In a way, you can consider me among the ranks of baseball players like Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Not because I’m great at baseball (see my post on baseball), nor been in a criminal line-up, nor have I lied under oath to Congress, and certainly not because I have the same intimidating musculature. I have something in common with these defamed would-be Hall of Famers for the precise reason why they are defamed.
As you can clearly tell by my intimidating physical presence, I, too, have used growth hormones.
I’m 5’6″ and 112 pounds. I’m hardly the type to clobber baseballs. Most of the time I can barely stand on my own 2 feet (see my post about falling). When I was in 4th grade, my parents and I visited Dr. Lovinger. Dr. Love (as he didn’t mind being called, I hope) told us that I might be a good candidate for taking growth hormone. I was 4-feet and millimeters at the time. Maybe not even that. I remember reaching for air as I stood up in the 3 foot section of our community swimming pool.
Dr. Love had told us that if I didn’t take growth hormone, I would grow to be 4’6″. If I took growth hormone, I could reach 5’6″. It sounded good to all of us.
Being on growth hormone meant taking 4 years of daily shots. My mom learned how to give them, and overtime I learned how to take them…for 4 freakin’ years. It was a small syringe, hidden by a metal cylinder that collapsed when it hit my skin, guiding the needle into me a little more precisely and a little less painfully than with the syringe alone.
I always elected to have these needles injected into my arms and shoulders. (Looking back on it, I should have elected to have some injected into my legs. I could use more muscular legs.) For 4 years, I was a human pin cushion. I was in 8th grade when I got my last shot.
The growth hormone did its job. All of those years of shots along with puberty itself took me to 5’6″, which is where I stand now. Dr. Love was right on. But there were some unintended and unforeseeable consequences to taking growth hormone.
Even though it’s hard to say how my body changed from taking growth hormone as opposed to just going through the atrocity of puberty, there are some things I’m certain of:
My hair changed. Before growth hormone I had fine, straight, blonde hair. After growth hormone: thick, wavy, dirty blonde hair.
My facial structure changed. Growth hormone squared up my face. I probably have a bigger jaw-line than I would have if I didn’t take growth hormone.
Acne. The biggy. From when I was in 6th grade to literally the moment I crossed the stage to grab my high school diploma, I had terrible acne. The best way to describe my acne is with the word “volcanic”. See my other post where I talk about my acne.
It’s hard to speculate on these things and even harder to speculate on the bigger picture. I don’t know what adult life is like at 4’6″. Is 4’6″ worse than 5’6″? I don’t know, but 5’6″ suits me just fine. I’m not sure how my teenage years would have gone if I didn’t have to sustain the social stigma of severe acne. Probably more smoothly, but the teenage years are awkward and alienating anyway.
Either way, here I am many years later, standing at 5 foot 6 inches, a baffling and frustrating 112 pounds, skinny as a rail and just as unstable as my Wii Fit says I am. But, I am whole.
Could use some more food, but whole nonetheless.
