Found And Lost, Part 6

 (Is There Anybody Out There? - Pink Floyd)

Anyone with any experience with weight loss will tell you that having a scale in your home is a terrible idea when you're starting after your goals.  Actual progress with weight loss happens in a million tiny little ways, most of them utterly unreported by a simple scale.

No, my barometer for weight loss has always been jeans.  Blue jeans don't ever lie, and neither does a good belt.  Once your pants start giving you trouble, either because they're gotten too tight or too loose, that's a pretty good sign that things are happening.

By the time August had rolled around, my belt was absolutely telling me that things were happening.

Ever wonder what it feels like to have a syringe full of adrenaline shot directly into your heart?  

My wife must have gone absolutely mad listening to me cackle quietly to myself each time I put my shorts on in the mornings.  Things were afoot, and my mood generally reflected that.  It urged me to new heights when it came to getting out and walking.  The days had gotten hot, as they were wont to do in the middle of a midwest summer, so I'd done the only thing I could think of:

I took to hanging out in the grocery store.

Need fresh meat?  No problem! I'll go get that right now.  Salad?  No problem!  Eggs?  Done!  Any chance to go to the store and walk around amidst blessed freon was taken.  I would simply make a habit of walking a circuit around the entire store before I actually did my shopping.  By the time September arrived, I knew I could get into my grocery store, walk a circuit in 10 or so minutes, get shopping done, and then get home.  All told, I would grab around 20 minutes' worth of walking wherever I could, whenever I could.

I didn't want it badly enough to get out and sweat my drawers off, but it was close.

Finally, finally, my appointment in mid-September arrived.  I took the whole day off of work, got up, walked in the morning, ate a clean breakfast...

Then, it was time.

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I very nearly took the stairs in order to get up to the third floor where my doctors' office was.  The elevator was moving entirely too slow, and I found myself contemplating the physics involved in getting out to push the damned thing by the time the doors opened on 3.  I bounced into the office -- not without a significant amount of jiggle -- checked in, and immediately asked the contained ball of sunshine if I could use their scale.

She giggled at me and told me to help myself.

I blew through the glass door that was separating the waiting room from the back offices where they conducted exams, took a hard right, and skidded to a halt in front of my nemesis, thoughts of my belt completely absent from my head. "Now, my little metal friend, you will yield to me," I all but purred.  Then I stepped up, steadied myself, and read the display:

456

Somehow, I had gained a pound.

I look down at my belt and muttered, "You lied to me."  

Then I went back to the waiting room and sat down in the farthest chair from the door.  It was the only thing I could think to do.

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I thought I was being clever by getting to my appointment early.  I had it all planned out.  I was going to vault up onto the scale -- Parkour! -- hear the lamentations of my enemy, and then use the spare time before my actual appointment to discretely excuse myself from the waiting room and run laps in the hallway, screaming the entire time.

Oops.

Ten minutes passed.  Somehow, it only took a year.

The nurse deserved better than a fake smile when she called my name.  It was all I could give her.  She knew, of course.  I wasn't the first person to come in there, to that place, feeling the way I did.  "I have to see it," she said quietly, radiating sympathy.  "For your chart."  She knew what she was asking me for.

I got back up on the scale again.  The climb took forever.  I didn't want to see it again, so I looked at the wall above the display.  She reached across and turned the scale on.  

Then she frowned.

"Can you step off for me real quick please?  I don't think the last person that used this Zero'd it properly." Her words pulled a breathy little huff of laughter out of me.  "That would have been me," I said quietly.  "I just turned it on and hopped up about 10 minutes ago."  I hopped down and stepped aside.  The nurse shook her head. "One of our staff is supposed to do in the morning so all you have to do is climb on.  Not your fault at all."

Holy shit.

She pressed a few buttons, tapped the scale platform once with her food, and the machine beeped at her.  Then she stepped aside.  "Okay, try it one more time, please?"

I actually had the thought of, 'This is so cliche,' as I stepped back up, eyeing the rapidly climbing numbers.

441

The nurse smiled and opened her mouth, but I held a finger up in the air. "Wait for it," I muttered.  I stepped off of the scale, waited for it to snap back down to zero again, and then climbed back on.

441

Someone in the room shouted, "That's what I'm talking about!"  I realized it was me, and I was pointing at the display on the scale.  Then I walked back to my usual exam room, cackling like a madman.

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My face hurt, and I didn't care.  Short of accidentally kicking a puppy -- there were no puppies in the room, I'd checked -- nothing was going to take the stupid grin off of my face for at least the next 15 minutes or so.

It took a few of those minutes before the door opened and my physician came in.  She was smiling also, though hers had considerably less lunatic fringe in it.  "Congratulations," she said without preamble, legging a stool over to sit down on.

"You heard?" I said.

"The whole office heard," she deadpanned.  

I did not apologize.  There is no shame in this dojo.

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No one could confirm what did the trick.  It might have been the walking, or the vitamin D, or the prolonged change in diet.  It could have been all of those things, or none of them.  That's the problem with being an edge case.  Whatever the case might have been, my 'engine' appear to have been restarted successfully.  That meant I could start focusing on the next problem:

Someone had injected silly putty into both of my lower legs.

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"It's called 'pitting edema'," my physician said, her expression amused.  "Given your weight, it's not uncommon, though you appear to have a rather impressive case of it, I'll grant you."

As she talked, I was demonstrating the silly putty thing.  I'd put one of my legs up on the exam table and pressed my thumb into my tibia.  A lot.  When I lifted my thumb up, a spectacular imprint remained.  As we both watched, the flesh slowly began to expand outward again.

"That's what happens when excess fluid, probably water, builds up in your body.  It can happen almost anywhere on your body, but it's most common in the lower legs, ankles, and feet."  I nodded, absently using my fingers to draw something inappropriate on my shin. "How do I get rid of it," I asked.  An instant later, I looked up and added, "Don't say 'lose all that weight.'  This has been a really great visit so far."

My physician rolled her eyes and said, "Compression sleeves.  Preferably full, knee-high socks.  But...yeah, also that other thing.  You won’t need to lose all of the weight, but the more weight you lose, the less fluid will have potential to hang out in your extremities.  Have you ever worn a compression sock before?”

I shrugged, and committed the cardinal sin of common sense. “No, but...how hard can it be?”

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My psychologist was elsewhere when I got dropped off at his office.  I was invited to head in and make myself comfortable, so that’s exactly what I did.

“You spent a lot of time staring at the same picture on my wall.”  It was telling, the kind of voice and demeanor that my psychologist had that, when he spoke, I didn’t immediately jump out of my skin.  Instead, I simply turned to face him as he sat behind his desk.  At some point, he’d walked in the room and settled himself, and I haven’t noticed.

“For what it’s worth,” I countered, “I’m not actually looking at that picture.  That’s just sort of where I end up staring when I’m in your office and I get contemplative.  Which...admittedly, happens quite a bit.”

“This is the part where I’m supposed to ask you what’s on your mind.”

As I started collecting my thoughts, I unconsciously let my eyes drift back over to the picture on the wall.  Then I realized I was doing it and laughed a little.  “This is...weird for me.”

“You’re going to have to clarify that a little,” he chided gently.  “There are rumors that you were shouting at the scale up front earlier, so...I’m not sure what’s weird for you anymore.”

I couldn’t help it.  The grin from earlier surfaced for a moment before it abated slightly and I went back to staring at the picture on the wall.  I thought about how to make my next statement.  Then I opted to try something new and simply told what was on my mind. 

“I really don't like doctors."  Then I spent the next 10 minutes telling him why.  When I was done, or at least done enough, I sat back in my suspiciously well-appointed chair and spread my hands, sighing. Waiting.

“You know,” he began after a long moment's pause, “A lot of people don’t particularly care for doctors, and they don’t really have a legitimate reason.  You...have one of the most legitimate reasons I’ve ever heard, hands down.”  He leaned in a little. “You don't...sound happy about that."

I sat there for a moment, looking at my hands instead of the picture for a change.  Then I looked up.  “I’m not sure what I expected when I came here.  A fat camp, condemnation, something out of those of those reality television weight loss shows...."  I rolled the remains of my sentiment around in my mind, trying to find the next handle on it, and failing.

No one at the bariatric center had bullied me into weight loss in any way.  No one had pushed surgery, or meds, or exercise, or kale.  Everyone had listened to me, to my entire long, odd, unusual story.  Then they'd worked with me to take enough small steps to make a difference.  Maybe more than that, they'd respected me.  They hadn't hurt me.

I couldn't figure out how to say any of that.

It took me another half a minute of staring at my own hands before I finally managed, "Everybody here is really nice."  My voice sounded small in my own ears.  Exhausted.  

When I looked up, my psychologist had tears in his eyes.  "Thank you."