Another cafe, another darkening sky in another suburb. I am going to a friend’s for dinner once I’m done with the doctors and MRIs and ultrasounds and a double round of nuclear scans, with great gapes of time to kill in between. A maw wide and empty enough to make me think: all western medicine depends on war. Cancer patients need Molybdenum 99 sourced from outmoded nuclear reactors–it goes to the patient or the weapon, weapons are winning out at the moment (except there is no honesty in that profession–weapons directly, “energy”, indirectly). I’m told have a different isotope fueling the camera’s efforts to light up my organs on film, but it’s all from the same element. A true perversion of a singular truth about medicine in general, buttressed by the technician’s lie: “Don’t worry, the tracer has no side effects”. In any case, I have time to kill until it’s safe to get under that machine again.

This is the coldest damned cafe in all of the greater Toronto north. The snow fell hard here, the door opens wide to gusts and the only thing that keeps me from shivering outright is the stainless thermal coffee cup I brought with me, filled with boiling water so that it acts as a heat source as well as tea. Too scalding hot to drink, but chill-slaughtering when I hold it in my hands. The technician told me to eat something, drink wine before making my way back to the machine. Wine is a disaster with gamma rays.

I made such a fuss about getting ready to come here today. I picked out a cashmere sweater I wish I hadn’t ruined with haplessly applied deodorant, as it would have been warmer. I put on a pin- striped skirt and noticed I’m smaller than I was, it fit me without constriction this time and I thought about all the time that’s passed since I’d worn it last, who I was then. I decided I’d need tights and some lizard shoes with a heel–but that was the height of the absurd, where was I going? I took all of it off and put on khakis and boots.

I don’t know what to wear to this kind of thing. I just want to get in, get it over with, get it done. I can’t stand the amount of time I’m left to spend under an opaque plastic lens or some frigid probe waved by a distracted technician. Its like being buried head first, with your thoughts in crescendo the deeper down you go. And a soundtrack of nothing but swelling minor chords playing in every enclosed space.

I tried hard to keep from crying all day.

It feels like I haven’t been out in a year. I haven’t been, though. I never take the opportunity to be out on my own, especially in the evening. But life at home has been dark and samey, to tell the truth, it’s become lonely. So I guess I’m out just listening to the voices around me, looking at books piled on tables, full of self help advice, blazing typography and wild images. Nobody actually writes fiction anymore, it’s all “how to”, “what not to do”, how to avoid the dread of the reality of your life. The “real” literature takes up two table tops in this big box of a store before the covers start to become repetitive, like Warhol screen prints.

I’m drawn to the fluff, myself. High quality picture books on fashion, or inane softcover volumes on how to dress yourself so you don’t look like a free-range ox. Art books marked down in price because they’re written by ghost writers, and not scholars. I’m looking for wit and levity, no one is serious about clothes. I just want to make a sound that shakes open the blinds, lets a little light in.

Secretly, I hoped I would run into an acquaintance here. Years ago, I often used to. I’d see one of my cousins from my mother’s side of the family, the ones who grew up around here, for whom I seem to have upset the order of the universe. I’m being silly about that, they never conveyed such ideas to me but I was a puzzle for them as they were all planning to leave, and yet I actually moved here on purpose. Or, I’d run into a friend from school, Angela, a sweet natured girl who was always brilliant around a prematurely bitter old misfit like me. She married years ago, and moved to Alaska to have babies. Her children are almost teenagers now. I am still mystified when I think of the way she met her husband, but I won’t get into that. Let’s just say it involved the internet, a misdirected filmscript, gender confusion, and an on-a-whim New Year’s eve date in a cabin so cold and so far North trees don’t grow there. Instead, I have a fleeting conversation with a middle-aged Frenchman who is forced to wait for his plain black coffee to be brewed, just as I am. We’re the only people in this barn buying what Dennis Leary used to refer to as “fucking coffee flavoured coffee”. Even the grinders and baristas smell of synthesized cinnamon and eggnog and pie spices, everything needed to make arabica beans smell like Disney’s version of Christmas.

Well, it is the season, after all. Cold sharp winter and darkness that falls early, stays hours longer than it should. Starbucks is already playing Starbucks Label Christmas music (though I have to give them credit as it is December, and long past Hallowe’en).

This time is always the hardest, when fall doesn’t want to let go to winter. Tougher still these days, as I’ve been hiding like the undead for more than a year. I keep pushing my appointment with my doctor back, more out of lack of funds than anything else, but also because there are things I just don’t want to tell. Like the day I knew I wasn’t going to recover, when I could feel every thing inside change irreparably.

Several weeks ago, Jen, a friend of mine, decided to “bite the bullet” and do something about all the weight she’s accumulated over the years since becoming a mother and home maker. And business CEO: she looks after other peoples’ children as well as her own in a super-efficient and well run day care centre she makes out of her home.

Her own children are older now, and they’re capable of getting through the day without constant supervision or her own oversight (both children spent a few years battling serious illness, so her monitoring shouldn’t be dismissed as frivolous or overbearing, it was necessary). She’s decided to go back out into the work world and pursue a different career. And good for her–she could use some fulfillment, some challenge, and some new opportunities. She’s spent ten years looking after children and she needs and wants more.

To do this, she’s decided the first step must be dramatic weight loss. Her preferred means to this end is lap band surgery.

She’s never said anything about it to me, but she’s wondered to my husband if I’ve dismissed her as a friend for her decision. Because I’ve treated her children for their illnesses in the past, and I’ve even treated her for particular emergencies, she had a fear that I might not be so accepting of her decision, that I’d be angry about the choice she made and probably stop talking to her all together.

I’d never have done that, but I’ve thought about the surgery, and my conclusion is: it’s the surgical imposition of anorexia nervosa, pure and simple. And insane. That being said, as an option for weight loss, it’s no less crazy than any other “diet” out there. And that includes Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Dr. Oz’s low fat “heart health” plan or anything else that’s packaged for consumption by Oprah or Nestle or any company selling weight loss products with names that begin with “Doctor”. I’m going to throw in all the other “health-store” products for weight loss too: the PGXs, the Herbalife-style soy protein shake regimes, the “Herb” based drug diets, the prescription drugs to help with weight loss, the “Slim Shot” pre-meal faux foods that make you feel full so you can starve more easily. They all accomplish the same thing, and they are all equally unhealthy. So why hate on the surgery alone?

the lap band apparatus

They all work the same way, and they all create the same temporary results. They all change the body permanently in terms of metabolism, and one would have to work exceedingly hard to continue the same amount of ongoing starvation in order to keep the weight off for good, which is what they all promise they’ll do but never actually deliver. When these methods stop being effective (and they always do), and when the body’s own need for real nutrients begins to take over, then other steps will have to be taken to sustain that weight loss.

Most people who can afford it go on prescription stimulants: daily or weekly “B12 shots” (that are not really B12) to keep the metabolism moving at a close to normal rate. Some try to accomplish this with excessive exercise, several hours a day spent training or working out or running. It can be done with some success for the very few, and there are all kinds of options people try, including medications and special long term liquid diets. If you want some ideas on how to accomplish the eternal slimness, any pro-anorexia site will fill you in. They’re basically do-it-yourself guides, equal to the medical manuals on how to keep the weight from coming back. Just type “pro anorexia” into Google if you need to know, and bingo, cornucopia.

I know why my friend has made this choice. Like all fat women (and men, it applies there too) who’ve experienced life in both body shapes, my friend is acutely aware of the way others perceive her now that she’s big. She’s whip smart and incredibly competent, and if you spend any time in her company you can tell she can handle anyone, she could manage anything. We laugh about it, but she can accomplish things I’ve never seen anyone do before, and she can do them easily–just for example, I’ll let you know that she directed subcontractors she hired to renovate an entire house in two weeks, within the budget she specified. They finished ahead of schedule, cleaned up after themselves, and they came in under budget; plus they did the work properly because she insisted it be perfect before she paid them. She got exactly what she demanded. That might sound like nothing to you, but my family’s business is construction and contracting: I’ve worked in it since I was fourteen, and though I’m out of it now it’s still a daily concern for the rest of my family, and I know what comes and goes in the business. I have never once seen anyone capable of accomplishing this until I saw Jen do it, and in the almost 50 years that my family’s business has been around, no one’s ever heard of it taking place either. If it happens at all, it’s exceedingly rare. But Jen knows what’s involved in each task, knows what good work looks like compared to poor work, and she knows how to persuade people to get the obstacles out of the way so they can get what they’re supposed to do done.

But it’s likely she won’t be hired in any interview, because many people have a firm belief now that “fat” equals “unhealthy”, “fat” equals “stupid”. There’s also the “fat” equals “déclassé” concept, which goes hand in hand with the belief that fatties are happy being lazy, they eat and watch TV all day. Interviewers really think a fat woman can’t represent their company in a good light (and she can’t, not when there’s so much prejudice out there). So they’ll be pleasant, and they might even love her as a candidate; but her odds of being chosen over anyone else who is not overweight are not good.

If she slims down quickly, she’ll be in a new job by September–and she’ll have her pick of offers, despite the fact that we’re in a recession. Unless you’ve experienced the way your brilliant attributes suddenly become surprising and visible only after you’ve slimmed down, you won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. But if you have, you know her pro-surgery decision wasn’t about “health” vs. “illness”, and you’d know the argument about weight loss and and health doesn’t hold water. Lap band surgery is frequently deadly, and like all diet plans and medical procedures (including pharmaceutical weight loss aid pills), death is always listed as a side effect. At the cost of at least sixteen thousand dollars in Canadian funds per procedure (it’s not often covered by OHIP), and at such a high risk for death and other illnesses that would follow any surgery and any starvation weight loss plan, you’d think the risks would dissuade anyone. But the risks just don’t, and the overweight people who opt to undergo these procedures in any form know all about them, yet they choose to submit anyway. Why?

Because the decision isn’t about health at all. In Jen’s case, it’s about being allowed the right to pursue her career goals without prejudice…and following that, the chance to have a life that’s free from that prejudice all together, even if it’s only for a little while.

The end justifies the (incredibly punishing) means.

And I totally get it.

There’s a chill in the air.

Summer hasn’t been summer this year (I always hold out hope that autumn will just be Indian summer and we’ll all be much better for it) but things are definitely ending and beginning again.

I closed up my practice at the end of July, organising the files and contacts and books I probably won’t look into again for a good long while. I haven’t been so committed to it in months, and this was something I felt keenly just after my mother died. My heart hasn’t been in the work of looking after patients I treat, trying to keep them committed to their own developments towards health. Closing things down, finally, felt good.

But there is this other problem of “what next?”

Part time work I’m doing in the wine industry really isn’t enough for me, and the vineyard I’m hoping to oversee in the future is still a pipe dream–when I need to learn more, I can always learn more about it, there’s no real need to do it today. For now, I’ve left one winery position because I’ve been invited into another–it seems more hopeful, and it promises to restore an element of lightheartedness to the work that’s disappeared. It’s a very different environment, but there are a lot of similarities and my own experience counts for a great deal.

I’m still playing with the science behind homeopathy, wondering why it is that so many other scientists in the world have been so highly influenced by Hahnemann, and making note that all of those scientists have met with resistance despite the solidity of their research and applications. Some of those scientists even denounce Hahnemann as a quack (Luca Turin, this pertains to you) but their own work basically extends from–and supports–his. I was hoping for an opportunity to do some of this research on my own, and write about it–or just have an opportunity to edit or write about or teach homeopathy instead of actually treating patients.

Well, the opportunity’s presented itself. Out of the blue, the other night, a colleague in Vancouver called to ask me to become part of the Journal published by the Canadian Society of Homeopaths–she’s asked me to be a peer in their review committee. When she found out I had a teaching degree she asked if I’d like to work on some of their education projects–doing the kind of education outreach within the community which would support homeopaths and their patients wherever they practice by creating links for information between labs, remedy retailers, patients and practitioners. This is desperately needed (it’s a major hurdle, practising with no support from those who serve your patients’ needs in terms of access to the medicines they need as they’ve been prescribed). Another project they’ve wanted to carry out happens to be one of my pet projects, too: teaching new grads how to set up and operate financially viable, successful practices which sustain them in terms of livelihood, and sustain the science by making it more visible to patients as viable health care. A lot of work to do! And finally, an opportunity to do it.

Now if there were only something I could find that would improve my income–a real, full grown adult’s kind of work, with real, full grown adult pay. I’m going to keep my eyes open for that, next.

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I know I should write about the wine industry here, and I know I have the one angle no one else seems to want to touch right now.

I know it will be controversial, too. And not very healthy for me. All good reasons to go ahead and write.

Yesterday I did a little search to see if there were any possibilites for
small business grants through government programs. There are, lots of them. For $500 I can find out all about them.

I want to sell the vineyard, lock up the practice, sell my shares in the family business, move to a place where I can walk everywhere I want to go, and find a new life doing something I never realized I would love.

I want to make friends with my father, who’s lonely, and frightened of losing his memory and his faculties, his eyesight and his driving license. He still hates me though, so it’s not possible.

My husband is a good man who needs someone more suitable, someone happy and secure. He needs a woman with a stable financial foundation and the ability to either look after every minute detail of his life herself or the ability to hire someone to do this for him.

We’re not the people we were when we met.

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January 2012
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Movies I’ve been thinking about lately

Polytechnic

My Life Without Me

No Country For Old Men (and the whole collection of Coen Brothers' films, as a result)

There Will Be Blood

Funny Face

Withnail and I

Mo' Better Blues

The Inside Man

Lives of Others

Music To dream by:

Nina Simone's anything;

Jeff Buckley's covers of anything by Nina Simone
(and also just about anything and everything he's done, especially "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" and "Everybody Here Wants You");

Good Old David Sylvian, who always fits

Books, Poems, Plays, Spoken Word

stacks and stacks of cookbooks

David Foster Wallace, on a lark

I always love reading Naomi Klein and Linda McQuaig
and Marilyn Waring and Hazel Henderson
(the women who should be running the world).
(Along with me, perhaps).

Who’s been to see me?

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