To Blog Or Not To Blog ...

I went on a blogging hiatus while I tried to figure out the delicate balance between recovering from an eating disorder and being a kidney patient. Most of the time I end up shutting it all out by compartmentalizing, putting it away in my head and just going through the motions, staying in this weird limbo. How can I honestly say that I'm doing everything I can to save my kidney when I still suffer from eating disorder? Am I recovering? You bet your ass I am. But it isn't possible to just get over an eating disorder, simply because I now have a new diagnosis. If I could just get over it, I wouldn't actually have an eating disorder and we'd be discussing a problem that doesn't actually exist. 

I'm not perfect and I'll call you a liar and tell you that you don't actually know me if you think I am. But I'll do the same if you don't actually think that I'm giving it my all and doing the best that I can. If it were as simple as picking up a hamburger and going to town on a plate of french fries then by all means, fire up the grill and pass the ketchup ... but I think we all know it doesn't work that way. 

Today I met with my nephrologist (kidney doc) and received my referral to the vascular surgeon for a preoperative vascular access/dialysis evaluation. I was also officially referred for transplant. Transplant. AYFKM? I've been an eating disorder patient my whole life (well 2/3rds of my life) and these are words that I feel should not be in my vocabulary. I don't know how to be a kidney patient. 

Scarlett says I have to separate the two, so I'm going to work on doing that. Maybe the key to getting through this is realizing that I can be an eating disorder patient working on my recovery AND a kidney patient starting the road to recovery via dialysis and/or (hopefully or) transplant. It'll be kind of like ... multi-tasking. Anyway, I think I'll stick to blogging during this process because I do not want to lose ground in my eating disorder recovery. I need to make sure I don't let my eating disorder become the way I cope with my kidney and I also need to make sure that my eating disorder recovery does not get lost to my kidney recovery. Let the multi-tasking begin.

What I do not miss about my eating disorder at this point in my recovery: Not having control over my thoughts. I love that I can break away from the eating disorder chaos in my brain and think about other things, future plans. I like that I can have day dreams about something other than an eating disorder related issue or thought. And I love that it happens naturally and I can experience what it feels like to have moments of freedom.

What I am not going to miss about my eating disorder once I'm recover(ed): Being denied a fun afternoon jogging around Greenlake with my friends and then going to eat frozen yogurt afterwards. When I'm recovered, I'm going to go to run  Greenlake every day, and I'm going to run with a handful of crab cakes from Tom Douglas' restaurants, and I'm going to do it in neon green shoes, because I can.