Growing up is sad. I kind of hate it. Thank God I have my babies to keep my mind on the positive things so I don't dwell in the past. I love my life, but generally speaking, I had a great childhood. I grew up with a mom who took me to mommy-n-me craft events, was Room Mom every single year in elementary school and a dad whom I idolized. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always enthusiastically responded with 'an engineer' like my dad. I was close with my 3 cousins and aunts and uncles and spending time with the 'whole' family on holidays and occasional weekends was the Cats Ass as far as my little self was concerned. Growing up sucks because the older you get the more you are faced with reality, that your parents are real people too and have real emotions that aren't always great and suffer from real ailments and you realize that they are not as strong and powerful as you once perceived them to be. True colors from friends and family are revealed and it hurts to see people you love in any light other than the glowing one you grew up to know. That said, It can be a hard thing to have to be the one to act above them, as if you are the parent.
Luckily, since I'm a bitch, It wasn't as hard for me to dish out the Tough Love I saw necessary to change my mom's life. She was on handfuls of pills a day for blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, fish oil supplements, assorted other 'required' vitamins, etc. Then she told me she had to have 8" of her colon removed after a colonoscopy proved she had some abnormal polyps lurking around.
What did I do? You bet your ass I got angry! I had a daughter and was planning on another baby. My grandparents were all dead before I was born so I didn't want that to happen to my children. I'll be damned if my children don't have their grandparents at their high school graduations. So, I went shopping. I bought some pantry staples and some new interesting options (to get her to try new things) and went over to their house, grocery bags in hand. When I walked in, I started yelling. I was freaking mad! How dare she let herself go like that! She was in piss poor shape and my dad who is overweight swears he has no health problems, which is obviously false. I raided their pantry and threw out everything with shit. If it had dairy, MSG, no nutritional value, it went in trash bags which were later donated to a needy family. (I even feel bad about that! No one should be eating that!). I gifted them the groceries I had bought and used a magnet to prominently display my list of RULES on their fridge. How did they react? My mom cried and thanked me for caring. My dad was pissed I threw out his favorite ice cream. He got over it.
While at first they tried hard to stick to them, they fell off the wagon and dairy was the hardest thing for my mom to give up. This past new years she vowed as her New Years Resolution to give up dairy once and for all. Her doctors appointment shortly thereafter was one of the worst following the holiday season of binge eating comfort foods and sweets. Insulin was near in her future. You can follow the previous blog posts to take it from there, but that's what I did. Tough Love.
The thing is: If my mom was to die and I hadn't said anything, I would have felt responsible. The way the food and medical industries suppress information, it was really like knowing a secret that alone, could save her life. What was the worst that could happen? She could get mad at me for being intrusive? It was well worth throwing the information (and groceries) in her face. I wasn't going to be the asshole responsible for someones death when I knew something so simple could potentially save her life.
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