DIGEST

  

1.

 “What’s actually wrong with you?”

It takes time and a measure of courage for a person to ask this. How do I know?

If the conversation is in person, the pitch of the voice goes higher, and the volume lowers. I almost want to respond with, “Why are we whispering, Barbie?”

How rude that would be!

 

Most people ask because they genuinely care and want to know how they can help, even if it turns out that they can’t do anything at all.

Some people are just curious, and that’s okay too. We’re hardwired to want to know about each other.

A few mongers simply want to spread “the news” to any and everyone who will validate their craving for being labelled “the one who knows.” We all have that aunt/cousin/colleague.

Then there’s that one cousin of mine, bless her soul, who reminds me every time I fall sick that it’s because of the COVID vaccine. She’s relentless. She once said, and I kid you not, “Gugs, you’ve been fat your whole life. So why are you only getting sick with heart disease after getting the vaccine? It’s the vaccine that’s killing you. Your doctors are lying to you.”

While it cannot be denied that the COVID vaccine, as with other vaccines we’ve been using, has caused damage to some people’s health. I still think I’m better off having had it because my lung issues started before COVID19 came and changed the direction of the earth’s rotation.

Ladies and gents, my cousin is wrong. I have lung issues that affect my heart. But I just nod to console her anti-vax spirit, lest it haunts me at night. She's not in the medical field. I don't want to say what field she's in, as though one cannot be intelligent even if they didn't finish matric. I value her opinion on many things. Not this though. 

Being fat is an extreme sport. Well... not a sport, I wouldn’t be fat if it was. Correct? That’s how we’re seen. "She probably can't kick a ball to save her life." I can. 

Probably can't swim to save her life." I can. 

"She probably can't run." Ok, this one is true. I'd perish. 

                                                 

  Cousin is right. I've always been fat

 

 2.

Lung problems. That’s what's wrong with me. I have COPD, to be precise. That is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I have a fancy illness! In primary school, I used to envy the kids who would faint or come to school with burn wounds. I finally have a fancy illness. Yay to me. Where are my manifestations sisters and brothers. Do you believe now?! 

So here’s how it unfolded.

1981: I was born. Immediately have bronchitis. Nice!

1982: Tuberculosis. Splendid. 

Primary school: always coughing. We put this one out to the constant tear gas and gunfire. I grew up in Katlehong. That's for another day. 

FFWD>>

2006: I’m pregnant. I start snoring. This never goes away. Here starts the sleep apnea. But what did I know about that? Nothing. No one is walking around talking about sleep apnea in the mid-2000s.

I also started having hypertension (high blood pressure.) I put it down to pregnancy. After which I was too busy raising an infant who had the audacity to poop in the water I’d be bathing him in, and occasionally vomit the food I just gave him from my boobies – ungrateful! I love my baby. I’d kill for him, but sometimes I want to be the one executing that. Even now, 17 years later.

Every few years, I'd be prescribed a higher dose of BP meds. Same process everywhere I go: A doctor would take my BP reading, use a stethoscope on me, then sit down at the desk and tell me to lose weight. 

I'd try. I'd fail, time and again. I'd self-sabotage. I'd try again. 

It’s 2023 and I’m still trying. But this time, I have the help of a dietician and a holistic pulmonologist.

Going back to those early years, I also attributed hypertension to life’s stresses, I gave every excuse as to why my BP was constantly going up. The betrayal and subsequent divorce, temporary homelessness, and a traumatised child. So I essentially keep the hypertension as a pet, instead of actively finding other solutions.

2017: I started to develop coughing fits and choking at night. Do you think I went to the doctor for that? No ma’am, no sir. I knew what the problem was. I’m too fat. If I can just lose 10kg, I’ll breathe better.

Hear this, it’s not completely untrue that weight loss would improve my health in many ways. I’m not in denial of that at all. 

The lack of holistic checks from medical doctors that I have seen has had a direct impact on my lung health worsening unnecessarily. I'm not medically educated and I don't know where to start. Dr Google will tell me I have cancer of the stomach and have eight days to live.

In 2021, a cardiologist was furious at the “negligent treatment”, as he called it, that I’ve received from doctors. A day before my angiogram, he told me he would be ready to put in a stent if he found any fat clogging my arteries. He followed with, “I’m 99% sure I won’t need to use the stent.”

He had no use for the stent.

I'm genetically predisposed to storing midriff fat, as confirmed by Dr. Goldberg. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother all have the apron belly. When my grandmother was actively dying, she was skin and bones, except her belly. it was fat. Not loose skin, fat! I know because I held her in my arms a few days before she died. I stayed with her body as we awaited the coroner. 

 

2019: I had frequent run-ins with bronchitis. The night-time choking and coughing got progressively worse.

2020: I was diagnosed with asthma after a lung test in a contraption that gave me nightmares. It’s a glass chamber that you go into. Then you breathe into a pipe that’s connected to some machine that the clever people and Lung Corp created. I don’t know if Lung Corp exists, but I imagine that it’s filled with white-coated, spectacle-wearing people who walk around with old-timey X-ray films, talking about naming new infections.

Back to earth,  the pulmonologist who diagnosed me also suggested a sleep study. But it was in the thick of COVID, so some tests and treatments were considered unnecessary and hospitals were simply not allowed to perform them. Remember those days? Cancer patients were especially betrayed by that decision. I digress.

I couldn’t get a sleep study done.

  

3.

September 2021: I go to my cousin’s wedding in Springs. We party hard. There’s a video of me, circulating in the family to this day, where I’m dancing to Bopha, and it’s safe to say that if I were to be kidnapped and asked to dance as a ransom, it would be my last day of existence.

The next day, all the almost-40 cousins were sick. Me included. Except, I had swollen legs. We all put it to the Bopha saga. I needed to drive back to Randburg. I couldn’t. I placed my legs in cold water for an hour. No change. Someone rubbed me down with menthol balm. Nothing. Eventually, I drove home from Springs. It took me 1.5 hours, instead of the usual 45 minutes.

 

wedding vibes

When I arrived home, I immediately took diuretics (pills that help remove excess water from your body.) This helped a lot. The swelling started decreasing, while the bathroom trips were increasing.

Water retention is evil. You have to keep drinking water while camping next to the bathroom. You can’t not drink water, because you’ll be dehydrated. So, there’s excess water in your body, but you must drink more water and a water pill to expel the water. Ay ay ay!

I forgot to mention that at this point my chest was wheezing and a trip to the kitchen felt like a marathon. Thought I was tired from all that alcohol and Bopharing.  

The next day, my feet were still swollen so I emailed my current GP. She told me to come in immediately.

Okay, drama lady. I'll come in. 

  

4.

“Oh my goodness you’re big.”

“Thanks, doc. That’s new.” (turns out, it wasn't just my feet that were swollen. my whole body was inflamed.)

“Gugu, sit on the bed now!”

Haybo! No “Hello, how can I help you today, my dear patient?”

Dr. Rosch was visibly startled. She checked my oxygen levels and my BP. Now, unlike people who had contracted COVID by that time, I knew nothing of the oximeter or what those readings meant.

SpO2: 68

BP: 186/120

She hurried me out of her office to the nurse’s station. I knew the BP reading was bad, but the other reading made no sense to me. She went red on the face and encouraged me to pick a hospital close to my family. I giggled, as I do. She intensely told me that this was no joke and I may be having a pulmonary embolism. Again, I didn’t know what she was saying, but I was losing my smile at this point because she had never spoken to me with such urgency. 

I was promptly married to an oxygen tank. Seated at the first available station. No time to prepare an out-patient bed. Just, sit down. Put this mask on. Do not move.

After about 10 minutes, doc returned. I was moved to a more comfortable position where she started explaining the oximeter reading. By this time she had called a physician who she trusts and I no longer had the luxury to choose a hospital – my choice would have been Sunward Park – I was going to the nearest one. Olivedale. Thus, Olives and Needles was born. 

Knowing how stubborn I am, she took my car keys temporarily.

An ambulance was on the way to pick me up from the Medicross clinic. I can't make this stuff up. 

Sometimes I think I was born to entertain others even if I don't intend to. 

 

 

 

To be continued.

In the next installment...

YIKES!