I wasn’t a particularly fat child. \u00a0 Although, I felt huge compared to my friends. \u00a0 I was a “normal” size baby. \u00a0 I was an average sized toddler and so on. \u00a0 Then around 6 I started to gain weight. \u00a0 Not massive amounts but I started to become a chubby child. \u00a0 At 9 I weighed 112. \u00a0 I remember that was an embarrassing day when the entire 4th grade class got weighed and I weighed so much more than the other kids. \u00a0 Of course, when I look back on pictures I just don’t look that big. \u00a0 Yes, definitely bigger than most but not “grossly obese.” \u00a0 Wow, I don’t like that term.<\/p>\n
Growing up I was always a gamer though. \u00a0 Sure my weight stopped me from some things. \u00a0 I sucked at PE. \u00a0 I hated the Presidential Fitness BS we had to do every year. \u00a0 The stupid long jump was cruel for me. \u00a0 I was short and fat and there wasn’t a chance I was going to get anywhere close to where the President said I should be able to jump at my age. \u00a0 (Have I just aged myself by mentioning Presidential Fitness? \u00a0 Do they even still do that? \u00a0 Ack, maybe I should check before people think I went to school while we were doing our homework on stone tablets.) \u00a0 By High School I gave up on PE. \u00a0 I hated it. \u00a0 I hated the stupid shorts. \u00a0 I hated running around the field feeling so much bigger than the other girls. \u00a0 I didn’t feel coached by the coach in the, “come on you can do it kind of way.” \u00a0 I felt like he felt I was just taking up space…which I was.<\/p>\n
As a child I wanted to be an entertainer. \u00a0 I loved being on stage. \u00a0 When I was young I took ballet and loved it! \u00a0 It was so freeing. \u00a0 There was an unfortunate incident with my tights splitting during a recital that definitely marked me for life. \u00a0 At that point I knew I was too fat to be a ballerina. \u00a0 One thing was checked off the list. \u00a0 Then in elementary school I loved being in the little plays we did. \u00a0 But as I got older I had the feeling that because I was fat no one would want to see me so I decided to become a marine biologist when I got older because the whales and dolphins wouldn’t care about my size. \u00a0 (I hadn’t factored in getting a wet suit over my copious body nor did I imagine the anchor I would have to wear to actually submerge myself…)<\/p>\n
There certainly have been times in my life when my weight has stopped me. \u00a0 But I always am willing to try. \u00a0 Save for the embarrassment of not fitting I am always willing to give it a shot. \u00a0 I don’t often try to fit into restaurant booths anymore. \u00a0 Not that I won’t necessarily fit but I had an experience at a great diner in Chicago where I ruined a shirt from sitting in a booth. \u00a0 I slid into the booth and then sat there for hours with friends drinking coffee and having a great time. \u00a0 When I slid back out my shirt was covered in gum. \u00a0 Yes, gum. \u00a0 The warmth of my belly had melted the gum that people had stuck up under the table leaving me covered in strands of sticky chewed gum.<\/p>\n
I remember years ago some friends and I got the opportunity to fly over to Catalina Island. \u00a0 I was ready to do it. \u00a0 Sure I had some apprehension about getting into an aluminum can and flying 26 miles over the Pacific to a tiny island but it sounded like a blast. \u00a0 Then the question came, “How much do you weigh?” \u00a0 Uh, really!? \u00a0 Because of my weight I counted as two people so, I could go if someone else didn’t. \u00a0 I didn’t go.<\/p>\n
I don’t have those experiences often in life. \u00a0 You would think that after living as a large person most of my life I would be prepared. \u00a0 But it still is always a surprise to me. \u00a0 Maybe, in part, because I just don’t think of myself as “that” big. \u00a0 I see BIG people living life all the time…people much bigger than I am. \u00a0 At least, I think they are bigger. \u00a0 They say your body image is established in your teen years. \u00a0 Clearly my body image is skewed.<\/p>\n
So, when I was waiting last week at Cedars-Sinai to have dye injected into my shoulder joint before an MRI I was caught off guard when the MRI tech came in and said, “I have a concern! Before we inject you I want to make sure you will fit in the tube of the MRI. I am concerned you aren’t going to fit. \u00a0 Also, you aren’t claustrophobic are you?!” \u00a0 He checked me out. \u00a0 He had me lift the gown so he could check out my size. \u00a0 He put both hands on my shoulders as if to measure my girth. \u00a0 Then I took the walk of shame out of the fluoroscopy room down the hall to the elevator to the basement where they keep the MRI machines. \u00a0 I asked what the weight limit was and was pleased to know I was 50 pounds lighter than the limit. \u00a0 (But as my ex-boyfriend used to say, “You have the ass of a 500 pound woman.” \u00a0 Yeah, EX boyfriend.) I was certainly nervous. \u00a0 As I stood there looking through the window as this slight woman was being taken out of the machine I was shocked at how narrow the opening was. \u00a0 “Wow! \u00a0 It is a small opening,” I said to the tech. \u00a0 He agreed. \u00a0 I asked about larger patients and he said they either use an open MRI machine that isn’t as efficient or they don’t get one. \u00a0 I told him I was surprised that the technology didn’t allow for taking care of larger patients since statistically there are so many people who are larger. \u00a0 Plus with all the bariatric surgeries being done and then redone these days I was very surprised. \u00a0 Of course, my surprise wasn’t going to make the opening any larger. \u00a0 They got me onto the table and strapped me in. \u00a0 I had to put my good arm up over my head to make me less wide at the shoulder. \u00a0 They slid me in no problem. \u00a0 As I found myself inside the tech yells, so I could hear him, don’t open your eyes. \u00a0 Of course, I did and promptly FREAKED OUT!! \u00a0 Instantly I felt claustrophobic and terrified. \u00a0 I had to get out of the machine. \u00a0 I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. \u00a0 “Uh, you need to get me out now!!!” I yelled. \u00a0 They slid me out. \u00a0 I sat up. \u00a0 The tech then asked me if I could do this. \u00a0 They didn’t want to inject me if I wasn’t going to follow through. \u00a0 I thought for a minute and thought about the pain I experience and the lack of mobility etc. \u00a0 “I can do this. \u00a0 I have to,” I said. \u00a0 Back up I went for the injection.<\/p>\n
I won’t bore you with the injection part. \u00a0 Suffice it to say it hurt like a mother!!! \u00a0 I was stunned at how much it hurt. \u00a0 They had my arm outstretched with some kind of weight on it so I couldn’t move. \u00a0 At one point I felt the assistants keys dangling off his neck into my hand. \u00a0 The pain was bizarrely awful. \u00a0 I said, “if you don’t stop I am going to yank your keys off your neck.” \u00a0 It doesn’t seem as funny in the retelling. \u00a0 In the moment, it’s what got me through.<\/p>\n
Before I flew to Amsterdam, I asked my doctor for some anti-anxiety meds to get me through the flight…just in case I got nervous. \u00a0 He gave me 10. \u00a0 I never took them. \u00a0 So, as I went back down to the basement to wait for the MRI I thought, “now would be a good time to break out the calming pills.” \u00a0 I popped half of one and waited. \u00a0 About a half hour later it hit and I took another 1\/4 of one juat to be sure. \u00a0 I was now ready for anything. \u00a0 Hell, I should have taken it before the injection but who knew? \u00a0 As the MRI tech started to strap me down to the table he said, “I have concern…” \u00a0 “You and your concerns!!!” I said. \u00a0 Turns out I was now “too relaxed.” \u00a0 He was “concerned” that my breathing would be too heavy in the machine because I was so relaxed and I would move. \u00a0 First, I was wearing that machine like a sausage casing or a pair of skinny jeans on, well, me. \u00a0 There wasn’t a chance I was going to move. \u00a0 I then asked if they would put my Glee CD in. \u00a0 I figured happy goofy music would ease any lingering anxiety the meds hadn’t covered. \u00a0 He then tells me he’s “concerned” about adding the cords for the headset as it will make the machine tighter etc. \u00a0 Man, he needs one of those relaxing pills to calm all of his “concerns.” \u00a0 I was fine. \u00a0 At first I asked about the bad techno music I was hearing. \u00a0 Turns out the thumps and bumps of the machine sounds like bad techno music. \u00a0 It didn’t bother me at all. \u00a0 45 minutes later they pulled me out. \u00a0 Then they wanted me to go back in with my bad shoulder up over my head. \u00a0 If I could put my right arm over my head I wouldn’t have had to do that.<\/p>\n
My life has been amazing so far. \u00a0 I would think that while my size has certainly impeded me in some ways it has made me stronger and wiser in others. \u00a0 I don’t feel like I have missed out on anything. \u00a0 As a child I felt like I could do anything and even though the truth of it was I had some minor limitations that were usually discovered in the moment, I have lived and continue to live an exciting and fabulous life. \u00a0 Sure I’m too fat to be a ballerina and I doubt I would pass the tests to be an astronaut (not just because of my size but because if I freaked out in an MRI I doubt they would let me drug up to go into space) and I am not that keen on being a scuba diver. \u00a0 I don’t feel like I am compromising by living my fantastic life at all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasn’t a particularly fat child. \u00a0 Although, I felt huge compared to my friends. \u00a0 I was a “normal” size baby. \u00a0 I was an average sized toddler and so on. \u00a0 Then around 6 I started to gain weight. \u00a0 Not massive amounts but I started to become a chubby child. \u00a0 At… Continue reading Too Fat To Be A Ballerina<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-los-angeles","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lisabrounstein.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}