Recovering From Laxative Abuse

When I was in high school, I started packing on the pounds.  I didn't like it.

One summer while I was at my dad's, I was 17 at the time, I wanted to be thin again in order to feel comfortable wearing a bathing suit to the lake and I discovered that if I took laxatives, it helped me be thinner.

And that is when it all started.  From that point on I took laxatives to cancel out the effect of my eating.  When I returned to my mom's I had lost quite a bit of weight and got some positive reviews about it, it made me feel so good that I continued to use laxatives to control my weight.

From the age of 17 to the age of 19 I used a moderate amount of laxatives in order to maintain my weight.  I didn't have to use so much because I was quite the busy person.  When I was 18, I was going to college, had two jobs and had an active social life.  I swam two hours every day and was always on the go.  When I got pregnant with my daughter at 19, it slowed my life down and I started packing on the pounds.  After having given birth, I found that I had gained some weight and was having trouble losing weight so I started to use laxatives again.  With their help and with extra activities again I started to loose weight again, getting to an acceptable weight.  Even though I was not using as much as I would later I was using laxatives on a regular basis in order to maintain my weight.  Back them laxatives contained phenophthalein, which was later banned for having some adverse health effects.

By 1997 I became pregnant with my son.  Pregnancy didn't stop me from using laxatives this time.  I didn't want to gain too much weight during my pregnancy, I did however lay off them for a bit after my son was born as I had been put on a medication and I didn't want the laxatives to affect their effectiveness.

Lo and behold I started packing on the pounds in a big way.  I got to be over 200 pounds and this affected my self esteem greatly.

By the year 2000 I started using laxatives again to lose weight.  This time my use of them really took off.  There was this pharmacy that sold bottles of 120 pills for a few dollars.  As these pills were cheap I would take more and more of them.  It came to a point where I would take about 10 pills after every meal.  I was also on a restrictive diet at that time and walked a lot.  When I started loosing weight again, the people around me were so proud of me, I got so much positive feedback it made me feel great.  I became obsessed with loosing weight.

From 2000 to about 2006 I would take 60 to 80 laxative pills a day.  I went down to  120\125 pounds.  Now that does not seem like very thin however at 5'7" with a large bone structure and a decent amount of muscles, this was in fact too thin.  I should never have gone below 135.  Oh it's only 10\15 pounds under you say, but it didn't look like only that.

Starting in 2004\2005 I started getting comments about my weight, comments implying that I had gotten maybe too thin.  When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see it in the beginning.  I still thought I was too fat.

One day in 2006 I saw a picture of myself that I had taken a bit earlier.  And then I saw other pictures and all of a sudden I really saw myself.  Saw how thin I had really gotten.  Something suddenly clicked in my brain and I realized that I had an eating disorder and I needed to do something about it.  I started to wean myself off laxatives.

The result was that I started packing on the pounds again.  I tried dieting to try to staunch the flow of weight gain to no avail.  I relapsed a few times, going back to laxative use, but was determined to stop and eventually I was finally able to completely stop.

In very little time, I gained well over 100 pounds.  The self-esteem issues that had caused me to develop an eating disorder that was still there so of course gaining all this weight did not make me feel very good.  Depression ensued and has since been my constant companion.  I have tried loosing weight in a healthy way since but nothing seems to work.

When I was thin I was exposing myself to all kinds of issues:

• Tremors
• Dehydration
• Weakness
• Nausea
• Water retention
• Colon infection
• Blurry vision
• Severe abdominal pain
• Chronic Diarrhea
• Gas
• Bloating
• Electrolyte Disturbances
• Chronic Constipation
• Bowel tumors
• Irregular heartbeat
• Kidney damage
• Electrolyte imbalance
• Organ damage
• Colon failure
• Death

When I abused laxatives, I had very low blood pressure and was prone to fainting.  I would often "wake up" on the washroom floor after a period of loss of consciousness.  Yet society viewed me as "healthier" than I am now.  I had severe IBS and would often bleed with my bowel movements.

Now that I am obese, I hate going out of the house.  I hate meeting new people and I especially hate seeing people I used to know when I was thin.  I often have to endure comments about my "fatness"  I assure you these "helpful comments" are anything but.

Sometimes I wonder if my current health issues may not have been caused by my years of laxative abuse.  This has been one of my greatest secrets.  I know it's something I should discuss with my doctor but I have no idea how to bring it up.

Not a Good Day

I am sitting here thinking of everything I need to do.

• I have to finish cleaning the kitchen - it's absolutely horrible, there are still a lot of dishes to do, the floor is a mess - it's bad I tell you
• I have to vaccuum the house - there are cat hair balls everywhere.
• Clean and pick up the living room.  A lot of stuff is in this room that does not belong, a lot of it belonging to my son but there is stuff from all of us - it's pretty bad
• Get all the cat litters cleaned up and fresh litter put in it.  I have to admit I have not done them in a bit and of course the kids are not doing them either.  Poor cats stuck with filthy litter boxes.  I am horrible.
• Go out and do grocery shopping.  The cupboards and freezer are pretty bare.  I am way overdue.
• Do laundry, both mine and my son's are needed.  My son is 16 but does not beleive in taking care of himself.  His laundry requires deep cleening at this point - again it's pretty bad

Yet I sit here after having only done some dishes and I just feel like crying.  I hurt, I am tired.  I just want to go lie down in bed and cry.  I did some therapy last year that implied that if I can make myself get up and do my chores the sense of accomplishement will help chase away the depression.  It only makes me exhausted and more depressed because I can't seem to get it all done.

I go back to work tomorrow.  I get two days off to get my sh*t done.  I also need these two days to visit people and rest to prepare for the week ahead.

During the week, trying to get my son to shower and go to work in the morning is exhausting.  Then I face the commute to work, takes me close to an hour I am already tired by the time I get to work.  I do my 8 hour day, trying not to let mi irritation overwhelme me the have to face the commute home.  Traffic at night going home is absolutely HORRIBLE! It often takes me over 75 minutes to get home.  By the time I get home I am so exhausted that running errands, preparring supper and doing housework is just beyond me.  The mess adds up very quickly, so that by the weekend, it seems insurmountable.

I envy those women who can not only get all this done but insert some time to exercise.  I want to be them so bad!

Losing Weight

Some of you may know that over the last few years I have gotten quite fat.  Sometime since 2006 I have gained well over a 100 pounds.  I did start off as too thin, so some of that weight was fine, but then between medications that make you gain weight, activity levels that have gone down because of constant exhaustion and pain, that bit of weight that may have been necessary has ballooned to way way way too much weight.

The weight did not go one super fast but neither was it an overly slow process.  I did try to stall the progress a few times without much success.

Ever since I started gaining, I have hated myself, hated what my body was becoming.  To make matters worst, the pain and exhaustion that started it all has progressively gotten worst, making it that much more difficult to do the physical activity needed to assist in weight loss.

So even though I have been thinking about loosing weight for quite some time now, I have only recently begun a "diet".  I started restricting calories on August 11, 2014.  Unfortunately I did not weight myselft before starting so I have no idea what my starting weight was.  I only weighed myself at the two week mark.

The good news is that I weight less than I thought I did.  So I have been feeling heavier than I actually am, that's a good thing, the bad news is that I had no way of knowing if the efforts I had been making for two weeks had any effect.  But now I at least have a reference point.  I will weight myself again in a little while to see if there is any difference.

I would like to lose about 80 pounds (37 Kg or 6 stones).  I figure, with my current calorie restriction, I should lose about 2 pounds a week. (Quite honestly, 5 would be so much better but until I can manage to do more excercise, that is not a realistic expectation).  At this rate, it would take about 9 months to reach my goal weight. (Just in time for next summer!)

I would really really really like to lose weight.  I really hope this works.  I am not that confident that it will due to my previous failures, but it would be so darn nice if it finally did work.

At least I am not doing the first leg of this diet by myself.  My daughter also feels she has a bit of weight to lose, so she is dieting along with me.  She cheats a bit more than I do, but she is also quite a bit more physically active than I am, so she can get away with consuming more calories anyway.

I get so many cravings though.  Chips, cake, BACON! Bread.

I am not a big chocolate or pop (soda) drinker, so not having any of those is not a big issue.

I am also more hungry than the amount of food I can intake, even the healthy kind.  It's amazing how fast calories add up.  I have researched healthy ways of reducing appretite, nothing works very well so far.

I hope that if and when I weigh less, moving my body around will become a tad easier, that my legs will be able to carry this body of mine furhter.

Well wish me luch and thank you for reading.

Trix

RIP Trix
August 1999 ~ August 2014

In the summer of 1999, we found out that the mother of my mother's cat was pregnant  with a new litter.  My mother knowing that I loved cats asked me if I would be interested in having a kitten.  Now at the time I was living on Welfare with barely enough money to feed myself and my two children that I did not think it was a good idea to have a cat, so I thought hard on the right answer to give.  Finally, I said that if there was a black kitten in the litter, I would take it.

The reason I said that was that the cat in question was a beautiful white cat, known for having beautiful white kittens.  It was highly unlikely that she would have a black kitten, so I felt pretty smug with my ingenious solution.

Towards the end of August the kittens were born...

Lo and behold there was ONE black kitten in the bunch!

Since I had promised I would take a black kitten if she had one, I could not back down, so in early October, the cute little bundle of black joy was delivered to me.

I had not told my children that we were getting a kitten, just in case something happened and we wound up not getting him.  My daughter was away at school when I received the kitten, so that day I stuffed the kitten in my coat, and off I went to meet her at the bus.

She got off the bus and we started walking home when within a few steps, she hears a little meowing sound.  She stops and asks me if I've heard a kitten.  I say no and we continue walking towards home.  Again she hears the soft meowing of a kitten.  She stops again trying to figure out where the sound comes from.  She hears the sound again and this time notices that the sound is emanating from my coat.  She asks me if I have a kitten in my coat looking at me that way a child does when they know we are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.  I lower the zip and out pops a black little head.

My daughter was ecstatic!

Since he had come to us in October, so close to Halloween, and him being a black cat, we decided to name him Trix.

Over the next year, that kitten barely laid a foot on the ground as she always had him in her arms.  In fact on a few occasions I was called to her school to come and pick up our cat.  She would stuff  Trix into her backpack and bring him to school. She would often dress him up in her dolls clothes, he was so cute with a bonnet.  Such a good boy to let her do all those things.

Trix was quite a mischievous kitten, on almost a daily basis he would get into our garbage can, tipping it over and making a mess.  He would climb our kitchen cupboards and go hide up there close to the ceiling.  I admit he spent a bit of time in our basement, especially when we were away from the house.

Time passed and we moved one place an another.  Everywhere we went, we had to be able to bring Trix with us.  Eventually (in 2002) we moved back to the Ottawa area.  By that time we had also adopted a little sister, a pretty white fluffy girl from another litter.  

At some point, Trix had developed a litter box issue.  Every once in a while he would pee on furniture or clean laundry, but that did not deter our love for him and we tried to correct him of this nasty habit (which would never really work BTW)

In April 2006 his little sister passed away suddenly.

Over time Trix had become considerable overweight, so December 2006, January 2007, we decided to try and put him on a diet.  We stopped giving him people food (chicken mostly) and changed his food.  He did not take well to this and decided to simply stop eating.  It took a while for us to notice and by that time, he had developed Fatty Liver Disease, which can be very fatal for cats.

We brought him to the vet and they told us he was in very bad shape.  They could try treating him but it would be VERY expensive and there was only a 50/50 chance that he would make it.  After looking at my daughter's tear filled eyes, we decided to go for the treatment and hope for the best.

For a week he was hospitalized.  They gave him several meds and force fed him though a tube inserted directly in his stomach.  After a week or so, he was brought home where we continued to force feed him every two hours a set amount of food through a large syringe and gave his all his medication at set times.  We did this for a week or two and brought him back to the vet for a check up.

Trix at the Alta Vista Animal Hospital being treated for Fatty Liver Disease

Good news! He had pulled through.  All his levels had stabilized and he had started eating on his own again.

Around that time we started fostering for a cat rescue organization.  Trix would take in scared little orphan, often feral kittens, and mother them.  He would help raise them and become well adjusted social and friendly kittens.  Over the course of the next few years he raised many kittens and would always get a little depressed when they got adopted to their forever homes.  Eventually, after losing many babies, it's like he decided he no longer wanted to get attached to them and stopped being a "momma cat".

Trix and one of his "babies" Coco

Trix and one of his "babies" Gabriel

Trix and one of his "babies" Huckleberry Finn

Trix with one of his last "babies" Shanti on April 20, 2014

About two months ago, we noticed that Trix was no longer his usual self.  We brought him to the vet and other than having some abscesses in his groin area, which could explain his slightly elevated white blood cell count, he seemed fine.  They put him on antibiotics to help get rid of his abscesses and he healed.

Last week we noticed he seemed to have lost a lot of weight.  Over the weekend he had developed breathing difficulties.  Very worried at this point we booked another vet visit.

Today we find out he has advanced cancer and he can no longer be treated.  He doesn't have much longer to live.  His chest belly and lungs are filled with fluid making it very difficult for him to breathe.  They implied that it would be best for us to let him go, but understood that we needed to come to terms with all this.

As I write this I am preparing to say goodbye to our lovely 15 year old boy.  By this time next week Trix will have crossed over to the rainbow bridge.

We will miss our beautiful black cat.

***Update:  Trix crossed over to the Rainbow Bridge on Friday August 22nd 2014 at about 9:25 PM  He is being cremated and his ashes are to be returned to us in a lovely urn in the shape of a black cat.

RIP Trix  August 1999 to August 2014.

Suzi Needs Medical Help ASAP!!

http://www.gofundme.com/caqd00

Living With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Hello All,

Through about 41 posts, I have described parts of my life as being tired and not being able to live my life the way I want. I figured it was time I dedicated a post to this illness and it's effect on me.

Wikipedia describes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome the following way:

Symptoms of CFS include malaise after exertion; unrefreshing sleep, widespread muscle and joint pain, sore throat, headaches of a type not previously experienced, cognitive difficulties, chronic and severe mental and physical exhaustion, and other characteristic symptoms in a previously healthy and active person. Additional symptoms may be reported, including muscle weakness, increased sensitivity to light, sounds and smells, orthostatic intolerance, digestive disturbances, depression, painful and often slightly swollen lymph nodes, cardiac and respiratory problems.[7] It is unclear if these symptoms represent co-morbid conditions or if they are produced by an underlying etiology of CFS.[5] CFS symptoms vary in number, type, and severity from person to person.[8] Quality of life of persons with CFS can be extremely compromised.

But what does that mean exactly?

I guess that is slightly different from one person to the next, depending on how severe they have this illness and how it manifests itself.

What does it mean in regards to me?

It means that I am tired all the time.  Sometimes so tired that I can rarely function.  It means that it can take me several days to overcome exertion.

Concretely what does that means?

How about I give a few examples of my life.  Recently, my father has come back into my life and has decided he wanted to help me renovate my home.  He has been a great help in that we have painted most of the house, are removing most of the carpets and replacing with laminate making the home look better and be easier to maintain.

My father and I have an understanding, he does the work (paint, replace floors) but none of the prep and post work (like emptying a room and putting everything back).  Often that means that 5-6 hours of work (where I help him as much as I can) means I will have as many hours pre and post renovation in work. 

He works on the weekends, usually a Saturday as I work during the week and he spends Sunday with his girlfriend (how sweet!)  Well one weekend of his help and I am out of commission for the rest of the week, sometimes even more than a week.

What does out of commission mean?  It means that I need to sleep more to try and feel refreshed enough to go to work.  It means that I will have to go to bed at 6:30~7:00 o'clock and have trouble waking up in the morning.  It means that I will snooze my alarm one time too many in the morning making me "rush" to get to work.  It means possibly even having to take a day off to try and recuperate.

Don't get me wrong I appreciate what my dad is doing for me and love the results after, but it does come at a cost.


I once explained to a friend of my daughter that I was like an old rechargeable battery that would not take a full charge anymore.  I permanently function at 75%.  My recharge rate is about 50% per day.  So if I use up 50% of energy then we are fine, I am back to 75% the next day, but if I use up 75% then the next day I am only at 50% and unless I can find a way to regain that extra 25%  I will be at 50% for a while.  There have been times (Like when I was moving for example or some of the current renos) when I actually went into the negatives.  This means that the next day I wind up being less than 50% and can be at that level for a while.

I need to sleep for about 10 hours a day to recharge that 50%.  That's because my sleep is unrefreshing and I often wake up several times during the night.  I have been known to sleep most of the day as well in order to try and get back to that 75%

One of the most effective treatments for CFS (chonic fatigue syndrome) is Pacing.  Pacing according to Wikipedia:

Pacing is an energy management strategy based on the observation that symptoms of the illness tend to increase following minimal exertion. There are two forms: symptom-contingent pacing, where the decision to stop (and rest or change an activity) is determined by an awareness of an exacerbation of symptoms; and time-contingent pacing, which is determined by a set schedule of activities which a patient estimates he or she is able to complete without triggering post-exertional malaise (PEM).Thus the principle behind pacing for CFS is to avoid over-exertion and an exacerbation of symptoms. It is not aimed at treating the illness as a whole. Those whose illness appears stable may gradually increase activity and exercise levels but according to the principle of pacing, must rest if it becomes clear that they have exceeded their limits. Some programmes combine symptom and time-contingent approaches. A trial of one such programme reported limited benefits. A larger, randomised controlled trial found that pacing had statistically better results than relaxation/flexibility therapy. A 2009 survey of 828 Norwegian CFS patients found that pacing was evaluated as useful by 96% of the participants

But as a single mom with two kids, one of which has high functioning autism, who works fullt time, pacing is not always possible.

Well thanks for reading.

Fear of Driving

I am having trouble with Blogger, where I can't seem to compose with the regular "composer" and HTML doesn't do paragraphs unless I know the code for it. I'll come fix it later when it seems to cooperate better.

Hello all,

I started this post several months ago but have never felt inspired to come and complete it.

Did I mention in a previous post that last year around this time I hit a Huge Pothole? Well ever since that time I have developed a fear of driving. It was mild at first, I'd just be afraid that my car was defective as a result of hitting that pothole. Eventually I went to have it checked and what needed fixing was fixed.

Yet the fear did not go away.

It progressively got worst. I know that in a previous post I discussed some peeves I had in regards to other drivers, well some of those peeves have developed into fears. I am no longer just afraid of bicycles and bikes but of every vehicle on the road. I am also afraid of every pedestrian that walks on the sidewalk.

I am afraid of my car breaking down or suddenly catching fire.
I am afraid of ice and snow.
I am afraid of skidding or hitting something or someone.  Or maybe just getting into an accident by skidding off the road or getting into a rollover.
I am afraid of tow trucks in front of me loosing their load or any type of truck really.
I am afraid of something malfunctioning with the tethers in other load baring vehicles.

 If you can think of it, I am afraid of it.

Just this morning I almost had a collision.  I was driving in a lane and someonedecided to turn into my lane RIGHT WHERE I WAS!.  It's a good thing there was nobody in the other lane as I was able to vear into it at the last minute to avoid a collision.  He either did not look properly or well, there are no other excuses really.  Had I not been able to vear into the next lane he would have hit me, that is how close I was to a collision.  It's not that he was cutting me off and I had to slow down, or that he was trying to come in behind me, there was enough speed to hit me.  This was right near my home, the rest of the drive in to work I was raw nerves.
I have discussed it with a therapist but since I am still driving I don't think they have taken this fear seriously.

Yes I am still driving, with my heart in my throat every single time, on the verge of hyperventilation from shear panic but yes I am still driving.  I hear that if I stop it will only get worst.

Last week I spoke to my psychiatrist about it, told her I had severe anxiety while driving and that I wanted to find a way to stop being so afraid.

She said she would refer me to an anxiety program but didn't know if and when I would be accepted.

To think that a bad pothole started all of this.  Amazing.

Do any of you have any suggestions for me?

Thanks for reading!

Utter Exhaustion

Hello all,

Wow, two posts within a week!  AMAZING! 

I know.  I have found something "acceptable" to write about.  Imagine that.

Is it interesting?  Maybe or maybe not, that really is up to you to decide.  Is it whiny?  I think so, so if you do not want to read about whining STOP right here.  It will only get worst from here on out.

I am tired.  Really really tired.  All the time tired.  I can easily sleep the day away.

I am in a Chronic Fatigue Flare.  It is very very hard for me to do my day.  Of course added to the exhaustion is the pain, but really even though I hurt, and indeed the other day I could have sworn I had been hit by a bus, it's the tiredness that gets to me.

You can explain pain to people and to some extent they understand.

I find it very hard to explain this tiredness to people.  When explaining, to me it just sounds more like I am being lazy.

I want (though not overly motivated) to do my work, I want to read, I want to write, I want to watch TV and be able to tell someone what I have just watched.  I want to drive and not be terrified that I will not see something crucial and cause a major accident.  I want to be up from morning to night without having to take a nap.

Coffee just doesn't do it anymore and not having coffee just means that I can't stay awake at all.  Without coffee I would fall asleep at work, fall asleep at the wheel while driving fall asleep just about anywhere.

I don't have any energy.  Going up stairs is a martyr, I just want to take a nap once I get to the top.  I am afraid of tumbling down stairs I am so tired.

Wikipedia explains Chronic Fatigue Syndrome this way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome.

Unrefreshing sleep, post exertional malaise.  What do these mean to the common person who doesn't have this issue?

I am being told to go to bed later by my psychiatrist to help me sleep better at night and solve this exhaustion I feel.  But she is trying to treat the depression, not the chronic fatigue (CFS).  The depression and the CFS are very linked in that the less I can do, the more tired I am the more depressed I tend to be as I just can't accept this current state.

I am tired.  So tired, my home is messy after it being clean just a week ago.  I have been resting trying to recover from the holidays and the prep for it.

I did two days of cleaning and prep work for having company, stayed up later, cooked a feast for my family and made it but now I have trouble taking down the decorations, doing everyday cleaning, the cat litters need to be done, the dishes, the vacuuming, the laundry etc etc etc.

The other day I just couldn't get up and going, I was in pain yes, a lot of pain but the exhaustion was so much worst than the pain, I called in sick from work and stayed in bed almost all day.  I hate days like that.

Happy New Year!

Hello All,

It's 2014, a brand new year.

Sorry for not coming to visit you more often, in fact it has been about 5 months or so.

You know how life is, it gets in the way of doing some things you want or should do.  I have been slowly getting back to full time work and the adjustment to that has been taking most of my time and energy.  I have been full time since December and it has made me so tired, what with it being winter and all.  It has also been so cold around here that it has caused my CFS to flare something awful.

Another reason I have not been here is not that I have had nothing to say, it's more that I have had nothing "acceptable" to say.  I have all these things inside of me, burning to come out but it is not acceptable to talk about them.  Not here, not anywhere.

If I let it out, it might hurt people.  Doesn't matter that keeping these things in is hurting me.  As long as it doesn't hurt other people then that's OK  My blog is no longer a safe place to let out my feelings or my thoughts.

It used to feel good to write here and let out in the universe my negative thoughts or feelings.  To know that I could be "heard" by a stranger somewhere helped to unload the bad and focus on the better.  But it's not only strangers reading my blog, and for that reason I needed to learn to shut up, to stop sharing, to keep things inside and not let go anymore.

Once I stopped sharing about the stuff that mattered, it seems like sharing the everyday stuff didn't seem very important or interesting for that matter so I stopped writing.  Sorry for those who were interested in reading my blog, but it just could not be helped.

For the reasons stated above I think I will put my blog on hiatus until I can come back and share with you all something interesting.  I don't know how long that will be.

Thanks to those who have taken the time to read.