Your Dark Passenger

Okay, so carrying on from last week’s conversation about my own personal addiction, I think I’ve figured something out.  I don’t think I have a food addiction; I think I’m just too lazy to change my bad habits.  So I guess I’m addicted to not caring?

I don’t know.  It’s hard to explain, I suppose.  Especially if you’ve never been there.

I can’t really remember where I left off last time so I’ll just start with more recent events.  I was doing everything I needed to be doing a few years back.  I ate healthy, nutritious food 6 times a day and I worked out at least 5 times a week with a combination of Jazzercise, cardio and free weights.  I was getting toned and my blood-work was starting to look really awesome from it.  (Who needs the Cheerios diet?)

Hubby stopped eating right at some point after that and I let myself get drug back down to my old bad habits.  I still managed to workout some, but that too fell away.  It nagged at me from the corners of my mind and I resolved myself to get back into the habit of working out, even if I couldn’t always eat right.

That was when I lost my energy.

The timeline starts to get a little fuzzy from here for me so I’ll just hit the highlights.  When I say I lost my energy, I mean it was completely gone.  I was tapped out.  Somehow, I managed to make it to work each day and the hours I worked were long.  I didn’t sleep at night - not enough.  I had a constant migraine day in and day out for 36 straight days before I decided it was time to see a doctor.  The doctor sent me to see a neurologist.  The neurologist ordered tests.  I went onto WebMD and found out from that source that I was going to die in the one way I’d always said I couldn’t handle dying.

So I’m waiting to die and hiding it from all the people I love.  Why worry them, right?  And the neurologist is loading me full of medication that, quite frankly, had worse side effects than the original symptoms that sent me to the doctor.  Like I said, the timeline is pretty fuzzy - thank you, Topamax and Ativan and whatever else I was told to take - but I remember it went on for months that way; everyone I knew waiting for me to get better, me waiting to die.

At this point it bears mention that neither my doctor nor the neurologist had actually told me my days were numbered; WebMD did.  As flawed as I know that site to be, it was the only source giving me answers.

Let’s flash forward again because I’m fuzzy on more of the details.  Basically, I had to see 4 more doctors to find out no one had a clue what was going on.  Add the new symptom of barely eating anything into the mix and everything is this giant mess.  Turns out a medication that was prescribed to me to help me sleep (but didn’t) was causing this whole slew of adverse effects

So yay…I get some energy back, I go on a little long vacation to hang out with my friend (who made me eat actual meals the whole time I was there…ugh.  *shakes fist at star for that one*)  I get back home and everything’s all good except for some jet-lag and BLAM-O!

Guess who gets hit with a thyroid problem to zap all the new-found energy?

Blech…so we go run all the tests and some moron decides to tell me that I’ve got a growth on my thyroid causing the problems.  What do you think the first thing coming to my mind now is?  Yep…the big C…cancer.  So now I’ve got my second cancer scare in the span of a few months.  (Oh, yeah…during all the original mess there was a chance I had breast cancer, but all that worked out too.)  I finally get back in to see the specialist and she confirms dude was an idiot and  the growth was too tiny to be anything, especially cancer.  The real question became this:

Why is a person with a mild case of Graves Disease (the thyroid issue that gives you loads of energy) tired all the time?  That was out of character for Graves.  Par for the course for me, when you think about it.

Fast forward some more…

There’s a lot of medical jargon that made absolutely no sense to me, but I got someone to translate to normal speak for me.  In a nutshell, I have hyperthyroidism and a heart that races for no reason at all.  (Had that checked out by a cardiologist years ago and he said it was nothing.  Guess he was wrong.)  Apparently, with the heart racing, my blood wasn’t circulating enough and that was making me tired.  Once that problem was medicated with some beta blockers and then the true symptoms of the thyroid were revealed and treated, well, now I’m right as rain.

Of course, in the midst of all this, my weight yo-yo’d a few times…

And my metabolism is royally screwed…

I suppose my real dark passenger isn’t the food or the lackadaisical attitude about working out; it’s the memory of all the time I lost to not knowing whether I’d live or die.  Really, it’s all the time I can’t remember because of the fog in my head from that time.  I can feel the memories are there, playing blackjack with my dark passenger, but I don’t get to remember them.

Y’all…that sucks.

Really…is it any wonder I might try to drown my dark passenger under a mound of sweets and carbs?

But, it’s time for all that to stop now.  I started the exercise regimen today and the healthy eating isn’t far behind.  I’m either going to whip my metabolism back into shape or it’s going to die while I’m trying.  (That’s close enough to the way the saying goes, yes?)

And with this rather lengthy bit of expository goodness, I get to the point of introducing the new daily segment on Your Dark Passenger.  For at least the next 8 weeks, in addition to the regular topic of the day, I’m adding a little diet and exercise update where I’ll either pat myself on the back for a job well done or I’ll be trying to explain away my bad behavior.  Because really, I think if we all support one another in those areas in which we struggle then we can all succeed.  It doesn’t matter if you need support to eat healthy, get moving, stick to a budget, stop drinking…whatever.  If you’re having a success then you need to come on here and shout it from the rooftops so we can all celebrate your success.  And if you’re having a crummy time of things?  Well, that’s when you need to come on here the most so that me and my 7 reader posse can cheer you up and cheer you on.

Hmm…it seems this little tale has reached epic proportions so it must be time for a “peace out, yo” and a little wave.

Jen

“Let your dark passenger come out to play…Be your own nemesis!”

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