jlg522
12/06/06: I began my wls journey when I called and made the consultation appt with the weight loss clinic to discuss bariatric surgery. My appt was set for 1/3/07. In the meantime, I have been reading a lot of books about it, including Barbara Thompson's book, WLS for Dummies, and a couple more. I'm trying to educate myself about the surgery. I have found out things I didn't know, such as that WLS is considered to be the only effective long-term treatment for morbid obesity. All I know is that I feel completely hopeless about losing weight in general, and I think WLS is my last hope. Otherwise, I honestly think I will spend the rest of my life being morbidly obese and doing the dieting thing. I have tried every diet and always end up gaining more than I lost. It's gotten to the point that I'm afraid to lose weight because it's actually a way to gain weight in the long run! I talked with my parents about it, and was a little nervous about what they would think. They were a little concerned, but are trying to be supportive. I told them how, from what I'm reading, WLS is much safer than the media has portrayed it in the past. They worry that I will be resentful of the many lifestyle changes I'll have to make after surgery, especially knowing that I won't be able to eat like I did before. To be honest, I worry about that too. I don't want to do the surgery if I'm not completely committed to making the changes I'll need to make to be successful.
1/3/07: I went to the bariatric surgery information appt expecting to go home afterward and think about things for a while. I met with a nurse one-on-one, and she told me I'm probably a good candidate for bariatric surgery. Next thing I knew I was applying for insurance coverage for the mandatory 12-week medically-monitored weight loss attempt that my insurance requires in order to approve me for roux-en-y bariatric surgery. I wondered if my knee surgery recovery would get in the way--it's scheduled for 1/30/07. The nurse didn't think so.
1/10/07: I was approved to start the 12-week pre-bari program. I also made appts for a bunch of tests, like a body com, body gem, EKG, physical, etc. which I will have over the next few weeks.
1/30/07: I had knee surgery today, which had been planned for 3 months.
2/14/07: I began the 12-week pre-bari weight-loss attempt program today, Valentine's Day. (An act of self-love maybe? :)) I had to wait a few weeks after I was approved because I had knee surgery and couldn't walk until today. My motivation feels a little low right now, possibly because I am so sedentary and am not motivated to do much while I'm healing from knee surgery. The last couple of weeks have been really rough pain-wise.
2/26/07: I'm returning to work on Weds of this week after having a month off from my knee surgery. I'm not really looking forward to it--I guess you get used to sitting around all day!
5/12/07: Well, it's been nearly 3 months since my last post. I just completed my 12-week medically-monitored program as required by my insurance.
I also got medical clearance on Thursday--yay!!!!! I met with the doctor in the pre-bari program and he cleared me.
Now I have to get psychological clearance before I can set up an appt to meet with the surgeon. I am waiting for the center to get in the tests they need so I can start that process. I am really nervous about the timing of this all. I only have ONE MONTH off this summer, which is mid-July to mid-August. Once mid-August rolls around I would absolutely not be approved to take time off, since it's one of the busiest times of the year. I just became interim training director at the place I work, and the new interns come to our center on August 15. It would look reeeeealllllly bad if the training director wasn't there when the new interns arrive. So if I don't have the surgery right around mid-July, I'm pretty screwed. It is important to me to have time to recover. Like everyone else, I hope to not have any complications. However, I know that complications are possible and should be planned for just in case.
My primary care doc is really supportive of me having the surgery, and he has several patients who've had it also. He told me that I should plan on having one complication after surgery. He said if I'm lucky, I won't have any, but many people have one complication.
6/3/07: Well, I got psychological clearance--yay! I've been telling everyone at the weight loss center how badly I want to have the surgery by mid-July so that I can have a full month off work. I just want to be sure I have the most time off possible so I can recover. So.....I got a call on May 29th that my surgical consult was in two days!! Yay! That's the last step before scheduling the surgery. Meeting with the surgeon came quicker than I expected. I really liked him. Dr. Y was kind, friendly, and knowledgeable. It did not seem like he was trying to rush me out the door even though he was meeting with four of us that morning. We met as a group for the info session and Dr. Y met with each of us individually afterward. He recommended the roux en y, which is what I was hoping for. He felt good about me as a candidate.
I was kinda hoping to hear from SWMC later on Thursday or Friday with the green light to schedule surgery. I didn't hear from them. Hopefully I will hear sometime this week.
Dr. Y wants me to have an endoscopy (EGD) and later a chest x-ray and ultrasound to check the gallbladder. For some reason I thought I was done with all the pre-op stuff, so I was a little worried that this would hold me up and/or reveal medical problems that I'll need to take care of first. I hope not. The way my program works is that I have to start Opti-fast for a whole 4 weeks before surgery, so I need to schedule surgery AT LEAST four weeks out. Since I'm hoping to have the surgery by mid-July, you can see why I feel some urgency. It's June 3rd, and mid-June is coming at the end of next week.
This afternoon I talked with Mary's mom, who had roux en y surgery 3 years ago. I feel a bit frustrated that I'm potentially 6 weeks out from surgery and this is the first conversation I've had with someone who has had the surgery. The place I'm doing my pre-bari prep is geared more toward regular weight loss than it is toward bariatric surgery. I wish they had a separate bari department, because I might get more personalized attention. The people who work there are nice enough, but I kinda feel like I'm on my own related to researching the procedure. I'm the kind of person who does that anyway, but the process is daunting in its complexity. Plus, the lifestyle changes are so massive that you'd think it'd be important to talk about it sooner than 4 weeks before surgery!
OK, enough venting. The other thing I've been thinking about lately is that it's hard to believe this surgery will actually work for me. Even if I "only" lose 70% of my excess weight, I'll still lose nearly 100 pounds and be in the 160s. I can't even really remember being in the 160s. I hid from scales most of my life, but I think I've been in the 200s since I was maybe 25-26? So, it's been 10 or more years over 200 pounds. Even before hitting the 200s, I was still in the high numbers. During college I went on a starvation diet and got down to 142 or something. At 5' 1/2", that's still considered overweight, yet I had to white-knuckle it to stay anywhere close to that weight. I looked pretty thin for me. I actually got into a size 5 jeans for like two weeks before I started gaining again. It felt so tenuous being at that weight, like my body wanted very badly to be heavier. Story of my life, it seems. My body has always wanted to be heavier, pretty much since puberty. To stay thinner I have to eat very little and exercise constantly. Otherwise....the pounds pile on!
I also can't imagine having a flat belly. I didn't ever have one, even when I was thinner. I was always flabby and had a bump of an abdomen. So I don't know if I will once I lose weight. In my whole life I can't remember ever liking my body. EVER. That's pretty sad. It's hard to imagine actually liking my body, even after the surgery. I wonder if I ever will???
6/4/07: I have a surgery date!!!! Wooo hoooo!!! July 17th! I am pretty happy with this date. It means I'll have 4 weeks off from work. Yay!
7/4/07: I've passed the two-weeks-until-surgery mark. Only 13 days to go. Wow.
My weight loss program requires that I use Optifast for 4 weeks prior to surgery to prevent the "last supper syndrome" and also to shrink the liver to minimize complications. I'm two weeks into it and it's been hard. I've been grieving the loss of eating "normally," which is to say, eating WAAAAYYY TOO MUCH. I am really having a hard time with not eating carbs, particularly pasta. It's a longtime family joke about how much I like spaghetti. I think I'm addicted to it. In fact, I have been eating pasta almost every single night of my adult life. Scary, isn't it? So that's been really hard for me. REALLY hard. I always knew I had a carb addiction of sorts. I didn't realize how tight its grip on me was until I couldn't have it at all---and with no foreseeable future of being able to resume my "normal" pasta consumption. I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and she said she felt sad for me because she knows I most likely won't ever be able to eat pasta anymore, and I've loved it ever since I was a little girl. Unexpectedly, that made me cry. Then I felt really silly about it. I mean, it's just food, right? It's not like I'm losing a family member. I feel silly with how much I am mourning "regular" food. I keep telling myself to get over it already, but I have these moments of regret about how much I've let food rule my life. I don't think I let myself truly be aware of how often I thought about food, planned my next meal(s), and revolved my life around food. With each vacation, I thought about all the great restaurants I would get to eat at. With each trip to the movies I became excited for the popcorn. At each summer picnic, I was excited to have burgers and potato salad. It seems that everything has some food association.
With all of this thinking about food addiction, I've been thinking about someone I used to date who had an alcohol problem. Each day at 7 p.m., my significant other would start drinking and would continue to drink until the wee hours of the morning. We often couldn't make plans past 7 p.m. because that was "drinking time." When things got really bad I remember thinking (or sometimes saying), "JUST STOP DRINKING ALREADY!!!" Although I knew alcoholism is an addiction, I couldn't truly understand why it wasn't just a matter of stopping drinking. I've been reflecting on that experience now and how I am feeling with my food addiction. It's not just that I'm an overeater. I have an addiction to food. In order for me to be successful with this surgery, I need to break the addiction. I know that for a while I will lose weight almost no matter what I do. I'm not too worried about that part. The part I am worried about is whether I can break the patterns of my food addiction so that I can maintain my weight loss for life. I don't want to kid myself that it will be easy or that I'll suddenly be 100% motivated to change my eating once I've had the surgery. I've heard the saying over and over: the surgery is only a TOOL. I hope I use the tool wisely.
7/10/07: One week from today!!!! That's crrraaaaaaaazzzyy!!!!!
********SURGERY 7/17/07*********************************************************
7/21/07: I'm on the other side now!! Things went pretty well. I'm still trying to figure out how the heck to get all my liquids and protein in. It's much harder than I thought it would be. I came home from the hospital full of air and weighing more than when I went in, but I'm hopeful that I'll start seeing results soon.
7/24/07: Today's my 1 week anniversary and I'm feeling pretty upset with only having lost 2 pounds. I had thought that people usually lost quite a bit at first, say, 4-5 pounds or more per week, and then later it slows down to 1-2 pounds a week. I'm hardly eating (drinking) ANY calories at all, and I can't understand why I'm not losing more weight. I've been reading other people's profiles and I haven't run across one yet that has this pathetic an amount of weight loss at the beginning. It seems I keep reading that people have lost around 12-15 pounds by week 2, and in some cases, even more than that. I was kinda looking forward to having a dramatic weight loss at first to keep me motivated through this hard post-surgery time.
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weight weight loss total weight loss
surgery date (7/17/07): 247
week 1 (7/23/07): 245 -2 -2
week 2 (8/2/07): 231 -14 -16
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8/2/07: OK, so I've lost a lot more weight this week. Thankfully. A 2-pound weight loss just seemed so lame at the beginning, but I'm feeling better now that I lost 14 pounds this week. I can see the difference in my face, and I'm beginning to recognize myself again. It's a nice feeling.
