My fat story Part six

What do you do, when you tried "everything"? What shall you do to not going around, feeling like a Walrus? Is there actually not anything who actually works?  The bad conscience and low self-esteem raises only the desperation but not the motivation! My God, so many different methods I tried to find that the so-called motivation!

IF YOU JUST WANT, YOU CAN DO IT!
But what - want? I WANT all the time!
Why can I not do it, then?
I felt like a total failure. I could'nt handle anything, damn it!
I could not hold on to a relationship!
I could not even have children with ONE man, with three ...
I could not give my children a WHOLE family.
I could not even stay away from being fat ...

I read in a magazine about something called Doctor Atkins Diet who informed that one should not blindly look at calories but instead, exclude carbohydrates from your food. What a nutcase! You have to have carbs in your body ... or? I read some articles again about this  "diet success" in the United States, that made all Hollywood stars so slim and stylish.
Hm, maybe that IS something to check out anyway? Checked id his book was available in Sweden and yes, but in English. I ordered it and put it on the bookshelf ... where it stood to the summer of 2004, before I started reading it.

I had at that time, managed to get myself a severe gastritis of all the noodle diets that I tried me wich did not give me anything other than just ... gastritis.

It was in that book I first read about insulin resistance, blood glucose curves, ketosis, fat, carbs, etc.. According to Atkins, you should go through four phases: 1.Inductionfase. Wich is the hard detoxification of carbohydrates and where you could stay from two weeks to several months, depending on how much excess weight you had. In the end, wich would be in phase four meaning that you could eat some carbohydrates such as whole grains and fruits.(When you lost all those extra kilos)

Well-read, I decided to test this strange diet with lots of fat and as little carbohydrates as it is possible ... I started the same week, that I started to work after the holidays 2004th. I had no idea what I weighed because I did not even own a scale. There was no point in having a scale when you weigh over 130 kg, when most scales rarely go over 120 kg.
My colleague thought I was completely crazy when ate my coleslaw (cabbage salad with mayonnaise), and tuna in oil for breakfast, nibbled peanuts and had fried eggs for breakfast.
She with her big hips and bum was constantly dieting on diet shakes...


After a few days, I felt something that I never really felt before when I dieted:
I WAS NOT HUNGRY!
I WAS NOT TIRED AND DEPRESSED!
MY STOMACH JUST calmed down!
Yes, that was good, right? 
But did I lose weight?
No idea because I did not have a scale.. but yes, I lost weight! I felt it! 

That craving for sweets did not disappear completley but suddenly I could handle it!

I didn't even my own birthdaycake, two weeks after I started the Atkins Diet. It had NEVER happened before.

Sometime in the autumn, people started to comment that I lost weight.

- Oh, you look so good. Have you lost weight? (Besides my colleague...)

WHY does everyone connect beaty with weight? I still don't get it...

But okay, I actually began to feel more attractive also because it felt like the fat was ranning of me. The clothes stopped tighten upper arms, stomach and especially the waist. I bought new clothes that showed more of my figure than the tents I usually bought to hide the bulges and my big body.

At Christmas I bought myself a Christmas present: A scale!
I bought this hateful device and made ​​sure it went up to 130 kilos, because  I actually had no idea what I weighed.

My reference was 138 kg because that was my weight at one time when I was at the doctor sick from depression, so everything under 138 was good.
At the same time I bought that scale, I decided to make the same fatal mistake as I did before: I would "treat" myself to eat Christmas food, candy, cakes but ONLY between Christmas and New Year. The 1/1, I would continue to eat as the Atkins Diet, Phase 1-2. 

I placed myself on the scale and it showed 126 kg (I think it was) - I had lost 12 kilograms in four months. I thought that was GOOD! It was not the dramatic weight loss I experienced when I did the gastric surgery but I had actually lost MORE than I ever managed to do on your own before.
Now it was only to continue ....
Ha ha ha, yes, it did went SWELL ... sugar cravings, hunger and hell were back.

The only "comfort" was that I actually did not gained those 12 kilos right away which always tends to be the case and preferably some extra kilos to.

But yeah ... now I was right there AGAIN! Bad conscience, the will was there but that motivation was blown away even though I knew that the Atkins diet worked and I actually thought it was easier than anything else I've tried + that I didn't gain 20 kg in a week because I lost the track of my diet. 

But well, I started to read in the newspapers that you could get "stupid" of not getting _ carbohydrates and that you could get heart problems if you ate too much fat etc!
So no, I did not dare to continue with the Atkins diet, it was actually dangerous ...
At the same time I became unemployed (year 2004-05). The school my colleagues and I worked on got shut down. I went up to my sister in Sundsvall and THERE I would certainly get started with my Atkins diet again .. it was there I found artificial sweeteners powder! I "cheated" a lot and could not really find the track again, even though I was not even home.

In the spring of 2005, I received a short-term employment at another school, and connected to starting a new job, I also started to diet again. My steady lunch was Turkish yoghurt with raspberries ... AND artificial sweeteners powder! I was gastric operated so I quickly became full on my "light" fat lunch.

http://goodshiplollypoop.blogspot.se

I lived on sweeteners, both in coffee, tea, and especially in dairy products. Otherwise, I ate regular sugar but not in coffee, tea and yoghurt for example. It was much tastier medsötningsmedel, which I started using years I was in Tranås at the Obesistas clinic. That was where I discovered that rosehip tea with ten sweeteners was crazy good.
Yep, it was sick ...I had no problem to put 15 sweeteners pills in a cup of tea.

Of course it was bought skimmed milk and cream for the kids so they would not become obese and instead of regular lemonade and softdrinks, we drank gallons of lemonade with non calorie sweeteners pills called Fun Light. The kids would not eat sugar ... and when I had my Atkins Periods, I drank probably a bottle of Fun Ligth every day. Samantha hated Fun Light and complained a lot every time there was nothing else to drink ... she drank water instead ...(smart girl.)

But when I ate according to Atkins, I bought more fatty products and loved to cook dinners for myself with fat gratins on broccoli, blue cheese and sour cream that I ate together with grilled meat (in the oven). The kids was still eating food with less fat content and sugar content. A lot of pasta, rice and potatoes. I've always been good at cooking and could make tasty dinners on cheap raw materials, based on rice, pasta and potatoes. The important thing was that the kids were getting vitmines, minerals and filled  stomach so they didn't go hungry.

EVERYBODY knew that sugar is not good!

I scanned all the foodshops for things that were UNDER 20carbs/100 grams and was really looking for food that I craved for and had put it back, because there is not really a single pastry, no pasta, rice or fruit that contains less than 20 carbs/100g.But I found dairy products that were below 15% carbohydrates and ignored the sugar in, it was so LITTLE! If I thought something was too sour, I just added sweetneres to it.

Consoled myself with my own little candy, yogurt with berries and artificial sweeteners powder, fun light-drinking and dark chocolate ...and yes, my Atkins periods always got interrupted by something.

Christmas, Easter, summer, weekend, Fridays, the party, crisis, money ... yes, there are lots of reasons to not stick to the "diet", at the same time, I read about a doctor called Annika,here in Sweden, who started giving her diabetic patients advices to exclude carbohydrates and increase the fat in the food and they got remarkably better blood glucose curves and could even be free from their disease!

WONDERFUL! I adviced a man I e-mailed with, which was severely overweight and had Diabetes2, to exclude carbohydrates and what he could eat. He was fully recovered only after six months, unfortunately I do not think he held his new eating habits...how hard can it be? *ironic*

Read at the same time, that children need fat to grow and stopped with skinned milk and started buying Milk with 3% fat and liquid margarine with canola oil and butter - it was better than hydrogenated fats for the children's sake ...
Actually, I'm not stupid: Health, food and medicine has always interested me so I am well-read, I have probably  always been. But intelligence and sugaraddiction is not intelligent and logical combination.

Sometime in 2004-2005, I also started getting some strange "cramps" that began somewhere in the middle of the spine and then beamed up to the oral cavity. It was incredible scary and I took painkillers every time it came then it stopped ... There were lots of Nurofen ... until I had no painkillers available and only drank water out of desperation and it dropped as fast as before. It was  not the painkillers that worked without just simply the water. Tested to drink other things too but it did not work at all. But what did theese cramps coming from?
- Tumors of the spine?
- Something wrong in my teeth?

In the end I just had to find out the reason of this cramps. _ First I went to the dentist because it made a lot of pain on the left side of the mouthand where I had a broken tooth. To my surprise there was no big problem with my teeth, a plomb had dropped but I did not even have an inflammation in the tooth.
Okay, there was no dental problems ...

I wen to my family doctor and tried to explain my symptoms. He said it was probably gastritis but since I'm gastric  operated, it feels different for me than for someone with a norma stomach. I started eating Omeprazole (gastritis medicine), while my doctor sent a referral for x-rays of my stomach. He wanted to see that everything was good with my esophagus, cardia and stomach (the one I don't have) because it CAN to be a hernia somewhere too ...
I started to work again in november 2005 at the school I got the temporary job in the spring. During the fall, I had renovated at home, went for long walks in the woods with my camera while Adam started first grade in school. I was in pretty good shape, used to move daily and was not VERY FAT, also because of my periods without carbs and "sugar".

I remember I started to feel something that felt like an "extra heart" in my throat in the mornings and I had trouble breathing. It was suddenly very heavy to move and I had to go much slower than I used to. It was really scary and I called my doctor to see him ... but I did not get that far.
In February 2006, I was home with my son because he had a cold. I woke up on Wednesday morning and vibrated like a Duracell Bunny! Lightheaded and totally dizzy in the head, I called the Medical information where I got a lot of drivel that no, it can not be menopause and no, not a heart attack either .. it's probably just stress. Try and rest and if it has not stoppedd until the next day, call your doctor.


I woke up on Thursday morning and it was exactly as bad. I called my family doctor who wasn't there and had about the same conversation with a nurse at the clinic as I had  the day before with the Medical information. She promised to tell my doctor to call me.
On the Friday I called again and got an urgent-appointmente and went straight to my doctor.
I got an ECG directly and my doctor said as he wrote a referral to the Sahlgrenska University Hospital:

- You have atrial fibrillation, and I can not do anything about, so here you get a referral to Sahlgrenska ..

- Huh? Atrial fibrillation? What is it? When should I go to the hospital then?

He explained what an atrial fibrillation is - that the signals between the heart and the brain are out of balance, and my heart beats too fast. There are no "fatal" and about 5% of all over 70 years old can get this .. okay, but Bu I'm only 40 years!!

Weird! 

- Which tram runs from here to Sahlgrenska?
- YOU TAKE A TAXI, my doctor says .. and calls a taxi for me.
I go vibrating out to the taxi and gets driven up to the emergency at Sahlgrenska.
I know that it usually takes hours to wait in the ER, so I go first and buys something to drink, a sandwich, some chocolate and a newspaper to be prepared for a long wait.

I am going into the ER, leaving my referral and is on my way to a chair to sit on ... then I hear my name, and three seconds later I am lying on a gurney with five people around me who put _ electrodes on my chest, air hose in the nose, an IV-needle arm and a pulse measure of my finger and I just look wide-eyed at them and ask what they're doing!!
- You have Arrhythmia and we need to be sure that you will not die ... (I do not remember exactly what they said).
They run me in to a room with a large monitor in front of me and promises that the doctor will come within fifteen minutes. Ha ha, right! Usually you have to wait for the doctor for more than fifteen minutes! 

I'm trying to decipher those curves and digits on the monitor that oscillate between 130-146 and understand that it is probably my pulse / heartbeats.
The doctor comes in after the within fifteen minutes!
Explains to me a little more clearly what Atrial fibrillation is and I get lots of questions if there is any heart disease in the family, if I drink a lot of alcohol  and just shakes his head when he can not find of any reason that I, as only just over 40 years old is there in front of him with Atrial Fibrillation.

I receive beta blockers to lower the my pulse and the doctor hopes that the flicker to give in by itself because it is not "normal" that I should have it.
I had to lie there for a few hours and no, the flicker did not stop. I learned something new when I was there in that room too:
In the ER they have different color codes for the seriousness of the condition of a patient;
Red - very great danger to the patient's life - life support directly.
Orange - serious with a certain danger to the patient's life if no action is taken.
Yellow - no overhanging danger of the patient's life.
I was Code Orange. I COULD died if I didn't had gone to the doctor I realized. I also learned that if I had arrived in within 48 hours from I  started to I  didn't been addressed directly with cardioversion (electric shock to the heart) but if crossing that limit, you must eat blood thinning medication (Warfarin) to not get a Stroke. The blood "whisks" and can cause clots in the brain. So I had been able to die if hadn't realized that I should go the doctor. Was that "pulsing sensation" and the fatigue I had before Christmas beginning of my atrial fibrillation? 

The feeling "death anxiety" got a whole new meaning for me.
I was TERRIFIED of dying! I almost went on tiptoe on the cardiology ward with my vibrating heart and I could not even tell my children. Oliver lived in Norway with his dad, Samantha was very angry at me and did not talk to me and Adam was too young to understand ... after a night on the Cardiology, I got to go home with a bag of pills (beta blockers and warfarin) and a note to appear before at the Östra hospital to set the waranfin level in the blood in order to make a cardioversion to get the heart in the right rhythm again. This I got to do every Thursday for the next three months because it took that long time before I had the right waranfin level in the blood. I had a  warfarin badge around my neck because if the blood is so thin , you can bleed to death if you get injured.

I worked and it was probably just all I could manage. Sometimes struck the devastating fatigue the same moment  I stepped out from work or when I got off the tram and should buy some food for me and the kids. I became so tired that I could hardly walk - never felt such tiredness in all my life before. On the Thursday before Easter, I finally got to do my Cardioversion.
You become sedated in a maximum of five minutes, and if all goes well, you get to go home a few hours afterwards. It went very well and I woke up without that feeling, that something was wrong in my body - finally everything was fine again!

But yes, I was also TERRIFIED to flicker again, of course.

I stopped "almost" to smoke and drank _ bland coffee with more milk than coffee to not increase my pulse in any way. I had to continue to eat my Beta blockers not to trigger the pulse so that I would get flickering again.

In the spring, I also did an x-ray of my stomach when the cramps hadn't  stopped. I had been delayed because of my flicker.

There were no objections to at the x-ray and I  saw for myself how the contrast fluid passed from the esophagus through my tube wich was my stomach and into the small intestine. It went on for half an hour.

I were examined at the Cardiology for my flicker and they could not find anything fault anywhere ... I was so very healthy and yet I was sick!
My doctor had a theory that I had atrial fibrillation because of my Gastric bypass surgery since it goes nerve fibers from the stomach to the heart , the cramps in my stomach maybe was triggered to start the flicker and continued to feed me with Omeprazole and a bunch of other pills that would help my body to digest the food who went undigested into the small intestine. He tried to explain that my internal organs was working on overtime, day and night to digest all the food that I ate. Now I had lived with my stomach surgery for over ten years, and the issue was / is - how long time can my body work with this burden?

I could also not understand that my heart is not flickered because it pulsated in my whole body! It felt like I had several hearts in the body, one in the head, one in the throat, one in the stomach and my "real" heart that I felt all the time so I could not lie on my left side when I should sleep or even sit anywhere who pressed against the left side. It did not disappear even after cardioversion ...
And yes, I got several atrial fibrillation over the next few years, and no, there was nothing that talked about why it pulsated in my body all the time! The pulse was good, even too low so I had to stop taking the beta blockers because it felt like I had braking oil in the blood. To go up a small staircase or a small hill was sooo hard! I had a jar of Beta blockers with me all the time in case I would get flickering again ... 

Photo: Philippe Rendu

The only thing that was "positive" was that nobody told my flicker depended upon my weight. Otherwise everything usually depends on your overweight...  _ _ _ ... The longest time I could stick to the Atkins diet was the year when my sister Helena got married in July 2006. I was assigned to be her wedding photographer and I nervous - I would stand in the front in the church and EVERYONE would not just look at the wedding couple but also at me and think:                     
- Oh, Maria she's as fat as always ...
Then dammit, I took control over the food again and managed to stay away from carbohydrates (according to my own interpretation) and didn't "cheat" until Christmas came ... (again) and I lost about 20-25 kg that period. I felt so good and felt so beautiful! The only cloud in my sky was the fear of flicker and that pulsating my body that never stopped. 

In early spring ... and it was time again - in in the ER with an elevated heart rate and atrial fibrillation. Now I had learned at least how it felt so I called on time and was defibrillated the same day and came home in the evening ... during the spring, I ended up in an incredibly difficult crisis at my work and as icing on the cake my oldest son moved back home after living with his dad in Norway for four years - an emergency measure when the my little family was about to totally collapse and I had to choose which of my children I to rescue. Adam felt very bad because of his big brother, Oliver felt terrible because of all the conflicts that he caused at home and in school .. but after 3.5 years with his dad, it didn't work anymore. 

Upphovsman: Elisabeth Andersson
Upphovsrätt: Göteborgs Stadsmuseum

His father was not able to handle Olivers puberty and the problems that came with it - Samantha had moved moved back home after two years of her  own accommodation and became homeless. I had my "dream home" on the opposite side of my apartment, a small terraced house with your own courtyard and flowerbeds. The accomodation was completely dilapidated both in - and outside, and I made a "deal" with the housing company that I would take care of the outside if they took care of the inside. The whole apartment was renovated and I struggled with the shovel, wheelbarrow, and saw and worked with my bare hands to bring order to the outside. I worked like crazy, and the level of stress in me was probably in top  while I struggled with my totally lost confidence because of the crisis at work, at home.

In August, it was time to start working again and I was so broken that I had anxiety when I had to go towork, I was simply afraid to run into my ex-students who had exposed me to a witch hunt worse than I've ever been experienced in my life. Two weeks later, we moved into the new home and everything calmed down. I had such PAIN in my body! Oliver tried to massage my bad feet but I screamed as soon as he just touched them but it almost did hurt more not to touch them.

I made ​​an appointment for a massage at work in September because _ the pain in my body didn't stop. The masseuse was totally shocked my tensed muscles and didn't "dared" to massage so hard and focused more on just getting me to relax ...

The day after the atrial fibrillation came back as a letter in the mail!

I felt a struck when I turned the bed to sleep. I knew that I had 48 hours to get to the hospital and I tried to sleep before I took the tram to East Hospital where I was after various examinations got defibrillated later in the afternoon. 

I complained at the cardiologist again that it pulsated in my body all the time and he listened to my heart but could not "hear anything" ....
This was how it was all this period.
Flicker every few months and chewing pills, cramps in the body, fatigue, insomnia,  and because of my heavy body I had pain in the hips, legs, back, shoulders ...

The misery ended when I changed doctor in January 2010 and met with a doctor who is a surgeon and said directly that _ the pulsating was cramps in the internal organs - an effect of the gastric surgery. Especially from the pancreas, which pumps desperately out gastric juices to digest the undigested food that comes out in the small intestine. He gave me a prescription of a medication called Egazil who is antispasmodic and blocks the nerves which turn inhibits the production of gastric juice. Side effects include slower intestinal activity and dry mucous membranes.

But I can NOT be without this medication because after I took the first tablet I hadn't gotten anymore atrial fibrillation. I'm terrified that it will stop working and the pancreas starts to begin "seizure" again or just quit working.

As if that was not enough?

Nooo! 

I also got carpal tunnel syndrome,  the summer of 2010 wich becomes so bad that I woke up several times a night because of cramps in the hand all the way up to the shoulder. 

I return to my new doctor who is gives me a cortisone Injection straight down into the wrist but it did not get better so he wrote a referral to a hand surgeon.
Until that day, I rubedb my hand with a painkilling gel and sleept with a wrist splint to not bend the wrist when I sleep.
In september I went to the _ hand surgeon and he said yes, I had the right diagnosis and I need to operate the hand.
NOOOOO!
I will notI had Googled at  surgery pictures of this type of surgery and had them in my head and I got told that it is performed solely under local anesthesia.
Here is a woman who has gone through everything one could possibly do in health care, but is terrified of a wrist surgery.
I said to the doctor:
- Is there nothing else you can do. I thinks it sounds a little weird to remove an inflammation with surgery...
- Yes, you can lose weight!
- Huh? But ... I had don't have any fat hands, I said, and pulled them out.
- It is not visible on the outside but it is  in the ligaments and clamps the carpal nerve
- Okay, then I guess I have to loose weight then!

I walked out of there and decided that NOW is the end to this "nonsense"!

Yes, there will be a part 7 too!!!!