queenbuffi
My story began August 4th, 2010 when that morning began like all previous mornings with me setting at my desk at work talking with customers. I stood up to pick up something from the printer and thank goodness someone happened to be walking by my desk because the room began spinning and massive chest pains started occuring. I had never experienced anything like this. The first responder came to my boss's office and my bp was incredibly high we thought I was having a heart attack! At the age of 36 I was not ready for anything that was about to happen. So the ambulance came and took me from work to the ER where my husband was waiting for us to arrive. How he made it from Martinsburg to Winchester and already in the ER before we made it across town is beyond me but I was so grateful to see him! The good news I received the next morning was I had not had a heart attack. As the weeks and months passed all the different dr visits, specialist visits all said the same thing...."You need to loose weight." I was diagnosed with an enlarged heart due to the high blood pressure and sleep apnea. If it were that easy to loose weight we would all be a size 0! In August I weighed my heaviest at 305 pounds.
The end of October I went to the orientation for bariatric surgery and found that the sicknesses that I have been diagnosed with and dealing with were in fact associated with being over weight. They had my attention that night and I came home and told my husband that my entire life I have yo-yo dieted up and down but have always been healthy so never worried much about it. Now that I have these health issues it is time to find a permenant solution for my life long problem. I want to have a long and healthy life with my husband and family. So he stood behind my decision but wanted to go to as many appointments as possible to make sure he was just as informed.
As I wrapped up all my classes and geared up for surgery many family members asked me not to have the surgery since I had learned so much over the last 6 months and had lost about 30 pounds. But I had been there before! I spent my life going up and down with my weight. I told my mom you can live without an arm or leg but you only have 1 heart and need it to survive so I was having the surgery to save my life! My surgery date was July 25th, 2011 and this was the first day of the rest of my life.
