Vera had a new handsome young doctor and he had diagnosed her with a degenerative chronic ailment, fibromyalgia, and NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). She turned down the wine during book club with a sad sniff and poured her heart out. The other six ladies swooned in sadness. No! Say it’s not so…. Vera the 50 year old middle manager of her husband’s company had not felt herself for at least a month.
“That’s not all” she confided, “he wants me to see a specialist! Probably a team of them before this journey is over.” She outlined for the next hour her experiences at OHSU and their careful care of her during her time of trouble.
Becky feigned concern but inwardly seethed. She was healthy as a horse, always had been. Cold and flu season usually skipped her, but now what? Melody, a member of the group who had dropped out, had been diagnosed with cervical cancer and now this. Melody’s ‘Go-Fund-Me’ to donate money to cancer had raised almost a half-million dollars. Becky felt her clout fading fast. She looked at the concerned women around her. She jumped feet first.
“Me too” Becky said before she knew what she was saying… maybe it was a hold over from the time she had been on Prozac five years ago. It still effected her impulse control.
All eyes swiveled towards her. She was 3 glasses of wine in, and not the mild stuff either – screw that light weight vino – 10%+ or bust.
“Want I really want”…she took a gulp….”what I really really want” she desperately fought the wine haze. “I WANT TO RAISE AWARENESS.” Hands clasped — so brave.
The rest of the night went by rapidly as she talked over the top of Vera to discuss her story which was now the center of attention. It had been a great night and in the rush of it all Becky couldn’t sleep.
So now it was 3am and Becky was on Web MD.
She had posted on her Facebook wall that she would be visiting Cleveland Clinic — take that Vera and your OHSU. Hmm, maybe she should have typed, Mayo Clinic…but maybe there was more prestigious places outside the US? France? Italy? She went back to scanning…
What was it that Vera had? Liver thing? Fibrmeeelgia? Becky had worked through most of a bottle of wine, not her favorite but she was feeling warm all over. She was researching!
What does liver pain feel like? Your liver is a football-sized organ that sits under your ribs. It works as your body’s processing plant. Among its more than 500 jobs are to convert food from the small intestine into substances that help you absorb fat and fight off diseases, stockpile energy, and filter and clean your blood.
WebMD
After scanning the pages at 3am through thick reading glasses, she got the gist of it — okay high fat diet to fight off her liver disease and red wine was healthy for the metabolism. She knew a few of her book friends had talked about a diet for health – KEDO? Something like that…
She typed it into Facebook and soon found many groups devoted to the high fat diet they were calling KETO. Perfect. She finished her wine. She would start tomorrow and put in regular posts on her FB wall letting her 432 followers know where she was at in her personalized health journey.
Post at 4:00 am
I’m not taking my diagnosis lightly. Tomorrow I start the KETO diet! Thanks for all of you who have sent me so much overwhelming support today. It was a shock, but I’ve always lived my life for others and did not notice that my own well being was slipping away. Thank you for coming on this health journey with me. Time to finally put myself first. — POST
10 AM EYES FLUTTER OPEN, BECKY WAKES UP IN HER MAKEUP. REACHES FOR PHONE
Update.
Update.
Update.
Wow! Becky had a wall full of new posts, this would take a while to work through. She smelled her coffee maker downstairs, it auto-brewed at 9:30am. She hopped down stairs in her house coat and slippers. The husband had already left his room to go to the office for the day. She filled an extra large coffee cup with a deep rich single-origin Ethiopia blend and then paused…..along with the 2 teaspoons of sugar she usually put in her coffee she reached into the back of the fridge where an ancient block of unsalted-butter resided. Leftover from that one holiday where she had considered baking cookies but instead had gone to a local upscale bakery.
Becky tapped letters into the search box on her phone: “how much butter for bullet proof coffee?” Two Tablespoons. She estimated the measurement as a quarter stick of butter and tossed it into the coffee. She suspiciously took a sip, to her wonderment it tasted amazing.
Becky types update, “getting through the day on bullet proof coffee. If I had this years ago I would never have become ill! ” She thought and added #What They Don’t Want You To Know.
Becky’s phone rang. It was her husband. She let it go to voice mail. She needed to get ready to go to the store and had no time. The morning was such a rush!
2PM TRADER JOES then WHOLE FOODS MARKET*
…butter, peanut butter, cocoa butter, coconut oil, coconut cream, chocolate, heavy cream, lard, MCT oil, whey protein powder, two-dozen eggs and 3 pounds of bacon obtained.
Becky had all her items for organic ‘Fat Bombs’ and 6 bottles of her favorite wine that was on sale.
2:30pm post, “bacon and cream cheese are my new best friends!”
Replies had been pouring in about supplements to try. So on her way home Becky stopped by a supplement store and picked up some green tea extract* and Creatine* to help with her fatigue and two bottles of organic apple cider vinegar.
By 4pm Becky wasn’t feeling too well.
“feeling nauseous – KETO flu?” –POST
Husband working late, Becky made supper for one. A pack of cheese laid out on a baking tray with pepperoni on it, ‘Pizza sliders’ [1]. She poured a glass of wine. He skin felt greasy and like it was breaking out.
“I’ve never eaten so much fat in my life. I feel like a block of lard! I can’t wait for this to work!” –POST
7pm Becky had more supportive messages. “Doctors don’t know anything about diet, the KETO diet would put them out of business so they don’t recommend it! Keep it up girl!”
At 8pm Becky was part of a group ‘dog-pile’ as someone in their supportive KETO group complained of gallstones, inability to digest fat properly, weight gain, cellulite and a bad rash. Becky was so angry she saw red for a second. “Enjoy your S.A.D. diet when you’re kicked out of this group!” –POST
S.A.D. Stood for, ‘Standard American Diet’ and was a pejorative term used by all fad diets to describe the average traditional diet of Americans. That traditional diet was no longer good enough and Becky knew it after only 24 hours on KETO.
Becky had an upcoming checkup with her doctor, wouldn’t he be surprised! It wasn’t the Cleveland Clinic, it was Providence Oregon, but the group didn’t need to know all her health information, that was, after all – PRIVATE!
Becky tucked into bed with visions of her doctor going, “wow, what did you do?! This is amazing. No patient before has ever been THIS healthy. I’m incredulous at the shape you’re in at your age. What’s your secret? Please, please tell me!” And then Becky would flip her hair and maybe look at him with a little pity. What would she say though? Would she point out how “doctors are never taught nutrition” (she had read that about 500,000 times online so it must be true that they never thought to crack a nutrition book). Maybe she would be nicer…she mused…”there is this diet they don’t want you to know about, a diet called KETO” — and as the doctor listened in rapt attention, forgetting about all his other patients she would explain it. Maybe after this she would even start a blog, or a newsletter, explain to other people how they too could be THIS healthy. She could even share her bacon recipes!
Becky didn’t feel too well but she went to bed smiling. She thought maybe she heard her husband come home eventually.
“I could give you chemotherapy drugs and your blood pressure would come down, your cholesterol would come down, your weight would come down, but what doctor would brag about giving cancer chemotherapy drugs to lose weight and improve blood values!”
— Dr. McDougall (who happens to not be a Keto doctor…)
The first week on the diet Becky had donated her scale to Goodwill. “Get rid of that lying cheating scale that will rob you of your motivation as it bobs up and down. If you steadily eat right you will train your body to burn fat as its primary fuel and you’ll unlock an amazing source of energy.”
Becky didn’t feel very energetic. She applied two layers of concealer under her eyes because they were dark and sunken. Then her wrinkles picked up the concealer and made her look old. She wiped off the makeup. Maybe she wouldn’t go outside today.
She was six weeks into her diet. She had told everyone she was flying out to Cleveland Clinic. She wasn’t sure why she had stuck to that… she had considered just saying, ‘I’ve decided to go to my local primary care provider and get my blood work…” but she didn’t.
Her son Chris had called her from college yesterday. She hadn’t talked to him in about six weeks. He was rushed for time on the phone and didn’t have time to really talk, she tried to tell him about her health but he said nothing. There was a yawning chasm of silence on the line. Her life had been dominated every minute of the day with diet and health for weeks. She tried to convey the struggle, the journey, the epic struggles she had gone through – and not given up! She had stuck to KETO through an acne breakout, a rash, dark circles under her eyes, bad breath – and finally had given up wine!
“We’re going to see The Dandy Warholls tonight at Revolution Hall – I better go get ready. Feel better, or good luck or something. Bye.”
Chris wasn’t on social media so … she had no idea what his life was even like. The floor under her sometimes seemed to shift, like she was falling into a black well of despair, of a loss so profound she could barely understand it. Was it because her parents had both passed away? Was it the empty nest? What was her life now?
The Book Club
Becky couldn’t find anything to wear in her closet. Maybe when her husband had done laundry he had put her dress on hot, that would be like him, messing up laundry day. The back yard was dotted with dog-houses from the time she had a dog rescue. She shuddered, that had been awful and her husband never kept it very clean. Now all dropped off to be re-homed by the animal shelter, the dog houses still needed discarded.
Becky found a baggy pair of lounge pants that she could pair with a sweater and a holiday pin. It wasn’t ideal, she liked her heels and a nice dress – to look ‘put-together’ at events. But dressing down had its place too she mused. Stay down to earth, grounded, and relatable to the common folk.
Becky was half-listening to the book club. “Anything is possible if you work hard enough” and they all agreed. They were comfortable and well read. They were ladies of deep thought. But a thought, a memory kept coming back to Becky like a bubble she was trying to force deep down into the dark murky waters of her father, her real father, working 12 hour shifts. He had cracks in his hands, fissures that were so dry they would bleed. He was expected to work in all kinds of weather. He had to climb to dangerous heights with no safety gear even in icy weather. He had to weld in the heat. He was expected to fix anything that broke down, and he did, and he made just enough money to make payments on an old used Chevy Truck that he worked on every weekend.
He never complained. That was how it was. He had a tiny little place to live, the old truck and crushing work.
After he passed away and her mother had a nervous breakdown eventually also dying, Becky had been adopted. She tried to never remember her parents, but there it was, the bubble. Her adoptive parents took her to Disney World and National Parks. They made sure she had access to the best education when it was time for college. She was naturally hired into a really good company and she had always assumed it was on her own merit, because times when that little voice raised ugly questions….questions about, was her Dad who worked his hands to the bone, who was smart enough to fix any machine and build just about anything out of lumber….was he really less hard working and less intelligent then her adoptive father who worked crunching numbers in an office as a clerk?
They were superior right?
They had to be. The other people. The other people voted for Donald Trump who loved racism. They swore a lot. They thought fashion was the latest inexpensive repulsive Walmart garment. The were vile, racist, misogynistic, and holocaust deniers, science deniers….right? RIGHT. The void threatened her again…what if….what if they weren’t….what if they worked harder then her? Maybe…more deserving in a way or at least deserving of opportunities…Well no, no that couldn’t be it, they were all bigots – she would do well to recall that….but maybe some of them those with those hands that worked all day every day and had such pride in their work…
Her political candidate, the one with the pedophilia scandals….she hadn’t been comfortable with it, sure she just hadn’t but – everyone was for him, and he couldn’t be that bad right? They were making history, they were fighting for something!
But the bubble was just hanging around in the dimly lit room with the fairy lights, the designer furniture, the stylish accent pillows that were new and the luxurious curtains.
They didn’t have curtains when she was a kid. In two of the rooms they had blankets over the windows that would billow slightly in the winter wind cut through the old glass panes. Was it because her parents were bad people? They didn’t deserve kids maybe…maybe the poor shouldn’t have children…yeah that resonated but…but they worked so hard. The house was always clean, and her Mom was always busy doing something, and her father worked so very hard. When was the last time she knew anyone who worked that hard?
When she was online the world seemed to close in around her sometimes, to get smaller and smaller. She joked that sometimes she felt like she was just taking a personality test. Thumbs up = Yes, Thumbs Down = No. And it felt like her opinion was very important, but she was making decisions on things she honestly didn’t know anything about and occasionally, it made that little voice inside of her nervous. “It’s like I live in a small world taking a never ending personality test and it just gets better at giving me content to endlessly scrawl through!” She would joke to herself. The joke was starting to eat at her and was no longer funny.
She was in a room of people but she felt so alone. She didn’t say much that meeting. She went home. Turned off her phone and went to bed.
The Doctors Appointment Doesn’t Go To Plan
The scale said 210lbs.
“Wait!” Said Becky, she slipped off her shoes hopeful. 209.8lbs the scale read.
Becky felt the color drain from her face. She had begun KETO at 163lbs and had hoped to lose weight. Maybe 120? Possibly 109lbs like her high school weight.
She was in shock. The doctor took some blood and she was scheduled to come back to review the results.
Becky thought about posting on the KETO group about the weight gain, but she knew she would be criticized for not following the diet correctly. Whenever anyone complained about the diet that was the result. They person was blamed. None of her friends there would listen to her.
Becky tried to talk to her best friend Grace. Grace with the good hair. Grace was the epitome of the word grace, tall, slender, impeccably dressed she was married to a football player. Becky tried her best to put the swirling troubling thoughts into a sentence, but she knew it wouldn’t really express what was in her heart – what was in her heart? She took a stab at explaining to Grace…”What if the opposition – what if those blue collar workers just wanted easier access to healthcare, retirement they could depend on and to be left alone to go to church and live their lives? ” Grace choked on her latte and laughed.
“OH MY GOD BECKY” she laughed a little hysterically. “Did you read some of their propaganda or something? Who in the hell has been talking to you!” Grace took a deep breath and popped into lecturing mode.
“Look, it’s that simple. They pretend to be about Freedom, but won’t let us teach our truths in school. They take away EVERYONE’s RIGHTS! ALL OF THE TIME! Look what they’ve done here locally!” Becky couldn’t immediately think of anything locally ‘they’ had done, but there had to be ‘bad things’ right? They wouldn’t just go into a class war with their fellow citizens without damn good reasons…right? Right?
Becky sipped her latte and nodded agreement, but that little voice again said…you live in a liberal town that has been that way for forty years…how were they taking away local people’s rights to anything? Where is the threat?
“We need better patrolling of the Internet and Newspapers and shut these bastards down before they start convincing people they’re right!” Grace said emphatically.
Becky muttered, “so mass censorship…shut down everyone we don’t agree with. Destroy their lives. Take everything away from people who were our neighbors just a few years ago, but we’ve now declared them enemies. ” Becky stopped short she had not intended to be so honest with her thoughts and had almost used the word fascism.
Grace stood up. “Well Miss thing, I guess I know who will be a Trump voter if he ever crawls out from under his rock. I have no idea what has gotten into you, but I have a 3 o’clock nail appointment. I don’t have time for this.” She got up with her designer hand bag. Her heels clicked on the pavement as she walked off – dang those were nice heels, new? They had to be. They matched the handbag.
Becky was in sweats with her hair in a pony tail. Her hair was falling out lately, must be age she thought. Later that night Becky realized that Grace had unfriended her on Facebook. She felt it right in her heart, a twist of a knife, did it even matter?
Return to the Doctor Office
Becky had skipped the last book club meeting. The first time she had ever skipped it. She felt apathetic and disjointed. She thought about booking a therapist but felt an unusual resistance inside of herself so didn’t, she knew they would take out the mental squeegee and set her viewpoint to the ‘correct’ thinking – the allowed thinking of the day. She had not logged in to Facebook and had flirted with the idea of deleting it.
At the doctors office she didn’t bother to take off her shoes this time. She has worn the sweats and an old sweater.
215lbs the nurse read out helpfully. Becky rolled her eyes.
The nurse took her blood pressure, 98 / 163
“Okay the doctor will be in to see you shortly.” The nurse said.
Becky’s phone buzzed with a text. She glanced down.
“How was your doctor’s appointment?” Her husband asked via text. Becky was surprised. He rarely ever texted her and she didn’t know he even recalled their conversation about her appointment, he had kept yawning and glazing over.
“Still here” she messaged back, “worried”
“I love you” he said. “I love you too” she texted back…and meant it.
Disillusioned Epilogue
Becky had brought home a prescription for blood pressure, a statin for cholesterol (which sat on the counter unused), and metformin. The doctor diagnosed her with a fatty liver and had sat her down to have a talk about diet, exercise and metabolic disease. The little voice inside of her said, well, this is probably what you deserved hu?
Becky joined a church. It was a small plain wooden building. She didn’t know anyone there. After service she didn’t stick around for the pot-luck, but left quickly. She was searching for something but she didn’t know what.
She had quit the book club. She had deleted all her social media. Her friends were mad at her and said she had “died” metaphorically. They had been talking about her at length at each gathering in unflattering terms, but if Becky had known she wouldn’t have cared.
Every morning Becky got up early and went for a jog. Her left knee hurt. She braced it and took more walk breaks, but she didn’t quit. Sometimes she took a nap in the afternoon.
She hadn’t been on the KETO diet for months. She had stopped coloring her hair. She had just been trying to listen. She wasn’t sure what she would hear.
Sometimes she sat for an hour having coffee with her husband. When her son came home he was startled to see her, grey hair growing out, her ‘fat clothes’ engaged — but also…Mom was jogging? What was the catch? What social group, what area of awareness… but there was none of that and he caught himself curious and talking to her for the first time in a long time.
At Christmas they all went to look at lights. Her husband and her bought a sleep number mattress so they could share the bed again. Sometimes she woke up and his arm was around her and she felt better.
She had not watched CNN or MSNBC in over six months. She had no idea what was going on. Part of her really didn’t care. She decided she would not be voting again. Ever. She didn’t like picking sides.
When someone checked out her groceries now, she thought about how hard that job had to be on their feet all day. She didn’t wonder about their political affiliation anymore. She said please and thank you.
One day Becky hit rock bottom her friends would have noted, had they a window into her life.
She was in her sweats playing a game of checkers with her husband on a Saturday morning over coffee. He had her laughing so hard she snorted coffee out her nose. They laughed harder. Her hair was in a dreaded scrunchy and she was wearing a pair of knock off plastic Crocks she had found at a garage sale. A dog was at her feet, just a regular dog. It needed a home after the owner had died. She had gotten to know a few people at the church.
And that’s how KETO saved Becky’s life. It gave her a life worth living.
I’m going to hell for this one. — author
