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Friday, June 10, 2011

Steroids: A History.

Note: This was a really emotional post for me to write and even reflect on, and I hope that it covers some topics that haven't really been addressed by macro literature.

I recently looked back at a picture of myself three years ago when my celiac symptoms were beginning to appear, and I was taking steroids to manage the constant recurrent infections. I'm so emotional in doing this, and it's hard to pinpoint the reason. In some ways, that period of my life was one of the happiest, as I was traveling and studying under a professor whose research would permanently alter the path of my academic career. I was reading new authors and making incredible new friends. I was also beginning a three year battle that would culminate in two surgeries, countless hospitalizations, and enough prescription pills to stock a reasonably sized pharmacy. I would become intimately familiar with my kidneys, ovaries, and GI tract. In fact, I have a really neat scan of my ovaries that I'm TOTALLY framing and turning into bathroom art as soon as possible.

I guess I just can't believe that was me. I can't believe I was that sick, can't believe I was that disconnected from my body, can't believe all the medication I was on... It's so many things. It's really emotional. I feel I don't even know that girl. I worry a lot about getting back there. I know my propensity for sweets and for yin foods, and now that my diet is a little wider, maintaining moderation is really something I have to struggle over.

Sometimes when I read the macro books, I feel like this doesn't get addressed. I wonder if anybody else feels this incredible sadness looking back. When you know the pain and sickness that are going to rock your future world, you just want to reach back and shake that person by the shoulders and say "WAKE UP AND PUT THE BISCUITS DOWN."

The only thing I can glean from this is asking myself today what I'll be shouting back tomorrow. What am I doing today that I'll regret tomorrow? I think I made some of the best and worst choices of my life that year, but there's no doubt that it was one that would shape the rest of my life.

Spring of 2008 // Spring of 2010

1 comment:

  1. Great post Becky. Yes I agree we need to have a Macro book to talk about the balance of moderation after we expand our diet.
    I can so relate when I see pictures of myself with the puffy checks, it motivates me to want to never go back to that old me.

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