Getting ready to go through this surgery has opened my eyes to a lot of self awareness. About myself and to how I feel about things in life; But mostly, about how I feel about food. I treat food as if it is a relationship. I go to food when I am sad, when I am happy, when I need reassurance. Food has never let me down. People have let me down. Circumstances have let me down, but never food. I started saying good-bye to food about a year before my surgery. It was a slow process, and I failed a lot. Almost the same as when I said good-bye to my marriage. It was a slow gradual process for me to come to the realization that my marriage was the one thing I wanted desperately to always be there. I didn’t want to accept that; no matter how volatile and deadly my marriage was for me, how destructive, and how damaging, emotionally and physically, I would die if I stayed. I still WANTED my marriage!!! I was willing to give anything. And I do mean ANYTHING to make it work!! And I almost gave my life! I see my relationship with food as the same situation. I have been clinging to food as my comfort for as long as I can remember. I know it’s killing me. I see the damage it’s doing, in my relationships with people, (I tend to keep everyone at arms length) in my bank account, by eating what I eat, and by having to buy the clothing that I need to buy in order to maintain those choices. It’s pretty expensive!! But that didn’t change my attitude towards it. I still wanted to eat, because I was still lonely and I was always looking for the one thing that’s going to get me through the emotional tornado that was my inner-self. That IS my inner self.
I have been through a lot to get to this point. Not only the insurance red tape with my company, and the requirements of the Bariatric facility I worked with, but also the ridicule and criticism of strangers, and even friends and family. Even at my heaviest ever weight, there were people in my life who say just diet and exercise. I’m sorry, but I have passed the point of diet and exercise being a viable option for me, about 15 years prior to surgery. Asthma makes it difficult to exert myself, pain in my knees and ankles make it extremely difficult to exercise, and the ability to recover from any physical exertion was days long, not just an hour or two as a normal person would need. Yes, I could have done it slowly and with a lot of will power. But, do you honestly think I got to that point by having will power? NO! Food addiction is the same as being an alcoholic, only alcohol has an age restriction, and it’s not readily available at every street corner drive thru, and it’s not advertised on T.V. like food is. I have realized that I am powerless over food, and I am an addict. The difference is, a person can survive and have a happy prosperous life without alcohol or drugs, even though they are addicted to that drug. So there has to be some balance between a food addicts need for their drug of choice and being able to survive... I think gastric bypass is that option. At least it is for me. I don’t see another way for me to conquer the beast that controls me.
I have been passed over for jobs, I have endured criticism, from complete strangers, and from people who I know, and from people who supposedly love me. I have had people name call at me from passing vehicles! I have been ignored, as if I am not even in the room, and believe me, I was NOT easy to miss!! Talk about going from one extreme to another! I’ve been cut off by cars while walking, even if I was in a cross walk, and I have had people not hold an elevator or a door for me, even though it’s pretty clear that the courteous thing to do would be to accommodate an upcoming person. I’ve lived with this ridicule and criticism for most of my adult life. It’s heart breaking, and it’s disgusting. My family has suffered: my children have been subjected to antagonistic behaviors, ridicule and criticism from other kids. They’ve been picked on and bullied because of my weight. They’ve seen me cry because I want to do things with them, and I physically just can’t. They’ve missed out on things in their lives, such as sports activities, and going places, because I just didn’t have the stamina to keep up the pace, or (more honestly) I didn’t want to go and be subjected to the stares and snide commentary, and possibly have my children see it. Some days, by the end of a work day, I’d go home and just pass out because I was so exhausted from hefting around my weight for a day. My sisters and brother and I were scattered a lot as kids, so by the time I got close to my sisters and brother again as an adult, I was very deep in my addiction, and nothing anyone said or did could have changed it. My sisters don’t think I know this, but they make special arrangements for me, so if we go out some place, they make sure to pick a table, not a booth, or a seat without arms on it, so my rear-end will fit in the seat, if we go to a theater they make sure it’s one with seating that has no arms on the chairs. It’s kind of sad that they’ve had to make accommodations for me, but they have, and they do, and they love me anyway. I am so grateful for that; grateful for my family and friends who have stuck by me and never gave up on me. Grateful that I have people in my world who won’t hurt me, even when they saw me killing myself slowly with food.
I can blame only part my weight problem on physiology. Around the time I turned 30, I had my youngest daughter, and was diagnosed with thyroid disorder. With in 6 months my metabolism slowed to almost non-existent. For years leading up to that point, I worked on my feet, on the go all day long for any where from 10-14 hours a day at a company contracted to Boeing. I was, up to that point in my life, maintaining at about 300 pounds. Within those same few months, my mother became ill, and was no longer capable of caring for my children, and my fears of leaving my newborn, and my 7 and 9 year old (all) girls with strangers at a child care facility, was overwhelming. So I took a job at a day care, which was pretty sedentary for the most part. Then I began office work, which was completely sedentary, but my lifestyle and eating habits had not changed. So with in 2-3 years of being diagnosed with a thyroid issue, I had gone from active and on the go all the time, to sitting at a desk and still eating as if I was burning it off, not taking into account my thyroid issues, (unmedicated at this point) or the fact that I was 30, and starting that ever scary time when all of our metabolisms seem to falter a little bit. Over the next 10 years, I packed on at least 10-15 pounds a year, which brought me to my heaviest weight of 465 pounds.
Now that I have an opportunity to change this area in my life, and basically get a do-over on how bad I have screwed up through years of bad choices and horrible eating habits, and some medical conditions, I am jumping in feet first, and I believe with all my heart that if I didn’t have this surgery, I would die. I don’t want to die. I am too young to die. My kids are too young for me to die. My family is basically healthy, so I am going to beat this addiction, with the help of surgery, and through the support of my friends and family. I have a goal, and I will reach it. I haven’t ever been a very focused person in my life. Most of the time, it was survival. Make sure the kids are happy, healthy, and well adjusted, and anything I needed could wait. I never took the time to care for myself. I always figured it would work itself out, and I’d deal with it when I couldn’t find another way. Well, now the kids are grown, (almost) and pretty much self sufficient, and it was high time to address myself, my life, and my issues. So here I am.
This has been a life long battle for me, but my true journey began on May 4th, 2011. That’s the day I had surgery. That’s the beginning of my do-over. That’s the day GOD brought me through the darkest most guilt ridden curtain I’ve ever been under, and allowed me to see the sun shine in my heart again. That’s the day I knew I was going to be OK, even if the morphine pump was making me wish I could back up and take back the surgery. Morphine and I don’t agree.
I hope I can inspire anyone who is thinking about this surgery, to go for it! This surgery truly is a life saving tool. It will be what you make of it. Sure there are ways to cheat, but I didn’t go through this whole process and practically fight and claw my way to that operating room table, just to fail by finding a way to go back to eating the crap I used to eat. It’s hard. I cry, a lot. I miss my friend, my confidante, my stability... but I am learning more about myself, and to rely on ME, not a cheeseburger and fries. I am learning that I can control my addiction. Being forced to control it at first was an eye opener, but gradually, I am learning that I CAN do this. I WILL do this. I will win!!!!
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