My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“Ting, ting,” my husband goofs as he taps my skin. “Do you feel strong from all that iron?” We have to make dorky jokes like this – otherwise we’ll go into a joint fugue state at the understanding of how much my anemia has upended our plans and drained my savings account (because ’murica). I wrote about this back in November , when I thought I just had to get some iron put directly into my blood and that would ‘fix me up for a year or two.’ Ah, my sweet summer child… Not only did the four IV infusions I did (to the tune of $900, for my part after insurance ) not make me feel better, but my next blood test showed my iron levels had dropped even further – I was at 3% saturation in January! All I could think to say when we got the results was “what happens when I get to 0%?” The next thought I had was “what the fuck is going on with my body?” After all, it made sense that I couldn’t absorb enough iron from my ironically super iron-rich diet –  I did have asur...

View this post on Instagram The benefit of being trapped in a chair for an hour while liquid iron drips slowly into my anemic veins: nothing to do but work on my book! #amrevising #forcedwritingtime #mybodyisanoldjalopy A post shared by Anne H. Putnam (@ahputnam) on Nov 8, 2019 at 11:24am PST Even though I warned her, my new doctor was still startled by my iron levels. “The low end of normal is nearly twice this number,” she insisted, educating me even as I nodded along – I knew this already. “Last time it was a point lower,” I told her, but she (like most people) didn’t seem to care how bad it used to be. She cared about getting me healthy now. “People get blood transfusions around these numbers.” I raised my eyebrows in surprise – not mock, but a bit exaggerated, trying to give her the reaction I felt she was after. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but rather that my anemia had been a concern f...

It’s been on my TeuxDeux list for months now, just rolling over to the next day and the next. Every time I open my laptop or check the app to make sure I’m on top of schoolwork and life admin, it’s staring at me: make appt with bariatric dr. When I can’t take it anymore I move it ahead a few days, manually, telling myself I’ll do it when things are calmer or the apartment is quieter or it stops raining… These excuses are bunk, of course – for one thing, a Pacific-Northwesterner* should never wait to do anything until the rain stops. But I’ve been putting it off, because I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’ll be weighed and measured and found…what’s the opposite of wanting? Overabundant? I’m afraid I’ll succumb to pressure and tacitly agree that the weight is the problem, not my attitude about it (or my hoped-for response, the whole reason I’m going to a bariatric doctor at all: that my post-GB body processes food and exercise differently and there’s some key element I’m missing...

A friend of mine emailed me last night, suggesting I watch the latest episode of BBC 2's 'Horizon', because it dealt with the issue of Gastric Bypass.  But when I started watching it this evening, I realized that really, it deals mostly with obesity – how and why it exists, and what we should do about it – and Gastric Bypass plays a large part in the last third of the program. In all honesty, as I started watching, my immediate reaction was rage and righteous indignation.  Gabriel Weston, the thin, blond, female surgeon who hosts the show announces at the very beginning that for her entire life (including the ten years in which she's been practicing medicine) she has operated under the 'assumption [...] that I am the size I am because of my character'.  Now, not only is that a particularly smug way of putting it, there is a serious problem with the underlying message: that fat people are fat simply because they are lazy and eat too much.  They don't have ...

Happy New Year!  I've had a lot going on these past couple of months, and I'm currently getting down to business on the first big set of edits for my book, but I just had to pop in to share my thoughts on a couple of articles that have been stirring my blood lately. First, this article from the New York Times, about a new study proving that our bodies actually conspire against us to hold onto fat we desperately want to lose, and that people who have lost weight before actually burn fewer calories doing the exact same activity as they would have burned had they never been overweight (sorry if that didn't make sense, just read the article).  I read it while I was on holiday in Rome, stuffing my face and telling myself that all the walking on cobblestones would work off the carbonara and the lasagne and the fried artichokes, and I must say I found it both fascinating and seriously depressing.  The description of the lifestyle a person needs to lead just to keep off a sign...

I had a total meltdown last night.  Some of it was triggered by the usual stress (I just got back from a wonderful trip to SF, and I'm homesick and worried about catching up with work, and I had a massively important writing deadline yesterday), but mostly it was about the doctor's appointment I have tomorrow.  And the weigh-in that awaits me there. I know I've ranted about doctors before.  And I've told you about this one , specifically.  The short story is that if my BMI goes up one more point I'll be cut off from using Nuvaring, which is the only form of hormonal birth control I've ever tried that hasn't made me feel crazy and disinterested in sex.  So I booked this appointment last month, making sure to make it for a day when I was unlikely to be PMSing and likely to be writing at home instead of in the office.  But I didn't factor in the vacation beforehand; suffice it to say, my weight is not low enough that I feel totally confident strutting i...

Well, in fairness, this one was a nurse.  And she was pretty cool.  But the numbers were still assholes. A little background: I'm still in London, and not going home as often / uninsured in the States, so I decided it was well past time to try to get my birth control on the NHS.  So I went into the clinic affiliated with my Uni.  And of course they had to weigh/measure me.  And of course my BMI says I'm obese. Fuck off, BMI.  Obese??  Ok, I could lose a few stone, but if you're seriously telling me I have to lose 50 pounds to be within the range of 'normal,' you're off your rocker.  I'm a size 12, for god's sake!  I know it's not slender, but it's certainly not obese either! I'm so sick of being controlled by numbers.  Even the nurse, when I told her I'd had weight-loss surgery and had been leveling out within 10 pounds of my current weight for the past 9 years, said she thought the numbers were a bit silly as they don't take b...

I woke up this morning, nose running, lungs itchy and swollen, and generally just feeling like shit on a stick. I got out of bed, topless, and turned to put on my robe, and there was my boyfriend, staring at me appreciatively. I was not in the mood, but all he said was “you’ve lost a lot of weight.” Of course, being the bitchy, complicated female that I am, I replied: “I don’t know how to take that,” and walked off to the bathroom, covering up on my way. He meant it as a compliment to how I look now, rather than an insult to how I looked before, and in his defense he’s never once in 3 1/2 years said anything but kind words about my body. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear the unkind ones he doesn’t say. Those are delightfully provided by my own fucked-up psyche. But the point here isn’t that I’m screwed up, because everybody already knows that. The point is, when he said that about my weight, I realized with a jolt that these past few days I’ve been so focused on hacking up my al...

I have a bone to pick with the medical community, although it's probably well hidden beneath layers of fat. Yes, I'm talking about the way that doctors and medical professionals deal with weight. A few months ago, I asked my friend if she liked her 'lady doctor,' because I needed to go in for my annual check-up and I don't have a doctor in SF. Her response was something along the lines of "yeah, I like her because she doesn't talk a lot. I mean, except to tell me to lose weight." At this point, she shrugged, as if this is par for the course. For the record, this friend, while not slender, weighs less than I do. So I went online to Yelp (otherwise known as the bible), and I chose a doctor who gets rave reviews. He's a man, unfortunately, but I figured I should just suck it up and give him a try. And I liked him, mostly. The only thing he did that bothered me was that he talked a little too much. Oh yeah, and that he kept slipping in comment...