Anorexia loves Cancer

There is a whole lot of frustration in being told you’re dying of cancer yet still being randomly bombarded by that pesky old Eating Disorder – I mean intellectually, what the hell does it matter if we eat cake? We’ll be dead soon anyway! Yet to that the eating disorder reminds you that at the very least you’ve got to die skinny.

So part of the pre-colonoscopy routine involved only eating from a very specific food list for a few days prior, and that list includes things we don’t eat, plus we didn’t have an opportunity to go grocery shopping to prepare so we essentially only ate a few slices of white bread over a three day period (and honestly didn’t try as hard as we could of) to find suitable foods.

On the freezing Saturday afternoon I was feeling fine and drove to pick up Miss 11 from a sleepover about an hour away from home. As I was chatting with the kids parents in the nice warm house I had a massive hot flush (thanks, surgical menopause) & suddenly felt the room spinning.

Thinking I just needed to cool down I said a quick thank-you-bye and hauled ass outside into the unseasonably ice wind where I staggered towards the car, periphery darkening, ears ringing and promptly and inelegantly face planted into the front lawn.

I came to a few seconds later still unable to see and crawled my way to the car, it was so close yet so far… I think my daughter opened the door? No idea but next thing I know I’m in the seat leaning on the wheel trying to work out how the heck I’m going to be able to drive and there’s a knock on my window.

I guess Miss 11’s friends parents had witnessed this feeble attempt to enter the vehicle and had run down to stop the madness in case I actually tried to drive anywhere. Thankfully they were super kind as their daughter had quickly filled them in on the fact I had Cancer so they didn’t just assume I was on crack.

After being given an icy pole to try and bring my probably low blood sugar up and about half an hour of lying down I eventually came good and insisted that I was fine to drive home, I figured out that wasn’t quite accurate about 10km later when I realised I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had ended up heading down a looong mountain toward the coast rather than inland toward home.

The dizziness started coming back and with cliffs on one side and steep rocky slopes on the other turning around was impossible and I was desperately looking for somewhere safe to pull over while Miss 11 called hubby just in time to tell him he’s need to pick us up before the steep mountain made the phone service cut out.

The world was getting narrower again each second until I suddenly realised there was a police car behind us and got really excited and said to Miss 11 “thank goodness! maybe they can help us / call an ambulance” so I put my hazard lights on, slowed dramatically, wound the window down and waved wildly at them to pull over while I pulled off to the side.

Much to my dismay the cop on the passenger side was staring out his window at me like I had two heads but they just kept driving past. Miss 11 was saying “They’ll be back? Right?? They’ll come back!?” but alas, they did not. Hubby said later if I wanted them to stop I should have flipped them off instead.

We sat at the side of the road staring at the tree canopy above as night slowly fell , still hoping those cops might come back up for some reason. I was getting dizzier and apparently slurring my words, poor Miss 11 even tried climbing up the steep mountainside a bit but couldn’t get a signal.

About 2hrs later hubby arrived with our neighbour, our neighbour drove my car with Miss 11 home and hubby loaded me into his ute. I had a mild headache but the light sensitivity was getting really bad and apparently I was slurring pretty bad and generally talking like a drunk person though I have almost zero recollection of that.

Hubby ended up calling an ambulance because even though I could smile and lift my arms up he didn’t like my sober drunk-talk and wanted to rule out a stroke. The ambos were lovely, well they sounded lovely – the light was burning a hole into my head so I couldn’t actually look at them, I think I was probably just pleased that they called me Kate and not my birth name!

After making sure I wasn’t stroking out, checking vitals and so forth (which were absolutely fine) it was concluded that I may have been having one of those weird migraines where the headache isn’t as bad as the other symptoms again (it has happened before) or “she might be overwhelmed from all that’s been happening” (aka “she seems medically stable but has a history of mental illness so it’s probably that”) so they let me go home to sleep and true to form we woke up the next day we woke up fine and dandy.

So Miss 11 had a bit of a scare but we had a good talk and she’s seems fine now and I’m just a tad dizzy still so not allowed to drive until after all the food restriction related procedures are done.

I also know I need to actually make an honest effort to eat more nutrient dense things when I can, but it’s getting harder, the triggers are more impactful and I loathe the illogical nature of mental illness and it’s lack of magically disappearing when you need it to. Sigh…

Kate