To drug or not to drug...That is the question

I have no will power when it comes to food. I have struggled with weight for as long as I can remember.

Only twice in my life have I managed to really stick to a plan where I took off a decent amount of weight. When I get to a point where I can’t stand the way I look and feel, I manage to lose the weight, but the problem is as soon as I get to where I finally look and feel better, I become satisfied with myself and instead of maintaining the level of self control and exercise, I slip back into my old habits.

I lost 40 lbs five years ago, by walking and cutting out fast food. Gained it all back plus some.

Last month I went to the Doctor because my prescriptions needed to be refilled. After looking over my chart the conversation went something like this:

Doctor: I have three years of mammogram slips, and blood tests for
cholesterol in your file and no reports to go with them. Have you had any
of them done?

Me: Nope!

Doctor: Why not? With your history of cancer, and your family history of heart disease these tests are important.

Me: Didn’t feel like taking the time to do them. Besides even if there was something wrong, I’m not sure I would do anything about it.”

Doctor: How much exercising are you doing

Me: Do I look like I’m doing any exercising? Sorry…None. I have good intentions but can’t seem to get enough motivation to get going.

Doctor: Your weight is up and you’re inching closer to morbid obesity every year. I must say you are displaying some very self destructive behavior. Do you think you’re depressed?

Me: I’ve wondered about that a lot lately.

With those words, I burst into tears.

Me: I don’t think I’m depressed. Everything in my life is going extremely well. I’m very happy and keep busy, I have a lot of friends, do a lot of things I enjoy so there is nothing I should be depressed about. But I just don't understand why I can't motivate myself or get
control of my eating.

Doctor: It doesn't have to be an outside
stimuli causing the depression. It could from a chemical imbalance. I'm
going to write you a script for an antidepressant. As far as filling your
other prescriptions, I will write them for only one month, if I don't
have your lab work and mammogram reports I will not refill them until
you get them done.

So my dilemma began.

I hate taking medicine. But pain has forced me to take a pill for arthritis, and one for the edema I have as a result of having some lymph nodes removed to diagnose my Hodgkins Lymphoma 10 years ago. So adding another drug to my system was something I wasn't going to do without careful thought and prayer.

I prayed about it for a couple of days. I wasn't getting much in the way of direction so I whinned to God about it one morning. About a half hour later one of the woman from my lay ministry class called to ask about our assignment. Turned out she had the answer to her question right in front of her and didn't realize it. She laughed and said " I guess God just wanted me to call you for some reason."

Maybe you're supposed to give me the answer to my prayer, I said. After telling her my situation, she said, "Luanne I don't think you seem depressed at all, but I know just how you feel. I balked at my doctors suggestion a few years ago because I didn't think I was depressed either. But decided to listen to my doctors advice. I was amazed at how much better the pills made me feel. It made a big difference in my life. You won't know if you don't try, but you have to do what is best for you."


I hung up the phone and started praising God for the phone call. Just as I was making up my mind to begin taking the drug, the phone rang again. It was my sister and I also told her about the doctors suggestion.

"Don't take them. That's stupid. Of all the people I know you would be the last person I would say was depressed!" Depression is a doctors pat answer to everything anymore. Besides if you are depressed it's because you aren't exercising and eating healthy foods, not because of some deep seeded reason. And aren't you the one that is always saying God will give you the strength to do anything if you let him...Well, maybe its your faith that is the real problem. Practice what you preach!"


Okay, now I was bugged. Two phone calls out of the blue and both seeming like an answer to prayer. But which answer......?

Later that afternoon, another good friend I hadn't spoken to in weeks called and asked me to go to a movie with her. I decided she would be the tie breaker. She is a firm believer in antidepressents and thinks everyone in the world is in need of a therapist. We are the best of friends, but have entirely different outlooks on life and we don't agree on anything. I was convinced her advice to take the drugs would push me toward not taking them.


We decided to skip the movie and just go out for dinner. When I posed my question to her, I couldn't have been more surprised with her advice. She had a very soothing demeanor that night. Much different than normal. She didn't urge me to take the pills as I thought she would, but didn't tell me not to either. Her advice....."I can't make that choice for you. Do what your gut tells you."

That's how I knew God was speaking through her. Because I was prepared to do exactly the opposite of what she told me to do.

After a couple more days I finally decided that even though I liked my sisters advice the best, I would take the pills. The directions said to take a 1/2 for seven days then 1 for seven than 1 and 1/2 for seven and finally 2 a day. I managed to go for a week and when I foundd myself really feeling depressed I decided to quit.

Also I couldn't shake the feeling that I was only taking the drug looking for a quick fix. I was hoping they would take away my appetite and hoping if I lost some weight I would be more inclined to exercise. Maybe I didn't give them enough of a chance, but I'm thinking before I continue to put a drug in my body that has enough side effects to kill me, I should probably force myself to exercise and see if that curbs my appetite and picks up my spirit.

Good selfadvice if I do say so myself. I'll let you know as soon as I manage to do it for 3 days in a row.

Giving Up Control

I just finished reading my cousin's blog. I can strongly identify with her struggles. Case in point, she doesn’t want to go to her WW weigh in because she knows she’s up in weight. She’s struggling to get pack on program. Right now I have the same issues. I'm eating more and moving less. Like Paul say's in his letter to the Romans:

For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

I think our mutul problem must be in our gene pool. Both our mom’s died sooner than they should have. The years of smoking did them in, but the extra weight compounded the lung issues they both had. As long as I can remember, my mom always said she wouldn’t live a long life. Both of her parents had died younger than the norm, and she was sure she would follow suit.

I hate the term “morbidly obese”, but that’s what my mom was. Her sedentary life style kept the weight on and kept the lungs from clearing out the nicotine. As a result, in her early 60’s mom developed congestive heart failure. She began falling asleep at the kitchen table, and usually with a cigarette in her hand. The doctor explained she was slowly asphyxiating herself. She wasn’t able to breathe deep enough to take in the good air and expel the bad.

Every morning she would sit on the edge of the bed until she could catch her breath. One morning she fell asleep sitting there and slipped off the bed. My dad couldn’t get her up by himself and called an ambulance. She was in a coma for several days and also on a respirator. She was in the hospital long enough to curb the physical craving for the non filtered Camel cigarettes she smoked for 50+ years but the mental desire to have a cigarette with her morning coffee was still there.

On my first visit to her after she came home from the hospital, she asked me to go to the store and buy her a package of cigarettes. I emphatically told her no, and in a huff walked out the door. But on the drive home I suffered a guilt trip and drove to the store. I bought the cigarettes home with me hoping mom would change her mind. No such luck.

The first thing bright and early the next morning mom called asking me if I'd gone to get the cigarettes. I was fuming mad that she was putting me in this position of enabling her habit. Nevertheless, I drove the quarter mile down the road to her house. I walked in and slapped the pack on the kitchen table, and fighting back the tears I said “Don’t ever ask me to do this again. Maybe you don’t care if you die, but I do”.

I started to leave but mom asked me to get something out of the cupboard for her. By the time I got whatever it was down, mom had finished scarfing down her first stick of nicotine. I wanted to throw up when I saw her reach into the pack and take out a second cigarette right away. She held it in her fingers for a second or two and then reached into the pack for a third. She turned and opened the drawer of the cabinet next to the kitchen table and dropped both inside a little dish, and then handed the rest of the pack back to me.

Mom lived another 10 years, and often she would tell us not to let ourselves get to the point she was. She had always assumed that the cigarettes and the extra weight would probably cause a massive heart attack that would kill her instantly. She never imagined that she would have to live for 10 years as a prisoner in her home, confined to her motorized scooter, and that she would have to relinquish the independence that she loved so dearly.

Going through mom’s personal belongings after she died, we came across the two cigarettes still in the same spot she’d placed them ten years earlier. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was moms’ way of assuring herself that there were still some things in her life she had control over.

My mom has been on my mind a lot lately since her birthday was a week or so ago and now with Thanksgiving just around the corner, family memories are flooding my head. I really had no intentions of making this post all about her. I was actually going to talk about my own self control issues I'm struggling with, but I've run out of time. Guess it will have to wait until tomorrow.

While You Were Sleeping

I've lost my interest in posting. But I've been ticked all week over another legislation passed by Obama and his merry men. I'm tired of being PC. So sue me, put me in jail. I will not be quiet about this issue. But before I move to the main issue I thought this was a great cartoon and article.

I stumbled on this political site accidentally while I was doing some research today for a paper on heresies and aetheism. I am not recommending the site but only giving credit where credit is due http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/ . And evidently he borrowed it from here http://bobmccarty.com/2009/10/04/halloween-a-teachable-moment-about-socialism/



The author says:

I'm not a big fan of Halloween, but I have some advice
for those of you who expect to allow your children to take part in the ritual of
trick-or-treating: Use the five guidelines listed below and allow the 2009
version of the costume- and candy-intensive holiday to serve as a teachable
moment about socialism and about "spreading the wealth around" in the manner
touted so often by President Barack Obama:

1. Tell your child he cannot eat any of the candy he
collects and will, instead, have to take all of it to the ACORN office nearest
your home (wipe tears);
2. Tell your child he will have to turn over their bags
full of candy to the government-authorized agents who, in addition to collecting
the candy, will need to record his name, Social Security number and contact
information for future use (wipe tears);
3. Tell your child he will have to wait 12 weeks for
ACORN officials to count all of the candy he collected and repackage it for
equal-share redistribution among all children in their community (wipe
tears);
4. Tell your child that, within 12 weeks, he should
expect to be provided instructions for picking up a his fair and equal share of
the treats he collected after ACORN officials finish counting all of the
collected candies (wipe tears); and
5. Tell your child that the scenario above offers them
a glimpse of what the future in the United States will look like if socialism is
allowed to flourish (wipe tears for last time) and that he can keep his children
from having to experience such pain by voting for - and by encouraging others to
vote for - conservatives whose values line up with those of this country's
founders and the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Actually I am for spreading the wealth to a point. We all can stand to give up more for the sake of those with real needs and hardships. But I am not in favor of this administration. Not because they are Democrats, but because they are flaming liberals who don't give a damn about anyone but their personal agenda, and disguise it in Democratic sheep skin.

This week the hate crimes legislation passed. It makes me sick. People, hate is hate no matter what. It just makes no sense to me that killing someone is more wrong if you are gay or black.

As I stated in letters to both my state representatives to vote against the bill:

"The hate crime legislation we now have is in my opinion a farce. At
the risk of sounding like George Carlin let me ask- If it is wrong for you to
kill me how can it be more wrong to kill me if I am a homosexual? Does
that make it less wrong to kill me if I am heterosexual? Is it
more wrong to shoot my husband in a fit of anger if I catch him in a same sex
affair than if I catch him with another woman?

How will you be able to look the parents of the children killed in
Columbine in the eye and tell them that their grief is less because their
children weren't gay or black. KILLING IS WRONG HATE IS WRONG.
WRONG IS WRONG, AND WRONG IS NOT MORE WRONG SOME TIMES."

The answer back from both of them was a canned script, and they didn't answer the questions. But what should I have expected. They are both so far up Obama's butt they probably couldn't hear my concerns or didn't give a rip about any other position. They told me any position other than theirs is not being tolerant.

GET REAL.

America what have we done. How long are we going to sit quietly by and let our nation be turned into relativistic society.

Relativism says that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual. And tolerance, according to the Encarta dictionary, “is the acceptance of the differing views of other people and fairness towards the people who hold these different views.

The definition of tolerance is one that many in our culture are trying to ramrod down our throat these days, saying we must tolerate, or in other words, accept moral decisions such as homosexuality, a woman’s right to choose, and same sex marriages etc. This is not tolerance, this is relativism in disguise.

In today’s liberal culture, relativism is viewed as a one way street. We are being told we must tolerate and accept the views of moral relativity; however they do not need to accept our moral views that differ.

In the case of a same sex couple who want to be able to have their partner be able to make medical decisions for them in case the other partner is unable to do so, is different in my view than granting them the right to be married.


As more and more people are rejecting God and Christianity, absolute truth is being abandoned. Yet without some standard of morality, laws cannot be made and maintained. If there is no right and wrong, how can it be wrong for me to say you are wrong?

I don't think we should be policing peoples bedrooms. But I do believe in marriage between a man and woman. I don't think someone should be thrown in jail for living in a same sex relationship but both can not be right.

I'm sorry if it means you can't get married, but some people love their animals too, should they be able to marry to get free veterinarian care for their pet. Where do we draw the line, and yes one must be drawn or chaos will envelop our nation, and the rumbling is already being felt. Anything can not go because than nothing can go.

I believe we need to be tolerant of people but not of their ideas. I am not free to hate or harm someone because I vehemently oppose their beliefs. If I can love and show kindness to someone with differing views then I believe tolerance becomes a virtue.

I will let this video at Youtube by Casting Crowns be my final thought. It is really something to think about. Don't be caught sleeping America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rqhG2yT-58&feature=related