I have a friend about my age (around 40) who has got to be the unhealthiest person I know. She's been injured twice at two different jobs and has long-term physical problems in her knees and one shoulder. She also has trigeminal neuralgia, a problem with her facial nerve, that causes splitting migraines (doctors call it the "suicide disease" because the pain is so intense, people can't bear it for more than two or three years). Pain management is her life, plus routine botox injections (25 shots at a time) to deaden the nerves that cause her pain. She takes such massive amounts of pharmaceuticals, going from one to another, that sometimes I'm shocked she can do things like drive a car and hold down a job. Every five years she needs knee surgeries of one kind or another, and just had shoulder surgery last year.

And of course, she is grossly overweight. She's actually very oddly shaped: from the waist up she is merely overweight, but obese from the waist down. Some of her weight issues can be attributed to limited mobility, and drug side effects, but some is just her own damn fault. She eats a lot of fast food. She drinks probably two liters of crappy processed iced tea daily (really, it might as well be soda, although she thinks it's better). She refuses to eat fruit because (she says) "I don't have scurvy." Last night we went out to dinner and she ordered baked macaroni and cheese, which at this place comes with either a salad or steamed veggies on the side. She told the waitress not to bother bringing either. (My husband pointed out later that she eats like a teenager or college freshman who is finally out from underneath mom's thumb.)

I have made subtle and un-subtle statements about her health and her eating habits over the years, especially when we worked together many years ago - that's how we met. I understand her disabilities, but the truth is, she could lose 40 pounds if not more by eating right, and so many of her problems would at least be improved. And she's extremely intelligent, so it's not like she doesn't know what's good for her and bad for her.

So for the last several years she's lived in NoCal, and is moving back to L.A. in a few months. She has a new boyfriend and they're planning on getting married and starting a family asap because her bio-clock is ticking loudly. I'm frankly not sure I want to keep up the friendship - it's easy when you live in different cities, but I swear I don't know if I can be around her much. The energy is so bad...from her and from me, at this point. If you had a friend who's boyfriend was no good, or who had a drinking problem, you'd become frustrated over time, and no matter how much you may care, eventually you'd want to move on from that friendship. Can I dump a friend for being fat?