The Scale Conspiracy

Shelly and I had just been directed to an exam room at OU Medical for my consultation with Dr. Selby. Before I had a chance to sit down, a young nurse fetched me to take a short walk with her down the hallway to be weighed and measured. I can’t recall her name, and unfortunately, my brief interaction with her generated an intense feeling of indignation in me much like the ire of the woman in the story above. It certainly wasn’t intentional on her part, and I have reflected on the incident as a possible example of how I may have changed or been influenced by some effect of chemotherapy. On the other hand, that sounds like such a convenient copout, I can barely stand to use it.

As I strolled down the hall with the young nurse, she invited me to step on the scale to be weighed and measured. Now, I will tell you without hesitation that I believe it is possible that the scales in doctors’ offices are all calibrated for some nefarious purpose. Compared to my scale at home, I always weigh at least 5 pounds heavier on the scale at a doctor’s office – every time. They are not accurate, and I can prove it…or maybe it’s just a matter of who you trust. I’ll go with the entity that makes a profit from accurate weigh-ins.

All of you who have traveled by air know that every airline charges a fee, usually around $30 dollars, for a checked bag weighing no more than 50 pounds. Part of preparing for every trip I have ever taken before Roy passed away where it was necessary for me to check a bag, I packed it carefully and he would weigh it at home prior to leaving for the airport. I have since acquired a luggage scale, but at the time, he would use the bathroom scale and first weigh himself as a baseline, and then he would hold my bag in his arms and step back on the scale, make note of the total, and subtract his weight so we would have a figure that represented the weight of my bag. If it weighed even a pound over 50, I would adjust the contents until it was a pound or two under just to give myself a cushion.

When I arrived at the terminal and set my bag on the scale at the check-in counter, it always weighed what it did when Roy and I went through his routine at home with my bathroom scale. Within a pound. Every. Single. Time. I guarantee if I took the same bag to the doctor’s office and weighed it on his scale, it would cost me an additional fee because it would be at least 5 pounds overweight.

While the weight thing isn’t a surprise to me anymore, the measurement of my height certainly came as a shock. As we approached the offending apparatus, the young nurse asked me how tall I was. The conversation was eerily similar to that in the story above.

“I’m 5 feet 4-3/4 inches tall,” I said.

“Hmm. I don’t think that’s right,” she said, “because I’m 5-4, and I’m taller than you are.”

The first flash of indignation hit me as I stepped on the scale and turned around so she could adjust the metal bar on top of my head. The voice in my brain said to myself, If you’re going to question my answer, why do you bother to ask me?

“Okay, you can step away,” she said. “Yes, you’re actually 5 feet, 3 inches tall. See?”

With incredulity I turned around and looked to where she was pointing with her finger. The bar was positioned at 63 inches.

Remember I told you about my propensity to curse? I had to bite my tongue, but my tone could not disguise the annoyance that washed over me like a tidal wave.

“I know we all shrink as we get older, but an inch and three-quarters?! How is that possible?” I asked, almost shrieking.

While I might like to say that she reacted with a smug “I told you so,” she really didn’t, but she also didn’t seem to realize how our brief interaction had affected me so adversely.

Oh, how oblivious young people can be sometimes, I thought, and tried to calm myself down. Could the compression fractures and other problems in my spine actually account for an inch and three-quarter difference in my height, which until this afternoon, at least as far as I was concerned, had been 5 feet, 4-3/4 inches?

The consultation where this incident occurred was three weeks ago, and the implications have been slow to hit me. The next time I gave it a moment’s thought, which has since developed into an obsession, was when I read Dr. Selby’s notes from the visit. “BMI: 26.6 – Overweight.”

What the ----?!

When I was at my heaviest back in 2007, I weighed 170 pounds. I think most of my friends would say I didn’t look like I weighed that much, but I was miserable. I dropped a few pounds over the years, but it wasn’t until my stepdaughter’s wedding in 2018 with a dive trip to follow that I felt motivated to get serious about it and decided to change my eating habits. I

used the MyFitnessPal app to track what I ate, limited my caloric intake, and within six months I had dropped nearly 30 pounds. I felt much better about myself. Here’s a picture of me in Roatan, Honduras on a dive trip after the weight loss.

Now that I’m shorter than I thought I was – that for years I thought I was – I am struggling to come to terms with the implications. On 21 February 2012, as far as I was concerned, I had a reasonably healthy BMI, and I was most certainly not overweight. That all changed in one day. When I lost the weight in 2017-18, I developed new eating habits to which I try to adhere today, but I realize if I’m going to impact the figures my doctor includes in his notes, I’ll have to modify my diet a little more to reach my ideal weight. According to the BMI calculator on this web page: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/bmi-for-women#bmi-calculator, “normal” weight for me is 104.4 to 140.6. However, in light of the medical obstacles I face, namely, the bone marrow transplant, I might ease up on myself. Chances are, I’ll drop some weight without trying.

In the meantime, I think I’ll blame the chemo.