kansaschai
Hello. I hope my story helps you in some way. I am turning 46 in a few days and have been recently approved for lap-band surgery. I will be banded on September 29th, 2008. What a great birthday present. This will ensure many more birthdays to come, how perfect. It took an entire year of fighting with AETNA Insurance, but persistence paid off.
As I said, I will be 46, and I like to consider myself a very dependent, intelligent woman. I have always thought I was overweight, but when I look back at pictures, I was far from overweight. I remember being called fat-ass, etc. by my father as a child. He must have instilled something inside my head and now I fit his picture. I have lost a son to suicide when I was 40, right after I had started school to obtain a bachelors degree. I was enrolled in a three year program. I got through his death and did manage to graduate within three years and graduated Magna cum Laude. I like to think that I can do anything, and I usually do, except this one thing, lose weight. But now, with a little help from a little tool, I plan on accomplishing that goal as well.
I currently have Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, restless leg syndrome and bad knees. I am convinced that through losing weight, I will be able to kick at least four of those to the wayside and be at least free from meds and pain. I am pretty sure that the thyroid and restless leg will not respond to weight loss. I am a grandma and getting up and down can be a problem unless I have the injections in my knee caps which last about three months.
I am sure that weight loss will also make me more attractive to those who see me but I am not doing this for that reason. Purely for medical and health reasons. I know that I am too young to have these health issues and that it is silly that weight is causing all of this. I don't know why I cannot do this by myself, but I will not beat myself up about it. I will simply do what it takes to accomplish this. Everyone needs help sometime in their life. This is my time.