squirrellady
This is my journey.
I have struggled with my weight since I was a child. Through elementary school there were years where I was only 10 pounds or so overweight. In third grade I put myself on a diet. I remember the day that I decided that I would not eat breakfast, eat lunch at school and eat a very light supper. My grandmother was very good at telling me that I was fat as well as my Dad. They thought they were helping me by keeping me updated on my weight status. It was funny though because my grandmother was a prim and proper lady. She was small and was always put together perfectly. At dinnertime she would load my plate up and expect me to eat everything and then would tell me that I had gained weight. She had lived through the depression and she felt good when she fed the family. My parents would also load up my plate and we were required to eat everything even though it was an adult serving size. It was amazing that I did not weigh 3oo pounds in the first grade. I was active in elementary school and played outside most of the time so that kept my weight in check or close to it. My sister was the pretty one who was the perfect weight. She was very out going and had tons of friends while I on the other hand was not as pretty and was so shy it hurt. I was praised for being so quiet and I learned that if I was quiet all the time it made me a good girl. I had very poor social skills. My parents were good parents but they were typical working parents. My diet in third grade was successful and I was proud but I did not get any positive reinforcement from anyone so that made me feel like a failure. When I was in 6th grade we moved from North Carolina to Central Florida. I went from elementary school to middle school and it was tough. I was about 20 pounds overweight when we moved and was very self concisous of my weight. I did not really make any friends. Each year I put on more weight. The summer before I went into my 9th grade year I went on the Cambridge liquid diet because at this point I was about 45 pounds overweight. I wanted to go into my first year of high school smaller. I lost around 35 pounds before band camp started. Looking back at pictures I looked really good but never thought so then. I maintained that weight until my junior year and gradually started putting on a few pounds here a few pounds there. The only thing that kept me from ballooning out was that I was in the marching band. My parents did not teach me to exercise or to eat right. We were pretty poor so the food we ate was not usually well balanced. In elementary school by 5th grade I had gotten so shy about eating that I would not eat in front of anyone. I stopped eating lunch at school and it got really bad in middle and high school. I did not eat lunch 1 time through my years in middle or high school. In my mind I thought that if people saw me eat they would know that was why I was fat. Pretty stupid thinking but that is what I thought. I went into college and was living alone 3 hours away from my parents. I did not eat properly. I had very little money to live on and I had to depend on the money my parents gave me because the school program I was in I had to go to school too many hours to work. I would eat happy meals and romain noodles. I started packing the weight on. When I graduated from college I was about 60 pounds overweight. I started my first job and the weight kept creeping up. In 1989 I weighed 235 pounds and I went on Nutrisytem. I lost 85 pounds and was in a size 10 jean. It should have been a happy time but my Dad had promised me a new wardrobe if I reached my goal of getting down to 120 pounds. In January of 1990 I had a deep vein clot and some other health issues. I had been sickly my entire life but the docs could never really figure out what was wrong with me. I had to go off of nutrisystem. That year I had so many different health things going on that I started letting the weight creep back in. I was devastated the most though that my Dad did not recognize that I had done really well losing weight and he said that the deal was off for the new clothes because I did not reach goal. I cannot tell what a horrible downslide this caused and to be honest the scars from that are still there. I now have learned that it is about me and not about anyone else but I was young and impressionable. In 1997 I had to have an ovarian hysterectomy and that was a very traumatic experience. I was 30 years old and really wanted to have kids someday. I weighed around 205 pounds when I had the hysterectomy but after that the weight started packing on. In 2004 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and had to go on prednisone for almost a year. I gained a ton of weight. My highest weight was 273 pounds. In all these prior years I had been on every diet known to man. I would lose a few and gain a few. In 2007 I kept seeing adds on tv for the lap band surgery so I got up the courage to go to an information seminar. They talked about all 3 weight loss surgeries and I was on board with the lap band. I thought that since it was reversible it was the best option. I started the process and found out that my insurance would not pay for any wls so then I spent about a month deciding what I wanted to do. I made an appointment with the psychiatrist and that came out ok so then I started the process of getting all the clearances. Because I had lung issues, clot issues and auto immune issues I had to get clearances from all my docs. That was not an easy process. At least they were all supportive. The psychologist did tell me that she did not recommend the band for me because of my eating behavior. I had not considered any of the other options. When Dr. Kim looked into my record the nurse called me and said that he recommended the sleeve for me. I started my research but was reluctant to have a good organ removed. It took about 2 months for me to wrap my mind around this surgery. I finally had all my approvals from the pulmonologist, rheumatologist, hematologist, cardiologist and I had my surgery date then I get a phone call 4 weeks before surgery telling me that my surgeon was not doing surgeries for US bariatrics anymore. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. They said that the founder of US Bariatrics was taking all the patients that were scheduled but I would have to go to St. Augustine which is about 2.5 hours away from home. It took me about an hour to settle down and think about things so I made the phone call to St. Augustine and set up the surgery. I had never met Dr. Kim who backed out and had not met Dr. Marema at this point so it was not like I had a relationship with either of them yet. My surgery was originally scheduled for June 23rd and after the cancellation Dr. Marema was able to do me on June 25th. When I had my pre surgery visit with Dr. Marema I fell in love with him. I felt at that moment that God had been at work changing things around to suit His needs and not what I thought was best. Things went like clockwork and the hospital and staff treated me with such great care. I am now 10 weeks out and am so glad I took this journey. I have a long way to go but I know that I can do it. It is very different this time because I am doing this just for me and no one else. I am thankful that my parents are supportive but my success no longer relies on what other people think. I am still extremely shy and will probably always be but I have learned to eat in front of other people, I just eat tiny amounts now.
