Necessary Mutilation

I love it!  I recently learned that one of Aspires nurses is also undergoing the process to prep for bariatric surgery with Dr. C.  She is a few steps behind me and just met Dr. L. for her psychological.

She readily opened up to me when I approached her and I feel both vindicated and enraged all over again at her stories of having felt chilled and belittled by him and ways in which she too believed he should not be who is recommended for vulnerable fat people with esteem issues!   We both agree we’d like to formally inform the Center of our feelings after we are less beholden…something I know I definitely look forward to.

Oh, and how neat that I now have an ally in this process!

I hate limbo!  I’m still waiting to hear that the Bariatric Center received the finished psychologist report from Dr. Bland (and that I’m not crazy enough to undergo surgery) so I can be scheduled to meet with Dr. C.  I broke down and called them myself yesterday, but was told they hadn’t gotten it yet and that it should likely come “any day now.”  I wonder if Dr. Bland realizes how important his timeliness is and how much people may pin their hopes on him to answer questions to get them off to a good start of a long process.

I know that not only the waiting but the wondering and the anticipating are siphoning off a lot of my energy lately.  In supervision yesterday my boss asked if we should begin to plan for my time off.  I had already been pondering every aspect of what my absence from work would entail (including whether - and how - to tell my clients and even extended co-workers), and worrying about when things may come together enough so a date can actually be set.  In the absence of any real information yet, however, I had nothing new to tell my boss or even to plan ahead for.  Sometimes I even wonder if it will really happen - especially given our insurance limbo and uncertainties about the process.

At times I find myself upset - no, angry - that any of this must be part of my life and future.  What “normal” person has to typically consider, even “look forward to,” gross anatomical mutilation (as my friend Nancy says, changing what’s natural), pain, and scarring for the sake of survival (or so it seems).  Although part of me has reconciled this as part of my overall journey, my less-well-developed, more immature side succumbs to internal dialogue about drawing the short straw and the unfairness of it all and feels a victim of genetics, culture, and the food Nazis.  Then I vacillate to self-blame and loathing and a mysogynistic view of my obesity as a character flaw deserving of self-flagellation and the punishment of having my stomach “amputated.”

A more “gray” view would be welcome here!

What an anti-climactic experience from a long-anticipated day!  Today I met with the “bariatric psychologist,” Dr. “L,” as is required.  His name itself made me expect a kindly, warm older gentleman - perhaps an ex-fat person with great compassion for those presently awash in extra weight.

Wrong!

This arrogant and insulting man without an ounce of extra weight, my age or so, was “just the facts ma’am” bland and about as jovial as dry toast.  Thankfully the sweet young woman who greeted me (and my husband, who was off work for today’s holiday and insisted on driving me) made up for his manner with her kindly candor and sense of humor.  When she set me up in the wait area to take the requisite “260 Yes-or-No-questions test” (I knew it would be the MMPI!), it immediately got me chuckling at the inanity of many of the questions; she often laughed with me from behind her desk and even commented that it is the ones who get offended at or take the questionnaire too seriously that she worries about.

As a social worker I am all too familiar with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test, ambiguously worded on purpose to screen out lies and detect any number of possible mental health diagnoses — from psychoses to phobias to depression to narcissism.  Unfortunately, I found many questions either comical enough to read out loud (”Do you find yourself covered in gray spots when you get up in the morning?,” or something like that) to my husband (thankfully, no one else was in the waiting room!), or worded strangely with seemingly improper English (Wrongest? Baddest?).  Plus, there were those questions that cried out for “maybe” or “sometimes” options because I knew that answering yes or no would either condemn me as mentally ill or as a liar - e.g., “Have you ever stolen as a child?” (Y = Klepto Kiddie and N = Liar, as every kid steals!).

The test aside, my ensuing 45-minute meeting with Dr. Bland was similarly insufferable despite my best efforts to liven and loosen him up.  While conducting a rather transparent mental status exam on me (”Spell world.  Spell world backwards.  Where are you right now?  What day is it?”  Aack!), one of the directives was to write any sentence on a piece of paper and then hand it to him.  I wrote:  “I hope I don’t flunk this mental status exam!” which he then read without even an eyelid flutter of humor.   And as to the Q&A opportunity I had expected, the “doneness” of our process became apparent when he abruptly got up and ushered me out without even asking psychologist-like things such as, “Anything I can answer for you?” or “How are you feeling with things now?”

I must admit I selfishly feel somewhat insulted by how much this process felt all about the requirement that I be sane rather than the forum for reciprocity, questions and answers, a springboard for things to come, or whatever else I expected it to be.

Well, maybe in that sense it may have been the first step of blind compliance and trust in the system to do what it needs in my overall behalf without my thinking so much or exerting too much free will into the process.  God I suck at that!

Oh, and a last aside about today:  How startled was I to see the name of my esteemed teammate and colleague Dr. H. on the door of the room just down the hall to Dr. Bland in this office building I’d never been to before?  Both interested to see where Dr. H. hangs his shingle while in private practice opposite days to ours, and mortified at the thought of bumping into him, I peeked - but not long enough in case the door were to open.  If this isn’t a representation of my ambivalence about and inner shame over my patient role, I don’t know what is!  Pass the mental status exam indeed!