Me and Vegetarianism

This evening, I cut up raw chicken for the first time in over a year. Of course I'm afraid that my entire kitchen is now teaming with salmonella bacteria, but I am so sick of eating bread and plain baked chicken. I had to force myself to make a meal that had more taste, and that usually requires putting raw meat on a cutting board. To all the vegetarians and vegans--I applaud your bodies. I've tried vegetarianism for health and environmental reasons, and I've failed. The first time I became a vegetarian was after I took a "World Religions" class my sophmore year in high school, and read a book by an eastern philosopher which listed the environmental impact of meat consumption by humans. It also explained that humans were not meant to eat meat (I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now if I agree with that). It stated that the body could get everything it needed from the other food categories. And, a particularly striking comment which still remains in the back of my mind--I'm not sure exactly what the quote is, but the jist was that we could feed the world several times over with the grain we use to feed the cows bred for consumtion. All of this was very impressive.

In high school, I fell off the wagon a few times, but ate more meatless meals than not. In college, I paid no attention to food at all, hardly ever went to the grocery store. I ate cereal for breakfast and lunch. For dinner, I ate boiled potatoes with oil, vinegar, and paprika (I'm not sure where I got that recipe, but it was delicious). I drank rediculous coffee with milk and sugar, and vodka-based cocktails. But I took a vitamin every day. My junior year, I started to have bouts of constipation, although I didn't know that's what it was called, nor did I know what was wrong with me, nor did I link it to my diet. I did go to the doctor, of course, and was told that "it happens some times". She never used the word "constipation". At that time, I hardly used the internet, and hadn't yet discovered the joys and terrors of web MD.

By my senior year, I started to feel weak every once in a while, and would rush home to eat cereal. Then it started to happen every day. Right before I graduated, I went to the doctor and she weighed me. I was shocked to see that I was 107 lbs. I hadn't weighed that little since I was 13 years old. She commented on how white I was. But I'd always been very fair. During my childhood and adolescence my summers were happily spent inside a dance studio. The last time I had a tan I must have been 9. When I was in 7th grade, I read Dancing on My Grave by Gelsey Kirkland, and learned that Balanchine wanted his dancers to be very thin and very white, because this added to the illusion that they were other-worldly. I wasn't born blond and blue-eyed, like the all-American girl I thought I wanted to be as a child, but I was definitely white and thin. Now I had founded reason to wear it like a badge. So when the doctor told me how white I was, I answered, "Yes--my skin doesn't tan." And it is true--my body has lost the ability to tan. If I go out into the sun, as I learned in my mid-20s, I now simply burn.

The summer after graduation from college, my sudden feelings of weakness grew more frequent, and more intense. I was granted a fellowship to study writing at Bucknell University, and one day, I felt so weak, that I actually thought I was going to faint. One of the other writers said he knew a doctor, and asked me if I felt like I wanted to see one. Of course I said "yes." The next day I met him at his apartment and he drove me out into the country. I suddenly felt like a character in a Flannery O'Connor story--a girl who finds herself alone in the country, and to whom unspeakable things will happen, and of course, the situation is always one that never should have happened in the first place if one paid attention to common sense. The feeling of impending doom closes in. Why did I get into a car with a man I've only known for two weeks and not even ask him which direction or to which town we were going? Why hadn't I gone to my doctor sooner to ask why I was feeling weak? Why did this guy have a friend who is a surgeon, when all of the writers were supposed to be under 21 years old? Who has a practicing surgeon friend at 21 years old?

Eventually, we arrived at the surgeon's home. He opened the door and did not look like a surgeon at all. He had some kind of a running outfit on. I was very embarrased to be there. While he gathered his things from all parts of his kitchen, I told him about how I would suddenly feel very weak. He didn't even sit down with me to talk about my symptoms. He just said, "You're dehydrated. Drink Gatorade. It has electrolytes." I was so relieved. Later that night, when I had another incident, despite the gatorade, another writer came up to me and said, "You know what you have? Anemia! I'm anemic. Most people are. Take one of my iron pills." I don't like taking any medicine and protested but thanked her for her generocity. "Just take one. It's like a vitamin. It's like a sugar pill. You'll feel better. Trust me. It's nothing. I take them every day." I didn't wanted to take it. One is not supposed to take medicines that are not prescribed to oneself. "Just take it!" she yelled. And she left the little red pill on a napkin for me. Once she left, I threw it away.

When I came back to Chicago in August of that year, I went to the doctor, because by then I thought I had diabetes. She gave me a blood test and told me I was anemic. Then she prescribed the little red iron pills. I was in complete shock. The surgeon did not even suggest that I might have anemia.

I ended my vegetarianism.

The next time I became a vegetarian was after the food poisoning/flu/anxiety incident--the thing that has defined me for the past three years, and altered my life so drastically. At first, I became a canned souparian and a breadarain, since I knew that those things never upset my stomach. Eventually I also added rice, soy beans, and corn. I simultaneously developed stomach pains, and went to the doctor because I didn't know why my stomach felt like I had just completed 200 situps, and I was afraid of repeating that horrible night. She said I had "Acid Reflux" and she gave me Prevacid. I asked her if that was what had caused the terrible night and she said she didn't know what caused it. I had to see her monthly to report on my progress with Prevacid. By the third month, I told her that I didn't think it was helping me, and she noted that I weighed 108 lbs., so she said I was "anorexic" and sent me to a specialist.

Dr. Goldstein is a very good doctor. First, we met in his office, NOT in an exam room. We talked. He asked me what was going on in my life. I told him. Then we went to the exam room and he felt my stomach. Then he told me, "You don't have Acid Reflux. You have IBS." So I had been taking a pill for three months to treat a problem I didn't have. He said that IBS was common, and that it's worsened by stress. He said he would give me a pill for it if I ever got to a point where I needed it, but at this point, I did not need it. His tone was so caring, and at the same time, very authoritative. I didn't question him. I wasn't mad at him. I didn't fear him. I simply believed him. And further, he was so matter-of-fact that I didn't even worry too much about the fact that I was going to have to use the trial-and-error method to see which foods irritated me. I was calm because I wanted to be calm for him.

But the further I got from that appointment, the further I got away from the prospect of eating foods that may irritate me. So, instead of slowing introducing foods back into my diet, I stayed on my breadarian souparian ricearian and beanarian diet. It became hard to eat outside my home. I always brought my own chamomile tea with me wherever I went, including restaurants. I was really getting sick of Cambell's Chicken Rice Soup.

Sometimes, necessity forced me to eat outside the home, and I distrused all food except bread and soup. Then, I started to distrust the Campbell's soup because I overheard someone talking about canned goods and how they can contain bacteria (I had never thought about it before...). I then realized that part of the food I ate the day of the horrible incident was from a can. I no longer could eat my canned soup, the only food that had some nutritional value and was still in my "diet."

My phobia about food became more intense, and I once again became a vegetarian. The entire category of "meat" was too risky. I started to eat salads, but then there was an E.coli outbreak on bagged spinach which could not be killed with water, and I no longer ate any raw veggetables. I started to feel weak and dizzy again.

I eventually sought professional help. I realized how many things I had stopped doing and eating because of my intense fear of illness. So this is why cutting chicken today was a very special event.

At first, my task was to bake chicken, since I hardely would have to touch it at all, and the oven heat could kill anything. But tonight, I've graduated.