A Story of Recovery:

Stage IV Recovery

Most of my life has been extraordinary. I have had two long-term careers I loved: social work and teaching. I grew up with an amazingly talented, attractive, and accomplished extended family in beautiful homes. There was a lot of love, but also depression and alcoholism. I clearly remember my father’s beautiful artistic sister dying when I was five.  I didn’t know at the time what suicide meant. Later, I found out it was also the cause of death of my grandfather’s sister.

I overate sweets from the time I can remember, but was so active I was only a few pounds overweight as a child. In my 20s I maintained a normal weight. I had found out that if I drank the foamy kind of alcoholic drink, it took my appetite away. I realize now that I was technically anorexic, as I frequently didn’t eat anything for days, but the caloric value of several drinks a day added up. After traumatic times in my teens and early 20s, involving serious legal troubles, suicide attempts, multiple addictions and hurtful behaviors to myself and others, I took a two-weekend transformational course when I was 28.  It saved my life and turned it around.

Since then I have participated in many terrific programs, including AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), had a fabulous career, and great relationships. But nothing I did would stop my overeating and dependence on flour and sugar products. I tried literally every single weight loss program I could find over the years, and some of them multiple times.  I met my husband and moved to another state at the age of 53 and proceeded to put on almost 50 pounds in one year, bringing me to 236. Thinking I had a virulent form of flu that wouldn’t let go, my husband took me to the ER late one night. I was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stage IV. That night in the ER, when we were told, I looked at my husband and said, “I’ve done this to myself.” I instinctively knew the minute I was told, that stuffing my body with sweets for 50+ years had caused it, or at least given it the environment in which to flourish. Skeptics may prefer to say only that my diet had certainly contributed to it, but much modern cancer research now confirms that my moment of insight had validity. I had been forced to retire from the career I absolutely loved a few months earlier, due to terrible fatigue; I just couldn’t do the job anymore, and I was very, very sick.

While receiving chemotherapy I ate lightly, following a plant-based diet designed for fighting cancer. It was actually quite similar to what we eat in FA, with only a few foods with flour and sugar. I lost a great deal of weight, and when the chemo treatments were done the doctors ecstatically declared my cancer in remission. The cravings for flour and sugar came roaring back immediately. I hadn’t realized how much the nausea and other side effects from the chemo treatments had been stifling the cravings.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the weight came piling back on. I knew it would be very unlikely that I would stay in remission, such a hard-earned miracle, while feeling I had to drive to a fast-food place for the first binge of the day by 10 am, no matter how I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. By now I had read several books and studies saying how cancer cells “love” sugar. I found myself at my top weight of 244, was tired all the time, and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I had a wonderful husband, beautiful home, amazing horses, (that I was too heavy to ride) and retirement stretched out before me without hope of being able to do any of the things I wanted to do. Day after day, I went to get my fix of flour and sugar and came home to finish whatever I hadn’t eaten on the way home. Later I’d do it again, and sometimes again. I knew I could not ignore the call of the unfinished food if it was in the house and had always had the strangest belief that, if I didn’t have extra of my favorite sweets at home, I’d somehow magically stop overeating the next day, despite all evidence to the contrary.

I came into FA only weeks after the diabetes diagnosis. I have lost almost 100 pounds. I literally cannot describe how good I feel from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, full of gratitude. I have more energy than I did in my 20s. Not only can I ride our horses again, I can mount from the ground, something I have not been able to do since I was 17!  My husband and I are hard at work on some of our dreams and we are involved in community activities that are important to us. I follow a food plan that I have worked out with my doctor and my sponsor.

So after suffering grief and depression over the loss of a beloved career, as well as a close call with death in the beginning of my retirement, the promises of the program have come true for me, and my third act stretches out full of hope, purpose, and with the energy and health to do what I want to do, one day at a time, with my Higher Power and FA.