I woke up with a start and a suffocating tightness in my chest. Then I laid there in silence and imagined myself falling off a cliff, over and over again.
Sometimes the scenery was different – a seaside bluff, a mountainous rock face, the unprotected edge of a very tall building – but the results were the same. Every pore of my body was flooded with fear, and I knew I was going to die.
This was Sunday morning, and I was having a panic attack.
On Friday, out of nowhere, he said, “I’m thinking of doing that 4 Hour Body thing. Can you lend me the book?”
I looked at him, equal parts dubious and incredulous. This is not a man who needs to lose weight. “But WHY?” I asked.
“I’ve put on a few pounds this winter, ” he replied, tapping his completely non-existent anti-belly. “I want to give it a shot.”
“You realize there’s no bread on this diet, right? No bread, no pastries, no sugar. Nothing” I said, in ominous and foreboding tones. “And you’re, like, a baker. Did I mention no bread?”
“Just give me the goddamn book.”
“Fine.”
And this is how we came to be doing That 4 Hour Body Thing, aka the Slow Carb diet, together.
So, I’m really pissed off at myself.
A few years back, during and after my marriage first fell apart, I went though what I’d call The Divorce Diet (well, technically Separation Diet – but Divorce Diet has a much nicer, more rhythmic ring to it, doesn’t it?). Like so many people going through a divorce, I sort of, well, stopped eating. This wasn’t an intentional thing, mind you. It just kind of… happened. It also just so happens that around that time I started using exercise in a manner much like an addict uses a drug – to fill a void, to make me feel better, and moreover better about myself, because I felt so very, very shitty about myself at the time. I guess some people going through traumatic, life-changing events curl up in bed, pull the covers over their heads, and eat carton after carton of Ben & Jerry’s. But I did almost exactly the opposite. Which I’ll go ahead and note is truly weird for me. I’m traditionally much more of the shove-my-face-full-of-food-and-crrrrrry kind of person, but in this instance I wasn’t. Maybe there was some kind of unconscious internal push toward the idea of transformation, toward CHANGE, because I so very much wanted that in so many different parts of my life, I’m not sure. But the upshot was, I lost about 40 pounds in an unprecedentedly short period of time. And I felt better, physically and mood-wise, than I had in maybe 10 years.
Well I bet you can see where this is going, right? In the past two years, I’ve gained almost all of that back. Why? Because I’m happy now. Fat and happy. With the emphasis on Fat (not to diminish the happy part, mind you, because I am quite happy, but rather to underscore my TOTAL EPIC WEIGHT LOSS FAIL). Yeeeeah.
Hysteroscopy, derived from the Greek ὑστέρα “hystera” meaning uterus, is a procedure in which a thin camera is inserted into a woman’s vagina, up through her cervix, and into the uterus so that its interior might be viewed for diagnostic purposes. Back in ye olde old-timey times, mustached gentlemen would insert coins into large wooden boxes containing images of women’s uteri, which could be briefly viewed or “peeped” by pulling a corresponding string and gazing into a viewing hole carved in the side of the box. These devices were called “Raree Boxes” or “Peep Shows.”
My doctor called. The first words out of his mouth? You have nothing to worry about.
I love this man. FUCKING LOVE HIM.
Then he went on, “I’m looking at the ultrasound. I see some enlarged follicles in your ovaries, which is what the technician was talking about when she said she saw cysts. And your uterus is a little enlarged and the lining is a bit thick, so we want to look into that. But it’s not ovarian cancer. You have nothing to worry about.”
Had he been in the room, I would’ve kissed him. (And then slapped him on the ass. And then started blubbering like an idiot, probably.)
No zebras. Horses masquerading as zebras, maybe. But those stripes were hastily painted on. Stupid fucking faker horses. I HATE YOU, FAKER HORSES. *shakes fist*
I had the ultrasound this morning.
In passing, before she began, the ultrasound technician said to me, “If I don’t see anything, I usually tell people that. If I see something, I’m not allowed to comment on it.”
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