Читать книгу The Spirit Told Me What the Doctors Couldn't - Jody L. Williams - Страница 6

¹ In you, Lord, I have taken refuge;

let me never be put to shame;

deliver me in your righteousness.

² Turn your ear to me,

come quickly to my rescue;

be my rock of refuge,

a strong fortress to save me.

—Psalm 31:1-2

With the severance package I received from Columbia Gas Group, we moved to the Hickory, North Carolina area to begin a new phase in our life together. We bought a house in a new development in Conover, North Carolina and I began working for Corning Cable Systems in strategic planning. Lisa took a position as a teacher in a private school as a first grade teacher. Our lives seemed to finally be settling down, allowing us to put down roots.

My weight was still bouncing around sometimes 230 – 240 pounds, sometimes peaking up to 250 – 255 pounds. I continued to workout, lifting weights and walking several times a week. We lived on a circle that measured a mile around and I would walk at least two laps a day, trying to get in up to four laps a day every morning before work at a pace of twenty minutes or less per mile.

We searched for and finally found a church home at Christ Alive Church. This was a small church that was meeting in the band room of a local middle school. During our time there, I took ministry classes to learn more about the theology of the charismatic teachings and ended up getting my license in the Assemblies of God. We experienced many miracles of God in both of us and to others in the congregation and watched the church grow to several hundred people and the ability to purchase land for a building.

In December of 2001, we were blessed to find out we were finally going to become parents. By the end of January, we knew we were going to have a boy and on July 9^th, 2002, Noah Scott Williams made us happy new parents. Now I had an even more important reason to get healthy. I was a new dad and had a family to take care of. On April 23, 2005, we had a second son, Joshua Tate Williams and on April 30, 2007, we had a little girl, Abigail Joy Williams. With the addition of three kids and all the events that go with raising kids, our lives got very busy. But our lives were also enriched with the special blessings that raising kids brings. My family became one of the main focuses and my motivation for getting healthy.

Unfortunately, my health did not improve, despite how hard I worked. In fact, what I had feared most was beginning to come true, that my continued high weight would lead to serious health problems. In 2002, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on medication. One pill a day to start but eventually increasing to two pills a day. In 2004, I was diagnosed with diabetes and put on Metformin to help control my blood sugar. My body was getting less and less healthy every year. My wife and parents were very concerned about my health. My mom would tell me that I had to do something or I might have a heart attack or stroke and leave my family without anyone to take care of them. Lisa was always helpful, helping me watch what I was eating and making sure I was exercising.

The most frustrating part of this was that I was exercising and even though sometimes I ate more than I should, it was not sweets and the normal bad or unhealthy foods that most overweight, unhealthy people were known for. Most people didn’t believe me.

They would give me advice, “Just cut down on the late night snacks, cut out junk food, you have to watch that sweet tooth.”

This wasn’t my problem. I didn’t snack or eat junk foods. My lunch and dinner helpings were sometimes too large. But considering my workouts, this should have more than offset any weight gain. I did notice that I began to feel more and more stressed. I seemed to always be on edge and this lead to emotional eating.

I remember visiting one doctor’s office requesting that they look at my hormones to see if there could be something wrong. Before even seeing the doctor, the nurse told the doctor my request in the hallway.

He said, “Look, I’m not taking extra time and money to run any test. It is simple. He is eating too much. He needs to eat less and workout more.”

Apparently, the doctor thought I couldn’t hear him through the walls of the exam room but I could. When the nurse came back in, I told her I heard the doctor’s opinion and didn’t need to wait any longer to see him. I just got dressed and left feeling totally frustrated and alone. I felt like no one believed me or would take the time to help me find out what was wrong.

In 2004 after being diagnosed with diabetes, I started noticing that I was more tired than normal and lost some of my sexual desire. I talked to my doctor about this and was diagnosed with low testosterone. In fact, the test showed my level was so low that it would be equal to what an eighty-year-old man would be expected to have. He put me on a gel at first but moved me to monthly shots soon after. This helped with my energy and desire but no further testing was done to find out why my testosterone was so low at the age of thirty-one.

This was an unfortunate pattern of care that I had been receiving from the medical community. Doctors were treating each problem separately. No one was looking at the whole picture to say, does this all fit together to show something other than a lazy, overeating, obese person. No one was listening to me when I told them how I was working out, or how I was watching my diet or that I was not eating sweets. They just looked at me and saw what they thought was an overweight, non-exercising, obese person who was irresponsible, lazy and killing himself with food.

My weight was even affecting the way I was treated at work. I joined Corning Cable Systems in a very competitive MBA program that brought highly capable graduates into the strategic planning department. We worked directly with the executive managers of the company to create business plans for the organization. Once an individual worked in this capacity for a couple of years, they would roll out into the higher manager levels to get line experience with the expectation of being future executives.

I remember having a lunch meeting with a senior vice president and other leaders of the company. The senior vice president turned to me and said, “If there is anything that holds you back in this company, it will be the way you look. If someone can’t control their weight, they can’t control other things.”

I felt like crawling under the table. At other times, I had others tell me that I needed to change the way I looked or dressed to be more successful. I know that this type of statement could be considered insensitive or even harassment, but I know that they were trying to be helpful and not hurtful. They knew I had the talent and ability, but in this world, the way someone looks causes people to draw conclusions about a person’s personality, intelligence, likeability and many other traits that have nothing to do with their weight. This put me at a dire disadvantage that I would have a hard time overcoming and unfortunately, that was the reality of it.

My weight stayed around the 240 mark and it began to affect my back. In 2001, I had my first of many incidences of “throwing my back out.” I went to a fantastic chiropractor, Dr. Davis. He worked with me for weeks to get me so I could walk. He would see me sometimes twice a day and use all types of techniques to reduce the stress and pain. He, too, spoke to me about my weight explaining how this was putting so much strain on my back and knees. I continued to see him monthly, or when flare-ups would hit, for the next ten years.

In 2007, I left corporate America and started my own company. It had always been a dream of mine to run my own business; to be successful and make money based on what I did and not on anything else. I purchased a business consulting franchise called Action Business Coaching. I loved helping business owners develop business strategies and execute those strategies to grow their businesses. I became a local public speaker focused on business improvement, growth strategies and motivation. I felt I had found my calling in life. I was helping people and using all of my training from my MBA and corporate experiences to help local business owners grow and be successful.

During this period, I had several, what seemed to be, unrelated injuries. Twice I broke ribs. Once while working on plumbing under the sink. I was attempting to loosen a pipe and felt a sharp, burning pain shoot through my side to my back. The second time I was rolling around on the floor with my son, Noah. I was lying on the floor throwing him up and catching him. After doing this a couple of times, when he came down I felt the same pain shoot through my ribs to my back as I caught him. I was able to put him down safely but was in major pain for weeks afterward.

Another injury I sustained was a torn triceps muscle as I was trying to catch an older man from falling. Thankfully, I was able to keep him from hitting the ground and hurting himself, but I tore the muscle in the back of my arm. And as I mentioned before, my back continued to give me troubles. I thought all of these injuries and ailments were due to my weight and that maybe I was just clumsy, but in reality, these were also symptoms of Cushing’s disease: weak muscles, joint pain and problems, bones breaking easily. But again, this didn’t sound any alarms or cause my doctors to do tests to see why this was happening.

One advantage of owning my own business was that it allowed me to make trade-offs with other business owners for services that we both needed, otherwise known as bartering. In particular, I was able to make an arrangement with the owners of a gym. I would help them with their business strategy, marketing, financial and operational plans in return for a gym membership and personal training for my wife and me. I began working with the owner’s wife and she put together a weekly workout plan. I would meet with her every other day and lift weights and do flexibility workouts. This was a great arrangement for me and I was really able to get serious about working out daily. I finally had a professional who could give me advice on the best exercises to help me lose weight and get back in shape. I jumped right in with great excitement and really enjoyed working out. I felt myself getting stronger but saw no change in my weight.