Fessing up

I'll admit I eat like an American.  I've had too much fast food, red meat, soda, and processed food-like product.  I am quite disturbed by the American "white is better" theory.  White flour, white sugar, white rice.  Food racism.  What a curse!

Let's not forget that our public schools implemented these bleached out products just as often as our poor families; at a private school I attended we were given Subway, McDonald's, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut every week.  They bought the hype.  Convenience won over health. 

I was a fairly healthy person through my first pregnancies.  In between pregnancies I would progressively get back into my soda addiction.  My worst soda habit is Red Bull.  They are my equivalent to cigarettes (thank goodness I don't smoke).  I usually plateau at a gallon of red bull a day.  Not water.  No water.  Sugar, caffeine and majorly too much B-complex. 

My last pregnancy I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and mitral valve prolapse.  I got to wear a heart monitor all day and night (except in the shower) for a month of that pregnancy.  I have no way to prove it was the red bull.  I have no reason to believe it was anything else.  That pregnancy ended almost three weeks early when I showed up at the hospital vomiting uncontrollably.  I was in labor and my liver was failing.  I had an emergency C-section.  We all came out alive.  If I hadn't gone the hospital that morning, I wouldn't be typing the same (or any) story. 

After I finished breastfeeding, I hopped back on the red bull train.  My youngest will be 17 months soon.  Most days I drink 48-64 ounces of that vial concoction.  I'm not sure why I drink something that makes me hot and angry.  I'm not sure why I drink something that depletes my appetite and causes major diarrhea.  I honestly think it is a subconscious desire to have something.  Something I thought I could control.  

I'll never have a perfect heart again.  I've done irreversible damage.  My liver is always going to be slightly wonky due to a genetic condition I carry; also my lungs are less durable from that condition.  I still expect to live a long enough life to meet my grandchildren.  I want to be at my great-grandkids births.  I want to have enough time on this planet to spread positive energy to others.  I must change my lifestyle.