I am having intermittent anorexia.
That is, I am having difficulty eating off and on. No appetite.
I don't have anorexia nervosa, I love food and I actually have food insecurity which goes back to an alcohol household where I suspect that sometimes I was not fed. I usually don't go anywhere without taking food with me. My daughter has inherited it. She says that when she is eating a meal, she always thinks about the next meal. It's more of a "is there food available" thought than "what will I eat next". Now you are wondering if I was drunk and starved her, but no. I went into preterm labor at 23 weeks and spent three months on bed rest on the drug terbutaline. Terbutaline is related to caffeine and dopamine. So we were on a stimulant for three months, a small continuous pump that was jabbed into my thigh. There were times when my then husband was off playing golf and I would cry, because I was hungry and he had said he would make lunch. He was not back and I literally planned each trip to the bathroom (get that book, more yarn, scissors and move to the couch), so I would wait as long as I could stand to and then get up and grab something to hold me over.
"Why do you need to eat if you are just lying there?" he said.
"I am growing a baby and why don't you try just lying there?" On a drug that gave me a visible fine tremor and a heart rate of 100 at rest. Only my knowledge of all the Really Bad Things that could go wrong at 23, 24, 25, 26 weeks held me in bed. Forty weeks is the due date, term is 38, things are pretty ok if you can get past 36 weeks. I knit continuously, especially after my mother was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer and I couldn't go see her.
Well, now that my PTSD is reactivated, on to the present.
Why anorexia? I've been thinking about it. I had trouble eating on Tuesday in the afternoon. I finally ate an instant Pho pack, which really has minimal calories and nutrition, but it's all I could stand. I was thinking hard about something and I had a dress rehearsal for Chorale. I worried about staying awake, since half the time I am going to bed at 6 or 7 or 8. Rehearsal started at 6:30. I think when I am a little stressed, the antibodies bump a little. And then I don't want to eat. It helps control them.
At other times I am just famished.
It's pretty weird.
I am glad that I can eat everything except gluten now. Tried it when my muscles felt better, but then had gut pain for a week. Sigh. I miss bread. It might get better and it might not.
I had a few patients in my age greater than weight category. At age 92 their weight was less than their age. I worried about them and tried to get them to eat fats. One had difficulty tolerating almost any foods. I do suspect Monsanto and the caterpillar leaky gut toxin, but whatever.
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