Life under the knife

More cutting is on the way--I have yet another surgery scheduled for Wednesday morning, September 1. I don't what the deal is with me having surgeries scheduled for the first day of the month. I have a complete hip replacement on October 1, 2009, and a hernia repair surgery on April 1. I guess God just wants me to get it out of the way up front. This will the third one in less than 12 months. So, what is it THIS time? I have posterior tibial tendon dysfunction,otherwise known as PTTD. What is that? The website "Your Orthopaedic Connection"explains it much better than I can:

Tendons connect muscles to bones and stretch across joints, enabling you to bend that joint. One of the most important tendons in the lower leg is the posterior tibial tendon. This tendon starts in the calf, stretches down behind the inside of he ankle and attaches to bones in the middle of the foot.

The posterior tibial tendon helps hold your arch up and provides support as you step off on your toes when walking. If this tendon becomes inflamed, over-stretched or torn, you may experience pain on the inner ankle and gradually lose the inner arch on the bottom of your foot, leading to flatfoot.

For those of you who are toting around 100-500 plus pounds on your body and consider yourself "healthy" because you don't have high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes, think about how much extra pressure you are placing on your bones, joints and connective tissues like the tendons and ligaments. Check out this excerpt from The Importance of Foot Orthotics:

The human foot is a marvelously complicated yet efficient machine, comprised of over 100 working parts, including as many as 28 bones working in conjunction with ligaments, tendons and muscles. All of this supports and balances our entire body, and in the course of normal walking bears up to 1.5 times our body weight on each foot. This pressure is enormous, and with the average foot traveling 1,000 miles a year, it is no surprise there are many injuries.

The feet act as shock absorbers for the entire body, and in the course of a one-hour strenuous workout will cushion nearly one million pounds of pressure. As a result, many people feel the pain of this stress, usually caused by foot imbalance. This pain shouldn’t be ignored as it is not a normal result of foot function.

The passage above is talking about people who are at a normal body weight. Extra pounds places extra pressure on those 28 bones and 100 working parts in the feet. At 400 pounds, I was asking my feet to carry a lot more than what it was designed to do. In addition to that, I was born with very little arch in my feet. I remember feeling the arch in my right foot collapsing when I around 10-11 years old and playing baseball in the backyard. It doesn't feel good. But I ignored it, which is what the article says a person shouldn't do.

Over the years, I gained more and more weight, which added even more pressure to my weakened arches. Finally, when I was about 26 years old, I felt a tendon snap in my right foot. I didn't know that was what happened. But I've learned more about what's been going on with my feet over the past six months, and now I can recognize when the tendon is tearing. And it's been doing that a lot these days.

Now, I'm a visual/audio learner, so seeing pictures helps me to conceptualize new material. I don't know if this helps you, but I appreciate the graphics available on the Internet that have helped me see what my podiatrist has been talking about. The first picture is a normal foot and arch. Here's the medical description of it from www.arthroscopy.com :

The navicular bone is a key structural component in the formation of the arch of the foot. When this bone is in the proper position, the arch is maintained. However, if this bone moves out of position, towards the bottom of the foot (plantar surface), then the arch begins to sag and disappear. As this occurs, the patient develops a flatfoot deformity.

And now, a picture of the foot that has begun to develop a flatfoot deformity. (Mine looks worse than this on the MRI.):

The posterior tibial tendon is essential to the normal functioning of the foot by maintaining the navicular bone in the proper position. By doing so, the arch of the foot is maintained. However, if the posterior tibial tendon fails to function properly, the navicular bone begins to drop, the arch falls and a flatfoot deformity begins to develop. When this occurs, the foot may develop pain with weight bearing.

This is kind of what my feet look like right now (picture courtesy offootankleinstitute.com):

And this is how bad it can get without surgery (from the The Institute for Foot and Ankle Surgery at Mercy):

With increasing deformity of the foot, the joints in the foot get very stiff, and little in and outward movement of the foot is possible.

Obviously, I want to have the surgery before my feet become badly deformed and essentially useless. I asked my podiatrist if I would be able to walk if the tendon completely ruptured. He said that I could, but I wouldn't want to. I understood what he meant immediately. The pain would be excruciating. No, thank you.

This is yet another example of the wreckage of my addictive eating past--it has wrecked havoc on my body in ways I never could imagine. Even though I've lost an awful lot of weight, I'm still paying for the damage done. As bad as that seems right now, it could be so much worse. I could be still into the food, gaining even more weight, and becoming one of those people that you see on programs like "Two Ton Mom".

If you are suffering from morbid obesity, you HAVE to lose weight in order to get the treatment you need for the various health problems that incur as the result of out of control eating. I strongly recommend this program: Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous
The life you save will be your own.

My brother's birthday

Today, my brother Ricky would have been 46 years old. But he never made it past his 24th birthday. The truth is, I can't tell you the exact date he died. I think it was early December, either 1987 or 1988. It must be intentional, this memory lapse. Why would I want to remember the most horrific day of my life-- the day my baby brother, my ONLY brother, left all who loved him?

So I'm not going to remember anything about his death today. I'm going to remember how he LIVED.

Richard Sydney Shortt II was born May 18, 1964 at Sutter Memorial Hospital located at 5151 F Street in Sacramento. Six years earlier on March 27th, I was born--same hospital, same room, and according to our mother, same bed. I'm not so sure about the bed part, but hey, I was too young to remember the first event and not allowed entry into the maternity ward for the second one. Mom came to the window of her room and proudly showed my sister Tam* and I the swaddled bundle that we were supposed to believe was our brother. We weren't buying it.

"That's a doll." Tam.

"And it's red. It's a red doll." Me.

I can't remember what Dad said in response, but it seems to me that he wasn't very happy.

Like any family, we can recall all kinds of memories--how Ricky used to spit out his pacifier when we peered into his crib. He had pinpoint accuracy. I was always hit in the forehead, and when Tam looked in, he nailed her on the nose every time. Then he would chortle gleefully. We swore that he was doing it on purpose, but Mom said it was just our imaginations. He was only four months old, after all. We weren't wrong. Ricky turned out to be a prodigy in terms of finding ways to harass his older sisters on a daily basis. His Older Sister Guerrilla War Campaign began before he was weaned off Similac.

Exhibit 1: Carefully placing his Hot Wheels, Tonka trucks and Lego toys right outside our bedroom door before Tam and I woke up in the morning. Purpose: To torture our bare feet as we headed for the bathroom in the morning.

Exhibit 2: Lobbing pieces of cantaloupe (I'm allergic to them) at me during breakfast. Laughing when they stuck to my forehead.

Exhibit 3: Turning both the bass and the volume of the stereo on full blast while I was taking an after school nap on the couch in the den. I was in high school! Teachers, hormones and constant crushes on boys seriously wore me out every afternoon. Straight cruelty!

Exhibit 4: I had a boyfriend named Sam when I was 16. I wasn't all that crazy about him, but he drove a shiny blue Mazda, and I never had a boyfriend before. Ricky decided that if Sam wanted to be my boyfriend, he was giving his consent to the same treatment I received. Poor guy never understood what had happened to him. Ricky and his little buddies from the neighborhood would run around his shiny blue Mazda, kicking in the hubcaps, jumping on the hood, and yelling "Sam, Sam the garbage can man!" This happened as soon as he parked his car in front of our house. I would be in my bedroom reading, and I suddenly heard Sam yelling, "Angie! You better do something about your brother!" Damn shame to see an 18 year old man near tears.

As mortifying as the experiences were at the time, I would pay off the United States' debt to China if I could have my brother Ricky with me today, sitting around laughing at these and many other memories. I do, however, believe that there is life after this one, and that my little brother is in the Realm Beyond, smiling because he knows how much I love and miss him.

I just wish I could tell him in person.

*Tam wasn't born at Sutter Memorial, but at Keesler Air Force Base hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi--these things happened when your father was a member of the United States Air Force. Ricky and I used to tease her by singing "Mississippi Mama, never lost a fight!" Don't tell her I said that. She still gets pissed off about it.

An Open Letter from a Food Addict

With much love and sincere thanks to Al-Anon Family Groups, for pioneering the way to keep substance abusers and food addicts accountable for their actions.

I am a food addict. I do need your help, but not in the ways you have tried in the past. The best way you can help me is to leave me to my own devices. Believe me; I have a lot of them.

Don't lecture, blame or scold me. I know exactly what I’m doing to myself, even though I eat as if I will never get another meal. I berate and demonize myself almost every moment of the day about my obsession with eating large quantities of highly refined, processed sugar/flour/high fat food.

Don’t show me the latest magazine diet or clip out articles about obesity risks and weight loss treatments from the newspaper. I will thank you politely on some days, become surly and distant on others. But I won’t do anything more than glance at the clippings before tossing them in the garbage. Please don’t take it personally.

Do not buy me diet books; I’ve bought enough of them over the years. Do not get angry if you’ve noticed that I haven’t opened those books. I am sick. You wouldn't be angry with me for having cancer or diabetes. Food addiction is a disease, too.

Don't throw away my “secret” stashes of food when you find them; it's just a waste because I can always find ways of getting more.

Don’t hide the bathroom scale from me; I will find it. Or if I hide the scale, don’t put it out in the open again. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but there is nothing rational about food addiction.

Don't let me provoke your anger. If you attack me verbally or physically, you will only confirm my bad opinion abut myself. I hate myself enough already.

Don't let your love and anxiety for me lead you into doing what I ought to do for myself. Don’t bring me food, cook my meals, help me get dressed, or call my boss when I feel too depressed to get out of bed and ready for work. If you assume my responsibilities, you make my failure to assume them permanent. My sense of guilt will be increased, and you will feel resentful.

Don't accept my promises and solemn pledges to lose weight. I'll promise anything to get off the hook. But the nature of my illness prevents me from keeping my promises, even though I mean them at the time.

Don't make empty threats, as in you will send me to one of those fat camps or reality shows to force me to lose weight. I know you’re not going to do that, and the fact that you would even say that to me just compounds my shame. But if you do decide to do those things or anything else, stick to your decision. Do not let me talk you ought of it.

Don't believe everything I tell you; it may be a lie. I’m not going to Weight Watcher’s or start the latest magazine diet on Monday, and even if I do, I will only half-heartedly follow those programs. I will tell you that another family member or a friend ate all the entire box of cookies, the gallon of ice cream or the whole bucket of fried chicken. What I tell you about my eating may even sound plausible, completely rational. But my word can’t be trusted when it comes to food. Denial of reality is a symptom of my illness, and I am in so much denial that I don’t always see how much more weight I’ve put on. It’s unfair of me to require you to be in denial about my food issues the way I am. Moreover, I'm likely to lose respect for those I can fool too easily.

Don't let me take advantage of you or exploit you in any way. Love cannot exist for long without the dimension of justice. It doesn’t matter how much I yell, scream, cry or make you feel guilty. Don’t give into my overt or passive/aggressive machinations.

Don't cover up for me or try in any way to spare me the consequences of my addictive eating. Don't lie for me, pay my bills, or meet my obligations. It may avert or reduce the very crisis that would prompt me to seek help. I can continue to deny that I have a a serious problem with food as long as you provide an automatic escape for the consequences of my eating.

Above all, do learn all you can about food addiction and your role in relation to me. Go to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) meetings when you can. Attend Al-Anon meetings regularly and adapt whatever they say about alcoholism and the alcoholic to food addiction and the food addict. Read the literature and keep in touch with Al-Anon members. They're the people who can help you see the whole situation clearly.

I love you.

Your Food Addict

Drive-by spammin' web site sleazoids

First, the !@#$%ing drive-by spammers who took over this web site (and many others here on Blogger): a pox upon you and those of your ilk, unkind and barbarous sirs! Okay, that's lame, but I'm working on keeping the old Aries temper within reasonable boundaries these days. For the sake of my continued recovery from life-long food addiction, I can't afford to have lingering anger and resentments to fester and boil over. (Even though the drive by spam took place when my Internet connection was down and my health was on the downside; oh, those low down, dirty sleaze-suckin'!@#$oles taking advantage of a lady when she's down and out! No class!) Anyway, I have to try my best to refrain from such actions because they might lead me to consider Domino's newly revised pizza with the improved crust that once tasted like cardboard.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, Angela, how do you know what Domino's pizza crust used to taste like? Obviously, I ate it. Can't lie. Domino's was cheap and they delivered. When a food addict gets into the "phenomenon of craving" aka a serious need of a fix but has very little money, a cardboard crust seems better than nothing at all. Of course, that's in the opinion of a desperate addict in need of a fix, as pathetic as that seems to me right now. I used to say that I never ate anything I didn't like, but that's not true. I had that flour/high fat protein jones going on, and if I couldn't afford Zelda's (pizza heaven here in Sacramento, IMO)I was willing to pay for a knock off version of my drug. It's kind of like the drunk who's low on cash and buy cough syrup or vanilla extract to get a buzz. Disgusting, but hey, that's what addiction does. Warps the mind to do unreasonable things.

Hmmmm....now that I think about it, THAT'S what I should wish upon those website-crashin' Neanderthals! Yeah! May your nights be filled with a thousand cardboard crust pizzas with anchovies that tear up the roof of your mouths, and your mornings be filled with acid indigestion and clogged bowels! Heh. That'll learn ya!

I have more to post, but I have to get to bed. I have to have a tooth extracted tomorrow, Act 4 of Angela's Teeth Opera that started last June. Hopefully, the finale will be an exhilarating success, and I walk away with a minimum of the AlvinandtheChipmunks look in effect. Catch y'all later in the week.