MDT66
9/2/06 – Like many others on this site, I've been heavy all my life. I was a normal sized-baby and my mother tells me that at 40 days I'd doubled my weight (from 6 lbs.)... I was not a fat toddler and as a kid I loved to run around, ride my bike, play kickball, roller skate. I was also in ballet classes, which I really loved, but because I was chubby I was relegated to playing bunnies, birds, and other assorted animals in the ballet school productions. No en pointe shoes for moi! But, I also had a "healthy" appetite that I didn’t control very well – no matter how hard my mom tried to keep me from overeating. I was the kid that my friends’ parents used as an example when my friends didn’t eat – look, Merci eats everything on her plate! At around age 10, mom (who had been chubby and had lost weight in puberty, with no small thanks to being anorexic/bulimic) took me to see Dr. Fernández, who put me on an 800 calorie diet. I remember HATING the process, but I lost weight. However, it didn't last that long. I continued to be overweight and remember vividly hating having to wear “husky” sizes from Sears. At age 12, I weighed 117 lbs. (boy, what I wouldn’t give to weigh that now!). Throughout junior and high school, my weight went up and down. Freshman and sophomore years I played volleyball, which I loved. I hated any other kind of exercise, though.
I lived at home during college, and continued to struggle with my weight tremendously. I’ve always been fortunate to have a great bunch of friends, but my social life in terms of dating has been non-existent (except for a brief period in my late 20s when I wasn’t extremely fat and had a “boyfriend”). I had a nervous breakdown during my sophomore year in college and got noticeably better with medication and therapy.
At age 20, I decided that I didn’t want to be fat anymore and went on the MediFast diet and lost about 60 pounds. I kept the weight off for a couple of years, but it came back on with a fury afterwards. I had another breakdown at age 28 and was diagnosed with a slow thyroid, which is one of the causes for depression. I went back on anti-depressives, started therapy again, and began taking Synthroid for my thyroid problem. On my own, I started eating better, exercising (unbelievably) and lost about 70 pounds. I was a size 16 and looking back at pictures from those days, I looked AWESOME! That didn’t last too long either. After a while, I stopped exercising, started eating poorly again, neglected my medication for the thyroid problem, and started gaining more and more weight.
So here I am, at age 39 (the big 40 is on November 11), and I feel like I just cannot go on like this anymore… I hate having my picture taken, but I know how badly I look (and especially FEEL) because I look at myself in the mirror every morning. I wear a size 22W, weigh 258 lbs., have high cholesterol, my blood pressure fluctuates, have a fatty liver, and pretty much feel like dirt most of the time emotionally if not physically (thankfully). I was interviewed and saw myself on television in June and almost fell off the couch – I know that TV adds 10-15 lbs., but the disfigured being I saw on TV that sounded like me just scared the hell out of me! I truly wanted to climb under my covers and never come out again! How could I show my face in public? I was literally embarrassed to have let myself get to this point.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in The Miami Herald about VSG and felt like a light bulb had been turned on in my life. I had never wanted to have surgery because I thought – hell, I CAN and MUST do this by myself. I’ve even had a friend who is a dietitian design an eating plan for me (that lasted two weeks and I actually lost 14 pounds!)… I literally started a diet every Monday and every Tuesday failed to go through with it. I thought and thought about it and finally decided that I had to do this, I had to check this out because I have hit rock bottom. I raised the issue with my very supportive parents (who have been, along with my sister, very worried about my health since forever) and they said to go for it and count on them. Last year my sister, who is a nurse, had been dead set against any kind of WLS, but she has come around after seeing others who have successfully gotten healthier with it.
So… this gets me to today. On Thursday I will attend an orientation at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, FL and on the 13th I’ll attend the orientation at Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove. That’s it for now!
