I feel like I’ve been on a dizzy-ing roller coaster ride for about four days now. I haven’t had time to blog or even to read our blog. My time has not really been my own lately.
A little background: I work at a small police department in a little city with a population of about 35,000 people. I’m not a law enforcement officer but I would say my job is pretty critical for our department….I’m the secretary for the chief and assistant chief of police. It’s not a glamorous job and it’s not something you do to get recognized or to be praised. I know I serve a purpose and I know I do a good job but sometimes it is a bit much.
Last weekend a drug deal went terribly wrong and four people beat up and stabbed another so badly that he died. The four suspects were found quickly and have been put in jail. Drug deals, fights, domestic abuse calls, dog fighting and “shots fired” are common place and I have to say that this bad drug deal did not even phase me.
However, on Wednesday morning, I got to work and no one was there. Shortly after I arrived I found out that an explosion had happened in town and they didn’t know what caused it. A very well-loved and prominent doctor had gone out to start his car and there was an explosion. The details were sketchy at first. All I knew for sure was that the doctor was critically injured and had been sent by Air Wing to a nearby Med Center. Everyone was speculating what caused the explosion but no one was saying for sure. When the ATF, FBI and bomb squad were called out it became apparent that it wasn’t the car battery, as everyone had suspected. At noon I heard it was an IED (improvised explosive device) and shock waves were sent through our whole community.
A prominent, very mild-mannered and sweet doctor had gone out to his car to go to work and had been the victim of a bombing. This man was my doctor when I first moved here. I can’t stress enough how sweet and quiet this man is. My dh and I just saw him at dinner the other night and he was his usual friendly self. He is my chief’s physician. He is very active in his church and has so many friends. He is also a contributor to many charities and is well known in government. I’m still in shock, as is everyone else.
This story quickly became national news in a matter of minutes. My phone didn’t stop ringing all of Wednesday or Thursday. We had local press conferences, Greta Van Susteren, Good Morning America, 48 Hours, CNN, FOX and MSNBC. Those were just a few of the things I had to deal with. We had newspaper coverage from local papers to the New York Times and the Associated Press. I was so tired Friday that I didn’t think I would be able to go on but I got up and went in to work.
I didn’t know it at the time but I was getting sicker and sicker. The work I had put in on Wednesday and Thursday only made the cold I was getting worse. Friday was a calmer day but the cold was sinking in deep. The funny thing was that I handled the media so well, and I stopped whatever I was doing when anyone had a request that no one realized that I still had my day to day duties to take care of…like say, PAYROLL!
I left work Friday feeling completely drained and not really knowing how badly I was really feeling. I didn’t even want to think about having to come in over the weekend to do payroll but I knew if my people were to get paid, it was up to me to get payroll done. I got home after work Friday and went to bed. I was totally exhausted. I stayed in bed and slept all day Saturday. I had chills, no appetite and just felt like crap.
I woke up this morning after highly medicating myself over the weekend and was feeling so much better. I made it in to work and worked on payroll and even had an appetite today.
Ok, now that I’ve told you that story, I want to tell you I ate from stress. I didn’t eat all the time and I didn’t eat a lot of sugar or anything in particular. I just ate while at work, while the phone was endlessly ringing and while I was in the office by myself trying to do all this stuff by myself. The other thing I did was “I allowed myself to stress eat and not beat myself up over it.” Does this mean I’m not recovered from an eating disorder? No. I don’t think so. I think it means I was stressed and I ate. Thin people do the same thing. No big deal. Nothing to call myself names over. It was nothing to throw me into full-blown depression. I just simply ate because I was stressed. Will I do it again? Probably. Maybe not. Who knows. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it and curse myself or restrict foods just because of this incident. That’s what I’ve done all my life.
Today’s a new day. Hopefully I’ll be back to post more soon.
~sas
(The doctor is in serious condition, has lost one eye and has a broken wrist and broken leg. He’s doing much better than expected and will be treated for burns and other injuries locally. That is GREAT news!)
Angry Gray Rainbows 
I think it’s awesome that given all the stress you’ve been under that you’re able to stay grounded around your eating and your humanity.
You know me, so you know what I think about stress eating and being recovered. For the sake of validation though (we all need it sometimes)….
Even NORMAL people stress eat sometimes. The trick is – they don’t freak-out about it. And, yes, like you said – even thin people stress eat.
However recovered you are, perfection is never going to happen. Just because you have an ED history doesn’t mean that you have to be more “orthodox” about food than other normal human beings. Perfectly imperfect and all that, yes?
In fact, I wonder if maybe you needed the extra food, ya know? I know that when I’m under stress and trying to manage huge emotions… let alone dealing with national news outlets and the car bombing of a respected community member PLUS being ill???!!!! Have you considered that perhaps your body REQUIRED the extra food?
Anyway… even if it is emotional eating, I went to ShapelyProse and dug up this old post of FillyJonk’s for ya. It was about holiday eating and how it is NORMAL… but also how emotional eating happens. It’s fine. You’re fine.
Here’s the link for Merry Holiday Eating! Enjoy it, my friend… and keep being kind to yourself. You definitely deserve it.
http://kateharding.net/2008/12/23/merry-holiday-overeating/
It might not have been only stress that was causing you to eat. When you’re sick, or getting sick, sometimes your body will tell you to eat because it needs that extra energy to cope with whatever illness you have (and if you slept all day Saturday, I’m betting you didn’t eat, so those calories from eating all day long at work were necessary).
I saw the news about the explosion and your doctor. I don’t understand what’s wrong with someone that they could do something like that to another person. I hope he recovers, and that the authorities are able to find whoever did it.