Chopped Liver, Foie Gras, Liverwurst: An Appetite for Destruction

I successfully avoided the freshman fifteen. And despite everyone’s assurances, I didn’t gain any weight my first year of marriage. In fact, I hadn’t gained any weight since I was fourteen. For ten years, I fluctuated between a ghastly 105 and an unhealthy 112. My slim frame was not from lack of trying. After years of my GI badgering me, I tried to supplement my meals with milkshakes, boost, and pasta. And yet, despite eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, I didn’t gain a pound.

My roommate post-transplant was an older woman who had a successful double-lung transplant a few years back. She was back in the hospital for a minor infection but was extremely positive about the post-transplant lifestyle. One day, as I slowly walked the busy hallways, trying to regain my strength, we struck up a conversation. After discussing our surgeries and getting to the topic of recovery, my roommate made a funny joke. “Oh, you are gonna gain some weight now. Let me tell you,” she chuckled in a hearty drawl. “No way,” I protested. “I still have Crohn’s disease so nothing is going to change.” “You wait and see,” she continued, “I gained forty pounds post-transplant. Between the prednisone and your new lease on life, you eat. And believe me, you eat a lot.” I shrugged her off and continued on my walk, slowly recovering.

I now look back at that conversation as a heralded warning, a voice to the future that I should have been paying attention to. I’ve gained twenty pounds since transplant and slowly upping that total daily. Between the prednisone and my new rigorous appetite, my once foul-proof metabolism seems to be slowing down. Of course, I’m still a healthy weight but for some transplant patients, weight gain can become another obstacle to overcome. Transplant patients are at high risk for diabetes and high cholesterol. The dual impact of immuno-suppressive drugs and weight gain can create a cascading effect that ultimately puts the new organ in danger.

In a few weeks, I’ll be taken off of the prednisone, the biggest culprit to my increased appetite. Between physical therapy and holding the babies, I now work out a few times a week. My diet of fried food, ice cream, and Jelly Belly’s isn’t going to change though. And so I’m hoping I can turn this weight into something good, a sign of health for the first time in ten years. As my GI so shrewdly put it, “I love a chubby IBD patient.”