By Richard Tardif
This is not about the TV series from “Fit to Fat to Fit”. This is about 45-year-old Jenny Paret, single mother of three living in Montreal. Paret is a busy Administrative assistant full of energy, and someone with an amazing ability to remember details. But for three years, fatigue was her constant companion. I’ve known her for years and have always envied her energy, but for those three years, her energy was depleted.
Her story begins in late 2014 when she became fatigued, almost overnight. Her first signal, was that she started to rapidly lose weight, and along with that, what remained of her energy.
“I had not changed anything in my diet,” she said. “Eventually, I was hospitalized for a week and told I was suffering from acute pancreatitis. The doctor on call told me that a surgery would be scheduled to remove my gall bladder and that would solve the problem.”
While she was waiting for the surgery, her fatigue became worse. “In the morning, I focused on getting dressed and going to work,” she said. “Once I reach the building, I plaster my smile on. I try to focus on my many tasks. My brain gets foggy at times. I hid it well from my colleagues. I breathe in and out, take a walk, and come back. I hope that “today” is the day I will feel efficient like I used to be.”
There are times when at work Paret admitted she’d rather be home in bed.
“I know that is not possible since I am gathering the courage it will take me to cook supper for my three girls and listen to whatever happened at school, do a load of laundry and try to keep the house clean. Each girl wants special attention. Each one needs my full attention. Just thinking about it makes me exhausted. I have developed tools to make evenings a lot less stressful.”
Jenny’s oldest makes supper on days where her body is preventing her from doing so. “I lie down a bit and the girls are understanding and considerate,” Paret said. “They even urge to me to take a day off so I can fully rest. They accept that I don’t have the same energy level I used to. They are forgiving when I hide in my bedroom to watch Netflix. They knock softly on the door, bring me a glass of water and request a hug. They leave quietly and tell me to continue to rest.”
On weekends, in the winter, any outside activities with her girls didn’t exist. “The cold is too hard on my joints. I struggle with seasonal depression. When Spring finally comes, I get motivated. I plan BBQ’s and playdates, shopping, swimming. I stay present physically and mentally around my kids. We joke around, I encourage them, I watch them closely. I see how much they have grown and I feel grateful that I am still alive.”
However, in January 2015, her salivary glands were inflamed and the pain was unbearable. “I went in and out of the hospital sometimes staying overnight. No one could help me. They just kept on giving me anti-inflammatory drugs and I also had red rashes all over my legs, and watery eyes.”
Finally, Paret’s “Dr. House” came to see her in the emergency area. Her specialty was in Nuclear Medicine. Nuclear medicine is a branch of medical imaging that uses small amounts of radioactive material to diagnose and determine the severity of or treat a variety of diseases, including many types of cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders and other abnormalities within the body.
“She asked me three questions. My ethnic background, my age and a description of my symptoms. She smiled, patted my hand and said she would take care of me. She said she was certain of my diagnosis but many tests had to be done before she told me.”
In late 2015 Paret had her answer.
She was diagnosed with Sarcoïdosis, an inflammatory disease in which granulomas, or clumps of inflammatory cells, form in various organs, causing organ inflammation. Sarcoidosis may be triggered by your body’s immune system responding to foreign substances, such as viruses, bacteria, or chemicals.
Diagnosed at the age of 42, Paret always held fast at 120 pounds
Weight gain
Twenty-days days after the diagnosis, Paret began treatments of 50mg of Cortisone. A few months later, she gained 20 pounds as a side effect but the weight gain didn’t stop. After seven months of treatment, she weighed 180 lbs. Other side effects include increase in appetite, inflammation of the joints where the temperature outside changes drastically, and moon face.
After a seven-month sick leave, Paret returned to work.
“I was very nervous seeing as I had changed a lot physically. My colleagues were used to “skinny Jenny”. I got to work and as I stepped into the elevator, I crossed path with a colleague. The look of shock painted on his face made me uncomfortable but he chose to ignore the fact that I had been gone for a while and he spoke to me as if he had seen me the day before.”
When she reached her office, she immediately retreated inward. Looking everywhere, but at her boss, with her shoulders hung in shame. He asked me point blank why I looked so nervous. I couldn’t form a full sentence. I babbled about my weight, appearance, discomfort. He quickly told me that there was no shame in being sick. He actually said “stop worrying about everybody’s opinion. It’s not like you spent the last months eating hot-dogs all day!”
Feeling confident, Paret went to visit her colleagues.
“I heard gasps, saw looks of disbelief. My anxiety rose again. Some welcomed me, some ignored me.” One person even approached her and said she didn’t know how she was going to get used to her being so different physically.
“I thought in anger “what the heck? she doesn’t have any idea how I am going to get used to myself. As the day ended, my heart melted when one person came and simply asked if my health was better and shared that they had been worried about me the whole time I was away.”
The work days were painful for Paret. Her ankles were swollen. Her back would hurt.
“I stayed true to myself. I made jokes, I smiled and I was grateful I was alive. I spent days walking about head held high in spite of how slow it took me to go from point A to B.”
Soon after, her symptoms lessened. The dosage of the cortisone dropped considerably. “I started to lose the weight. I lost 20 pounds in a matter of months.”
Paret remains tired, and is slowly recovering, but is happy she has adequate energy to get to work. What has changed is her outlook on overweight and obese people.
“The way people look at you it’s as if I was responsible for my weight, that it was my fault,” she confessed. “I felt on the outside of life, not fitting in, and that made me angry. I knew that when I reduced the dosage of Cortisone I would drop in weight, and that gave me comfort.”
And she did drop in weight, but remembers how she was looked at, and how she felt. She also remembers how in the past how she was judgmental of others. “I lost weight, but it’s not easy for those who have spent many years with extra weight. I don’t look at overweight or obese people the same way, and I don’t judge.”
Paret’s experience is part of the problem that the public holds widespread misconceptions that minimize the complexities of obesity and how difficult it is to reverse, including that it is a temporary condition that is within the individual’s control. Obesity is blamed on “personal choices about eating and exercise. Blaming the overweight and the obese frees everyone else of responsibility.
Richard Tardif is an award-winning journalist, speaker, author based in Montreal. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth About Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
Richard’s second book, Still in Denial: The Reasons forEmbracing the Truth About Fitness, will be released in May 2019.
Another book in The Denial series, Beyond the Denial: Embracing Your Fitness Trainer and Your Health, is scheduled for release on September 1, 2019
