No-one is sleeping tonight. It seems that for most people sleeping tablets have been like golddust when they actually had stuff to sleep through or off but as soon as they’ve been a little better (not to mention sleeping all day) then the magic has worn off.
As for me – my pillows are flatter and the magic of sleeping still has not arrived in my head. Perhaps there is, as there was today, more willingness to take the days easier and so the nights, if disrupted by anything – weather, chemistry, other auras, noise etc. etc. – are less disturbing or damaging. I had a good hour – 1 ½ hours today after lunch…
…ah yes – possibly why I’m distracted and churning. Lunch was extremely difficult, taking me forty minutes to drink 1 bottle of Resource (not even the full quota). Putting a thick, sweet and sickly milky drink into my insides yesterday was a nightmare and made me feel incredibly queasy and drained me so totally that my head span, my stomach churned, my eyes started flashing and I had to curl up in bed for over an hour. Until Mum rang and woke me in fact. Then I spent most of the afternoon burping and suffering from feeling incredibly nauseous when most of the morning I had been immune to feeling sick and had just felt a little shaky, weak and wary when having a shower. I had also pottered lazily on the computer and the internet instead of being very focused and had taken my time doing everything – had a digestive biscuit which had been fine.
By 6pm, and still really mentally harassed because my insides were still harassed I asked for a plain piece of wholemeal bread, margarine and marmalade. Which was delicious. Even Flora managed to taste perfect in the state I was in – and nervously I quartered the bread and gingerly went easy on the spreads but actually to taste something that was chewable and sat inside me in a food-like not slop-like way felt incredible. My phrase to Alison was ‘sod fucking Resource’ – which she nicely and sweetly took to heart, offering me a menu from which to order for Monday.
This served to demonstrate three things. 1: the nurses know little about the strictness over which I am ‘supposed’ to be reintroducing food and more importantly the dieticians now have some explaining to do when I tell them that I got on better in extreme digestive difficulties with something that wasn’t milk-based and actually their ‘better’ product only served to make me feel worse; 2: I cannot order solely from the hospital menu – there is not enough on there that can make up enough calories in the substances that I like and that are varied enough for me to eat consistently and nice enough for me to want to. Prunes in juice and a slice of bread, butter and jam for breakfast; Cottage Cheese Salad and cheese and biscuits for lunch; Cheese Wholemeal sandwich and a banana for dinner – and believe me I tried to order the things that I could manage and all I responded to was what I ticked…I don’t want their cornflakes, branflakes or lone weetabix drenched in milk till unrecognisable, nor could I stomach their cold porridge – Ready Brek in actual fact. I’ve also seen the brands of their cereals and they’re supermarket’s own-brand, sugar stuffed with very little fibre and far too much salt. The bread, I’ll admit was OK but I can’t imagine a cheese sandwich is going to be appetising. Nevertheless the fact that I am now ordering from my menu means that if there is something on there – like the cottage cheese salad – which I’d like or manage, I can supplement with my own food, i.e. eat the crackers with it and have a yoghurt for pudding or a piece of fruit as well…well then there’s options available.
The third thing it made me think was that the biggest concern I have is whether I can eat enough straight off to consume as many calories per day as Resources and snacks could give me. Now I know I’d want to slip my mealtimes a little: lunch @ 1, dinner@ 6 for example to give me enough time to snack in between. I also know that nothing can happen ‘officially’ tomorrow given the lack of dieticians around – however I will request tomorrow to see a dietician first thing on Monday morning. I may even say to her that by all means she should run it past St George’s but I’m finding it actually easier to eat – particularly if it could be food from home which supplements/bulks up/forms the basis of my diet – than I am to drink supplement drinks. Tell them that I’m moving mountains faster than they thought I would. I actually was worried last night seeing the menu that I was frightened of the quantity of food but can appreciate now that I simply cannot get the calories from hospital nutrition alone. I genuinely feel that – the resistance I had to ticking things emerged from that good old physical basis which I always forget is where my responses come from these days. My physical resistance though was not, I don’t think, to the quantity in principle – it was to gaining the calories from hospital foods – Fish Pie with a potato topping, creamed potatoes and peas is not my idea of a good dinner. Plus – these bulkier ‘hot foods’ are useless if I am wanting them an hour later, whilst salads etc. can be put in the fridge after they’ve been sent up on the lunch trolley – more stuff for Kelly which I will spend tomorrow noting down and have a conversation on Monday, not wait til Tuesday’s review. So anyway…things are moving on and my fears are certainly being shown the back door by the stomach bug we’ve all had a taste of. The practicalities of proper food intake seem to be coming ever closer and not through my forcing it but feeling better on it than on milky drinks.
Hmm…all I had to say really, most of it boringly practical in my life’s reconfiguration around foodstuffs but essentially that’s where I am right now – this is the practical bit of the less pragmatic waffle of earlier today (or should that be yesterday…!?) Still…I had the strength to say no today – and yes to something much more beneficial. That gives me a foundation to express how I truly feel about Resource – perhaps keep one a day but not so many – food – please, quickly introduce so I don’t lose any ground in the transferral – and strategies – slipping the timings and incorporating externals foods to ensure I can get the calories I need. And to know that that is instantly where my thoughts travelled when I saw I couldn’t eat enough from the hospital menu genuinely and wholeheartedly encouraged my psyche enormously. That upward trend that I spoke of…its genuine and feels bloody good. I also know that despite my adamance on St George’s diet, I know more about my own body through sensing it than anyone else could ever do. Its time I started standing up for what it needs.
And there’s my 2am revelation. It is not just my psychological state that warrants standing up for and defending. Its not just the mental health aspect that I need to assert as being fine and happy and willing to eat. I didn’t know it before but it hasn’t just been my mind that has wanted proper food – my body has thrived on it as well…and as such needs me to stand up for its need to move on as swiftly as possible so it can start feeling healthier within itself when it is away from such milk-based stuff which I have never in my life had an affinity to. Yes – not only is my mental health and inner strength worth standing up for, so is my body and the things it needs to keep and make it healthy…starting tomorrow…with a response in the morning as to whether I want to try a Resource again or whether I want some bread and a glass of orange juice. I know now which I’m veering towards, but I will of course double check tomorrow…but after going to bed anxious over whether I could stomach the amount of food necessary to intake calories necessary I am now convinced I can – it just has to come from wider arenas than I am offered here. I can bring in more cold and calorific from home than I can choose from these limited prospective meals. I feel good about the promise of this now, which I didn’t before I slept tonight…perhaps I will return to rest now and get some more sleep, which my body also deserves after the 48 hours it has been through.
Love to all – and thanks for reading (scanning, skimming, casting a brief eye or whatever you do). It makes a difference to have real people who have opinions who I am ‘speaking’ these words to – it means I am running my truths past people who could oppose me and I increasingly have less and less qualms in doing so. It demonstrates to me that I feel no shame about the machinations about food which my life contains currently. It is a dominant focus to me as I right the things that have been incorrect about its presence in my life. Once it is all in place to progress I am sure the amount of rubbish I write about it will lessen. However the fact that I feel like I am being the whole me – food and all – with everyone shows me I no longer have any hang-ups about how, what, why and all aspects and ramifications of food and its place within my life. For someone who has doubted their own personal sanity for almost ever around the biggest supposedly supportive influence that can possibly exist for any human individual, to know that I no longer am paranoid about it and the way it takes a place in my life is the most tremendous gift that writing these blogs openly to you all can give me. So thank you for the reading of them that you do – and for letting me know that you’re out there, keeping a trace on someone who values you all very, very much.
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