Rochelle’s mother died this past October at the young age of fifty eight. She had failing kidneys and had been on dialysis for a little over ten years. Rochelle told me this was caused by her mother’s uncontrolled high blood pressure. Until her mother went on Social Security Disability Insurance, because of her kidney problem, she had had no health insurance at all. In Texas only children, pregnant women, and disabled people are eligible for Medicaid. Rochelle also had not had health insurance until she started to work for the grocery store. She too has high blood pressure at age thirty eight, but now she regularly sees a doctor and is being treated for this problem. On her last doctor visit she had been put on a second blood pressure medication. Just one medication was not doing the job.
Except for one quick visit, outside and at a distance, I hadn’t seen Rochelle for over two years due to COVID. When I called her to set up an interview meeting last month she was all excited. “I’m on a diet,” she told me. “And so are my kids.” I had seen a photograph of the three children, now aged fourteen, sixteen and nineteen, a few months ago. They were all very, very overweight. Rochelle was very overweight as well, and I could see when we met for the interview that she had gained quite a lot of weight since I had last seen her. She told me that she weighed 269 pounds and all of the children were well over 200 pounds. Her doctor had suggested that they all lose weight to improve their health. I had never heard Rochelle mention being concerned about her weight or the weight of her children. I did eat out with Rochelle frequently, and with her children several times. I was always amazed at how much they consumed at lunch. But it wasn’t my place to say anything. Now that Rochelle had mentioned it, we could talk about it.
Rochelle was excited to be on a diet. She was trying to stay away from junk food, fast food, sugar, and sodas. That was asking a lot because not only was that the kind of food she had grown up eating, but it is the kind of food she served her children. When talking about it during our interview she burst into tears. “I know I caused the problem,” she said. “I made my children fat. I was just too busy to cook and would bring home fast food.” I asked her what kind of food her mother had made for her and her sisters when growing up. “Mama didn’t cook. She was always off working or partying,” Rochelle told me. ” We all had to fend for ourselves.” She told me she had not been a fat child but then started gaining weight in late middle school and just didn’t care. Rochelle said she had just thrown out all the junk food in her apartment. This is going to be a difficult road for Rochelle because she really hasn’t been educated in nutrition. She admitted that she didn’t like most fruits and vegetables and she doesn’t know how to make healthy food for her family. Poverty has put her in a situation where junk food and high caloric food are the norm. It is cheap, available, and tasty.
I have often had a problem with my weight, though not to extent of Rochelle and her family. For the last eight years I have used a Fitbit to keep track of my exercise. I also log all the food I eat into the Fitbit app when I am trying to lose some pounds. I decided I would buy Rochelle the same model Fitbit I use. It is an older model but has all the functions one needs for weight control. I bought my current one second hand and found one for Rochelle too. She can link it to her phone. Yesterday she came over to get it. I showed her how I kept track of my exercise and food consumed through the app on my computer. She looked very interested and said she would start using it. She also said she had lost six pounds. “I’ve decided losing weight is more important than getting out of debt,” Rochelle told me. “Nothing really will matter if I don’t get healthy. I don’t want to die young like my mother.” She is right. Getting healthy is the most important thing of all. Obesity and poor nutrition is another challenge poverty has given to Rochelle and her family. Finally having health insurance and seeing her doctor regularly may make her able to prevent the heath problems and early death that plagued her mother. But it won’t be easy.
Rochelle's World 