mtrainer
My story....hmm, where to begin? I was always a big girl. I can remember in third grade wearing a misses size 14 and a size 6 women's shoe. Yes I was tall but I was also big. By the time I graduated high school I weighed 312 pounds and wore a women's size 24/26. Ok, so there's a little history....
Before I ever considered surgery I tried all the fad diets from Atkins to that awful cabbage soup diet to diet pills, prescription and OTC, but nothing ever worked.
I first heard about WLS on a missions trip to Scotland in April 2005. There was a man from another missions team that had WLS of some sort and was anxious to tell me how surgery could change my life because I was "such a pretty girl, if I could just lose some weight I would be so much happier and be able to find a husband." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, he actually said that! I was SO VERY offended. I thought he was a nice old man before that and his wife was so sweet, but afterwards I decided that he wasn't so nice and I really didn't like hime that much after all, so I avoided him the rest of the trip.
So a year later I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and hyper tension, still trying to stay on the Atkins diet, but with little success and a lot of guilt. I was on 3 diefferent meds for the diabetes and one for high blood pressure. My sugar levels were barely controlled and my blood pressure was still on the high side even with the meds. There is a history of heart disease, diabetes and cancer in my family, so the odds were really stacked against me. I knew I had to do something, and I was desperate for help.
Then I found out that my health insurance covered WLS but at the time it only covered gastric bypass,, and not the lap band, which sounded a lot safer to me. So I started doing research, going to meetings and talking to people who had had WLS of some sort and those that were considering it and those who were waiting for a surgery date. I decided ultimately that gastric bypass would be the best option for me and on October 31st, 2007 I did it!
At the time of my surgery I weighed 364 pounds and wore a size 28/30W or 4-5X (my heaviest ever) and today (3/4/08) I weigh 290 and am in a 22/24W (2X) in tops and a 20/22W in bottoms and those are starting to get loose!
I have so much more energy now than I did before and can do things that before surgery were difficult to impossible. I have made a list of goals for myself and have already acheived some of them (like having the seatbelt in an airplane fit - yay!) and I look forward to acheiving many more!
