My mother is a full-blown medical denier, notorious for saying she’d stop bringing us to the pediatrician if she didn’t think it’d get her arrested. She’s had a mix of health scares, nothing major. Or at least, nothing that she or any of us talk about much. Every once in a while I’ll say to one of my siblings “remember how Mom literally has a brain tumor,” and they’ll reply “oh shit, yeah. She should probably get that checked out again.” And then we chuckle uncomfortably and conclude that of course, she never will. The only doctor she ever trusted is her OB, Dr. Pivarunas, but even he made her shit-list for waiting until child number five to let her know she could have a glass of wine.
She and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on most things health, which is why although at 22 I was named executor of her and my dad’s will, but not her chosen medical proxy. That honor goes to my older brother, who she knows would pull the plug while I’d make her take the Tylenol. However, things shifted when I was trying to conceive after a miscarriage and allowed a1 fear of the world to have an absolute chokehold on me. I was constantly trying to not let myself go crazy about ovulation sticks and fertile windows, but I was also sending Liam endless clickbait articles about the forever chemicals in our water, asking him if he’s had his daily allotted handful of walnuts for sperm health, signing us up for super expensive monthly supplements subscriptions, and drinking fucking green juice. When I did get pregnant, I started fully relying on my mom to confirm all my delusions.
I’d text her “How many ultrasounds did you get when you were pregnant because I can just tell my baby doesn’t like them and I think it’s because they’re radioactive and giving him cancer.”
She’d reply “I wouldn’t doubt it. Skip all your upcoming appointments and stop getting your nails done because the polish is going to make your son grow breasts.”
That’d be enough for me to kiss both my ultrasound and nail techs goodbye, no citation needed!
Even before my fertility ****~~~journey~~~**** I could be considered pretty supplement crazy. I wasn’t positive what brain fog was, but I was sure the Stamets 7 mushroom blend cured mine and I recommended it to all my friends. I could be found filling a water bottle from a Roman street fountain and then pouring in bovine collagen peptides on my honeymoon. I liked feeling like I was Taking Care of Myself and didn’t mind overcompensating for problems I didn’t yet have.
My laundry list of vitamins was cut short in pregnancy after I switched to a fancy schmancy first trimester prenatal subscription which smelled so horrific that all my houseplants wilted2. I had seen and tasted how my green juice fared as vomit and started to view its impact on my gut biome as outright antagonistic. I ended up needing Liam to baby-bird me my prenatal wrapped in bacon and stuffed in cream cheese seconds just before I entered deep REM sleep to ensure my body didn’t instantly reject it and all its works and all its empty promises.
Once I gave birth and started breastfeeding, I jumped right back on the crazy train. At Ignatius’ first pediatrician appointment, the doctor looked at me and said “You need to be taking 5000mg of vitamin D so he gets 600 to help his body absorb calcium.” I nearly fell out of my chair. Vitamin D for his bones! His bones! I spent so much time trying not to puke my baby out that I had (stupid, stupid!) overlooked his bones! Not only that, but Iggy had surpassed his birth weight by day 3 outside the womb despite his tumultuous birth3 and gained over a full pound by 2 weeks, marking him in the 90th percentile for weight and 97th for height. But as my mom says, anything less than 100 is a 0 so I knew I had to do anything I could to get those stats up.
Choline for brain development because while his head circumference was in the 75th percentile (barely a passing C), the doctor couldn’t give me any clear answer on how much of that she thought was brain versus bone. Iron to combat my vision going black every time I stand up. Vitamin C to help the iron go down. Vitamin A to give him a youthful glow. Vitamin E to make the glow a little less yellow. Vitamin C again because wait, is that glow or jaundice? Okay, definitely glow so back to the party. Beef liver, marrow, cartilage, biotin, collagen, riboflavin, and elastin for my own glow4. Enough pills, how about a dandelion root, catnip, alfalfa, turmeric liquid supplement for postpartum recovery? Paired with, you guessed it, collagen peptides and maybe some electrolytes and we’ve got a well-rounded breakfast going.
While my paranoia is inherited from my mom, my tendency to self-medicate is completely my dad. His health follows a pretty predictable cycle: he determines something is wrong with him, then invents an aggressive and often illogical regimen to solve it, 4 years pass until he declares himself cured of all ailments5 and any doctor who says otherwise is lying so caution is thrown to the cheese-flavored wind before he ends up in urgent care again.
The most recent pendulum swing backwards was by far the most dramatic. His last stint in the hospital in 2020 prompted him to go keto which successfully reversed his diabetes for the second time6. However, the first death knoll chimed at my wedding in 2023 when declining a slice of chantilly cake was determined not worth the extra years with his grandchildren. The second gong rang as he licked the plate of a taco supreme breakfast skillet clean at the Silver Star diner the following June. The final and most resounding was a quadruple bypass surgery in October of 2024.
Yet prior to his official diagnosis of congestive heart failure, the two of us brainstormed how to fix him up with a dream and an Amazon account. He said his stomach hurt so bad he couldn’t sleep so I sent him a tub of Bloom green juice and he bought OLLY gummy probiotics. We went on a walk and he could barely breathe so I sent him links to reverse osmosis UV treated water filters. He started taking mullein gummies. He said he felt his chest tightening and his left arm going numb; we went together to a cannabis store on Orchard Park Rd called “Devil’s Lettuce.” I begged him to only get CBD, he bought a tincture and then ordered weed gummies online. I said “I feel like you’re just looking for an excuse to eat candy.” He said “so what if I am?” And on and on and back and forth until he got 5 leg veins to cosplay as heart veins and now is married to his blood sugar monitor.
While my dad’s in it for the sugar and red dye 40 of it all, when you really pin me down you’d find my love of supplements just as immature. We could get into the weeds about the mechanization of the human body prompted by our increased reliance on technology to make us feel good about ourselves. How we often view our bodies as something incomplete, needing prescription after prescription to get the right happy hormones going well enough to make it through the day. Because wow, God must be some sort of ridiculously clumsy mechanic if you look at all the broken people in the world who only appear perfect on social media (and even they post a crying video every once in a while). But I’d like to think it’s really not that deep—for me, at least. I just love shopping and feeling special and my vitamin addiction checks both those boxes.
If you start seeing my Amazon guy carrying boxes of essential oils and reiki stones, it’s time to call reinforcements. But for now, let me keep gobbling down my magic candies in the morning and saying “that’s the Choline,” every time my baby smiles or wiggles his toes.
Some would argue, healthy
It was legitimately so bad that months later I received a mea culpa via email from the company where they were like “Okay, we tweaked the recipe and we swear to God it smells better now.”
60+ hours! I’m a legend. Or really bad at giving birth.
I’m a little more high maintenance than a baby.
Usually prompted by an insatiable craving for an apple fritter or something
But made him really difficult to go to a restaurant with