Journey28
Well, I guess my story is similar to everyone elses. I have struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. I've always been the girl with the "pretty face." I'm 29 now and I am ready to change my life for the better and start living a healthier life. I want to be a better mother and wife and I want to finally enjoy life without always worrying about the way that I look.
My husband and I have talked about weight loss surgery ever since we got married in 2005. We both struggle with our weight and once we met we both spiraled down a dark path of eating out and being lazy. Our eating was completely out of control. I think we both felt safe and just really let ourselves go after meeting one another and falling in love. We never really thought that WLS was a viable option for us because we assumed that our insurance would not cover it and that we'd never be able to afford for us both to have the surgery if we were paying out of pocket. This past summer my husband was in horrible pain due to a fractured hip that he has had for years, with all the extra weight he was carrying around it got really bad. He had to see a surgeon who basically said he was going to be in a wheelchair if he didn't get his weight off. They said that hip replacement was not an option unless he lost 200 pounds! Since he was not able to exercise, he told us to look in to having bariatric surgery. We talked to insurance and found out that they do cover 80% of the cost of surgery so he enrolled in the program through St. Luke Hospital. He had his surgery on Nov. 25, 2008 and in 2 and 1/2 months he's already lost 85 pounds. He is off all of his pain medication for his hip and it rarely hurts him anymore at all. Before he was taking so much pain medicine just to cope and he could barely walk some days. Now he is working out at the gym 5 days a week.
Once my hubby got through surgery I decided to enroll in the program in December of 2008. This was after a long debate as to whether I should wait to have the surgery when we were done having children or if I should put having more children on hold and go ahead with the surgery. In the end we thought getting healthier was probably the best thing we could do for our family. I was in the program and was done with most of my classes by late December when I found out I was pregnant! We have a son, who had just turned a year old at the time. I was flabbergasted because we tried to get pregnant for nearly a year with our son and somehow in a fluke we got pregnant by surprise. A big part of me felt like God must have wanted me to have my babies first and then have surgery. I was kind of relieved to have the weight of the decision out of my hands. I went for my first ultrasound on Jan. 12, 2009 and found out that the baby had passed away. I had a missed miscarriage meaning that I did not have any symptoms. The next day I had to go to the hospital and have a D & C. I was devastated and felt so lost. I didn't know what to do. What was life trying to tell me now. Was there meaning in anything? I was feeling really depressed over the loss of our baby and my husband was loosing all of this weight which made me feel even worse about myself. I was in the shower crying one day because I felt so lost and I had an epiphany. I felt like I needed to "fix" myself and take a year off from "fixing" everyone else. I decided to call the doctor's office in early February and re-enroll in the WLS program. I had to have cardiac clearance, meet with a nutritionist, and meet with the psychologist. I was able to get into those appointments right away. Last week, Feb. 19 I found out that my surgery had been approved by insurance and the only thing left to do was to have an upper GI. I went today and had my upper GI and stopped in at the weight loss center while at the hospital and found out that a nurse should be calling me this week to schedule my surgery! I saw the nurse in the hospital gift shop and he said they were scheduling into the 2nd and 3rd weeks of March! Probably less than a month away!!
I am really excited to embark on the journey! I am so thankful that I can go through this with the support of my husband. I hope my son never knows what it is like to struggle the way my husband and I have. I hope growing up with healthy parents helps him become a healthy person. I can't wait to run around with him this summer and be able to sit on a roller coaster with him some day. I also look forward to being able to join a pool and take him swimming without feeling mortified the entire time. I can't wait to go to the grocery and not feel like people are judging what is in my cart. There are so many things that I look forward to experiencing!
