Juice-ly 27th - FLASHBACK: What A Waste, Parts I and II.

NOTE: These entries were originally posted on Facebook during November 2014, a month in which I embarked on my first super-extended juice. I began the month with some significant health problems and ended it some 40 pounds lighter! 

Since then, I have eaten a whole-food, plant-based diet and lost a total of 125 lbs. and counting. I hope you are able to benefit from my struggles. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment! 



Juicevember 19th (283.0 lbs.) – what a waste! (Part One)

Needed one of these, for sure.

I’ve talked about my doctor’s concern about my kidney function in this space before. I originally scheduled a nephrology appointment for the first week of December, but after my doctor called me this past Saturday morning I freaked out and got the appointment moved up to this morning. Missed class time for it and everything.

In case you’ve never seen a kidney specialist before, one of the things you have to do in advance of your appointment is save what can only be called an “extended sample.” Yep, a whole day of your own pee. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as awkward as I did carrying an increasingly filled quart container all over campus, in my backpack. I have no idea what people thought of me as I took said backpack with me to the bathroom, and it’s best not to think about such things.

Especially considering the results of my appointment. First off, there must be some sort of wall of silence between student health and nephrology, because while the people who saw me today were extraordinarily nice, they also had no idea who I was or why I was even there. I had to tell them about my elevated levels of creatinine and my entire medical history, like I hadn’t done that exact same thing a month before at student health. Kind of an annoyance, but the main issue came with the fact that halfway through my appointment, no one had asked me to and over the gallon jug of waste sloshing around as discreetly as possible – not in my backpack this time, but in a separate teacher-type bag.

In fact, the nurse seemed kinda surprised that I had it with me. “Oh, you’ve already started that?” were about the words she used, and through two different doctors, the lab, and the people waiting in the lobby, wondering why I had so many bags with me (“Is he homeless?”), that was the last time anyone seemed even remotely interested in that jug. I gave a completely fresh sample, which came back without any causes for alarm, so the doctor seemed just to throw up his hands and send me downstairs for bloodwork and a follow-up appointment. So – good news that the somewhat confused nephrology department could not find any cause for alarm with regards to my kidney function (pending the results of the blood test, of course).

But bad news that I had to figure out what I was going to do with a payload that at one time had some scientific value, but after the doctors released me just became weird to have. For some reason I thought it was a wise thing to discuss disposal options with the lab tech who took my blood, and she suggested that I take it home and dump it there. No way I was leaving that building with my own pee, not inside of me! I mean, what if I got pulled over and the cops searched my van and found THAT, right? I ended up ducking into a bathroom and getting rid of the evidence, so to speak.

“I know I came here for a reason,” I told the tech. “I’m just trying to figure out what it is.” I’m sure she was quite relieved to have me out of her chair, but then – so was I.




Juicevember 19th – What a Waste, Part II. 

"Rusty" sounded just like this guy.

It didn’t take very long for me to reflect and figure out just why I had to come so far out of my way this morning. A couple of reasons came immediately to mind: one, I finally watched them take my blood, and it wasn’t quite as faint-inducing as it had been previously. Two, because I heard yet another success story from a character in the waiting room. This guy had a voice that seemed to me to be a cross between Larry the Cable Guy and Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Sling Blade. I didn’t catch his name at the end of our conversation, but he looked like his name was Rusty, or…something rhyming with Rusty. (No, really – that’s all I can think of.) Every time someone got called to the back, Rusty would shout, “ANOTHER VICTIM!” as if it would get funnier every time he said it (believe me, it didn’t).

Anyway, I never, never talk to anyone in waiting rooms, but Rusty said something to me first. He asked me if my Ventolin rescue inhaler actually worked. I said yes, it does, and he asked me how long I smoked. I told him I had it because I had asthma as a kid, and he launched into his fascinating story of having been addicted to smoking for some thirty-five years (35!). He had used inhalers but none of them worked well for him (wonder why?).

I asked him what made him quit, and his wife (who was sitting next to him the whole time, punctuating his sentences like Ed McMahon did to Johnny Carson) quickly said, “When he woke up at night and couldn’t breathe.” Soon after that, he quit and has been free of cigarettes for the past 15 years or so. How in the world did he go cold turkey, when so many people try to do it and fail miserably? Rusty then told me that you just have to want to quit in order to quit for good. He substituted those small, possibly toxic cinnamon candies known as Atomic Fireballs for Marlboro Reds for a few days, and just like that was cured. “After that, it’s just habit,” he shrugged. When I asked him if he ever had the urge to go back to smoking, he said, “Sometimes when I’m driving down the road, I reach in my shirt pocket like this [and he reached into his shirt pocket, like he only owned shirts with front pockets or something], but nothing is there.” Well, what about social situations when you used to smoke? “Naw, I just don’t go out to the bars anymore. I hate the smell of smoke now.”

Of course, my interview with Rusty got me thinking about the nature of my addiction. How true it is, that lasting victory over addiction doesn’t happen until your behavior matches up with your belief. I know that years from now, long after I’ve locked this thing away for good, that desire to eat a whole pizza, or to drive through at the golden arches, will well up inside of me, and I will reach in my shirt pocket to try to satisfy that hunger. Will I have made the proper provisions so that nothing will be there? Will I still be vigilant enough to practice the kind of discipline over those base urges that I have exercised, with the constant help of the Holy Spirit, over these past two-plus weeks? Or will I fall and wallow in my misery for a month or two? The only thing I can control is my next decision. How freeing is that to know?

Looks like my apparently fruitless visit to the nephrology department was not as much of a waste as I thought it was. Praise God for “chance” encounters like the one I had with my friend “Rusty” and his wife (whose name is probably Janeane, or something along those lines).