Fat Old Woman in Las Vegas: Gambling, Dieting and Wicked Fun (2 page)

I had forty dollars in quarters to lose before I left Vegas and went home to my real life … that of a boring, frugal housewife slash small time comedian slash even smaller time writer.

Until that trip, I was a coupon cutting, thrift store shopping, cheap-as-dirt gal. But, because I was in Sin City, nothing I did actually mattered, right? Besides, to this day, I have this rule about being on a vacation, and that is no rules are allowed. I drink what I want to drink, eat what I want to eat, flirt with whomever I want to, and then at the end, I come back to the grim reality of calorie counting, liquor restrictions, penny counting and a medieval-like monogamous role as dutiful wife.

I’d adopted the ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ attitude way before the slogan was popularized by an ad campaign. What is a vacation for if not to take a break from everything in your life that makes you tense? And when in Rome? Always do what the locals do, right?

Even if it is something you’ll regret later.

The fact that I was in Vegas gleefully planning to lose forty friggin’ dollars was not out of character for me, at all. I was merely using my hall pass from my vacation philosophy. In those days, forty bucks bought two weeks’ worth of groceries. And there I was, cheapo me, preparing to throw it away in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

As soon as I dropped my first coin into the slot, I noticed a tingle emerge from somewhere inside my soul. It was the same kind of excitement I felt when I scooped the first spoonful of a hot fudge sundae or opened a box of Whitman’s chocolate. The anticipation of what was to come in those circumstances always led me to the point of swooning. All rational thought dissolved into a primitive lust for what was coming next. Gambling was beginning to have the same effect as sugar had on me.

The slot machines I played were Triple 7 machines, the most common machines at the time. I’d gamble a quarter and two white sevens would pop up … not a penny in profit would be paid. I’d lost my money. Mixed colors of triple sevens popped up a few times on the pay line. Twenty quarters! A five-dollar profit, if I didn’t count the money I initially gambled. But still ...

And then it happened. I put in a single quarter, pulled the lever, stepped over to the next machine to deposit my coin. Before I put it in, I heard the bells go off and saw lights flashing on the machine I stepped away from.

I glanced back at the machine. Three red sevens were lined up. Three red sevens! On the payline! I’d won fifty friggin’ dollars! I couldn’t believe it!

I was happier than a pig rolling around in rhinestones and mud. I was hooting and hollering when a man from behind said sarcastically, “Too bad you didn’t bet TWO quarters.”

Why was this stranger raining on my parade? Didn’t he see what had just happened? Didn’t he … it was then I happened to look at the top of the machine. I hadn’t really paid it heed before, and if I had, I still wouldn’t have bet TWO quarters at a time. Who would do such a thing?

But the sinking feeling came over me, one that would stay with me until I arrived back in Minneapolis. If I had only put in one more coin, a measly twenty-five cents, I would have won a thousand dollars.

My initial joy melted into deep regret and feelings of shame. Why was I so cheap? Why did I always have to be so gosh darn thrifty? If I’d only invested another quarter … and this was also the first time I’d used the term ‘invested’ connected with gambling … the winnings would have paid for both our trip and the brake job we put off to head to Vegas.

Downtrodden, I cashed in the rest of my coins and trudged back to the hotel room.

As soon as I opened the door, I started whining to my husband about what I could have won. He interrupted me to begin his lecture on the odds of ever winning in gambling, explaining the basic laws of probability. His sermon ended with the age old “they didn’t build Las Vegas on winners, only losers.”

That’s what I got for marrying someone who minored in mathematics and majored in clichés.

∞

Robert Frost is a favorite poet of mine. As a young teen, I devoured Frost’s poetry nightly. Early on, I identified with the hired man in his poem
The Death of the Hired Man
. I sadly understood what Frost meant when he wrote the line “Home is where when you have to go, they have to let you in.”

In the verse, the handyman had come ‘home’ to die which was a bit ironic since he’d hardly been stellar help. He’d usually leave at the time the couple needed him the most. Still, it was one of the few places on earth he felt welcomed over the years. When he needed to find a place to die, it was the only logical choice.

Twenty years and nineteen trips later, I wonder if Las Vegas has become that place for me, a place where they have to let me in. And a place where, if I paid any attention to my doctor’s warnings, I could easily die.

Traveling two thousand miles to Las Vegas by a combination of automobile, train, and bus were somewhat hampered by my health issues. There were days when I couldn’t make it across my living room without screaming in pain. The myriad of my escalating problems made going anywhere, except the nearest urgent care, a highly questionable adventure.

Physical obstacles are common among the overweight elderly. Yet, I never think of myself in that exact terminology. Rather, I am merely “kind of old” and “kind of obese”. The term ‘kind of’ is one of my favorite qualifiers. It allows me to use the correct term ‘old’ and ‘obese” to describe myself, yet somehow softens the blow.

I’ve never been one who excels in self-awareness. That singular concept is beyond my limited capabilities. I have no idea how others perceive me, or perhaps choose not to know. Instead, I believe every person I encounter jumps head first into my river of self-denial.

In an era when releasing private medical information is criminal, I have few reservations on divulging mine. Besides, most of them are painfully obvious. You’d never mistake me for a marathon runner. Or a mall walker.

I am one hundred pounds overweight. No tunic top, no matter how “long and flowing” will hide that little fact. I might be able to conceal five or ten pounds, but industrial strength Spandex could not hide what I’d like hidden. And, though I blog about being a large woman, make jokes about it on stage in front of a hundred strangers, I have difficulty typing the exact number of my excess poundage. But, it’s not just my weight that I would like to forget about. My health problems are one gigantic snowball growing bigger with each passing day.

My high blood pressure caused my congestive heart failure. CHF caused my heart arrhythmia. Arrhythmia led to a stroke. Having a stroke meant I had to have an MRI. During the MRI, the radiologist discovered a benign brain tumor. The position of my tumor proves that one’s grey matter is prime real estate. The only thing that matters is location, location, location. The growth, though small at the moment, is situated directly behind my eye socket. It if grows any larger, it can cause life-threatening seizures and blindness. My one hope is that it continues to grow at a snail’s pace.

The other hope I hold dear is that I make it to Las Vegas and home again, alive and in one piece.

∞

Vegas isn’t the best place for a person with bad knees either. Bad knees can be caused by an injury, obesity, or jogging for decades on concrete or asphalt surfaces. In my case, I was born with knees that were not normal. Decades of being overweight only added to my unseen birth defect. My kneecaps do not align but sit slightly off center, creating friction and rubbing away at the cartilage as they pull to the side, missing the natural groove that allows knees to function with ease.

I wasn’t aware of the issue until my knees started falling apart bit by bit in my forties. One day I stood up and it felt like a knife was being plunged into my left knee. Five hours and one CAT scan later, my doctor was telling me I needed to undergo surgery to relieve the pain and further destruction. Unfortunately, the surgery that was meant to save my knees destroyed them.

Before my kneecaps crumbled, I was a very active fat lady. I loved long distance biking. My maximum one-day ride was eighty miles on a forest bike trail. Any memory of my annual Vegas trips included gleefully walking the three-mile strip over and over, a smile on my contented face. After the lateral release surgery on my knee, any exercise that involved the use of my legs skidded to a halt. The slightest misstep or turn and my knee would reinjure itself, swelling to double its size. The pain would be unbearable. For days, all I could do was lounge on a recliner, an ice bag on each knee. With every passing breath, I vowed to never let a surgeon touch any part of my body, ever again.

I’m grateful my mobility isn’t bad enough I am forced to use an electronic scooter to maneuver around Wal-Mart. Yet, in any big box store I hold on tightly to the shopping cart, leaning over the handle for support as I hobble down the aisles. The thought of buying anything from the lower shelves never crosses my mind. I cannot do that simple act. At the check out line, if I drop a penny or a quarter it becomes the property of whoever finds it.

∞

Broken Heart

A decade and a half ago I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. The walls of my heart thickened as its power to pump blood through my system faltered. The harder my heart worked to accomplish its primary goal, the weaker I became. There wasn’t enough oxygen or nutrients streaming through my system to meet my needs. By the time I reluctantly made it to the doctor for an examination, I could barely keep my eyes open.

The doctor immediately ordered an overnight stay in a sleep center. He was convinced my heart failure was caused by sleep apnea, indicating my snoring was a sign. If that were the case, I’ve had sleep apnea since I was a toddler.

I’ve endured complaints about my snoring all of my life: from siblings, to roommates, to folks on the other side of a building. Thirty years ago, my husband and I stayed in a fancy lodge up north. At checkout, I recognized the couple in front of me. They’d stayed in the room across the hall. For five minutes they yelled at the clerk about the incredibly loud snoring that traveled across the hall and into their suite. The man hollered about the hotel renting a room to a “damn angry” bear. The woman claimed their honeymoon had been ruined. They didn’t sleep a wink, all night long. The clerk refused to refund their money. As they left, they each shot a hateful look at my husband.

My husband doesn’t snore. He doesn’t make a single sound when he slumbers. I was the damn angry bear who ruined a honeymoon night.

When I left the sleep clinic, I was outfitted with not only a sleep machine, mask and hose, but a handful of prescription medication that I’d have to take for the rest of my life.

A thought crossed my mind that maybe I was getting old.

Fortunately, once again, I dismissed it.

∞

Lucky Stroke

One Friday morning, two and a half years ago, I felt a slight “ping” go off in my head. Instantly, my world turned digital. I was trapped, floating upside down inside a liquid mosaic.

Being me, the extraordinary-dysfunctional-figure-out-every-single-damn-thing on your own me, I made my way to my computer. It didn’t cross my mind to call 911. Nor to call my husband, who was on an all day bike ride. As usual, I was alone in facing my demons in life.

It took a half hour for my vision to clear. The chair no longer looked like it was constructed from jigsaw pieces. The door to my office didn’t belong on the set of the Twilight Zone. Nothing about it was wobbly or squishy. Clicking the computer on, I Googled my symptoms. If WebMd turned out to be right, I’d just survived a stroke.

I still have my notes from my GP. “Patient suffered a cerebral infarction in the right PCA territory.” In layman terms, it was an ischemic stroke that resulted from a blockage in one of my blood vessels. The word infarction means the tissue surrounding the vessel that exploded died.

Died as in dead. Dead-dead. No recovery of the tissue was possible. No hope for rejuvenation of the tissue. A portion of my brain was literally as I claimed many times,
Brain Dead.
But this time it was for real, and not just an excuse of why I couldn’t make a luncheon.

Except for sheer exhaustion, a major year-long depression of biblical proportions, a loss of twenty-five percent of my peripheral vision, I actually felt the same as I did before the stroke. I knew I was lucky, still I was baffled.

When I thought of the phrase
stroke victim
, I assumed there would be slurring of words and crippled limps. I asked, “Doctor why isn’t my speech impaired? Why is my mobility the same as before?”

She answered, “You were lucky. The vessel that burst was on the right side of the brain. The left side of the brain controls language and movement.”

“What does the right side do? Specifically the portion where my brain was damaged? ” I asked, dreading to hear her answer, terrified of what I could no longer do.

“Actually,” she said, “we don’t really know what that part of the brain does. It does something, but we have no idea.”

A list of possibilities ran through my brain. Maybe it was the section that could predict the winning power ball numbers. Or maybe it was my direct line to God or Buddha. Or one day I would just stop in mid-stride, turn into salt and never move again.

My GP stopped my exaggerated paranoia to add a dose of frightening truth. “But there is something else,” she said. “Nothing to be that worried about right now, but the MRI revealed a benign tumor. It shouldn’t be an issue, unless it grows …”

∞

For one of the few times in my life, my fears were justified. I was terrified traveling to Las Vegas alone. A four-thousand mile round trip where anything could happen from a car accident, a train plummeting off a cliff, or being mugged in Las Vegas.

This time it wasn’t an accident on the road that concerned me. Instead it was a car crash inside my body that was waiting to happen.

But I knew one thing. There were so many things wrong with me that there was no reason not to travel. It was painfully obvious I was going to die sooner, than later.

And if somehow I have a choice?

It has to be Las Vegas, the saddest and happiest place on earth.