A Non-Guilty Conscience

Liver transplant patients who are either underweight or severely overweight have a significantly hard recovery time, a recent study has reported. Patients at the extremes of the body mass index (BMI) have a higher risk of death following transplant surgery, the study concluded. Those who are undernourished and had a BMI below 18.5 were more likely to be re-transplanted, while obese patients with a BMI above 40 were more likely to experience infectious diseases and cancer following surgery.

At 5 foot 5 and weighing in at a staggering 110 pounds, I have a body mass index of 18.3, just below the cutoff for a healthy weight. I wish I could bulk up a little more, gain some weight and get through this surgery a little easier, but I don’t see it happening. I literally have not gained a pound in years, fluctuating from 110 to 115, depending on whether I’m wearing my jeans or not. But I don’t think this is my fault. Instead, I’ll take the easy way out and blame others for my skinny disposition.

First, I’ll choose the most obvious people to blame – my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents and they did a great job raising me, they just didn’t pay attention to my nutritional needs growing up. My parents are vegetarians and they raised me to be one as well. For some, that’s a really noble undertaking and it even has a lot of nutritional value. But when you don’t like vegetables, soy, or tofu, you are kind of screwed. For the first 14 years of my life, then, I was stuck eating pasta, cereal, and bread.

My parents tell me that when I was little, they would give me meat and I would just sneak it to our dog. Eventually, they thought it was just a waste of money and so they decided to stop making me chicken and beef. I don’t think I didn’t enjoy it, I think I had a debilitating GI disease that made me not want to eat anything. Either way, too timid to stick up for myself and too lazy to make my own food, I remained a vegetarian until 10^th grade. After years of ridicule from friends, which even included the occasional act of violence, I decided I needed to eat meat. And so, with my friends around me to cheer me on, I bit into my first piece of chicken in years. We Jews love Chinese food and so obviously, I was smart and took it easy that first time, eating sweet and sour chicken.

Now I’m a devout carnivore, and so I don’t blame my parents as much as I used to. The last ten years, instead, I’ll blame on Crohn’s disease and my doctors. Crohn’s is pretty obviously at fault for me not gaining any weight since it directly affects your GI tract. I mean your stomach isn’t going to particularly enjoy food when your body is attacking it. You don’t fully process the nutrients and vitamins in food with Crohn’s either. But I think worse than that is the hell your doctors put you through in treating the disease. I’m fine with pills, that I don’t have a problem with. It’s the shakes, the liquids, and the tests they make you do that really make you weary of trying anything your doctor ever suggest. For instance, one of the first tests you take when looking for Crohn’s is a barium exam, where you drink a gallon of chalk mixed in peroxide. Then, before your colonoscopy, you have to drink a gallon of soda. Although this soda isn’t Coke or Sprite, it’s fleet phospa-soda, which tastes like bleach and pretty much does the same action of cleaning, just in your intestines and not your whites.

Obviously, after those experiences, when your doctor hands you a box of Ensure and tells you it tastes great, your gonna be cautious of his advice. In fact, you probably will just ignore it. It’s not your fault, you’ve been conditioned to disregard all nutritional advice he or she gives you. And despite all these various obstacles, I’ve tried to gain weight and stay healthy. I’ve broken the family tradition and started to eat meat. I’ve fought my disease and ignored my doctor. And yet, I’m still where I started, at 110 pounds. Thankfully, I can sleep soundly, knowing it’s not my fault.