I attended my first Go Red For Women luncheon last year. I sat in front of my plate of rubber chicken, admiring Jean Enerson's shiny red silk suit and listened as woman after woman stood at the podium telling the story of how she nearly died from a heart attack or stroke. They were too busy to notice the symptoms, they were misdiagnosed or ignored by their doctors. I was startled by what I heard.
I started to think about my life; at that moment I was still carrying my baby/management /bad marriage weight, smoking a pack a day, eating whatever the fuck I wanted to and sitting on my ass. I was annoyed if I had to get up to look for the remote, or find my lighter, or get a toy that my son had tossed behind the couch. I was Fatassica. Me. Type A, freakscene ME. I WAS NOT ME.
I made no time for myself - my day consisted of getting me up and ready, getting my son up and ready, getting him to daycare, getting to work, stressing out over shit I had no control over, eating enough food to feed a small nation over the course of the day, smoking, drinking a couple of Frappucino's, leaving work, road raging to daycare, road raging home, cooking dinner, doing the dishes, bathing the son, playing with the son, putting the son to bed, staring at the idiot box and passing out. It was almost exactly the story I heard from a woman who had narrowly escaped death.
"I'm a fucking time bomb, " I thought to myself.
Shortly thereafter, I went in for a physical for the first time since I had my son and my fears were confirmed. Everything was bad - cholesterol was really bad. Scary bad. I was told to lose the weight and quit fucking SMOKING ALREADY by a doctor who I had been seeing my entire adult life. "What has made you gain all this weight?" he asked. "I had a kid!!!!" I replied, "I have to feed kids, therefore I MUST have burgers and fries and 4 cheese macaroni (regardless of the nasty reaction my body will have), no time to exercise, no way. And I'm old - I have no metabolism, I fucked it all up doing truck loads of coke!!! That scale is full of shit!!!! It's the middle of the day, I just had Baguette Box, and I have MY CLOTHES ON!!!!"
All my bullshit excuses were going to find my son without a mother long before he should be.
I got a gym membership and started working out instead of going to lunch with the goal of being able to start running again without seriously hurting myself. 8 months later I have a clean bill of health, a nice clear head that helped me to make and execute the hardest decision I have ever had to make, am 3 pounds away from the lie on my drivers license, and I'm running a half-marathon this Sunday. On Mother's Day.
When I attended this event again yesterday every story I heard brought tears to my eyes - but not terror to my heart as they had the year before. The number one killer of women is heart related illness ladies. NUMBER ONE. We take care of everyone else first and it kills us. Get your numbers checked and take care of you. read more