nysha sarah-anne joseph/ 10th of feb/ nysha@y7mail.com, twitter:nyysha/ listening to mumford & sons/
reading Isaiah/ the owner of a bubble gum pink hairdryer / weather: spring baby yeah!
for what could possibly be almost a month now i'd been sick. like ridiculously sick. First i was trying to recover from my wisdom teeth surgery then i caught an awful bug ... coughing and nausea then as i was starting to recover from that I got hit with another bug. Relentless. It took my dim mind a while to work out that I was probably picking up the bugs from the kids I work with. Since the next time I went in to work their coughs sounded very familiar, of course they weren't as sick and weak as I had been. evil disease carrying children who still look disarmingly cute.
As a result of my weakened state on one of the days I passed out and so of course my very dramatic mother decided to take me to my GP (who also happens to be my uncle). My equally concerned uncle told me to take a blood test.
So results of seeing my uncle and the blood tests: I have a healthy liver and kidneys, my vitamin levels are good (hah! take that mom & stop trying to force them down my throat) but I have very low iron, something 2 of my other girl cousins had so that was almost expected and get this ! I'm underweight. I was shocked. I've been 53 kg ever since secondary school sometimes 54kg. And (I should tell you that I'm not too pleased about this) I'm 166cm. For the last few years I've been happily telling people that I'm 167 maybe 169. It was lies all lies. I'm 166 cm :( But I guess I'm missing the main point here. I'm underweight. My uncle said my bmi was low enough to try for top-notch modelling (my seriously deluded uncle) but I did tell him that modelling was never one of my life's ambitions. At least my mom thought it was funny. And then fully taking advantage of the fact that he was my uncle as well as my doctor, he says, "Nyshamol, you HAVE to eat more. Make sure you eat more red meat. Your iron is very low!" Then came the dreaded question, "What do you have for breakfast?" "Umm...milo?" and my cruel cruel mother smirked in the corner. Then comes the almighty "that's all ?!! " and then the spiel about breakfast being the most important meal of the day etc. But because I'm actually annoyed with myself for being underweight I've been studiously having proper various combinations of cereal, toast, milo & juice for breakfast followed by my poo-blackening iron tablets (ok maybe you didn't need so much detail). And I've been eating more. A few days ago I had 2 dinners. An early dinner before I went out then when I got back I felt hungry again so I had a second dinner.Twice. And yesterday I had 2 krispy kreme donuts. It may not be the most healthy but hey it should help with putting on weight. I hope I'm doing the right thing (well I realise the donuts were pushing it) but I thought I was listening to my body before and not overeating and that I was a healthy weight but as it turned out I was underweight. I help out at church with younger girls and so many of them are struggling with weight issues, some already have eating disorders and they're only 12 and 13 ! It breaks my heart. So to hear that I was underweight, I wasn't going to just let that slide. And the fact that the combination of being underweight and iron deficiency was the reason I had fallen sick so badly I was going to do all that I could to never fall that sick or feel that weak again.
But here's the confusing part. I don't tell everybody (though the fact that I'm blogging about it might mean otherwise) that I'm underweight and iron deficient just a handful of people. I don't mind telling people it's just a random topic of conversation. It only comes up when people ask about my health post-being sick. One older lady said she wasn't surprised that I was underweight and that she could've told me that; another older lady said that she didn't think I was underweight she said I look healthy! And that's what I've always thought. My cousin in Singapore when I mentioned it to him said that the WHO recently said that there should be different bmis for asians. So he asked if i wanted him to check with his dad (he's a doctor as well) if I was underweight. I didn't want the my 2 uncles arguing over my bmi so I let it pass. But seeing how i'm fully embracing the eat-more and stuff my face more than my brothers is going I should probably make sure it's not all in vain. Now that would be annoying.
I must say thought if you're still reading all this you must be an amazingly patient friend who is genuinely interested in my well-being. Thank you!
So I'll go investigate my underweightedness further and in the mean time enjoy the excuse to overeat! Hurrah!
