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I can't afford weekly therapy, so I'm on an every other Thursday schedule.  I can't even put into words how happy I am that this is one of my therapy days.  I brought up the subject of surgery last session and we talked about it for most of the hour.  Now I've got new issues I need to deal with about my mother and her reaction to my decision.  I'm impatient, but I'm grateful that my insurance is requiring a six month wait doing a physicians supervised diet.  I have all the time in between to make sure I'm mentally and emotionally prepared.  Between therapy and the people I've found on OH, I feel like I can go into this like a well prepared traveller on a heavily travelled path.  Being a trailblazer has never been my style.

I had a revelation in therapy last week. I have struggled to put into words how I feel about the way my size holds me back from living life. When the words finally came together, it was like a light switch had been flipped. What I said was, “I feel like as long as there’s so much more of me, there will be less of me. There isn’t room for me to be myself inside this fat suit. I’m crowded in here and I need to get out.”  

I have accepted that just diet and exercise are not going to be enough. I have accepted that the time has come for drastic, permanent changes to be made. I have accepted that no everyone will support me in this. I have accepted that what I intend to do is very risky. I have accepted that NOT doing it is just as risky. Yes, sometimes people die during or after surgery. It’s a risk. It’s one I’m willing to take, because if I don’t, I’m guaranteed an early death because of my weight. Seems a fair trade – a potential risk for a definite one.  

I am doing what I can. I am arming myself with knowledge and finding ways to connect with people who have been here before. I know I’m not alone. There may be people who think this is vanity – just a desire to be thin.  It’s not. For me, it’s life and death.

I am “morbidly obese”.    At 5’4”, I weigh nearly 300 pounds. This is after losing nearly 40 pounds through dieting solo. I don’t expect it to stay off. The cycle for me goes like this:  

--Get fed up with being enormous

--Start a serious weight loss program

--Lose 30 to 40 pounds

--Hit a plateau

--Try everything I can think of to break the plateau

--Realize that my weight is climbing back up

--Manage to maintain loss a short while by eating so little I am constantly miserable with hunger

--Get fed up with being hungry all the time and decide being enormous is better

--Repeat  

I can’t even begin to calculate how many pounds I’ve gained and lost over the years. At the start of the 2000’s, I was between a size 18 and a size 20. By mid-2001, I was a size 22. November of 2002, I was barely able to fasten a size 24. I hit a size 26 the following month. Since the start of 2003, I have bounced between a 26 and a 30 and back again several times.   In truth, though I love to beat myself up over it, there has been one major factor holding me back. In 2005, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. I gained 50 pounds in the six months following my first symptom – thanks to depression and a suddenly sedentary lifestyle. Since then, it’s been even harder to get my weight to drop.   I have made a decision. I am going to have weight loss surgery. It’s narrowed down to Lap-Band or Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass. Which will depend on what the doctors decide is right for me. If they suggest bypass, I hope I’m a candidate for laparoscopic surgery. The recovery time is shorter and the scarring is minimal.   I have been “obese” for a decade. I have been “extremely obese” for five years. I am verging on the edge of “super obese”. Pardon me why I quote Jim Morrison:

  “The time to hesitate is through.”