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Blogs by Linda Lange
IT'S HER BODY, BUT ... 10/22/2013 8:57:30 AM
I'm concerned about my friend, but maybe it's time to shut up. strode away from Lambeau Field, but turned back as I realized Pam was lagging behind. “Go ahead,” she waved me on. Instead, I slowed my pace to hers. We had come there to be together, after all.
A few weeks ago, three friends and I reunited in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We do this every fall; since 1998, we’ve missed only twice. We catch up on each other’s lives, revisit favorite haunts, and (of course) take in a Packer game.
Del looked great; she’s been working with a personal trainer. Carla carried a pedometer to count her 10,000 daily steps. Me? Seven years ago, I developed Type 2 diabetes. My doctor put me on a diet and advised that exercise was crucial in controlling the disease. I’ve gained back ten of the fifty pounds I lost, but I continue to work out, and my sugars are normal.
Then there’s Pam. She also has Type 2, but it’s not controlled, although she’s on medication. She said to me this year, as she has before, “Your doctor scared you about diabetes. Mine didn’t scare me.” C’mon, you’ve had it for what, ten years? Time enough to become wary of potential complications like nerve damage or blindness.
Pam can’t walk as fast or as far as the rest of us. This year she had trouble getting up from a low seat. Sure, people age at different rates, but I think the problem is her sedentary lifestyle.
Pam hates exercising. She makes excuses. It’s too hot for walking in Louisiana, and her home is on a busy highway. She doesn’t live near a health club like I do. We give her flak. Pam doesn’t get angry; that’s not her way. But it casts a shadow on our time together.
I know I shouldn’t lecture my BFF. As Del and I, the liberals of our group, maintain—in another context—it’s her body and no one has the right to tell her what to do with it. I also realize everyone’s metabolism is different. Pam could match me, bite for bite, step for step, and she might gain weight while I lose.
She’s made progress, after all. She’s thirty, maybe forty pounds below her top weight. And now she’s found a sweet wine to substitute for the fruity cocktails she used to drink. Unlike dry wines, it tastes good to her, and it doesn’t raise her blood sugar as much as the mixed drinks. But still, she tests higher on medication than I do without. Maybe she needs to be more proactive with her doctor. Or maybe she simply needs to work out.
I enjoy exercise, and I hope that one day Pam can feel what I feel. I’m elated when I find my zone, that magical place I discovered—on a playground with Pam, Del, and Carla—more than fifty years ago. I love to feel my muscles working together. To be able to let go, yet stay in control.
But she could throw that back at me. Pam’s devout; I’m an atheist. I’m sure she wants me to experience what she feels in church—the rapture, cleansing, whatever convinces her of the rightness of it. That’s not happening. So it’s unfair for me to tell her how she should feel.
Carla, Del, and I don’t mean to patronize Pam. We’re concerned. The bottom line: We want her to be well enough to return to Green Bay with us, next year and afterwards. She completes us.
