Things have been quiet round here for a couple of reasons.  For one, my husband and I were out of town for a week beginning February 7th.  For two, late in the trip and then when we got back, I got myself a flu, which, thanks to my awesome asthma, turned into pneumonia, a trip I took once before as a teenager, and not one I care to repeat again.

Unsurprisingly, this has basically kicked my ass for the past two weeks.  I'm recovering briskly now, though it's been a hell of a month.

This illness, unsurprisingly, necessitated a trip to my doctor's office.  I like my doctor immensely, which is a huge gift, and one I especially appreciate considering every other doctor I've ever had in my entire life has been at best antagonistic and at worst downright abusive regarding my weight.

For most folks, a normal aspect of any doctor's visit is getting on the scale.  I don't get on the scale.  I kindly and firmly refuse, and have done so for several years.  My doctor and I have discussed this, and I have assured him I am open to any conversations he wants to have about my weight if he has reason to believe that it is negatively affecting my health.  I have also promised to tell him if I notice any sudden and unexplained changes in my size.  But I won't get on the scale.  Not backwards.  Not with eyes closed.  Not in a house, not with a mouse - the scale is the green eggs and ham I will not eat.

I have a few (totally individual and personal) reasons for this. 

One, the scale is bad for my head.  I started consciously dieting at nine years of age, and as a result my numbers obsession runs deep and robust through my psyche.  Getting on the scale is traumatic.  I spent years denying this to myself and trying to force a comfort with it, and it does not work - it just causes me to regress to that weight obsession.

Two, I strongly believe that the specificity of the number on the scale really doesn't tell my medical team anything more than they can easily see with their eyes: I'm fat.  Quite fat.  If my doctor thinks my fat is causing me harm, the precise number of pounds I'm carrying is really a moot point.   I also feel as though the scale can be a red herring.  More than once I've seen doctors' and nurses' treatment of me change simply because of the number a scale told them.  I refuse to allow that to be a distraction in my treatment.  Without regular weigh-ins, I feel as though my weight gets less emphasis when my overall wellness is being considered.  This may or may not be true; but it feels better to me.

Refusing the scale was a skill I had to learn.  It took years.  And many situations in which I'd work myself up to say "no", but then immediately comply when asked.  Blame white-coat-syndrome, I don't know.  But I always feel like it's a test, even now, that I am never even asked to be weighed anymore, since I presume there's a note to that effect in my file.

So I was a little surprised when I visited my doctor last week - owing to extreme high fevers, difficulty breathing, and my slow acceptance that yeah, this isn't just a cold - and the assistant who saw me in led me into a room and pointed at a scale, asking me to step up. 

Ordinarily, as I said, I have to psych myself up a bit to Refuse The Scale, even now, when I've been doing it for years.  I don't like having to explain why.  I don't like the moment of tension between me, the patient, and the assistant just trying to do her job.  I dread it.

But when this assistant asked me, me with my fever and my wheezing and my swollen vocal chords, I surprised myself - instead of freezing, or complying, or taking a moment to compose a response, I instantly croaked out, "Why?"  As though it were totally bizarre to me that I should get on a scale in the doctor's office.  It was a beautifully organic reaction.

The assistant looked at me blankly, and then mumbled something about "weight, temperature, blood pressure", which I understood to mean "Um, because it's what I'm supposed to do."

I just shook my head and said, simply, "No."

And that was that.  No explanation, no elaboration.  We moved on.

It was a nice surprise.  And it was nice to realize that after so many years, even when my defenses were weakest, I was able to know that this was a choice I could make, and that I could choose to say no.

I'll call that this silver lining to this otherwise-grotesque experience.