WHO CAN YOU TRUST with your health? My Story, PART TWO

PART TWO

You can only turn time back so far.

Sadly, a year before my stroke, a friend told me about a way of eating that I just couldn’t grasp. It was the opposite of everything, EVERYTHING, I had ever been told. It couldn’t be right, and even if it worked for him, I thought it definitely would not work for me. We were nothing alike. He ran stairs up skyscrapers for fun, had the body of a 25 year old and hadn’t been fat a day in his life. He had come across this way of eating while trying to avoid his family’s genes for Alzheimers, not heart disease. I had great respect for this friend but it seemed so radical to go against everything I’d been told by all my doctors all these years. At the time I thought I better at least double check with my doctor before trying it. 

I made an appointment to run it by her so she could clear all my confusion up and help me understand the conflict in the research and her advice. She had a medical degree and had been a doctor for over a decade, I was sure she could explain it all to me. 

“That is so dangerous.” was the first thing she said, confidently and with great concern, after I told her about the change in diet I was considering. She is probably a very good doctor in some ways and believed what she said. It scared the crap out of me that day. She looked me right in the eye and told me not to eat that way, it would be dangerous and harmful to my health.

So I didn’t. 

Then I had the stroke. 

She came to visit me in the hospital. Very nice, still very concerned, but she never connected her advice to my situation. I didn’t either. It was all on me, as usual. I must have done something wrong and not taken her advice properly. She never said those exact words, that was just how I felt sitting across from her in my hospital bed. Fat, unhealthy, obviously undisciplined and lazy. I had felt all those things all my life, especially sitting across from doctors. It wasn’t their fault I had bad genes and just couldn’t get my act together.

I left the hospital after that stroke a diabetic, on meds to control my blood sugar level. But my doctor assured me that we would work on managing all that together so I made another appointment with her for a few weeks later.

I was depressed and anxious. I wasn’t sleeping well and my skin was dry and itchy all the time. But I figured for the millionth time I was just approaching fifty and this is how it is when you age poorly. It had been all downhill since thirty and that was my fault. I cried sitting in her office unable to deal with my crumbling health. She was kind and consoled me, then upped my Metfomin dose before I left. I asked if she knew of anyone who could help coach me through this mess I was making. She did.

She gave me the name and number of a patient who was also a “Health Coach”. I called immediately and spent $1200.00 for a six month commitment. She was going to hold my hand and walk me through the process of eating better and exercising myself to a healthy weight and life. I was finally going to get the help I needed, one on one. 

She had a whole program. She gave me new books every couple weeks on things like how to be more focused on the good things in life, she gave me a special drink shaker for the protein shakes I drank for breakfast every morning and we went to yoga class together. 

She also told me to “crowd out meat” and cut the gluten out of my diet. I proudly told her I had already done those things, and more. She looked at me skeptically knowing my medical history and standing there looking at me wasn’t very convincing either. She came over and went through my pantry to help me get rid of the bad food, replacing it with a basket full of root vegetables. She was sweet and cute and had the best intentions, a lot like my doctor. And two weeks after my six month commitment with her ended I had quadruple by-pass open heart surgery.

She felt bad, but didn’t know exactly why. I was so blind, it was still all on me. I had failed again.

To be continued…