Happy Birthday Phil; Not Much About Refeeding

It's Phil's birthday and I'm eating enough for two people living through an Arctic winter. In a tent. What was that, Phil? Distorted who???

I'm going to save feeling sorry for myself with refeeding woes for another post--although it is really uncomfortable and scary, and I've discovered a new oxymoron (as my friends are exhausted from hearing): masochistic gratification. More on that soon. For now, I quit feeling sorry for myself, and feel sorry for Phil instead--because he has to live with me? No, because he's so OLD!!! Cue music: "When I'm sixty-four!"

Sorry, I must have lost my tongue in my cheek. Both are so engorged right now--both tongue and both cheeks--that it's hard to tell one from the other.

Let's see if I can get one thing right. Phil is universally beloved in his local and his wider community. Check.
This year, he's achieved yet more notoriety in the local press, as a wise counselor for the Library Advisory Board (that's where you advise the City to give the library more money because reading is vitally important to the liveliness of the community and new books keep us vibrant)...

Source: Homer Tribune. Notice his book!

But Phil also has a sideline, although he would probably call it his mainline; his desired time allocation for it is mainlining the clock chime, as...a mammoth hunter! Yes, mammoths trod the ground we live on, or more likely, ground that formerly occupied  the space on which we stand, slump, or slide. As Phil's hiking speed has slowed to slightly less than warp, he's learned to appreciate the fact that you see more at a slower pace. And so, every time (the mainlined time) he's out the door, he's hunting, semi-systematically, for mammoth parts. Our neighbor recently told me that after hiking with Phil a couple times, he's found himself looking at the ground in certain places in certain ways at certain tides just as Phil does. On our hikes together, we sometimes divide up the beach, and tease each other with bits of petrified wood or layered metamorphic rock that could resemble "the real thing." 

Here's his hand with a piece of molar found last December...

Source: Juneau Empire

...and here's the whole Phil with that same molar

Source: Fairbanks News Miner--this news travels!

The pictures haven't hit the press yet, but he found another piece just a couple weeks ago.
Well, record-time post here. I need to round up the gifts, food, etc, for Phil's party we need to leave for imminently. Oh, and get out of my cooking clothes. I think I might have dirtied every single utensil in the cabin and the water to the kitchen is frozen off.
Next post, if I manage it, I'll be heading out on my trip to see my psych for a very very important decision. Although my mom just told me that bipolar is just a thyroid imbalance. So maybe I just need to get my thyroid dose right and I won't need my magical lithium after all.

Turning the Corner: Two Magic Potions, No More Soft-Pedaling

I've turned the corner!
- Memory: mostly back online
- Klutziness: diminished; some good predictive/evasive actions (but one big spill tonight)
- Energy: much better
- Breath: fine now

And my pen, my flagstaff, has been busy today.
All this clarity and increased energy has been helped by more calories and some quiet space, but it's--I've--received an additional quantum push from this magic potion:

Source: The Raw Food World

I've been hearing about Marine Phytoplankton and its amazing benefits for years. Plankton, whale food, tiniest plant organisms, are the ultimate, direct, bottom-of-foodchain source of those omega fatty acids for which people eat fish oil. Omega oils are so crucial for brain function (and are strongly recommended for people with things like bipolar, schizophrenia, and any depressive or psychotic tendencies). Plus, as an oceanic entity, it's going to be full of thyroid-supporting iodine and other trace minerals So, of course, this is a very expensive product! Out of my range...until recently it was on sale. Last Tuesday, I started taking just four drops with green powder in the mornings, and noticed a sharp difference by the next day. If you've ever had green juice, or wheatgrass, or one of those potions that give you a clear, ringing, bright energy that makes you feel positive and eager to engage with life, this stuff provides that feeling with an additional sense, physically felt too, of acuity in the brain.
I'm still noticing that increase in clarity and energy. Probably also helped me to step over the hurdle of these last couple days.
Holds Unbarred
I'd been panicking about the scale these last few days, distracted from what really needs to happen with the scale. That was the last holdout. I was eating more, but still backing off from my quantity-commitment, still scared to move forward. Then this morning, my therapist brought up the very real possibility I won't make the psych's ultimatum, and that she won't give me grace, and things will change very much. Up until now, I had not let myself imagine that scenario, even as I continued unable to ensure it wouldn't happen. I've been so afraid to move from where I am/was. Now I'm afraid not to get away/there soon enough.
So today, I ate more than I thought possible. (For perspective, I should confess that Phil, while very pleased, did not think it was a phenomenal amount.) I ate close to what I ate in treatment, quantity-wise; to where I'm lightheaded and it hurts. And I'll try for a night-time snack too, like I had to there. At least I can choose my food, which makes it far less unpleasant. Have some chocolate! Eat more honey (which I love, but quit eating when I quit beekeeping)! Actually eat some of those raw energy bars you always make and then stash in the freezer! 
I've got 'til Friday. Wish me luck. A birthday in the family and a packet deadline this week too. Big week!
Friends
The other 'magic potion' mentioned in the title is made of friends. Friends right here in town. Friends with whom I'm in touch via email and Skype. Friends on Facebook. Friends off the grid and out of range but still in heart connection. 
The umbilicus of gratitude.
This past Saturday, I Skyped in to a get-together of classmates from my school years in England. Most of us have known each other since age four or five, or even younger. It was so lovely to see five beautiful women in a room on the other side of the world, all so recognizable as their much younger selves, all enjoying each other and renewing shared stories now decades old.
My friend Rachel told me that her strongest association between me and food is a date with an almond in it. Yes! I was raised on those, I told her; also a pecan in a date. That's the candy my grandparents in Israel would give me, and I've offered it to my cousins' kids there now.
I Facebook posted this picture to Rachel today:

Yes, little almonds, big medjool date. You see the heart of it, though.
I ate the pecan one (!!!! first pecan in a long time) and left the almond one for Phil--sharing even when cramming=expanding, generous bigness.

Two-fer -- Not Story Alone (The Lyric Version)

Not only gratitude for stories, but...

Lack of gratitude for my own existence combined with gratitude for the experiences I've experienced and observed, and for the existences of so many other people who are inextricably part of me, constitutes a lyric moment--lyric monument, even, as well as all the stories.

I don't have the context to know gratitude for peace. But my questioning of the heart of the nature of peace is a song all of its own.

As I return, surprisingly rapidly, from deepened intertwining with anorexia to a clearer-headed, less klutzy, state, I wish that my haphazardly fixed scale weren't sending me crazy with implausible, potentially unhealthy, messages...but imagine if I were able to write a poem about that lyric pain!

Similarly, standing here, waving the white flag, being in an open space, not knowing what's to come next, I see a poem waving its flag, the staff of the flag being a pen, inviting.

Gratitude, Story, More on the White Flag

I'm not grateful to be alive. But:
- there are numerous people for whose existence I am boundlessly grateful
- and I am grateful for all the experiences I have embodied and absorbed through my senses
- and for the stories these represent.

I'm not grateful for the unprecedented peacefulness of our era, which is apparently the case despite endless war. I believe in it, but have no way to understand it. But:
- I am grateful for the safety of my family in the Middle East
- and for the love, grace, peace, generosity so palpable in my circles of friends
- and all the stories this brings.

I'm not grateful that my scale's battery died the very day I went to give an honest weight. I'm further not grateful for the anxiety provoked by the fact that the scale and I had been quite consistent, after wild initial fluctuation; and that now, with a new battery, it's showing wild fluctuations again. But:
- I am grateful to be shown that wild fluctuations may, astonishingly, not be all me
- and I am grateful for the reminder that technology isn't always home base
- most of all, I am grateful for the story it offers.

I'm not grateful that I have to have vital signs tracked, and to have rebelled against this, and to have been out of integrity. But:
- I'm grateful that I couldn't stay out of integrity
- and I'm grateful for having the experience of returning to integrity, that waving my white flag felt like such a relief, as it set the scene for beginning to project what might come next, rather than keeping things stuck
- and I'm grateful for the story to be told here.

I'm grateful for hearts, their hugeness, their power of connecting, like the earth with its mats of roots and mycelia.

I am grateful for the brain, with its firing and subliming, more powerful than a WiFi hub.

source: http://fearofwriting.com/brain-food-for-writers.htm

And oh yes, I am grateful for guts, seat of our instincts, absorption, seed-bed of neurotransmitters that regulate our feelings, tidal in ulterior motion like the ocean, like the hidden side of the moon.

http://www.fpnotebook.com/gi/Anatomy/SmlBwlAntmy.htm

And I'm thankful for all the ways these organs connect; all the stories for which they are lenses.

Thank you.

Integrity Again, and Surrender (but not what you think)

Phil is in Vegas whooping it up with his grandkids. Such a good thing for both sides! He is the funnest grampa imaginable, and it must be so good for him to be held in a space of such simple adoration; to be able to have straightforward fun, lots of laughter.

I'm staying home doing my best. Enjoying the quiet time, clear, deep-cold days, the sunrises and sets, visits with friends who are accepting, gracious, topplingly kind. Working on critical papers, writing, being ok with residual messiness and my fatigue-induced apathy toward it.
After my last appointment, I'm acknowledging that even after I get out of the chasm, there'll be climbing to do.
Which brings me back to integrity.
I was well short of the 'ultimatum' goal even after chugging a gallon of liquid, and since doing that makes a person pretty sick, if it doesn't get you there anyway, seems to be less point (or, point-less). Integrity is wholeness, right? So adding a gallon, or eight pounds, to myself is adding something not truly part of my integral whole, which is just as much out of integrity as if I were to take something away from my wholeness, like if I claimed not to know Latin or Greek.
Water-loading has always seemed such an easy fix, but it's only ever "worked" "partly," and there are times it's made me sick, or simply been implausible because I've miscalculated.
Now that I've (been forced to) come clean with my doctor and therapist; now that it's clear I won't be able to make the 'ultimatum' even if I drink enough to make myself sick; even if I gain for real the safe amount of weight in the time remaining, I'm in a space of surrender. I don't mean the Twelve-Step, spiritual, beatific, state-of-grace surrender, with all chakras lit up and rainbows puffing incense. Wouldn't it be nice if I did mean that; if I had finally reached the point I've been told to aim at all these years?
No, guys. I've been besieged from the outside and ambushed from within. I'm waving the white flag. There are certain limits beyond which I'm not willing to go, certain things I'm not willing to give up, but I'm hardly in a position to bargain for terms, am I? At this point, 100% adherence is mandatory until my psych appointment next Friday, at which time we will discuss my fate. Additionally, I am to go in for a weight today, augmented only by being an afternoon weight rather than first thing morning, with no extra liquid to strain (to stain) my integrity.
Ridiculous, eh, all this focus on my weight. It's all a matter of perspective. See my little pet parsley, a tree in the sunset?

A Happy Thanksgiving to all, in integrity.

"She Looks Ten Years Older" -- Consequences, and the Bind

Although what follows is about consequences of illness/addiction, I hope it will be of interest to writers as well as people interested in healing and honesty.
Every writer learns to manage a multiplicity of points of view: to think within her own head, and within the head of someone observing her, and within the head of someone she's observing. Any person could do with this same ability. Any person who's aging, or sick, or struggling with an addiction, could do with learning this, too. People in this category are precisely the people who can maintain an unrealistic perception of ourselves (yes, I include myself) and our abilities. For example, Phil's dad fell off ladders and into creeks in his later years, because his perception of himself as all-capable physically never got updated as he became eighty-something with blown-out knees and a triple bypass; which is why my grandma, formerly super-active, is beyond bitter and frustrated at her confinement to a wheelchair.

once you're in the vortex...

So, to forestall any backsliding from me based on claims that there's nothing wrong, that everyone's making much ado about nothing, that bmi guides are arbitrary and silly and what are you talking about 'dangerous,' I'm going to lay it out there. There are consequences to the 'mandatory intervention range' prize, and I'm going to share them here--the ones I can remember (see below)--as part of holding myself accountable. 
These are things I am not willing to admit to anyone out loud. I'm admitting them not out of narcissism but a desire for clarity and completeness, and to help.
There's also a major bind, which I'll also mention.

Consequences
- Physical strength is a prime area of mistaken self-perception. I can do all my regular bodyweight exercises fairly well, so I'm just as strong as ever, right? But stepping out of my own borders, I'm having trouble opening heavy doors, or lifting 15lbs above my head, carrying big grocery bags, etc.
- Soreness, fatigue. Yes, my muscles get and stay more sore. Yes, I get really tired. And I'm not abusing stimulants as I was in the spring, so no getting around it.

- Memory loss--I'm famous for my memory, and have always been glad to rely upon it. Lately, though, I've felt like an Alzheimer's patient, between finding myself somewhere and wondering what I'm doing there, and losing a word, and not remembering what comes next in a process. All short-term memory stuff. But yesterday I cried when I couldn't remember a friend's phone number and had to look it up. OK, it's just one digit I couldn't remember, but really, phone numbers are a package deal...
- Logical awareness and balance--as in my body, so in my head. A level of meta-awareness remains, where I can hear that what I'm saying makes no sense; but my logic, usually impeccable, isn't straight at times. I stare down the depths of a conversation and see a whirlpool in a drinking straw, and am helpless to squeeze things back up. That's a good part of why I'm writing this post, as I can logic myself out of doing all kinds of things I should be doing.
- Spatial awareness and balance--my goodness, I have become the most laughable klutz. If I pick something up, it's almost a given that I'll drop it. If it's anywhere near me, I'll run into it or tip it, or bruise myself on it. Sometimes I lose my ability to touch-type, or even type the semblance of the right order of letters.
I often get lightheaded when I stand up, or bend over. When doing my signature kitchen dance (no, not "chicken dance," even though I'm mixing up my words too these days ;) ) -- normally, I'll whirl from one area to another, picking up, setting down...I've actually put my butt down more than once.

- I'm in ketosis, holy grail of Low-Carb dieters; not on purpose. Some consequences of ketosis:
  - horrible breath. Can you imagine how mortifying that is?
  - worsened hallucinations. Yes, I have them normally anyway, but more frequent, more scary; consistently in several senses (visual, auditory, tactile at least). There's actually a bit of research recommending ketogenic diets for folks with bipolar 2 but the psychotic piece is a specifically cited reason why it's not for bipolar 1's.
  - stress on the kidneys (who have already been extremely and repeatedly stressed)
  - some heart-stress-type stuff--see, I never normally go away from my doctor without chapter and verse clarity!

- Hair loss. This wasn't happening earlier this year; grounds for my claims that nothing was wrong. It's falling out like crazy now, and I have pretty long hair.

It gets into everything!
- Hypothyroid--I have this already, as a long-term consequence of this illness/addiction. I hadn't noticed until I saw a picture of myself, though, that my eyebrows are disappearing: a pretty sure sign that I'm not taking enough thyroid med for how hypo my thyroid is.
- Amenorrhea--a given, pretty much my whole life even if you don't count childhood. Pretty convenient, except that it causes estrogen dominance, and the lack of progesterone affects smooth muscle contractions (think: peristalsis) and adrenals (think: containment and resilience) and many other hormonal functions.
- Gut stuff--food allergies and sensitivities worsen; digestion and absorption less effective with impaired peristalsis; irregularity.
- Absorption issues--both of food and of necessary medications, since both brain and gut are missing what they need.
- Adrenals--shot. Jump a foot in the air at anything sudden or loud; find it hard to make on the spot decisions.
- Aging--what a painful irony after all the fruit-and-vegetable eating, all the attention to good herbs and sunshine; hey, and all the calorie restriction. That's supposed to conduce to longevity, isn't it? I've always looked young for my age. Now, I'm being told I look ten years older. I really don't know what to do with that. I've never wanted to be vain about my appearance, but my youthfulness is something I've taken for granted.
- Honorable mentions: intermittent chest pain, impaired judgment in decision making (e.g. drinking a gallon of water preparatory to weigh-in, to make things look better vis-a-vis the ultimatum. Things look very bad. People were fooled as to the quantity but not the act. Three days later, I'm finally not feeling sick from this. Or, going on a long hike without having had lunch. Or, driving while hallucinating to be somewhere I needed not to be hallucinating). Having a hard time seeing the funny side of things, which doesn't help with the extreme relationship difficulty. And more...

The Bind
"Some" of these issues will be helped by gaining "some" weight--less than they say, in my experience. Improving nutritional status is more the key However, some of the physiological issues won't be changed, although they will respond better to medication.
Even more of a bind: weight restoration doesn't deal with the underlying issues. At all. I was barely close to 'fully restored' when I left treatment this time, and I was just uncomfortable. Last time I was in treatment, I left 'fully restored,' which just led to losing a shocking amount of weight in a very short amount of time, together with other 'behaviors,' and running away from any kind of treatment for many years. When I've been at relatively 'normal' weights, my pain and discomfort with that clouded anything else that was going on to the point that it was hard to access underlying issues. I've known friends undergo exactly the same thing, so I'm not just speaking for myself here.
Based on my experience, there has to be a compromise--especially with those of us who are older. A weight range that's lower than 'standard' but still healthy. That will allow us some physiological ease, while removing enough of the 'mind panic' for therapy to actually reach. I think this would be a far more effective strategy than putting people on Zyprexa or Seroquil so that they gain weight behind their own backs and then feel betrayed in the ultimate manner.

Full disclosure and my own bind: when I left treatment, I was just at the top of the 'compromise range' I had proposed to them. Even more reason for me to walk my talk now.

Choices, Priorities, Holding Myself Accountable

What happened to my priorities, and how can attention to them dig me out now?
There are many ways to sabotage, lose oneself. Like allowing oneself to get sicker.

"You are where you focus."
"You must have a clearly defined goal and a burning desire to let nothing in your way until you achieve that goal."
"You just have to get your priorities in order."
"You must walk your talk"/"Do as I say, not as I do."
We've all heard some version of these, whether in unsolicited advice from parents or in any success-oriented self-help book.

Always, making choices--Would you rather have this, or would you rather have that?

On a 'small' level, this just has to do with knowing what you love, and cultivating that.
I love persimmons, and when I lived in CA I harvested them from October well into December, eating them freely, reveling in their ripe translucence against the slanted fall sunshine. 

 Now that I live in Alaska, and buy them at the store imported from far away and quite expensive, my relationship with them is different, mediated by dollar and calorie amounts I was able to forget back there and then. Nonetheless, I buy as many as I can afford, and Phil and I enjoy every last one, first as festive decoration, then as sustenance that nourishes on more than one level. I choose the persimmons over the extra dollars in the wallet.

What have I been choosing instead of being a writer and being stabilized by lithium??
I love writing; I have a burning desire to be a writer. In order to walk that talk:
I should always choose to be writing, or reading for writing, ahead of any other thing. Which means putting it before my paid work, and charging much more what I'm worth for what I do. I should make sure I write down on paper all the writing I do in my head.
But also:
In order to walk the talk of being a writer, or any other activity for that matter: I should have been doing more than I have been doing--everything in my power--to avoid falling farther down the spiral of not-eating--losing appetite--not-being-able-to-eat--losing-more-weight.
Even if my burning desire had simply been to be able to hold a conversation, or to be able to remember what I did two minutes ago, or to take a hike without seizing up or getting dizzy, or to be able to travel, or to be left by myself, I should have been doing this.
I have wondered what sort of writing would result from not being able to remember what one did two minutes earlier. I guess you could look back and see what you had there, but that might just perpetuate the muddle. Pretty sure my blog post before last was virtually unintelligible.
Even for the sake of something small.  So much more, then, for the sake of something big? Like one's life purpose, and being able to continue taking the medication that made so many things possible and sanified?
In my small defense, it's not as thought I was continually consciously choosing not to feed myself: rather, it was a stream of small-picture excuses and avoidances that built a majorly deficient big picture.
 So. I'm in the hole. I'm not traveling over Thanksgiving and we're trying to work it out so that Phil doesn't have to cancel as well (which would leave me feeling terrible, but my ND doesn't want me to stay by myself). 
I know what they'll make me do if I go back to treatment. I have to prove to everyone that I can do those things myself, here, at home. But who is going to have any confidence that I can do that, based on the past six weeks? 
We're not even talking the "what if I don't do it," the "or else" at this point--they're talking about my survival, and I still can't internalize that as something seriously genuine (or genuinely serious).
With so many things in jeopardy now; with the aversive knowledge of what it would be like in treatment; with the injunction not to leave me alone (when I'm so craving some quiet time at home), I feel pretty motivated to show I can do it. I picture a huge chasm with a railroad bridge collapsed into it. The mess of ties and girders is mending back together in the shape of a spiral. I'm the train-wreck at the bottom, getting the wheels back on, limping over to the tracks, gradually following the spiral up toward a winter sunrise.
I'm writing about something this personal partly because it pertains to and impinges on the life of a writer, but also to hold myself accountable. I'm letting it be known that I want to climb out of the hole. I'm putting the three cups of coconut cream per day out there as something that can be mentioned.