Fast forward a few years, about 5 years, and I'm newly pregnant with my final, surprise, baby. I'm only about 10 weeks into the pregnancy at this point also and slightly showing, but just prior to discovering this pregnancy, I HAD been looking at my reflection wondering where this pot belly had come from. One night, while sitting on the commode, I bent over to retrieve the roll of paper that had fallen leaning sideways. I felt a very sharp pain in my lower back that caused me to gasp aloud. No big deal. I finished my task and went on my way. That evening while visiting my mother, I could not bend over to put on my shoes due to pain. I told her what had happened earlier, but she had to put my shoes on me and tie them for me. I then drove 1.5 hours home with my 2 children sleeping in the backseat. When I arrived home, I could not swing my legs out of the car due to the pain and had to turn my entire body in unison with the direction in which I desired my legs to go. I did manage to carry the children into their beds. It seemed the pain was at its worst when I was bent at the lower back in some manner. Anyway, that evening, I experienced the worst pain I had ever experienced, and having delivered all 3 of my children naturally (at that point only 2 of them), I can honestly share it was at least 30 times worse than the transitional stages of hard labor. My back was spasming so severely it arched my back and caused me to moan while clenching my teeth, curling my toes, and digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands in a fist. I endured this all night with the spasms coming around every 40 minutes. The following morning as I tried to leave my bed, I could not get up. Instead, I rolled out of bed onto my hands and knees figuring I could crawl to the bathroom, but I soon discovered as I sat there on all fours crying, that I could not even lift a leg in the knee forward movement required for crawling. My husband had to peel me off the floor as I yelled in agony and help me to the restroom. From there we went to the emergency room. The ER could not perform any x-rays on me due to the pregnancy and instead offered up some Vicodin, Tylenol No. 3, and muscle relaxers to my horror. I had never even taken ibuprofen or acetaminophen for a headache while pregnant. They offered me 3 Vicodin as I leaned against the guerney I was unable to sit upon while looking at the floor in my slightly bent over position because I could no longer stand straight up, and I took only 1. It worked well enough to get me home. I spent days awake and sleeping in a chair with pillows propped all around me allowing me to keep my lower back bent in more of a fetal position until I scored an appointment as a new patient with a chiropractor. Ahhh....the chiropractor...offender #2.
How can this be offender #2 you might be thinking? The answer is because his pot shot didn't come my way until well after I had actually delivered the baby. I had been seeing him at least once a week since this incident because I went from enduring a posture-distorting pregnancy to carrying an infant for almost 2 years after the delivery. Carrying children causes you to tuck your hips forward to compensate for the extra weight you are carrying out front, and this exacerbated my ever-lingering, still-undiagnosed back condition. I could feel when it was ready to flare into torture mode and had to learn a new way of doing things to compensate for it.
One day while resting face down on the chiropractor's table, having spent enough time contemplating the predicament I was in with having to guard my back and the need to exercise, I shared a few things with him out loud, such as, "If only I could find about 2 hours a day to pay attention to myself." Loving to laugh like I do, I jokingly also said with a laugh, "I don't understand how it got this bad. I swear I probably sit down on my own couch in my own house about once a week." He listened silently.
As I'm checking out at the front desk, he suddenly asks me, "Have you looked at what you are eating?" Not seeing the following statement of his coming, I answered, "What do you mean?"
Drumroll....."Ya know...like chips, ice cream, etc.?" This said looking me directly in the eye as if what he said needed to be said by him and heard by me.
I was speechless, embarrassed, hurt, confused, and angry all in one. Had he not been treating me for 2 years at this point? He surely could see my limited range of motion in my back, the cutest and pudgiest baby sitting atop my husband's lap in the waiting room, along with my other 2 children out there, and he knew the nature of my business and the fact that my husband and I worked opposite shifts. How could he not have heard me? I mean really HEAR me? It was obvious he thought I was making excuses for being fat and had no idea I hadn't even possessed an ice cream carton or bag of chips in my home in years and years.
Seeing how I still needed his services and he seemed to work miracles on my back, while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was HE who told me my lower spine was 7 degrees past its normal curvature, and I absolutely LOVED that bed with the rollers built in that massaged my back in a dimly lit room I would have paid rent to use every day for the relaxation and brief naps it afforded me, I continued on with treatment with him, but I avoided the small talk ever aware of what he REALLY thought.
Have you had someone incorrectly assume you eat a bunch of junk or too much as being the reason you are fat?
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