Donna B.
I am a skinny person trapped in this overweight body. I've never been slim. I remember having to buy and wear the ‘plus sizes’ when I was young. I was active in sports, scouts, and church growing up, but I was always the 'fat kid'. When I entered the USAF after high school, they said I should weigh 185 lbs., and I fought to reach and maintain 187 the whole time. After I returned home, my weight ranged from 240 in my early 20's to my heaviest of 340 a few years back after I had quit a 30 year-4 pack a day smoking habit 5 years ago. I have tried every diet known to man. I sleep with a CPAP set on 15 cfm. If you want to know what that feels like, put the vacuum cleaner hose in the discharge side, stick the other end in your mouth, turn it on, and try and sleep. I have hypertension, poor venous return and swelling of the lower extremities, sleep apnea, and depression.
Many of my friends have had WLS-RNY and have done wonderfully. Some may ask, if they had such success with the RNY, why I am having the BPD. Because with the RNY, you still have to diet the rest of your life. I've been dieting for the past 36 years (yes, I was on my first diet at the age of 12). It hasn't worked. RNY is a tool to allow their dieting to work. I want my surgery to be a tool that makes me lose the weight and keep it off without the strict dieting. I tell all my friends, BPD is the meat eating carnivores' surgery.
Wish me luck, on January 14, 2008 sometime after 5:00am I will be joining my friends on the Loser's Bench!
