Being mortal

When the Fogies were around the age I am now they announced that, when they got too old, they would sail into the Bermuda Triangle and vanish from this dimension. They never actually defined “too old”. Nor did they ever acquire a boat, or learn how to float one. But as far as I can tell that really was pretty much the full extent of their planning for the final stage of their lives.

As it turned out, they downsized a couple times, and eventually moved into a tiny apartment in a senior housing complex. It was more cramped than it needed to be because the Olde Buzzard never actually retired, and although his clients (he was a PR consultant) drifted away one-by-one, he refused to give up his gigantic desk and related paraphernalia. So, to the Marmeee’s enormous frustration, his “office” occupied about half their living room space. But that room opened onto a covered stoep, where the Olde Buzzard spent many hours building the framework for Marmeee’s garden. Beyond their tiny garden there was a common area – green lawn, and trees loud with the birds that used to bum off them when they sat out on the stoep to eat their lunch. A pair of plovers raised a family nearby every year, and toward the end of every afternoon the hadedas would fly overhead, shrieking. And they had lots of friendly human neighbors, too.

It was only after Marmeee died that we had to move the Olde Buzzard into a facility specializing in Alzheimer’s patients. That place was also quite homey, and although his room was small it also opened directly onto a garden. Not that it mattered, really. He didn’t have to be there long; he moved on just a couple months after she did.

Anyway, maybe not having much of a plan wasn’t such a problem for them. I mean, maybe the Bermuda Triangle would have been more interesting … But on the other hand they may have ended up being vivisected by some otherworldly mad scientist … Or even being passed over as unworthy of interest, their little boat eternally becalmed in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Instead, they got to watch their plover neighbors and grow flowers, and I think, by the time they got there, it was enough.

Between them – supervised and assisted by passing wildlife – Marmeee and the Olde Buzzard created gardens everywhere they lived. And this didn’t change just because they got old and had to downsize.

Sometimes, when I get mad at the Hubbit for glomming down more than his share of pie or ice cream, I threaten to put him in a home the day diabetes eats his legs and dumps him in a wheelchair. I wish this were an empty threat, but realistically he’s too heavy for me to lift. I end the threat with, “And don’t think I’m going to live in some crappy little studio apartment so that you can afford to go to a nice home!” Again realistically, even if he went into a cheaper facility, this is America, the Land Of Fuck-All Is Free, and I’d probably end up sleeping in my car. I’ve always been pretty easy-come, easy-go with money, and the Hubbit refuses to think about it at all … so, yeah, not a lot of late-life-stage planning happening here.

Mind you, sleeping in my car is sort of part of my game plan for after he wanders off into the Great Workshop In The Sky – assuming he does so (a) before I head for the Heavenly Library And Chocolate Shoppe and (b) before I achieve an extreme level of decrepitude. I’ve thought for a while that the best way to see America – which is something I’ve not done enough of in the quarter century I’ve lived here, the Hubbit not really being one for travel – is from the (admittedly questionable and probably over-romanticized) perspective of a van. So … the plan is a van, and then we’ll see. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s what I’ve got. And after all, if there’s one thing I learned last year it’s that you can’t depend on life to follow a plan. So, you know … why get hung up on making any?

I have a friend who’s a bit older than I, and in way better health, frankly, but she’s getting forgetful, and that scares her because her parents both developed quite advanced Alzheimer’s before they popped off. She lives alone – that is, her son inhabits a room in her house but he really lives inside his gaming computer. In any case, he’s not the nurturing type. So her plan is to off herself as soon as she feels she’s seriously lost the plot. She used to have an actual deadline to do this, but then the deadline year came, and she was busy, and her forgettery wasn’t actually interfering with her quality of life. Plus when I mentioned it a little while ago, in a spirit of friendly mockery (because how else does one respond when a friend is chatting about her suicide plan?) she’d forgotten ever having had a deadline – and since I don’t particularly want her to do herself in so long as I’m capable of fixing us a couple of mugs of rooibos tea, I changed the subject.

I really don’t think she’s ever going to get worse than moderately dotty. She’s healthy, active and energetic, involved with friends and volunteer activities, engaged in caring for a huge menagerie – horses, dogs, cats and birds. She’s conscious of the need to take care of herself, and she’s far too bloody-minded to tolerate anyone trying to tell her how to live. Also, she has me to hassle her to Write It Down, and Use Your GPS, and Remember The Last Time You Did That? Yeah – You Have Done It Before And This Is What Happened So Maybe Do Something Different This Time, Okay? But nonetheless there’s a flaw in her plan, in that she’s relying on her brain to tell her when her brain doesn’t work any more.

So I’m her backup plan. In her mind this means I’m named executor in her will. Once she’s “taken care of business” I will be responsible for selling her house, providing for her animals, and handing whatever is left in her estate to her son so he can find some more convenient place to set up his computer. (He doesn’t drive, so if she’s not around to ferry him he needs to move closer to town.) In my mind it also means I get a power of attorney, so that if she wakes up one day and can’t remember how to wipe her own bottom I can sell her house, provide for her animals, set the son free to follow his dreams, and pay for her care in the best place her money can buy. (She’s a good friend, but I’m probably not going to be the one doing any butt-wiping. And I’ve also firmly rejected her suggestion that I remind her that it’s time and hand her the pill bottle, pistol, or whatever.) So that’s her plan, and I think it’s a good plan … provided I outlive her.

It just occurred to me, dear reader, that I might owe you an apology. I really don’t mean for this to be a Grow-Old-And-Die Blog, and I’m sorry that’s been so much a focus here lately. I do think about other things – in fact I mostly think about lots of other things – but what got me writing about this today is a book I’ve just finished reading that’s set me to pondering the Important Stuff. I want to tell you about it, because I cannot recommend it too highly for anyone who expects to get old and/or die, or who is closely involved with anyone who is likely to experience getting old and/or dying.

Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, is a doctor’s thoughtful discussion about how modern Western medicine has lost its way in terms of meeting the needs of aging and dying patients. And he talks about how we might choose a different way.

For starters, he questions our assumption that doctors are the people we should be turning to for much of this care – because not all aspects of one’s hoary decline are medical. The problem with Western doctors, he says, is that they’re focused on fixing things. And when something can’t be fixed they don’t really know what to do with it, so they get stuck in a cycle of flinging fixes at the unfixable, often to the great detriment of the patient’s quality of life. Even when they want to recommend that a patient pass on further treatment, often they don’t know how – and the patients don’t get it; they think the doctor doesn’t care. Add just a soupcon of scare politics – dire warnings about “Death Panels”, for example – and any suggestion that people should, at some point, be allowed to quietly lie down and, you know, die … well, “cruel and unusual” doesn’t begin to cover the standard American reaction.

Or, when the doctor says a treatment might give them “a little more time”, they don’t understand that the doctor is thinking in terms of months, for which they will likely pay dearly in suffering. So they embark on suffering expecting years, and the end is heartbreak and devastation.

I’m not suggesting that doctors don’t have a role to play in keeping us going, of course. The guy with the scythe tapped me on the shoulder a year and a half ago, as you know, and then again last August, because – according to my doctor – custardy blood is “one of those things that happens as we age”. So, thank you, Western Medicine, that I’m here now and writing this instead of … not. And thank you also for putting the Hubbit back together each of the many times he tried to take himself apart, and for keeping him trundling along despite rusty joints and creaking organs.

But one can think of this kind of care as being on a spectrum – and over on the darker side of the spectrum is the case of my old friend Gummy. He was in a home when I met him – one of the better ones, but it still smelled of shit and boiled vegetables, and the residents spent most of their days scattered about the place in their wheelchairs, staring at the walls. Sometimes they sat in rows, side-by-side, but you never saw them talking. An hour or two before mealtimes they’d start working their way to the dining hall, and they’d sit around tables, staring sometimes at the tablecloth, sometimes at the door to the kitchen, still not talking.

I met Gummy outside church one holiday weekend, when he was slumped in his wheelchair waiting for the facility bus to pick him up. I chirpily asked him, “And what will you be doing tomorrow?” and he dealt me a withering stare and said, “What do you think I’ll be doing?” So I, shamed into being real, started visiting him, and that progressed to occasional outings and invitations to holiday dinners, and for a while he was pretty much part of the family.

He was slow, soooo sloooowww, and as the years passed he got slower. Sometimes, at first, and then later most times, he’d fall asleep mid-conversation when I visited him. We had the same conversations over and over again… I was so sad when, at last, I attended his memorial service and his older friends and colleagues shared their memories of him. I’d known him for years by then, but there was so much I hadn’t known, because we simply didn’t have those conversations.

Anyway, back to the point of this post … I used to accompany him to medical appointments, and one day … I forget the details, but I think he was having difficulty swallowing. The doctor, like most of them, tried to insist on talking to me – because waiting for Gummy to ponder a question and then, sooo sloooowwwly, whisper the answer, cost money, I guess. Or maybe he thought he was stupid as well as slow. In any case, as always, I glared and told him, “Just give him time – he’ll get there. He can speak for himself!”

Only on that occasion he couldn’t. And I quickly realized I was also out of my depth.

Or maybe it was the doctor who didn’t explain his options properly. The doctor, a middle-aged Asian man who kept his firm body packaged inside his smooth skin as neat and tidy as pork sausage in its casing, was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation.

He explained that difficulty swallowing was “one of those things that happen when you get old.” He said Gummy had two options: to continue eating as best he could, or to have a feeding tube surgically inserted into his stomach. He warned that there could be complications with feeding tubes … I don’t remember what the potential complications were. What I do remember is that the doctor really, really didn’t want him to have one. The doctor clearly thought it was time for him to just … let … go. To go gentle into that dark night.

But he couldn’t say that, especially with me glaring at him, so he talked about the feeding tube and potential complications and no longer being able to enjoy food.

Gummy said, “I don’t really enjoy eating any more anyway. My smeller stopped working years ago.” But then he said that he was worried about possibly dying if he kept losing weight. He wasn’t conscious of being hungry, you see, so he wasn’t afraid of starving – but he could read the numbers on the scale. I tried to ask him if he was sure, but ran out of words in the face of his puzzled stare. How could I ask him if he really wanted to keep living? How could I suggest it was time for him to die – that that’s what his body was trying to tell him?

Well, they inserted the feeding tube, and there were issues, and after a few weeks he ended up back in the hospital, where someone inserted the tube at the wrong angle and his food went into his abdominal cavity, and that was that, although it took a few days.

I don’t think he suffered, but really I don’t know, because to my eternal regret and shame I wasn’t there. I visited him only once during the week he was in the hospital. For a few years I had been his closest and most faithful friend – we had fun together, going on outings around town. But then the Hubbit and I moved to our farmlet some distance out of town, and visits were harder and became less frequent (although I still did the necessary stuff, like doctor visits), and one day he’d forgotten my name and I had to write it down in the little notebook he kept in his shirt pocket. So by the time we reached the end I didn’t know what to do about him dying … so I pretended it wasn’t happening until it was too late.

In Being Mortal, Gawande discusses a different, more honest, more accepting way of approaching our mortality. He discusses different ways that seniors might live – alternatives to the typical modern old age home, designed and planned to allow us to have agency right up to the end. He discusses ways that communities might be set up to enable seniors to continue living in their own homes. He describes one place where residents had been like the ones at Gummy’s facility – sitting around waiting to die – until a newly-appointed doctor in charge brought in several cats and dogs and 500 caged birds, as well as a forest-worth of living plants – and all those old folk started living again, invigorated by having something to care for. In other places he describes, seniors have freedoms unheard of in conventional old age homes – specifically, the freedom to make poor choices that might shorten their lives but that make life sweeter (like pie and ice cream for diabetics).

Then, moving on to the subject of care for the terminally ill, he offers an approach free from medical “cures”. The priority, he says – and this is precisely the priority I have for my dogs, so why not also for my two-legged loved ones? – is quality, not quantity of life. Rather than asking, “Do you want this treatment or that treatment or simply to die?” he says we should ask, “What constitutes a good life for you, from the perspective of what you’re capable of right now?” That determined, the question becomes simply how to accomplish that goal. It may be freedom from pain. It may be the ability to enjoy a dish of chocolate ice cream. It may be a clear head and time to spend with the people one loves.

Looked at from that perspective, it will almost certainly not be months of pain and nausea chasing an elusive, all-too-temporary “cure”.

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

Since reading his book I find myself looking at my own life from a different perspective. I’m still at the early stage of my slide into decrepitude, and as far as I know I’m not terminal – except in the sense that we all are. But I am creakily, crankily aware that three-score-plus years of poor choices about diet and exercise are demanding a toll. I make plans but not promises; I write to do lists, but I forgive myself if I can’t fulfil (or, some days, even start) them. I’m increasingly conscious of the need to cross things off my bucket list – not because I’ve achieved them, but because I’ve run out of time.

But I still have choices – so many extraordinary choices! I can still make a garden … acquire new skills … save a few more dogs … write stories. I can still pour myself out; I’m not yet reduced to a trickle. I can go to new places and ask questions and find answers. I can read. I can pray. I can love.

It’s not what I thought it would be. But, as it turns out, now that I’m here, it’s enough.

Start with a gasp

I’m a shower-before-bed person. I’ve never been able to understand how a person can get between the sheets all dusty and sticky from the day, and actually sleep. Even if I haven’t done much to raise a sweat and I feel cleanish and I’m tired so I don’t bother, as I lie there I can feel the gross stickiness of skin ooze and air crud. Ugh! Gotta get up, shower it off, rub dry, and then I can sleep.

Well, sometimes. Insomnia is a thing. But that’s a topic for another post.

Returning to the topic of this post, there’s this blogger that I sort of follow, by which I mean that I receive her posts in one of my many extra email accounts – the one dedicated to efforts at self-improvement. I believe in having lots of separate accounts because I wear different mindsets when I’m trying to be a better person, or farming and gardening, or dealing with our finances, or writing, or blogging. If all my emails go into a single account the result is a mess worse than the top of my desk, and I can’t find anything and nothing gets done.

On the other hand, I don’t check all those accounts every day, and as for the self-improvement one … well, I read the email topics as they come up as notifications on my phone, but usually that’s about it. Self-improvement is something I aspire to wanting to do, but most of the time it’s hard enough just to be as good as I already am.

Anyway, this blogger – she calls herself “Dr. Stephanie” and she writes mainly about keto and fasting, and she offers various courses, none of which I’ve actually done – wrote a post about how effective humans kick-start their day. It happened to land in my inbox on a day when I was lying in bed, hating myself for lacking the energy to get the hell up and do something with whatever was left of my pathetic life … and I read it.

Most of her suggestions I’ve forgotten. They were things like “feel gratitude” and “journal”, which are lovely feel-good ideas, but in the moment didn’t feel sufficiently like the kick in the butt I was craving. The cold shower, however … Now that sounded like a punishment worthy of the name! That I deserved.

So I dragged my bloated, sweaty (this was back when nights were hot) almost-corpse from between the sheets and into the shower. And I turned the faucet on to cold. And wailed.

It was so horrible!

Oh. My. Word. It was so horrible.

But then a strange thing happened. First, my eyes – clenched shut against the bright light of the bathroom – popped open. Then my skin stopped cringing from the rush of icy water, and I found myself intentionally exposing places like my armpits and the back of my neck and the crack of my butt – not exactly enjoying the rush of cold, but welcoming it anyway.

She recommended five minutes. I didn’t time myself but I doubt I lasted that long. I simply rinsed all over, rotating and bending to let the water get at all my less accessible spots. I didn’t use soap or a cloth, just cold water. Then I stepped out, found a fresh towel, and scrubbed myself dry.

I felt … Amazing. Invigorated. Energized.

Fun fact: this insanity is actually good for you. This morning when I went poking through Google in search of funny free images of cold showers, I found any number of articles touting cold showers as a solution to obesity, depression, low sex drive, bad skin, low energy – in short, pretty much all the ills that might beset your fleshly self.

Plus it was kinda magical, actually, how it made me feel.

Irrelevant photo of a happy memory. That’s another kind of magic. And being able to enjoy a happy memory … That’s the magic I really want to flow through me.

So I did it again the next day. And the day after that. And again a few more times. Then came a day when I had to rush for an early appointment and didn’t have time, and I felt icky all day, so the next day I made sure to shower again. Every now and then I skip for a day or two … but I keep going back to it.

It is always horrible. The only way to do it is to drag myself out of bed and get under the shower before I do anything else, because giving myself time to think about it – for instance while I put in contact lenses or brush teeth – just makes it worse. And now, as the nights get cold and the early mornings are chilly and I’m waking up before dawn as often as not, it’s really, really hard. Frankly, given my record for doing really hard things, I’m not that optimistic that I’ll keep going when winter really sinks its teeth into us. But … I hope I will. I intend to try.

Because that moment when my eyes pop open? When suddenly and with no effort of will going back to sleep is not only impossible, but also not remotely desirable? Holy cow, it’s a rush like no other!

Hey there – talk to me! What’s your favorite way to mortify your flesh? Does it make you feel as good as a cold shower?

Breaking the day

Every morning when I open my eyes, the first thing I do is check my phone. The third thing I do is vow that I will stop starting every damn day this way, because the second thing I do – Reading All The Things – invariably takes hours and leaves me with a headache, an aching bladder and a bad mood.

So henceforth, starting tonight (and continuing tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow) I will leave my phone on my desk, next to my computer, so that I have to get vertical and actually leave the bedroom in order to check it. And that will automatically push it back from the single-digit events of the day – because I’m an old lady, or getting to be, and therefore can walk only so far without attending to bladderly duties even when not under extreme pressure to do so. And if I’m going to schlepp all the way from my side of the bed (the window side) to the bathroom (which is on the Hubbit’s side) I might as well take my contact lenses with me and poke them in, and if I’m at the sink anyway I’ll brush the teeth, swallow the apple cider vinegar and pop the pills. It would be nice to say that at that point it would make logical sense to take two steps sideways into the closet and get dressed, but between sticking a finger in each eye and glugging down ACV and monster pills (all supplements; I’m still off drugs – yay!) and wielding a vigorous vibrating toothbrush I usually need to sit down at that point and think about the coming day.

Which of course is another reason to leave the phone in the Woolf Den rather than next to my bed. The early morning read-while-still-horizontal is achieved without contact lenses – in other words, phone about two inches from one eye while clamping other eye shut with one finger.

The Hubbit has never photographed me in this position, but if he did I’m guessing “alluring” wouldn’t be the first adjective to come to mind.

Ermm … no, I don’t wish to discuss other positions, alluring or otherwise, that the Hubbit may or may not have photographed me in during the course of the past two decades. Now if you’ll let me get back to the point of this post…

… Sitting and thinking about my day usually involves looking at my calendar (on the phone) and to do list/s on Evernote (also on the phone), which exposes me to the immediate peril of new incoming texts, emails and news alerts – not to mention (the horror!) possibly even a phone call. Many a promising start to a day has been derailed in this way.

So anyway … Today I prized open the bleary windows to my soul and fumbled for my phone and there was a text from someone I didn’t know, who had clearly dialed the wrong number before hitting “send”. I responded helpfully. Things went downhill from there.

Yea verily, between literacy louts and Trump-infested news held excessively close to my face (the up-close view doesn’t improve him – ask Melania) I need a better wake-me-up than my phone. Looks like I need a new charger, too. Pthah!
So what do you do to get your day off to a chirpy and cheerful start? Does it work?

The fast way to self-improvement

Well, I did it again, and this time I won! I have 95% successfully completed my second water fast. I didn’t journal the first one but this time around I thought it would be interesting to track how my body responded.

As before, I jumped into this after several weeks of thinking about getting prepared to think seriously about doing it. Tuesday night I was dinking around on Facebook and I popped in to see what was happening on Aussa’s new group page, and she’d just posted her weekly challenge to set a goal and grab it by the … pearl necklace and make it behave.

Just like this. But with jeans. And my belly button is still an innie. (Source)

I was not in my happy place. It was nearly midnight, which meant I had once again failed to get to bed early enough to bounce out of bed, all full of get-up-and-go, before sunrise. (Here in the gloomy north the sun doesn’t rise until nearly 7.30 at this time of the year, but I’m pretty pathetic when it comes to sleep. I fight it like a bitch, but I need a lot of zzzzzs.) I’d been in full binge mode (aka compulsive pleasure-free eating) for nearly a week, and I felt squeezed by my XXXL jeans despite having undone both button and zipper,  and was also regretting the ice cream I’d engulfed earlier that evening in the hope that a sugar hit would keep me awake long enough to manage the half hour drive home from the vet. (It didn’t. I had to pull over for a snooze less than 10 miles from home.)

In other words, my life was once again out of control at its most fundamental level. So, of course, I sneered and hated myself and kept scrolling to read about the extraordinary successes racked up by my fellow Aussa bitches … and then my fingers took over my brain, and by the time they’d done dancing around on the keyboard I had scrolled back and announced my intention to do a full water fast, starting immediately. Then I logged off and went to bed, quickly, before I was compelled to eat something.

I started each day with two green tea capsules (for energy) and a splash of raw apple cider vinegar in water (for gut health). We’re blessed with delicious water – our well draws from an aquifer nearly 600 ft down below a thick layer of rock. During the day I drank tap water whenever I felt thirsty. I slept longer and more deeply than usual, and woke feeling refreshed. I didn’t do any extra exercise, and as the fast progressed I moved more slowly and rested more often, responding to the needs of my body.

Ask Google “What happens to my body when I fast?” if you want to invite a barrage of conflicting information, ranging from “Your muscles will shrivel up and you will diiiieeee!” to “You will directly experience Nirvana and your whole life will change forever!” The interweb is host to hordes of experts, both self-proclaimed and accredited, and it can get confusing, so choosing your guru is pretty much an act of faith. As with any faith, the smart way to go is to study what the guru says, check in with opposing views to maintain your balance, remember that if anything sounds too good to be true it probably (but not definitely) is, and over time evaluate what they say based on your personal experience.

My guru of choice is Dr. Jason Fung. He’s flavor of the month and also way too young and pretty – definite red flags – but on consideration, for now at any rate, I’m willing to hop on his wagon and see where it takes me.

Day 1 – Tuesday

I didn’t start to feel hungry until quite late in the day, and several hours before I felt hungry I was aware of other benefits – dramatically reduced inflammatory pain in my muscles and joints, no brain fog, and a happier, more relaxed mood. I was moderately active (by my low standards) and became tired shortly after dark.

According to Fung, during the first day of my fast my insulin levels dropped and my body accessed its glycogen stores to release glucose for energy. The human body keeps a 24-hour glycogen reserve mainly in the liver and skeletal muscles. That stored in the liver is available wherever energy is needed (and apparently most of it goes to the brain! For some reason I find that reassuring.) As I understand it, the glycogen stored in muscle tissue used by the muscles, not readily released to the rest of the body.

As the day progressed without any more carbs going in, my basal metabolic rate fell as my body sought to cut back on energy expenditure. Most of the pro-fasting literature I’ve read says your metabolic rate rises again after a few days of fasting, to above your normal level, but I didn’t get to experience that. Maybe next time, when I go for longer…

Day 2 – Wednesday

Woke early feeling clear-headed and energetic, but after I got up I quickly ran out of energy. No hunger pangs as such, but I was aware that my body wanted fuel. My head felt tight, as though it was thinking about having an ache, but in fact I didn’t experience any headache during this fast.

I spent the day being gentle with myself, resting often, but still writing and doing my regular chores. By the afternoon I was ravenous and stupid, and by evening I was still hungry, tired, irritable and floppy all over. I was also constantly thirsty, despite drinking lots of water.

For some reason I cooked dinner for the male members of the household – my signature spaghetti bolognese. I don’t ever cook without tasting (I learned that the hard way – but that’s a story for another day) so I had maybe a teaspoonful of bolognese sauce and one strand of spaghetti … and then, after gritting my teeth and not eating with the men I couldn’t resist the redolence. I ate four, I mean five, okay SIX teaspoons of bolognese sauce. It was almost unbearably delicious. My stomach had pretty much given up on me by then and was hiding in a corner grumbling sadly to itself, so it was a little startled when that lot came walloping down my gullet. But the discomfort passed quickly and the relief was great!

Mind you, I was pissed at myself. I felt I’d let myself down, and was tempted to call myself a loser and just quit. But it was only meat, not carbs, and totaled well under 100 calories, so I decided to declare the fast unbroken and keep going. (Full disclosure: I ate a few teaspoons of bolognese sauce again the next night – I was just so hungry, and it was there. But that’s the only food I consumed for the 84 hours I fasted, so I feel … not good, but okay about it. Next time I’ll do better.)

To know what was happening with my body, I turned again to Dr. Fung. After 24 hours my body had depleted its store of glycogen, which activated other processes to generate energy.

• My liver kicked into gluconeogenesis, creating glucose from amino acids.
• In a parallel process (and I’m not going to pretend I understand yet how they are connected) it launched into autophagy, which essentially involves cannibalizing junk proteins, also to generate energy. If you want scholarly literature on the subject, Google has plenty; for those who want a greatly simplified explanation in layman’s terms, go here.
• Meanwhile, the hunger pangs kept coming and going because of a hormone called ghrelin – and the interesting thing about that is that ghrelin will switch itself off after a couple hours if you ignore it, even if you don’t eat. Knowing that hunger won’t last makes it a lot easier to resist!

The most important of these processes, as far as I’m concerned, is autophagy. This is relatively easy to trigger – unlike ketosis, which takes longer and can be harder to sustain. All you have to do is not eat for 24-48 hours. Unfortunately I didn’t get the full benefit of it, because eating even a small amount of protein switches it off. I wish I’d known that … It might have made it possible to resist the bolognese…

Day 3 – Thursday

I’ve read about how, after fasting for a few days, your body kicks into higher energy mode. The theory is that its initial response to a lack of food is to reduce your rate of energy consumption (aka “starvation mode”), so your metabolism slows and you feel tired and sleepy. But if there’s still nothing on the menu after a couple days your body goes “Woah! Gotta fix this!” and you experience a surge in energy, as well as much greater clarity of thought – because you have to get out there and chase something down and kill it.”

I was kinda hoping to feel that way by Thursday, but … nope. I woke hungry and was tired and draggy all day. My brain was clear but I was so fumble-tongued I might as well have been catatonic, for all I could communicate. During the afternoon I went out into the garden with Peter Pan to discuss vegetable matters, and – being too floppy to pick up my feet properly – I tripped over a squash vine and went down like a dropped two-by-four. And once down … well, I lay there for a while on the cool dirt, thinking about how nice it would be simply to stay there. Getting vertical again took way more effort than seemed worthwhile!

Anyway, Dr. Fung says you go into ketosis after two to three days of fasting, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen for me this time. I’ve always struggled to achieve and maintain ketosis, even when eating super low-carb and high fat. I’m not diabetic but maybe I’m somewhat insulin-resistant; I need to learn more about it and figure out how to change.

Day 4 – Friday

I went into this fast not sure how long I’d stay with it, but determined to last longer than I did last time. About halfway in a friend called and invited me for tea, so I put her off until Friday afternoon and set my goal at noon Friday – giving me 84 hours of fasting, or 12 hours more than last time. And I made it! In fact, I think if I hadn’t had the tea date I could even have lasted longer. By Friday morning the hunger pangs were less and my head was clear and alert, although I was still physically quite weak.

This time, I broke my fast gradually. At noon I had a cup of hot, salty bone broth. About a half hour later I had a small fruit yogurt with heaped spoonful of crushed pecans, which kept me going an hour and a half. Then I had a cheddar and tomato sandwich – just one slice, not my usual two. Tea was more indulgent – I chowed down on crackers with whipped cream cheese and pepper jelly and found room for lemon cake, but after that I didn’t want dinner. In fact, I didn’t eat again until after noon on Saturday.

Since then I’ve been ramping up my food consumption, which is annoying – why this relentless compulsion to eat? Still … I do seem still to want smaller quantities, and I seem to be going longer between meals, and I don’t have quite the same desire for sugar … so I guess I’ve gained some ground.

I found, while fasting, that my mood improved greatly. Since going back onto sugar I’ve been more irritable and short-tempered. The burning, aching inflammatory pain in my joints and muscles stopped entirely and still hasn’t come back – although it will if I’m not careful. I slept very deeply while fasting, and when I started eating again I immediately fell back into my night owl habits, reinforced by insomnia. My jeans were looser, but they’re getting tight again.

Now what?

The main takeaway seems to be that very fat people are more likely to survive the initial weeks of the Zombie Apocalypse because, provided we have access to water, we’ll be able to hide away and live off our fat stores for a good long while – and when the hunger pangs don’t bite we’ll even have a jolly old time of it, because our brains will be sharp enough to joke, sing and tell stories.

We’ll find a cozy hole and party like Hobbits. (Original illustration by David Wenzel)

But over the longer term the outlook for VFPs isn’t so good, unless our hiding place also includes some weights and an exercise bicycle.

I’m convinced that the reason I didn’t experience the energy surge I expected is that I’m starting off at a frighteningly low level of fitness. It’s unrealistic to think you can go from being someone who can just about maybe almost chase down one chicken in a very small pen without having a heart attack (and actually the last time I tried to do that I eventually had to call in reinforcements in the form of Peter Pan), to being capable of chasing down a wildebeest, merely by not eating.

This is going to take some thought. And planning. And work. And a whole lot less ice cream.

I’ll think about it … tomorrow.

 

Let’s talk. Have you ever tried fasting? What kind of fast, and what was your goal? What was your main takeaway from the experience?

And the winner is…

… a mug of hot, sweet, milky tea and a peanut butter sandwich. Not fancy, and it makes my stomach hurt, but it’s still the ultimate comfort food.

It was the tomatoes and apricots that did me in, mind you. Kuja stopped by and we wandered out into the veggie garden, and – because she’s not one for half measures – she got busy picking pretty much everything that was ready. I’ve been wanting to do this – no one benefits from food left sitting on the vine – and somehow that resulted in just having to taste a tomato … and then a different one … and another. So my mouth started singing the Halleluja Chorus, which woke up my stomach, and then a few other things happened that demanded action … and so, to end an interminable story, I ate the samn damwich. It was yummy!

Anyway, I still think I’m a winner. Three days of no food? That’s pretty darn good for me! I am going to try to make fasting a regular part of my life, and I need to have another go at keto … although it’s really hard to wrap my head around being completely carb-free when we have all sorts of trees and squashy things and tomatoes right out there.

Right now I’m feeling pretty good. I’m tired, but I feel energized. I’m also as happy as all get out because Peter Pan is back … I don’t think I’ve ever told you about Peter Pan, apart from a brief mention here … Hmm, where to begin?

I’ll begin with a picture and end with a promise to tell you more next time I write. Right now, I need to use this welcome energy burst to Get Shit Done in time for an early night, because tomorrow morning I am once again taking up my quill and reconnecting with Henrietta Gurdy. I’ve told you about Henrietta – I mentioned her by name here, but she’s changed a lot since then. I learned just recently that someone I met at the PNWA Writer’s Conference last year is gifting me her reservation for this year, which gives me just five weeks to make Henrietta presentable.

Anyway … this is Peter Pan…

He’s a tad more hairy than when this was taken in December 2016, but still the eternal boy. I’ve missed having him around!

And now I must go unskunk a dog. Gotta love life on the farm!

Do you ever find that winning and losing are hard to tell apart?