royals have made the playoffs.
Since 1985, the Europeans have won the Ryder cup 10 out of the 14 matches.
Switching from talk and sports radio to the pop station only to hear Bowling For Soup's "1985"
Funny how the reminders come in waves. At the end of my commute, still contemplating all of the reminders and references, one of the first patients on the schedule was one struggling with his own loss. His own grief. After 29 years, for me it can feel as distant as a black and white photo or as close as a punch in the arm. For him, while it's not brand new, he doesn't have the same distance. Our shared losses allowed me to help guide him, to tell him it's okay, to remind him that it does eventually get better, more distant. It gets less sore.
And maybe that was the reason for the reminders: to help me remember that loss, that acute feeling in the context of the distance time has given me. It's like having an old back injury. Some days it's as if it never happened, some days it keeps me from being able to function effectively. With the right rehabilitation, it doesn't stop me, but it never quite goes away. A missed step, a wrong motion and there it is, reminding me. And it's what reminds me to be thankful for the days when it doesn't hurt, doesn't ache, doesn't stop me. Just like remembering my sister helps me appreciate my parents, my brother, my husband, my family and friends so much more. The gap is always there, it just gets a little smaller all of the time.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
More on the NFL
So, I've really been troubled by my relationship with the NFL, and I thought that I could get my thoughts out in the previous post, but it didn't seem that satisfying. Which is pretty much a summary about how I feel about what's happening in the NFL right now.
I was delighted to see that the Vikings took a stance last week by deactivating Adrian Peterson. By the end of Sunday evening, they had decided to reinstate him. They claimed that they had reviewed the case and studied all of the information. No new information came to light about the case for which he was indicted, but there were apparently allegations of his involvement about abuse with another of his children. So, apparently, if you beat one kid, you get deactivated. If you beat them all, you can play. Oh, they're also insisting that it wasn't because they got slammed by the Patriots on the day that their star running back was out of the game.
The Vikings are claiming that they're going to let due process take effect. There is no reason that sitting Peterson will interfere with said due process, but it will send a message to players in that organization: don't beat up your children.
Unfortunately, we don't have a video of Peterson beating his child. We don't have a video of him causing head injuries to another child while "getting a whoopin' in the car." So we can't all be outraged and do the right thing. We have to use the pictures of the child's bruised and cut legs (which they absolutely should not have released, in order to protect the privacy of the child, not the abuser).
Again, the more I see (or, more accurately, don't see) in terms of leadership from the NFL on these fronts (Greg Hardy has already been convicted of assaulting his girlfriend and threatening to kill her), the more sick to my stomach I become over the game I once loved, the game that gave me so much connection to my dad.
At this stage, I've been waffling about dropping my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. I admit it, straight up, that I'm weak about this. Destroying memorabilia that I already own won't get me my money back from the league. But stopping my subscription, refusing to watch, that is voting with my dollars. Am I really ready to put such a huge gap in my September through February? We're talking no more NFL on 3 days a week, no more ESPN radio discussing football, no more using NFL sponsors when possible. It would literally be a shift in my entire paradigm to take that step. Maybe I'm not ready to give up. Again, I don't have a good answer. It may still take me a while to make that decision and get my money back from DTV. I wish I were more full of resolve and less disappointing to myself. I understand that implied hypocrisy.
Pink gloves and socks aren't going to be enough this time, NFL, to make us believe you care about women or our dollars. Bring us something meaningful and true.
I was delighted to see that the Vikings took a stance last week by deactivating Adrian Peterson. By the end of Sunday evening, they had decided to reinstate him. They claimed that they had reviewed the case and studied all of the information. No new information came to light about the case for which he was indicted, but there were apparently allegations of his involvement about abuse with another of his children. So, apparently, if you beat one kid, you get deactivated. If you beat them all, you can play. Oh, they're also insisting that it wasn't because they got slammed by the Patriots on the day that their star running back was out of the game.
The Vikings are claiming that they're going to let due process take effect. There is no reason that sitting Peterson will interfere with said due process, but it will send a message to players in that organization: don't beat up your children.
Unfortunately, we don't have a video of Peterson beating his child. We don't have a video of him causing head injuries to another child while "getting a whoopin' in the car." So we can't all be outraged and do the right thing. We have to use the pictures of the child's bruised and cut legs (which they absolutely should not have released, in order to protect the privacy of the child, not the abuser).
Again, the more I see (or, more accurately, don't see) in terms of leadership from the NFL on these fronts (Greg Hardy has already been convicted of assaulting his girlfriend and threatening to kill her), the more sick to my stomach I become over the game I once loved, the game that gave me so much connection to my dad.
At this stage, I've been waffling about dropping my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. I admit it, straight up, that I'm weak about this. Destroying memorabilia that I already own won't get me my money back from the league. But stopping my subscription, refusing to watch, that is voting with my dollars. Am I really ready to put such a huge gap in my September through February? We're talking no more NFL on 3 days a week, no more ESPN radio discussing football, no more using NFL sponsors when possible. It would literally be a shift in my entire paradigm to take that step. Maybe I'm not ready to give up. Again, I don't have a good answer. It may still take me a while to make that decision and get my money back from DTV. I wish I were more full of resolve and less disappointing to myself. I understand that implied hypocrisy.
Pink gloves and socks aren't going to be enough this time, NFL, to make us believe you care about women or our dollars. Bring us something meaningful and true.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
My abusive relationship
I realized it this year. I'm in an abusive relationship. It's not with my husband or my work or my family. It's with the NFL.
I became a football fan back in college, but I watched it long before then. I watched it in high school when I was in the marching band, but my relationship with football started long before then. My dad was a high school football referee. Each week, usually on Friday night, he'd sit on his bed with a big black leather bag at his feet. He'd start to empty the bag on to the bed, and make sure he had what he needed: the striped shirt, the white pants, white socks with black stripes. He'd sort through the various tools of the trade: the bands to count the downs, the yellow flags with the weighted clips, the small bean bags to mark the site of an interception or important play. We'd rifle through the bag, looking for the coins he used for the coin toss or playing with the whistles, all while he quietly sat there and polished his black leather shoes. It was that ritual every week that taught me the difference between cream shoe polishes and wax shoe polishes. I learned about when to use a brush, when to use a buffing cloth. Eventually, by the time I was in sixth grade, I was getting to polish one shoe and use the things I'd learned while he polished the other. I almost got as good at that as he was.
Then, one year for Christmas, we bought dad an electric shoe buffer. After the first couple of weeks of using that, polishing shoes just lost its shine. Ahem. Sorry about the pun.
Anyway, even prior to those memories of sorting through the referee's bag, paging through the rules of the game in dad's rule book, and pretending to throw the penalty flag at my brother, I had already staked my claim with the NFL. I was a Seattle Seahawks fan. The team was established when I was 5 years old. I didn't care. My family, like many other Montana families, had thrown their lot in with the nearest NFL team: the Denver Broncos. My dad had grown up just north of Kansas City, so he was a Chiefs fan and, more importantly, a Raider hater. I was okay with most of that, since I didn't really care, but as I grew older, I had to do what all teens do: I had to separate from my parents. I did it with football.
Why football? I hear you ask. Well, it was simple. My dad loved talk radio. This was before the modern era of talk radio. When we traveled to those small towns to referee games, we listened to the radio in the van. It was always one of two stations: KOA, a talk radio station out of Denver (which we could get better at night than during the day, due to the way AM radio works) or NPR. We listened to "A Prairie Home Companion" and "Whad'ya Know?" We listened to callers in Denver complain about local ordinances and politicians. And, of course, when they were on, we listened to Broncos games. My mom got tired of listening to NPR as much as we did and was constantly asking my dad on Sunday afternoons to find a Broncos game. We just sat in the back and desperately wished he would let us listen to music, for once.
As I grew up and moved away for college and medical school, and then established myself somewhere far away from my parents (living in Tennessee for residency, then Alabama and finally settling in North Carolina), I had less and less locally in common to discuss with my dad. But there was always football. We could talk smack to each other about how whose team was doing and who was going to the Super Bowl. We could discuss trades and player achievements. Where there had previously been a teenage daughter fighting with her old fashioned dad, there was now solidarity in the love of football.
Unfortunately, as I've grown and started my own family, the NFL has become harder and harder to love. The ticket prices and souvenir prices have become astronomical. The work the NFL has done to raise revenues has been exhausting. The game has changed, always under the guise of "player safety" but with players still ultimately unsafe. Criminal charges among NFL players seem like an acceptable part of the game. Every week, it feels like there's a new story of a player involved in some sort of crime, up to some sort of bad behavior. Racist and homophobic and other controversial comments and actions by players are more and more common. It was starting to get harder and harder to swallow.
And now, this season, the issues related to players involved with domestic violence has come to a head. I'm not going to recount the Ray Rice story here, you can look it up elsewhere. More disturbing are the other stories of other players involved in these cases, the way that the NFL treats cheerleaders (who are paid less than minimum wage), the way they take advantage of breast cancer awareness month to sell more products and tickets, all of their bad behaviors. And, of course, the Redskins.
And I find myself making excuses: it's not the individual players' faults. If I stop watching or boycott, it won't make a difference. Maybe as I fan I can encourage them to change by voicing my opinion. There aren't other sports that I enjoy as much or as consistently (even hockey, which I love).
They are all weak excuses. None of them is a good one. But I still find myself struggling to boycott. I flirted with not re-ordering the NFL Sunday Ticket package this year, and I put it off until the very last minute. . . at which point I caved and clicked on the "activate package" button in my Direct TV account page. I make myself feel better by following players like Derek Coleman and Russell Wilson on Twitter, who are outstanding citizens and men in their lives off the field, as are hundreds, if not thousands of players and former players.
I know that I should boycott, stop wearing my Seahawks shirts, stop giving the NFL my money. I know I should boycott their sponsors. Well, that's easy with Budweiser and McDonald's but what about the others who aren't so obvious? Granted, for domestic violence offenses, the claim is that a player will get a 6 game suspension (the first time that now you can miss more games for hitting your girlfriend than you miss for hitting a bong--which is a 4 game suspension). But that was only after the outcry at the initial 2 game suspension. And Rice got suspended indefinitely, but only after we saw real, video proof of the hit (nevermind that we saw him drag his now wife out of the elevator and he was CONVICTED in court-with an incredibly lenient sentence). Hardy, who plays for the Panther, was also convicted of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend, but he's still playing (well, his team de-activated him--like he's a toy or a bomb, just hit a switch). Peterson, who beat his son with a switch so hard that a doctor reported him for child abuse hasn't been punished by the league.
So I have to have that conversation with myself all of the time: is it time to leave? How can I stay? And, disappointingly, I haven't come up with what I know is the right answer yet. I guess I'm still attached to watching the team run in, remembering reading a book in the sun at the games my dad was refereeing. The simple joy that comes from remembering that time with my dad, helping him unpack and then repack that gear bag. The smell of shoe polish still makes me think of football. I know I won't be giving up those memories if I stop supporting the NFL, but a wee part of me is afraid it might fade. And maybe that's what I don't want to quit. I don't have a good answer. I just know that the Chargers just recovered a Seahawks fumble, and that means now my team needs me.
I became a football fan back in college, but I watched it long before then. I watched it in high school when I was in the marching band, but my relationship with football started long before then. My dad was a high school football referee. Each week, usually on Friday night, he'd sit on his bed with a big black leather bag at his feet. He'd start to empty the bag on to the bed, and make sure he had what he needed: the striped shirt, the white pants, white socks with black stripes. He'd sort through the various tools of the trade: the bands to count the downs, the yellow flags with the weighted clips, the small bean bags to mark the site of an interception or important play. We'd rifle through the bag, looking for the coins he used for the coin toss or playing with the whistles, all while he quietly sat there and polished his black leather shoes. It was that ritual every week that taught me the difference between cream shoe polishes and wax shoe polishes. I learned about when to use a brush, when to use a buffing cloth. Eventually, by the time I was in sixth grade, I was getting to polish one shoe and use the things I'd learned while he polished the other. I almost got as good at that as he was.
Then, one year for Christmas, we bought dad an electric shoe buffer. After the first couple of weeks of using that, polishing shoes just lost its shine. Ahem. Sorry about the pun.
Anyway, even prior to those memories of sorting through the referee's bag, paging through the rules of the game in dad's rule book, and pretending to throw the penalty flag at my brother, I had already staked my claim with the NFL. I was a Seattle Seahawks fan. The team was established when I was 5 years old. I didn't care. My family, like many other Montana families, had thrown their lot in with the nearest NFL team: the Denver Broncos. My dad had grown up just north of Kansas City, so he was a Chiefs fan and, more importantly, a Raider hater. I was okay with most of that, since I didn't really care, but as I grew older, I had to do what all teens do: I had to separate from my parents. I did it with football.
Why football? I hear you ask. Well, it was simple. My dad loved talk radio. This was before the modern era of talk radio. When we traveled to those small towns to referee games, we listened to the radio in the van. It was always one of two stations: KOA, a talk radio station out of Denver (which we could get better at night than during the day, due to the way AM radio works) or NPR. We listened to "A Prairie Home Companion" and "Whad'ya Know?" We listened to callers in Denver complain about local ordinances and politicians. And, of course, when they were on, we listened to Broncos games. My mom got tired of listening to NPR as much as we did and was constantly asking my dad on Sunday afternoons to find a Broncos game. We just sat in the back and desperately wished he would let us listen to music, for once.
As I grew up and moved away for college and medical school, and then established myself somewhere far away from my parents (living in Tennessee for residency, then Alabama and finally settling in North Carolina), I had less and less locally in common to discuss with my dad. But there was always football. We could talk smack to each other about how whose team was doing and who was going to the Super Bowl. We could discuss trades and player achievements. Where there had previously been a teenage daughter fighting with her old fashioned dad, there was now solidarity in the love of football.
Unfortunately, as I've grown and started my own family, the NFL has become harder and harder to love. The ticket prices and souvenir prices have become astronomical. The work the NFL has done to raise revenues has been exhausting. The game has changed, always under the guise of "player safety" but with players still ultimately unsafe. Criminal charges among NFL players seem like an acceptable part of the game. Every week, it feels like there's a new story of a player involved in some sort of crime, up to some sort of bad behavior. Racist and homophobic and other controversial comments and actions by players are more and more common. It was starting to get harder and harder to swallow.
And now, this season, the issues related to players involved with domestic violence has come to a head. I'm not going to recount the Ray Rice story here, you can look it up elsewhere. More disturbing are the other stories of other players involved in these cases, the way that the NFL treats cheerleaders (who are paid less than minimum wage), the way they take advantage of breast cancer awareness month to sell more products and tickets, all of their bad behaviors. And, of course, the Redskins.
And I find myself making excuses: it's not the individual players' faults. If I stop watching or boycott, it won't make a difference. Maybe as I fan I can encourage them to change by voicing my opinion. There aren't other sports that I enjoy as much or as consistently (even hockey, which I love).
They are all weak excuses. None of them is a good one. But I still find myself struggling to boycott. I flirted with not re-ordering the NFL Sunday Ticket package this year, and I put it off until the very last minute. . . at which point I caved and clicked on the "activate package" button in my Direct TV account page. I make myself feel better by following players like Derek Coleman and Russell Wilson on Twitter, who are outstanding citizens and men in their lives off the field, as are hundreds, if not thousands of players and former players.
I know that I should boycott, stop wearing my Seahawks shirts, stop giving the NFL my money. I know I should boycott their sponsors. Well, that's easy with Budweiser and McDonald's but what about the others who aren't so obvious? Granted, for domestic violence offenses, the claim is that a player will get a 6 game suspension (the first time that now you can miss more games for hitting your girlfriend than you miss for hitting a bong--which is a 4 game suspension). But that was only after the outcry at the initial 2 game suspension. And Rice got suspended indefinitely, but only after we saw real, video proof of the hit (nevermind that we saw him drag his now wife out of the elevator and he was CONVICTED in court-with an incredibly lenient sentence). Hardy, who plays for the Panther, was also convicted of assaulting and threatening to kill his girlfriend, but he's still playing (well, his team de-activated him--like he's a toy or a bomb, just hit a switch). Peterson, who beat his son with a switch so hard that a doctor reported him for child abuse hasn't been punished by the league.
So I have to have that conversation with myself all of the time: is it time to leave? How can I stay? And, disappointingly, I haven't come up with what I know is the right answer yet. I guess I'm still attached to watching the team run in, remembering reading a book in the sun at the games my dad was refereeing. The simple joy that comes from remembering that time with my dad, helping him unpack and then repack that gear bag. The smell of shoe polish still makes me think of football. I know I won't be giving up those memories if I stop supporting the NFL, but a wee part of me is afraid it might fade. And maybe that's what I don't want to quit. I don't have a good answer. I just know that the Chargers just recovered a Seahawks fumble, and that means now my team needs me.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Schedules, appointments, time. Also, I'm bored.
I love my job. Love it. I can't express to you how interesting, challenging, joyful, agonizing and marvelous it is to get to do what I do. I share with people, I counsel people, I grieve with people, I rejoice with them. I get to learn and I get to teach. And that's all before lunch time on an average day.
I'm not perfect and I'm certainly not the smartest doctor in the world. I try pretty hard to keep a life/work balance. I try even harder to stay current, to challenge my knowledge, and to be compassionate and kind.
I love my clinic: we have a very personalized approach to excellent care that is affordable. We maintain a high ethical standard of practicing medicine with up to date knowledge and patients as a priority. Are we perfect? By no means. Do we strive for excellence? By all means.
Having said that, there are days when the job can really feel like a drag. I'm not talking about days with irascible patients or bad outcomes, which happen no matter how hard you try to avoid it. The worst days for me are the ones with cancellations.
Now, there are many reasons you might cancel your appointment: you got a flat tire, your boss changed your work schedule, your kid is sick, you forgot you had the appointment and there's a conflict in your schedule. I don't blame people at all for having lives outside of my office. However, there's little for me that is more disappointing than checking my upcoming schedule for the next day when I go to bed, and then arriving at the office only to find a couple of gaping holes in my schedule due to cancellations.
Our office doesn't over book. Of course, occasionally we get a few appointments at the same time, generally during cold and flu season when everyone is sick and walking in to be seen. But the advantage of our care model is that each patient is allotted an appointment time that varies between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on their need (routine follow up is 30 minutes, a physical is an hour or more). We don't over book. We don't book 4 patients per hour. We don't overlap appointments. Ten to twelve patients a day is a busy day for any one of our providers.
That means a couple of things:
So, whether it's your stylist, your dentist, your mechanic or your doctor's office, keep track of your appointments. Keep a calendar, use reminders (email yourself appointments). That way when you get that flat tire or sudden schedule change, we might wave the missed appointment fee because we understand. But make an appointment, carve out the time, give it importance.
I'm not perfect and I'm certainly not the smartest doctor in the world. I try pretty hard to keep a life/work balance. I try even harder to stay current, to challenge my knowledge, and to be compassionate and kind.
I love my clinic: we have a very personalized approach to excellent care that is affordable. We maintain a high ethical standard of practicing medicine with up to date knowledge and patients as a priority. Are we perfect? By no means. Do we strive for excellence? By all means.
Having said that, there are days when the job can really feel like a drag. I'm not talking about days with irascible patients or bad outcomes, which happen no matter how hard you try to avoid it. The worst days for me are the ones with cancellations.
Now, there are many reasons you might cancel your appointment: you got a flat tire, your boss changed your work schedule, your kid is sick, you forgot you had the appointment and there's a conflict in your schedule. I don't blame people at all for having lives outside of my office. However, there's little for me that is more disappointing than checking my upcoming schedule for the next day when I go to bed, and then arriving at the office only to find a couple of gaping holes in my schedule due to cancellations.
Our office doesn't over book. Of course, occasionally we get a few appointments at the same time, generally during cold and flu season when everyone is sick and walking in to be seen. But the advantage of our care model is that each patient is allotted an appointment time that varies between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on their need (routine follow up is 30 minutes, a physical is an hour or more). We don't over book. We don't book 4 patients per hour. We don't overlap appointments. Ten to twelve patients a day is a busy day for any one of our providers.
That means a couple of things:
- When you come to our office, you see your doctor for more than 7 minutes, which is the average amount of time that a family physician in a traditional out patient office spends with each patient. You'll probably spend more like 15 to 20 minutes in face to face time with the doctor, if not more (given the 5 to 10 minutes it takes to be checked in).
- Our doctors (specifically, me) tend to be closer to on time. I remember when I worked in Alabama at my first job out of residency, I had a patient who said that she could drive to Birmingham, 45 minutes away, see a doctor there, and be back home in less time than it took to be seen in the clinic where I was working. Why? That clinic was driven by getting high numbers of patients to be seen every day. So, routinely the providers had anywhere from 25 to 40 patients scheduled each day. We also did obstetrics and some limited gyn surgery. So the other providers not only would schedule a solid wall of patients each day, they would break out to deliver a baby or do a tubal ligation while patients were waiting in the office through their appointment times.
- We tend to be less distracted. As any medical provider knows, the winding down end of an appointment is often when the "oh, Doc, by the way" problem pops up. Sometimes it's as simple as a toenail fungus that needs treatment, other times it's as serious as a heart attack. "I have chest pain when I walk up a flight of stairs, is that a big deal?" is an actual question a patient asked me as an "oh by the way" on the way out the door. If we can wind up without the press or rush of knowing other people are waiting in the other exam rooms, I'm much more likely to be still focused on you and what you are saying to me.
This is the beauty of working in an office where we aren't pressed to see 20 to 30 people a day just to stay liquid. It's also the agony. If you call at 8:30 am to cancel your 10:00 am physical, I now have an hour long gap in my day. It's boring. It's a total drag on the rhythm of a good, busy day. Sure, I know I can read, I can catch up on email and paper work (and blogging), but I want to be busy, to see patients, to care for people. Add to that the fact that patients who no show or who cancel last minute actually cost any doctor's practice money (we have the staff here and the lights on whether you show up or not) and it's frustrating.
The same is true in a beauty shop, an auto repair place, or even a restaurant that requires reservations. There is a reason places charge a "missed appointment" fee.
As Americans and as consumers, we take for granted that we can just walk in anywhere and get anything we want at any time. We also assume that not only can we, but that we deserve to be able to get what we want the second we want it. And this is because, frankly, as Americans in this age of convenience, we generally can. We can decide at 2am that we need to go to a grocery store for milk. We can stroll into an urgent care or Minute Clinic and see a provider for our med refills within a relatively short period of time. We can drive up to the oil change chain store and get our car repairs done. But none of that care is personalized or tailored to our needs, it's just shaped to fit our demands. And it often lacks the continuity that we need to truly experience high quality of care (from our doctor or our mechanic, frankly).
So, whether it's your stylist, your dentist, your mechanic or your doctor's office, keep track of your appointments. Keep a calendar, use reminders (email yourself appointments). That way when you get that flat tire or sudden schedule change, we might wave the missed appointment fee because we understand. But make an appointment, carve out the time, give it importance.
If your doctor's office keeps you waiting for hours after your appointment time, fire them and tell them exactly why. Find a place that respects your time and your needs, and then do them the same courtesy of respecting theirs.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Don't Break The Other Leg
Earlier today, I saw this image on the Book of Faces:
It was a bit shocking, somewhat troubling, but mostly heartbreaking.
I was this little girl.
In many ways, I still am this little girl.
So many of my friends were and are this little girl. We get bombarded with images of what is beautiful, what is desirable, what is considered gorgeous or even acceptable. And many of us just simply don't fit that mold.
Strides have been made to recognize the multifactorial causes associated with childhood obesity: easily available high calorie but nutrient poor foods, reduced physical activity, increased screen time, genetic predisposition, the list goes on. This entry isn't about those things, there are plenty of blogs about those things.
There have also been plenty of blogs and articles about fat shaming and how it affects people in their journey for health. Let's face it, we live in cruel times where people like to point to strangers on the internet or celebrities and critique bodies, clothes, style. The 'love your body, we're all beautiful' campaigns have been met with the 'stop making it okay to be unhealthy' response. Who has the right answer? I honestly don't know.
I do know this, though, it's a disturbing place to be with one's daughter. I have a gorgeous, funny, intelligent, active, healthy 8 year old daughter who is overweight. She loves to run, she loves to swim, she loves to play outside. She loves art, books, music, television and video games. We don't live in a neighborhood where she can play outside with other children. She doesn't want to play group sports or join an after school group that does physical stuff (basketball, soccer, gymnastics), even though she loves all of those things.
She, like most of the kids her age, loves pizza, macaroni and cheese, junk food, sweets and other fattening snacks she has access to, either at school or home. She, like most kids her age, hates to try new foods, especially when they're vegetables. I desperately want her to be healthy and to love her body as a vehicle for allowing her to do what she wants, but I don't want to turn her into the girl pictured above. I don't want her to see pictures of 'beautiful' women and allow that to drive her opinion of herself. I don't want her to measure her self worth based on her clothing size or her body shape. I don't want her, at 8, to talk about being on a diet for the rest of her life.
The truth is, I don't want to turn her into me. I hated my body, hated myself, for so long. I hated being fat, being clumsy, being slow, being weak. I hated being 'on a diet' for most of my young adult life. I hated buying every new fad to lose weight that was out there. I knew I should have eaten better, knew that second helpings of mashed potatoes or spaghetti weren't good for me, knew that vegetables were. It wasn't that I didn't know, it's that I felt helpless to try and change. Every time someone made fun of me at school for trying to wear a dress that didn't flatter, every time my dad mentioned that I needed to stop eating, every time I couldn't find the dress or pants or cute outfit in my size, my self-loathing multiplied, and the only thing that made it stop for a few minutes was food.
I will never forget the day I bought a pair of jeans in size 12 and assumed it would be my last pair of jeans ever, because I didn't know at the time that there was a Women's department hidden in the back of the store with the Petites and foundation garments. I was horrified, ashamed and resigned to that pair of jeans as my last, and that if I didn't lose weight, I would be trapped wearing my mom's clothes. Let's face it, in the 80s, women's size clothing styles were hardly something a 17 year old girl would have wanted to wear. But I also knew that I would never lose that weight, that something in me was broken if being on the swim team and swimming 2 to 3 hours for months didn't solve the problem. And it didn't. And I hated myself even more, to the point where I gave up on all of it when I went to college: I stopped swimming, stopped running, stopped caring about what I was supposed to eat, and just ate what I felt like eating. My "freshman 15" was more like a "freshman 40."
When talking about those experience with one of my dearest friends, she told me "don't break the other leg." If you break your leg, you don't lie on the couch and tell yourself, "well, the left leg is broken and I can't walk on it, I might as well break the right one." And yet I find myself doing it all the time: well, I didn't eat well at lunch today, I might as well just have a pizza for dinner. I didn't walk yesterday, what's the point of going today? I have to learn that it's okay to make a mistake, but that it's not okay to allow that mistake to define who I am or what my potential may be.
In order to stop breaking that other leg, I have to learn to be mindful. I need to be mindful of where I want to be. I need to set a fitness goal or a diet goal, absolutely. While "eating better and exercising more" is simple and effective, it is far from easy. To get from one size body to another, it seems simple enough, but I have to know and have a true awareness of where I am before I can start the journey to where I want to be.
If I'm driving to an address previously unknown to me, my GPS enabled phone won't be able to guide me there until it knows where I am right now. And I think that's what allowing me to love myself, even in this body that requires plus sized clothes, is all about. I need to be okay with where I am now, to know where I am right now at the start, so that when I hit a detour or a bump in the road or blow a tire, I can make a plan to get back on that journey and arrive successfully.
I have to stop being ashamed, I have to love myself enough, right here, right now, in order to get to where I want to go, to get the body I want to have. No longer am I needing to look like a model, but my quest is more pressing: I need a body that will allow me to function for the years that I will get to see my daughter learn who she is and what she wants. I want to keep up with her, to run with her, to watch her grow and enjoy her adulthood with her the way that I hope my mother is enjoying mine with me. In order to stop breaking the other leg, I have to recognize that the broken one is still a part of me. It's something I can allow to heal and that I can rehabilitate back to strength and utility again. It's something that will help carry me on my journey. There is a difference between loving myself, and my body, where I am right now and being happy about it. While I can be disappointed at having a broken leg, I have to continue to love the broken leg in order to stop myself from breaking the other one. In order to stop breaking the other me.
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| Photo credited to Meg Gaiger (harpyimages) |
It was a bit shocking, somewhat troubling, but mostly heartbreaking.
I was this little girl.
In many ways, I still am this little girl.
So many of my friends were and are this little girl. We get bombarded with images of what is beautiful, what is desirable, what is considered gorgeous or even acceptable. And many of us just simply don't fit that mold.
Strides have been made to recognize the multifactorial causes associated with childhood obesity: easily available high calorie but nutrient poor foods, reduced physical activity, increased screen time, genetic predisposition, the list goes on. This entry isn't about those things, there are plenty of blogs about those things.
There have also been plenty of blogs and articles about fat shaming and how it affects people in their journey for health. Let's face it, we live in cruel times where people like to point to strangers on the internet or celebrities and critique bodies, clothes, style. The 'love your body, we're all beautiful' campaigns have been met with the 'stop making it okay to be unhealthy' response. Who has the right answer? I honestly don't know.
I do know this, though, it's a disturbing place to be with one's daughter. I have a gorgeous, funny, intelligent, active, healthy 8 year old daughter who is overweight. She loves to run, she loves to swim, she loves to play outside. She loves art, books, music, television and video games. We don't live in a neighborhood where she can play outside with other children. She doesn't want to play group sports or join an after school group that does physical stuff (basketball, soccer, gymnastics), even though she loves all of those things.
She, like most of the kids her age, loves pizza, macaroni and cheese, junk food, sweets and other fattening snacks she has access to, either at school or home. She, like most kids her age, hates to try new foods, especially when they're vegetables. I desperately want her to be healthy and to love her body as a vehicle for allowing her to do what she wants, but I don't want to turn her into the girl pictured above. I don't want her to see pictures of 'beautiful' women and allow that to drive her opinion of herself. I don't want her to measure her self worth based on her clothing size or her body shape. I don't want her, at 8, to talk about being on a diet for the rest of her life.
The truth is, I don't want to turn her into me. I hated my body, hated myself, for so long. I hated being fat, being clumsy, being slow, being weak. I hated being 'on a diet' for most of my young adult life. I hated buying every new fad to lose weight that was out there. I knew I should have eaten better, knew that second helpings of mashed potatoes or spaghetti weren't good for me, knew that vegetables were. It wasn't that I didn't know, it's that I felt helpless to try and change. Every time someone made fun of me at school for trying to wear a dress that didn't flatter, every time my dad mentioned that I needed to stop eating, every time I couldn't find the dress or pants or cute outfit in my size, my self-loathing multiplied, and the only thing that made it stop for a few minutes was food.
I will never forget the day I bought a pair of jeans in size 12 and assumed it would be my last pair of jeans ever, because I didn't know at the time that there was a Women's department hidden in the back of the store with the Petites and foundation garments. I was horrified, ashamed and resigned to that pair of jeans as my last, and that if I didn't lose weight, I would be trapped wearing my mom's clothes. Let's face it, in the 80s, women's size clothing styles were hardly something a 17 year old girl would have wanted to wear. But I also knew that I would never lose that weight, that something in me was broken if being on the swim team and swimming 2 to 3 hours for months didn't solve the problem. And it didn't. And I hated myself even more, to the point where I gave up on all of it when I went to college: I stopped swimming, stopped running, stopped caring about what I was supposed to eat, and just ate what I felt like eating. My "freshman 15" was more like a "freshman 40."
When talking about those experience with one of my dearest friends, she told me "don't break the other leg." If you break your leg, you don't lie on the couch and tell yourself, "well, the left leg is broken and I can't walk on it, I might as well break the right one." And yet I find myself doing it all the time: well, I didn't eat well at lunch today, I might as well just have a pizza for dinner. I didn't walk yesterday, what's the point of going today? I have to learn that it's okay to make a mistake, but that it's not okay to allow that mistake to define who I am or what my potential may be.
In order to stop breaking that other leg, I have to learn to be mindful. I need to be mindful of where I want to be. I need to set a fitness goal or a diet goal, absolutely. While "eating better and exercising more" is simple and effective, it is far from easy. To get from one size body to another, it seems simple enough, but I have to know and have a true awareness of where I am before I can start the journey to where I want to be.
If I'm driving to an address previously unknown to me, my GPS enabled phone won't be able to guide me there until it knows where I am right now. And I think that's what allowing me to love myself, even in this body that requires plus sized clothes, is all about. I need to be okay with where I am now, to know where I am right now at the start, so that when I hit a detour or a bump in the road or blow a tire, I can make a plan to get back on that journey and arrive successfully.
I have to stop being ashamed, I have to love myself enough, right here, right now, in order to get to where I want to go, to get the body I want to have. No longer am I needing to look like a model, but my quest is more pressing: I need a body that will allow me to function for the years that I will get to see my daughter learn who she is and what she wants. I want to keep up with her, to run with her, to watch her grow and enjoy her adulthood with her the way that I hope my mother is enjoying mine with me. In order to stop breaking the other leg, I have to recognize that the broken one is still a part of me. It's something I can allow to heal and that I can rehabilitate back to strength and utility again. It's something that will help carry me on my journey. There is a difference between loving myself, and my body, where I am right now and being happy about it. While I can be disappointed at having a broken leg, I have to continue to love the broken leg in order to stop myself from breaking the other one. In order to stop breaking the other me.
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