My health always limits what I can do, especially day to day. I save spoons for the important things so that I can be more up and outgoing and have a good day (that I pay for later), but the daily things some people forget are hard. I don't mind that they're hard, that's just the way it is, and I can handle it. If I can't, you'll be among the first to know!
At the grocery store, the pace I cruise the aisles of our local Stater Brothers, how far I can reach before my arms go numb, how much I can lift are all things that slow me down. Even the length of the trip depends on how many spoons I have, and I sometimes have to make several trips in a week because I just don't have the energy to do it all at once.
When I do head to the grocery store and stock up on the most healthy goods from the outside aisle of the market, I face blatant and obvious ridicule. Despite smiling at those who peer into my cart, then look up at me with obvious and blatant digust, I keep smiling. Week after week this endures, with only familiar smiles and casual conversation with the checkers and baggers. We share recipes and places to shop. We smile and laugh at the goings on within the store. We share condolences and prayers. The employees might be getting paid to be nice, but they're always sincere.
The contrast has changed over the past two weeks of having no hair. Smiles are abundant from fellow shoppers. A kind woman offered to fetch flour off the shelf for me. The butcher offered to fetch a special cut of meat for me and tenderize it without me asking. A gentleman who has sneered at me before smiled and offered to put Gideon's milk into the cart for me. The baggers insist on helping me out to the car and returning my cart for me. A gentlemen outside the store grabbed a cart for me and cleaned the handle with the disinfectant wipes and smiled at me. The bakery worker offered to carry a cake out to my car for me.
After years of shopping this same store and being the person I am, rarely experiencing such acts of kindness, this all happens in three trips over two weeks. I haven't changed anything but my hair.
I'm still the same smiling woman with a horrible disease that I was three weeks ago. It's ironic how I change one thing about my appearance to ease a daily personal struggle and outward support becomes commonplace. In some ways, this only really goes to show how fucked up our society treats fat people without even knowing their story, or even caring. In some ways, it shows humanity still has redemptive qualities.
During Cushing's Awareness month several medical professionals were quoted as saying the quality of life with Cushing's is even worse than that of cancer patients. I don't want to compare, because illnesses suck, period. But it sure would be nice if people actually remembered that we're all human, and we all have our battles.
