It’s no wonder that I weighed 300+ pounds before I started this journey.  It’s a total wonder that I didn’t weigh more.

While I’ve always acknowledged that food and eating has (and will always be) a compulsion for me, I never really believed that it was an emotional thing for me.  I never remembered noticing that I would eat more when I was sad, unhappy, excited, or any of a variety of other emotions like some people can.  Although, I did always admire those people who lost their appetites when they got upset. 

I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to situations in which I start to feel that compulsion to eat.  Okay, that’s a lie, I really haven’t.  Not until today, anyway.  From now on, I’m going to try and pay attention to those compulsions to see if I can find any sort of pattern.  Today, I did discover one connection.

I’m going to come right out and say it.  I live with my parents.  Now, before you can call me a loser (oh, too late?), there are a few things you should know.  I work full-time and pay my own way.  I pay all of my own bills, buy my own groceries, and help out around the house.  While rent prices are extremely expensive in my neck of the woods, the main reason why I am currently still living there is because of my parents’ health.

When I moved back to the state a couple of years after college, I moved in with them, hoping to escape the sucky job that I had left and also hoping to save a bit of money for graduate school.  Then my brother died and being there to support my parents was more important than ever.  Then my parents’ health took a turn for the worse.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a ranting blog post about the state of health care in the United States - needless to say I am thoroughly disgusted with it.  I never posted it though, because I felt it may have been too ranting and because I wasn’t quite satisfied with it.  Perhaps one day.

My dad has suffered from extremely severe epilepsy since he was a preteen.  Some of my earliest memories regarding his epilepsy are in holding him up so that he wouldn’t fall, and when when he fell and hit his head on our hardwood kitchen chair.  I still remember the puddle of blood and having to dial 911.

Then the summer after my brother died, he had a seizure and fell down our stairs and shattered his kneecap.  He had to have it totally removed and currently does not have one at all.  Who knew you could walk without one?  I didn’t.  Then various other events occurred leading up to my mom being diagnosed with breast cancer.  Not only was I glad to be here to help keep an eye on my dad, but also to help her through that difficult time.

My dad’s epilepsy over the last year seems to have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.  He seems to be falling quite often lately, much more than he used to.  For many years, he’s taken more than 12 pills a day, and still has multiple seizures almost every day.  That leads doctors to label it “uncontrollable.”  His doctors have pretty much given up on finding anything to cure him.  In fact, he ended up in intensive care twice when I was in college.  Luckily, that hasn’t happened since, and we will never give up hope.  We love him.

Now, you all know I work evenings and it has worked out well.  Since I’m there (usually sleeping) during the day, I can usually hear if he needs help or falls.  Then my mom gets home, we overlap our schedules a bit, and I head to work.

So, that brings me to today.  It was about 8:00 a.m. and I woke up to a loud thud.  My first thought was “Oh God.”  I threw on my robe and ran out to our hallway and his bedroom door was shut.  So, I gradually opened it and sure enough.  He was trying to get up off of the floor.  God only knows what all he bumped into.  That man has more bruises than…I don’t know what.  Someone playing bumper cars without their car?  Yeah, I was grasping there.    He seemed to be okay though.  I watched him get up and orient himself and then get back in bed.  I checked back a few minutes later and he was still in bed, so I figured it was okay to go back to sleep.

Yeah right.  I called a spoke to my mom - she asked that I always let her know if he falls - and then tried to fall asleep.  I tossed and turned, turned and tossed.  I couldn’t get my nerves to settle down, so I finally turned on my bedside light and decided to try reading for a while.  Hopefully the distraction would calm me down and make me sleepy.  I usually hold my book with one hand when I’m reading.  That’s when my brain noticed that my other hand was empty and decided that that needed to be remedied right then.  And my thoughts immediately went to the No Pudge brownies I made last night.  (By the way, if you haven’t tried them and like your brownies extra fudgy, you must try them!)  I had to have one!  Of course, I didn’t leave it at one, but had two instead.  So, I laid in bed reading and stuffing my face with brownies.  Fat-free brownies, but brownies nonetheless.  At least I stopped at two, right?

While I was reading and eating, I heard my dad go downstairs and since he seemed to get down there okay, I figured he must be doing better.  It was right about the time that I was finishing my second brownie (about a half hour later), that I heard it again.  THUD.  Again, on with the robe and out of my room I flew.

My dad was sitting in the middle of our living room floor, the day’s newspaper strewn around him.  He had fallen into our footstool, knocked everything off that I had sitting on it, hit his TV tray (that he keeps his laptop on), and God only knows what else.  The worst part for him wasn’t just the bruises, but the fact that he didn’t stop having seizures there.  He continued having them for the next several hours.  I got him up into his chair and settled back.  I also ran and got him an ice pack for the back of his neck.  It’s a wonder to me that he doesn’t have frostbite.  His seizures seem to get worse when he gets overheated, so we’ve found that putting an ice pack on the back of his neck helps cool him off and calm him down sometimes.  Not today.

I sat in my mom’s chair and watched him for maybe half an hour or so and saw that he just kept having them and having them, so I called my mom.  There is a drug that his doctor told us to give him (if we can get him to swallow it) if he can’t stop having the seizures.  I called her to find out if I should give him one.  She picked up the phone and when I said he had fallen again, she immediately said, “I’m coming home.”  She also told me to get him to take one of the pills.  I did so and sat back and kept an eye on him.  He kept trying to read the paper, but that obviously wasn’t going so well when he kept having seizure after seizure.  At this point, we always start to wonder if we’re going to have to call 911.

My mom was home within 15 minutes.  We kept an eye on him for a while and I answered all of her questions about what I’d seen and then she told me to go back to bed so I could get some sleep for work.  Yeah, right.  I tossed and turned for at least an hour before I finally fell asleep.  Two hours later, my alarm went off.  Needless to say, Pamela is a bit sleepy tonight.

After I was ready to leave for work, my mom informed me that he had continued to have seizures the entire time I had been asleep.  She finally got him to go to sleep, but she said that he seemed to continue having them in his sleep.  After telling her to call me if she needed me, I headed to work.

And so, here I am writing about my day.  I just got an e-mail from my dad forwarding me links to items discussed on Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow tonight, so he is obviously feeling better.  Thank God.  I worry about him.  Both my mom’s and my first thought was that he had had too much excitement over the election yesterday.  My dad is a huge politics buff.  I mean, he watches congress convene on CNN.

So there you have it.  A day in the life of me.  An unusual day, of course.  Most days are much quieter and I’m able to get a full eight hours of sleep.  But it’s days like this that make me glad I’m a 31-year old woman living with her parents.  Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there?

I obviously love both of my parents.  I’m scared for my dad and worried about my mom (who has her own health problems), but since my brother’s death in 2003 I’ve realized just how important they are to me.  I don’t know what I would do without them.

Like many people keep their hands busy to keep themselves from eating, I apparently sometimes keep my hands busy feeding myself to allow my brain to zone out.

What about you?  Are you ever an emotional eater?