It was a beautiful, warm day in March 2003, the birds were singing, the snow was melting, and I was incredibly, incredibly ticked off at my dad.
The reason for the argument has long been lost in the mists of time, but I'll always remember what I did next. I was so angry that I stormed out of the house (on a day I had class!), marched down the driveway (on a day I had class!), and proceeded to take a walk to cool off (on a day I had class!). Since I was just that upset, I didn't regain a semblance of happiness until I had walked for a long time. Four hours and fourteen miles, in fact. And I totally ditched class.
Back at home that night, angrily performing madd Zerg rushes in Starcraft, I reflected on my choices for the day. I didn't regret storming off and taking a (long) walk, even though I had counted fourteen, yes, fourteen unfortunate very dead and very squashed former squirrels along all those rural roads, but I was feeling very guilty about having missed class. What if I missed some crucial information? What if the TA had finally explained our most recent really vague assignment? Yikes. Seriously, yikes.
The snarls of the Swarm interrupted my crisis of consciousness.
We require more Overlords!
Yeah yeah, OK, fine, I grumbled to myself, clicking furiously. Here are your Overlords. But screw you for interrupting my thought process. Look, I'm going to save now and exit the game! Ha, how does that make you feel now?
Finally free from my obligations as the leader of the Swarm, I got on to the class website and typed out a desperate email.
Hi, everyone. I was not in class today and was wondering what I missed. Did anyone take any notes they could send my way? Thanks in advance. Grace.
I sent the email. Then I decided I had punished the Swarm long enough, and fired up Starcraft once again.
An hour later, I checked for a response. Well, that was quick. I had received an email already.
Sure, I type up my notes from every class. This is what I have. Enjoy! Dan Huang.
Being a supernerd, I could smell another supernerd from a mile away. Dude, he typed up his notes. Which meant he actually took notes. And nobody in the class brought a laptop, so he must have retyped his notes after class. Wow. Even I wasn't that bad.
Now I was curious. Who was this guy? Why hadn't I previously detected his presence in the classroom?
Well, begin the sleuthing process!
I thought back to the most recent class. Huang was an Asian name, I knew that. I remembered that there were three Asians in the class.
Well, one wore a frat shirt with random Greek letters emblazoned on the front every session. Nope, couldn't be him.
Another one of the Asian kids was incredibly hot. Yeah, that was definitely not the mysterious Huang.
That left but one Asian. That would be the fat guy who wore the fisherman's hat and T-shirts in terrifying neon colors to class. Yes, it had to be him. That was Dan Huang. No self-respecting normal person would ever walk around with corny math puns on his clothing.
Really, I thought. I must study this Dan Huang in greater detail next Monday.
So the days went by, all five of them. Monday dawned, and destiny would soon make an appearance right before my (rather confused) eyes.
I got to class early that day. I wasn't really that into the class, and I wasn't really that into stealing furtive glances at the other supernerd in the room (really, I swear!), but I was the commuter who hitched a ride with her employee father every day to school, and frankly, I had nothing else to do at 11:45 on a Monday morning. I'd usually get a seat about ten minutes before anyone else showed up and read the textbook to get anything I had previously missed.
But was I really alone in the room?
A fuzzy memory from the dark recesses of my cranium pushed forward into my thoughts. I started.
Oh no! For six weeks I'd been sitting there in the classroom, reading about the role of women in the French revolution with my mouth hanging open and catching flies, and there was somebody else in the room!
And if it wasn't that Dan Huang, I remembered. I was just so into feminist symbolism that I had just failed to notice the other supernerd in the room who apparently also came to class early every week.
Well, I decided, today I would only pretend to read my historical documents. But I would really be watching what a Huang did in the wild.
On cue, my possible nerdy soulmate lumbered into the classroom.
In this sense, lumbered does not perform a purely descriptive, verbtastic role in my kinda-grammatically-correct sentence. He actually did lumber. First of all, there was a lot of supernerd chunkiness clinging to one particular supernerd. Also, when he walked, his head kind of tipped to one side, and he hung his backpack on the same side, so he looked like he was just falling over on the one side all the time.
So lumber he did. He lumbered into the classroom, through the classroom, and out of the classroom door on the other side of the room.
Hmmmm. Was he coming in or not?
I guess he was.
Having left the classroom only moments before, Dan lumbered in once again through the opposite door. He lumbered through the classroom and lumbered out the other door.
Ummm. This was weird.
Soon enough, the lumbering cycle began again. He lumbered in. He lumbered through. He lumbered out. Wash and repeat.
But right in the middle of the sixth lumbering cycle, just when I was considering lumbering out myself towards a safe place until class began, he stopped. I glanced up, but I also moved my book up too, so it would look like I wasn't actually looking, because I was smart like that. But now I couldn't see because the book was blocking my view. Crap.
He spoke.
"Hi."
I spoke.
"Hi."
He lumbered about two feet towards the door. Was the cycle beginning again? Nope. Again, he stopped.
"I think I might have sent my class notes to you last week."
"Oh, was that you?" I lied, shamelessly. "I was wondering who that was."
"Did they help?"
"Yes, they did, thanks. They actually really helped me understand the rationale for the Revolution, actually." Crud, I actually said actually twice. Dang, I just thought actually twice. OK, Grace, focus.
"Well," he responded, "I'm glad they helped."
"They did, thanks." Man, was I awkward.
He lumbered three feet in the other direction. So he had a net lumbering quotient of negative one.
"And your name was Grace, right?"
"Yeah. You're Dan, right?"
"Yeah."
Awkward silence.
More awkward silence.
But then, Hott Asian was there to save the day. He sauntered in with a pencil (but no notebook?), sat down on the far side of the room, stared into space, and proceeded to ignore the growing awkwardness. It was a lot easier to be less awkward if somebody else was also being less awkward.
Dan lumbered forward, towards the seat in front of mine.
"I think I'm going to sit here today. I can see the professor better from over here."
"Yeah," I awkwardized, "It really is a good view. You can hear the professor pretty well too."
"Really? Good."
"Glad you think that."
"And also," he said, "Maybe we can share notes. I'll bet your notes are pretty good."
I blushed. He thought my notes were probably pretty good!
"Well, I know your notes are pretty good!"
He smiled. Despite his girth and his Top Ten Reasons To Be A Statistics Major neon green shirt, he had the nicest smile I had ever seen.
I smiled back.
We sat next to each other during class.
And then the next.
And then the next.
And then the rest of the semester.
And then the exam.
And then we emailed each other over the summer.
And then we ate lunch together on the first day back.
And then we sat next to each other in another class we were taking together.
And then he decided to be creepy and wait for me after another class that I took.
And then I decided to be creepy and totally stalk him in the library.
But that's a story for another time.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Monday, October 14, 2013
Confessions of Social Confusion, Part Two of an Excessively Long Expose
Labels:
curse of nerd
0
comments
Last December, when I was still working at the preschool, a bunch of the staff were sitting around the lunch table swapping stories about kids with Aspergers.
"Well," said the occupational therapist, "I'll never forget this one kid. He was maybe six, seven years old and just loved geography. And you know what? When I had him, he could name every single state and capital, and he was only in first grade!"
As if it had been planned beforehand, a thundering chorus of surprise rose from the rest of the table.
"Wow! That's amazing!"
I elected to totally shut up. In fact, I turned bright red and tried to crawl under the table, but then I remembered that this was a preschool and I probably couldn't fit my entire girth under the table, so I just stayed where I was.
I knew all the states and capitals when I was six or seven. Also, I knew a good number of the world countries and their capitals, too. I also used to critique maps. Why the heck would you still have Sri Lanka listed on the globe as Ceylon when it was the 1990s? It was almost as bad as listing Taiwan as Formosa. Also, Rhodesia was a British colony, so they could stop calling Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Also, Yugoslavia was now obsolete.
"Well, I had one kid who was such a picky eater that she would only eat cilantro," chimed in the speech therapist. "They actually had to put the poor girl on a feeding tube."
Okay, at least I wasn't that bad.
Part Two of the Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger's Disorder dictates that the budding social recluse demonstrate restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities. And this is where my self-identity as a questioning neurotypical individual starts to fall apart. Let's take a look.
1. Encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus.
Eh heh heh heh heh. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.
OK, I am probably the queen of weird, weird interests. Like, pretty out there. Thankfully, my interests are all pretty nerd-oriented, so I can at least tell myself that maybe I was just born to do lab work on mice genetics or something. Yeah, something like that.
Unlike many other children, I never wanted to be a princess, astronaut, firefighter, singer, celebrity, cook, or other stereotypical careerist. No, I wanted to work at the post office. And you know why I wanted to work at the post office? Because at the post office, they had zip codes. And I could look at zip codes from all over the United States all. day. long!
I also liked area codes. In fact, I collected telephone books when I was a teenager. Not for any reason other than... well, there were lots of area codes. If you gave me a random local phone number, I could tell you where that number was located. 252 was Easton. 867 was Bethlehem. 588 was up in the Bangor area. Yeah, I was awesome like that.
I was into yearbooks, too. I liked yearbooks because they had names. Wow, there were so many kids with the last name of Rodriguez in this school! Who the heck names their kid Jhon, and what kind of severe mental illness did they have? Why did nobody ever have the fairly common Scandinavian affix of dottir?
And now that I have access to a ridiculous number of library research databases, my interests have only gotten weirder.
I like reading about the history of fruit. Bananas were known as Green Gold back in the early 20th century because they were just that profitable. Fruit companies literally built the infrastructure to bring several Latin American nations into comparative modernity. The banana that you eat today is quickly succumbing to a molding fruit disease. Research scientists are currently racing to develop a new banana that is mold-resistant.
I like perusing the zoning laws of area localities. Why did all of those acres of farmland you saw yesterday hold the Rolling Hills Development of today? Because the farmland is in a Rural Zone, which means that developers try to preserve as much green space as possible. Houses must be built on very large plots of land to meet the green space requirement. If you're looking for a larger home, or if you're looking to avoid city living, you're going to need lots of green space. Right in the middle of the former cornfield.
I like food marketing. I am slightly obsessed with Chobani. Not because I necessarily like to eat Chobani, but I'm fascinated by the growth of Greek yogurt in the past ten years. It's pretty rare that you have an innovation in, well, yogurt, but Chobani started it and now you can get Greek yogurt anything. I also subscribe to (free) food trade magazines. My favorite is Dairy Foods (shocker!) followed by Food Management, which is the periodical of choice for those who serve food in institutional settings like hospitals, schools, and... Google's main campus.
So you tell me: Are my eccentric interests abnormal enough to make me ever so slightly autistic? Or are they just abnormal enough to make me supersupernerd?
2. Apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals.
I am happy to report that, besides demonstrating symptoms of severe control-freak and rampant perfectionism, all my routines are very functional. They're pretty rigid, but definitely functional.
3. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g. hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements).
I chalk up my swaying while standing in church or waiting in line as just ADD fidgetiness. And I twirl my fingers through my hair. Small potatoes. However, there's just one more thing.
When I was in preschool, I used to "dance" to music by spinning around in circles. I have a distinct memory of me spinning around in our breezeway and holding up four fingers to signify my age at the time. I think that's pretty common behavior for a little kid. With me, though, I never really got over it. I have done a lot, a lot of spinning around in circles in my life. I won't go into the details because then I might really just die of embarrassment. But truly, it was excessive.
But was I ADD-bored or... Aspergers?
4. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects.
Well, I've always loved only a particular few bars of a song. I remember listening to some Backstreet Boys song for 45 minutes and never got past the first thirty seconds because I kept rewinding and rewinding and rewinding. To this day, I listen to songs on repeat in the car... like two hours straight of U Want Me 2 on a loop.
I think, though, that it ends there.
And the eternal question remains: Am I just weird or am I actually neurologically different? I sorta kinda meet criteria, and I sorta kinda don't. I mean, when it comes down to it, I don't really need to stick myself in a box. I'm just Grace. But I'm very curious, and I probably always will be.
But at least one thing's clear.
God help the progeny of Grace and Dan, for they shall be genetically cursed on both sides of the equation. I, personally, am praying for the emergence of recessive genes.
"Well," said the occupational therapist, "I'll never forget this one kid. He was maybe six, seven years old and just loved geography. And you know what? When I had him, he could name every single state and capital, and he was only in first grade!"
As if it had been planned beforehand, a thundering chorus of surprise rose from the rest of the table.
"Wow! That's amazing!"
I elected to totally shut up. In fact, I turned bright red and tried to crawl under the table, but then I remembered that this was a preschool and I probably couldn't fit my entire girth under the table, so I just stayed where I was.
I knew all the states and capitals when I was six or seven. Also, I knew a good number of the world countries and their capitals, too. I also used to critique maps. Why the heck would you still have Sri Lanka listed on the globe as Ceylon when it was the 1990s? It was almost as bad as listing Taiwan as Formosa. Also, Rhodesia was a British colony, so they could stop calling Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Also, Yugoslavia was now obsolete.
"Well, I had one kid who was such a picky eater that she would only eat cilantro," chimed in the speech therapist. "They actually had to put the poor girl on a feeding tube."
Okay, at least I wasn't that bad.
Part Two of the Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger's Disorder dictates that the budding social recluse demonstrate restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities. And this is where my self-identity as a questioning neurotypical individual starts to fall apart. Let's take a look.
1. Encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus.
Eh heh heh heh heh. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.
OK, I am probably the queen of weird, weird interests. Like, pretty out there. Thankfully, my interests are all pretty nerd-oriented, so I can at least tell myself that maybe I was just born to do lab work on mice genetics or something. Yeah, something like that.
Unlike many other children, I never wanted to be a princess, astronaut, firefighter, singer, celebrity, cook, or other stereotypical careerist. No, I wanted to work at the post office. And you know why I wanted to work at the post office? Because at the post office, they had zip codes. And I could look at zip codes from all over the United States all. day. long!
I also liked area codes. In fact, I collected telephone books when I was a teenager. Not for any reason other than... well, there were lots of area codes. If you gave me a random local phone number, I could tell you where that number was located. 252 was Easton. 867 was Bethlehem. 588 was up in the Bangor area. Yeah, I was awesome like that.
I was into yearbooks, too. I liked yearbooks because they had names. Wow, there were so many kids with the last name of Rodriguez in this school! Who the heck names their kid Jhon, and what kind of severe mental illness did they have? Why did nobody ever have the fairly common Scandinavian affix of dottir?
And now that I have access to a ridiculous number of library research databases, my interests have only gotten weirder.
I like reading about the history of fruit. Bananas were known as Green Gold back in the early 20th century because they were just that profitable. Fruit companies literally built the infrastructure to bring several Latin American nations into comparative modernity. The banana that you eat today is quickly succumbing to a molding fruit disease. Research scientists are currently racing to develop a new banana that is mold-resistant.
I like perusing the zoning laws of area localities. Why did all of those acres of farmland you saw yesterday hold the Rolling Hills Development of today? Because the farmland is in a Rural Zone, which means that developers try to preserve as much green space as possible. Houses must be built on very large plots of land to meet the green space requirement. If you're looking for a larger home, or if you're looking to avoid city living, you're going to need lots of green space. Right in the middle of the former cornfield.
I like food marketing. I am slightly obsessed with Chobani. Not because I necessarily like to eat Chobani, but I'm fascinated by the growth of Greek yogurt in the past ten years. It's pretty rare that you have an innovation in, well, yogurt, but Chobani started it and now you can get Greek yogurt anything. I also subscribe to (free) food trade magazines. My favorite is Dairy Foods (shocker!) followed by Food Management, which is the periodical of choice for those who serve food in institutional settings like hospitals, schools, and... Google's main campus.
So you tell me: Are my eccentric interests abnormal enough to make me ever so slightly autistic? Or are they just abnormal enough to make me supersupernerd?
2. Apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals.
I am happy to report that, besides demonstrating symptoms of severe control-freak and rampant perfectionism, all my routines are very functional. They're pretty rigid, but definitely functional.
3. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g. hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements).
I chalk up my swaying while standing in church or waiting in line as just ADD fidgetiness. And I twirl my fingers through my hair. Small potatoes. However, there's just one more thing.
When I was in preschool, I used to "dance" to music by spinning around in circles. I have a distinct memory of me spinning around in our breezeway and holding up four fingers to signify my age at the time. I think that's pretty common behavior for a little kid. With me, though, I never really got over it. I have done a lot, a lot of spinning around in circles in my life. I won't go into the details because then I might really just die of embarrassment. But truly, it was excessive.
But was I ADD-bored or... Aspergers?
4. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects.
Well, I've always loved only a particular few bars of a song. I remember listening to some Backstreet Boys song for 45 minutes and never got past the first thirty seconds because I kept rewinding and rewinding and rewinding. To this day, I listen to songs on repeat in the car... like two hours straight of U Want Me 2 on a loop.
I think, though, that it ends there.
And the eternal question remains: Am I just weird or am I actually neurologically different? I sorta kinda meet criteria, and I sorta kinda don't. I mean, when it comes down to it, I don't really need to stick myself in a box. I'm just Grace. But I'm very curious, and I probably always will be.
But at least one thing's clear.
God help the progeny of Grace and Dan, for they shall be genetically cursed on both sides of the equation. I, personally, am praying for the emergence of recessive genes.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
I'm Not Actually Fat, I Swear!
Labels:
detention,
life
0
comments
I've almost always been small and compact. Small because I'm five feet tall and am scaled even smaller than petite (I fit better into child-sized clothing than adult-sized clothing). Compact because I'm not actually thin, but I'm not really large, either. I'm more thick and built like my Italian peasant ancestors before me.
I once explained density to my young felons by displaying my compactness for all to see. They all thought density was the same thing as weight, which I knew was incorrect because I had finally grasped the concept of density the week before. This misconstruction of such an important scientific concept could not stand, but I could definitely stand.
I stood at the front of the class and called everyone's attention.
"Guys," I deadpanned as best I could, "I've got a question for you all. How much do you think I weigh?"
Shocked looks from everyone involved.
"No, really, what do you guys think?"
Someone raised a timid hand.
"Uh, sorry miss, I don't wanna be rude. I think you're about 115."
"Well," I shot back, "You're wrong."
"Oh."
"Anybody else?"
"Miss, you 120?" asked a particularly annoying kid, whom I had silently nicknamed Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious.
"Nope. Guess again."
And so they did, for the next three minutes. Then I pulled back the curtain of my self-revelation.
"You were all off by about twenty pounds."
Audible, possibly exaggerated, gasps filled the room.
"Anybody know why you all guessed on the low end?"
Silence.
"It's because I'm very dense. I'm short and small, but I have lots of muscle. I have more fat rolls than you thought I did because they're part of a smaller space than most people."
Heads nodded. They got it. Many relieved faces. Oh, so maybe not all females got incredibly annoyed if they asked you how much they weighed and you got it wrong.
"Miss," said Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious, all six feet standing up. "How dense do you think I am?"
"You," yelled the youth worker, "Are a heck of a lot denser than you think. Now sit down and do your work."
I cut off the discussion.
But all science lessons aside, I've been noticeably dumpy only once in my life. That was my senior year of college, when I lived off campus and discovered brownie mix. To my credit, I actually lost it all a year later, so maybe I'm not as lazy as people tell me I am.
Even though I'm not actually fat, and I don't look especially chunky, lots of people have actually thought that I was quite severely obese.
It started when I called up my doctor about five years ago or so and asked for an evaluation.
On the operating table (I'm not a fan of doctors), I voiced my breathing concerns to my all-business Ukrainian doctor. Most times when I tried to drop off to sleep, I said, I would stop breathing all of a sudden, and I would wake up. This would happen a few times a night, and I always got to bed late. Oh, and I was always really sleepy and ready to go to bed at any time, like at 8 AM.
My doctor referred me to a sleep specialist. This was terrifying. I scheduled an appointment, nearly dying in the attempt.
A few weeks later, I walked into the sleep specialist's office.
"Hi! How can I help you today?" My, what a bubbly secretary. She must just love torturing people.
"I'm here for an evaluation," I said. "Sleep study with the doctor at 7."
"You're here for an evaluation? Really?"
What was this?
"Uh, yes, I'm here for a sleep study."
"OK," bubbled the secretary. Why the surprised look? "Here's some paperwork you should fill out. Have a seat and we'll be with you shortly."
Hmmmm.
After an absolutely awful night hooked up with two dozen different cords on my head to some kind of weird machine, the sleep specialist broke the news. I had sleep apnea, a fairly common condition where some random muscles in the throat collapse during sleep, cutting off the air supply. Once there was no air coming in, the brain alerts the body that something is not right, effectively booting all the involved members out of a deep sleep into a partially awake sleep for air. On one hand, it's good that your brain is trying to save you from death every night. On the other hand, you're not really getting to sleep, like ever. I was told that I had fairly moderate sleep apnea and stopped breathing approximately twelve times per hour.
Well, that explained why I would close my eyes when driving down long, straight stretched of a deserted road in an attempt to get some sleep.
The cure for sleep apnea, said the doctor, was to use a machine called a CPAP (or a BiPAP in my particularly sensitive case) while sleeping. This machine pumps air into your lungs as you sleep, basically giving you CPR whenever you have an apnea, and creating terrible air bubbles in your stomach every morning. Okay, they didn't actually tell me that last one, but it certainly happened to me until I got my air pressure settings all figured out.
Lacking the proper insurance, I shelled out $1200 of my own money to buy a complete BiPAP rig. It took me a horrible eight months to be able to sleep through the night hooked up to a machine, but it was also one of the best decisions I had ever made. It did wonders for my general health and well-being.
But then, everybody started thinking I was really fat.
It started when I bought my equipment from a place online. I had to read a disclosure agreement first.
Sleep apnea is a common condition that effects many individuals of all ages. There are two basic treatments for sleep apnea. Your doctor may prescribe a CPAP or a BiPAP machine. Many patients have also had success minimizing and curing sleep apnea by losing excessive body weight. Talk with your doctor about weight management as a possible treatment option for sleep apnea.
But I wasn't fat!
Then I joined a sleep apnea online forum for general BiPAP help, because the thing was a real pain to manipulate (and I had to do it all by my lonesome, since my insurance didn't cover it). All the users assumed that I was fat. Many assumed that I was also male and 50+. After a while, I got so sick of the obesity assumptions that I created a custom signature promising my fellow posters that I was not fat. Really.
I am a female in my twenties. Five feet tall and 123 pounds. That is a healthy weight. I have had undiagnosed sleep apnea since I was in high school.
No, seriously, I'm not fat. Really.
I had to fill out that stupid medical history form every time I went to a new doctor or specialist. Everybody lifted their eyebrows in shock.
"Wow, that's very unusual! You seem to be at a normal weight."
I am not fat. I swear.
My sister had trouble sleeping, so she went for a sleep study, just like me. She told the nurse she thought that she might have sleep apnea.
"Oh, I don't think so, honey," soothed the nurse.
"Well, my sister has sleep apnea."
"Yes, dear, but you're so thin!"
So even the actual sleep specialists thought I was, uh, special. And, you know, fat.
I. Am. Not. Fat.
But seriously, although I am not fat (really!), the typical sleep apnea patient really is fat. And male. And usually over the age of fifty.
Remember, apneas are caused by collapsing throat muscles. Most people have sleep apnea because they're so fat that the fat on their neck is pushing down on their throat, making the muscles collapse and inducing apneas.
But I'm not fat. Nor am I obese. Slightly overweight, you could even argue. But my neck is tiny.
The Grace Is Fat assumptions are probably going to happen throughout my life until I am miraculously cured of my sleep apnea. However, I did find out why I have sleep apnea even though I am an atypical apneatic.
I had minor surgery two years ago and had to be sedated at the hospital. The actual surgically-repaired area felt absolutely fine post-op, but my throat felt like it was bruised. The doctor called me a few days later to give me a heads-up. Apparently they had a dickens of a time intubating me during the procedure. I have, according to the doctor, a very, very narrow windpipe. And that was causing my sleep apnea.
So there you have it. I'm not fat, I'm not obese, I just sleep with a mask on my face that makes Darth Vader noises when Dan is trying to drift off.
I am compact, not fat. I am dense, not obese. And now, secure in my BMI, I'm going to chow down a very large piece of Dan's cilantro-cheese bread.
I once explained density to my young felons by displaying my compactness for all to see. They all thought density was the same thing as weight, which I knew was incorrect because I had finally grasped the concept of density the week before. This misconstruction of such an important scientific concept could not stand, but I could definitely stand.
I stood at the front of the class and called everyone's attention.
"Guys," I deadpanned as best I could, "I've got a question for you all. How much do you think I weigh?"
Shocked looks from everyone involved.
"No, really, what do you guys think?"
Someone raised a timid hand.
"Uh, sorry miss, I don't wanna be rude. I think you're about 115."
"Well," I shot back, "You're wrong."
"Oh."
"Anybody else?"
"Miss, you 120?" asked a particularly annoying kid, whom I had silently nicknamed Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious.
"Nope. Guess again."
And so they did, for the next three minutes. Then I pulled back the curtain of my self-revelation.
"You were all off by about twenty pounds."
Audible, possibly exaggerated, gasps filled the room.
"Anybody know why you all guessed on the low end?"
Silence.
"It's because I'm very dense. I'm short and small, but I have lots of muscle. I have more fat rolls than you thought I did because they're part of a smaller space than most people."
Heads nodded. They got it. Many relieved faces. Oh, so maybe not all females got incredibly annoyed if they asked you how much they weighed and you got it wrong.
"Miss," said Mr. Incredibly Self-Conscious, all six feet standing up. "How dense do you think I am?"
"You," yelled the youth worker, "Are a heck of a lot denser than you think. Now sit down and do your work."
I cut off the discussion.
But all science lessons aside, I've been noticeably dumpy only once in my life. That was my senior year of college, when I lived off campus and discovered brownie mix. To my credit, I actually lost it all a year later, so maybe I'm not as lazy as people tell me I am.
Even though I'm not actually fat, and I don't look especially chunky, lots of people have actually thought that I was quite severely obese.
It started when I called up my doctor about five years ago or so and asked for an evaluation.
On the operating table (I'm not a fan of doctors), I voiced my breathing concerns to my all-business Ukrainian doctor. Most times when I tried to drop off to sleep, I said, I would stop breathing all of a sudden, and I would wake up. This would happen a few times a night, and I always got to bed late. Oh, and I was always really sleepy and ready to go to bed at any time, like at 8 AM.
My doctor referred me to a sleep specialist. This was terrifying. I scheduled an appointment, nearly dying in the attempt.
A few weeks later, I walked into the sleep specialist's office.
"Hi! How can I help you today?" My, what a bubbly secretary. She must just love torturing people.
"I'm here for an evaluation," I said. "Sleep study with the doctor at 7."
"You're here for an evaluation? Really?"
What was this?
"Uh, yes, I'm here for a sleep study."
"OK," bubbled the secretary. Why the surprised look? "Here's some paperwork you should fill out. Have a seat and we'll be with you shortly."
Hmmmm.
After an absolutely awful night hooked up with two dozen different cords on my head to some kind of weird machine, the sleep specialist broke the news. I had sleep apnea, a fairly common condition where some random muscles in the throat collapse during sleep, cutting off the air supply. Once there was no air coming in, the brain alerts the body that something is not right, effectively booting all the involved members out of a deep sleep into a partially awake sleep for air. On one hand, it's good that your brain is trying to save you from death every night. On the other hand, you're not really getting to sleep, like ever. I was told that I had fairly moderate sleep apnea and stopped breathing approximately twelve times per hour.
Well, that explained why I would close my eyes when driving down long, straight stretched of a deserted road in an attempt to get some sleep.
The cure for sleep apnea, said the doctor, was to use a machine called a CPAP (or a BiPAP in my particularly sensitive case) while sleeping. This machine pumps air into your lungs as you sleep, basically giving you CPR whenever you have an apnea, and creating terrible air bubbles in your stomach every morning. Okay, they didn't actually tell me that last one, but it certainly happened to me until I got my air pressure settings all figured out.
Lacking the proper insurance, I shelled out $1200 of my own money to buy a complete BiPAP rig. It took me a horrible eight months to be able to sleep through the night hooked up to a machine, but it was also one of the best decisions I had ever made. It did wonders for my general health and well-being.
But then, everybody started thinking I was really fat.
It started when I bought my equipment from a place online. I had to read a disclosure agreement first.
Sleep apnea is a common condition that effects many individuals of all ages. There are two basic treatments for sleep apnea. Your doctor may prescribe a CPAP or a BiPAP machine. Many patients have also had success minimizing and curing sleep apnea by losing excessive body weight. Talk with your doctor about weight management as a possible treatment option for sleep apnea.
But I wasn't fat!
Then I joined a sleep apnea online forum for general BiPAP help, because the thing was a real pain to manipulate (and I had to do it all by my lonesome, since my insurance didn't cover it). All the users assumed that I was fat. Many assumed that I was also male and 50+. After a while, I got so sick of the obesity assumptions that I created a custom signature promising my fellow posters that I was not fat. Really.
I am a female in my twenties. Five feet tall and 123 pounds. That is a healthy weight. I have had undiagnosed sleep apnea since I was in high school.
No, seriously, I'm not fat. Really.
I had to fill out that stupid medical history form every time I went to a new doctor or specialist. Everybody lifted their eyebrows in shock.
"Wow, that's very unusual! You seem to be at a normal weight."
I am not fat. I swear.
My sister had trouble sleeping, so she went for a sleep study, just like me. She told the nurse she thought that she might have sleep apnea.
"Oh, I don't think so, honey," soothed the nurse.
"Well, my sister has sleep apnea."
"Yes, dear, but you're so thin!"
So even the actual sleep specialists thought I was, uh, special. And, you know, fat.
I. Am. Not. Fat.
But seriously, although I am not fat (really!), the typical sleep apnea patient really is fat. And male. And usually over the age of fifty.
Remember, apneas are caused by collapsing throat muscles. Most people have sleep apnea because they're so fat that the fat on their neck is pushing down on their throat, making the muscles collapse and inducing apneas.
But I'm not fat. Nor am I obese. Slightly overweight, you could even argue. But my neck is tiny.
The Grace Is Fat assumptions are probably going to happen throughout my life until I am miraculously cured of my sleep apnea. However, I did find out why I have sleep apnea even though I am an atypical apneatic.
I had minor surgery two years ago and had to be sedated at the hospital. The actual surgically-repaired area felt absolutely fine post-op, but my throat felt like it was bruised. The doctor called me a few days later to give me a heads-up. Apparently they had a dickens of a time intubating me during the procedure. I have, according to the doctor, a very, very narrow windpipe. And that was causing my sleep apnea.
So there you have it. I'm not fat, I'm not obese, I just sleep with a mask on my face that makes Darth Vader noises when Dan is trying to drift off.
I am compact, not fat. I am dense, not obese. And now, secure in my BMI, I'm going to chow down a very large piece of Dan's cilantro-cheese bread.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)