One Girl's Story of Life After Weightloss Surgery: August 2012

So here I am… 30 years old. I am employed. Single. White. Female. Not a lesbian, as I like to remind those who are shocked and sometimes concerned to find a single girl of my age. In approximately 14 days, I will spread myself out like Jesus on an operating room table, offering myself up to the weight loss gods who will hold my life in their hands for approximately (wait, how long does my surgery last? I realize I don’t know the answer to that question)… we’ll say three hours. You see, my surgery is actually two surgeries combined into one operating room session (hopefully).

I had lap-band surgery on March 14, 2007. Yes, I remember the date. That was going to be my new birthday. They were going to save me. And I needed saved…. From weight, I thought. But what I really needed was to be saved from the emotional baggage I had collected over many years of being morbidly obese—about 12 years at the time, to be exact.

I was an average child. Maybe a little on the chubby side of average. My older brother and I were barely a year apart. He was a scrawny thing growing up and I was often mistaken for the older one. I look back at photos of me from preschool and kindergarten and I think, “Nah, I wasn’t big then.” When I was in first grade, my little brother was born. I was no longer the youngest and to top it all off, I became the dreaded middle child. Dad worked full-time for the local government and mom worked part-time, maybe two evenings a week, at her Uncle Larry’s pharmacy. Our family dynamic was fairly normal.

My parents both come from families where food was important. While I was disciplined for behavior issues growing up, I was never told no when it came to food. My mother is a born nurturer. To this day if you walk into her home at any given time, she will offer you a drink and ask if she can make you something to eat, rambling off a list of options, even though you’ve already said you’re not hungry… She loved with food. And we accepted. She cooked wholesome meals that we now know are not healthy… she pan-fried pork chops, made mashed potatoes from scratch with butter and milk, cooked us pancakes every morning and on some nights, made us “Hot Buttered O’s” for a snack—a recipe she had found on a cereal box in the early 80s that consisted of frying Cheerios in butter… the American Heart Association does not recommend this…

Her side of the family had clear weight issues, with probably 70 percent of them being obese. They were food pushers too. They knew what was good and they liked to share. Grandma and Grandpa were typical grandparents—we ate as much ice cream as we wanted, as much popcorn as we could stomach and drank enough soda to corrode the esophagus of five grown adults. And we loved it.

You see, my grandparents grew up in the midst of The Great Depression. “But we always had food on the table,” my grandma would say. This was not the case in my grandpa’s family, unfortunately. With an alcoholic father, my grandpa was soon taken up on his understudy role as head of household. They went hungry. Often. So as he grew older and had his own family, wasting was not something they did. You took a lot of food and you cleaned your plate. And if you couldn’t clean your plate, you gave it to one of the men and they’d clean it for you. Even though he was a hard-working man and his own wife and children would never starve, there was always the memory of not knowing when you would have your next meal. This is what he taught his children and what they unknowingly taught their children. Waste not, want not. My mother was very close with her father and so when he died an early death from cancer in 1990, she was a rightful mess.

For the first time, I realized those I love dearly could be taken away from me so easily. I was eight years old. To cope with the fear of losing someone and the pain of recently losing someone, I believe this is when I began to eat. It made me feel better.

By the time I reached third grade, I weighed 110lbs. I knew I was heavy. Kids were not so nice to me in school, but I grew a thick skin and it didn’t really bother me. I had plenty of friends and I enjoyed being on the soccer team. Family life was still normal. Money was tight, but we had a good life.

Then I got sick. It seems to me that I have written and talked about this period of my life millions of times over the past two decades. This was a pivotal point in my life. I had just been introduced to death and here I was, laid up in Children’s hospital, not knowing what was wrong with me. I literally thought I was dying.

The beginning of the school year started off fine, but I started to feel achy and I was having terrible headaches. I left school early many days. My shoulders and back began to ache, and I think my teacher was becoming increasingly aggravated with me. To her I was a nine-year-old whiner craving attention. My mom wasn’t taking any chances so she took me to the pediatrician who diagnosed me with the flu—the catch-all for mystery illnesses. Upset stomach? It’s the flu. Runny nose? Yep, the flu. Back pain? Again, the flu. Foot hurts? You must have the flu! He sent us home with a recommendation of Myoflex for the back pain and that was about it.

I remember to this day that my back and shoulders hurt so bad, it was nearly impossible to sit comfortably. My parents opened up the pull-out couch in the basement so I could lay there and watch Nickelodeon while my mom rubbed the Myoflex on my back to relieve some of the pain.

But I never got better.

My mom took me to the doctor yet again. At this time, we had just learned that my mom was pregnant again. That was all the doctor needed to hear to give me my next diagnosis: “It’s all in her head.” I was seeking attention after learning there would be a new baby. Mom didn’t buy it, but we went home and continued with our daily lives until one day, the mother instinct went into survival mode. My vision changed. Everything was blurry and I couldn’t focus. My mother is no neurologist, but she knew we had a problem. She took me immediately to the ER at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. I waited, in pain, for what seemed like hours.

To make a long story short, after numerous CT Scans, MRIs, blood analyses, etc., they diagnosed me with a Pseudo Tumor Cerebri. Ironically, these tumor-like build-ups of fluid are found mostly in obese females. I had so much spinal fluid built up that it had leaked into my brain and had nowhere to go. The average person has 16 tubes of fluid—I had 56. After a spinal tap, I was feeling almost instantaneously better and was sent home with instructions to follow up with neurologists and ophthalmologists over the next couple years.

I was lucky. I didn’t have to stay in the hospital very long. I was sick for a couple months, but I had gotten better and they knew what was wrong with me. Some kids weren’t so lucky. This was an extremely difficult time for my family. The Family Medical Leave Act was merely a twinkle in the eye of a politician and my dad still had to work full-time. My mom felt too guilty to leave me so she spent every night there, leaving my dad to care for my brothers alone. Family members stepped up to help and came to visit me, also. My parents were very worried. I remember having an MRI and the lady was talking to me through a speaker from a glass-enclosed room, giving me instructions. I could hear my mom crying in the background. This made me sad, but I wasn’t sad for me—I knew I’d be fine. I was more worried about how my family would take it if something happened to me.

And so began my fear of dying… I suppose I should call it a fear of those around me dying. Does everyone have this fear? I’ve often wondered. Occasionally, to this day, I get the phantom pain of what I experienced when I was nine years old and I immediately go into hypochondriac mode. It’s something my family and friends laugh at, but I am super concerned with all things medical. The internet has become my go-to doctor for initial analyses of symptoms. My actual doctor has requested more than once that I stop researching possible illnesses on the internet. He has gone so far as to humor me at times, writing me scripts for blood tests I’ve requested, just to be able to tell me they came back inconclusive, as he expected.

So life went on and my little sister was born on October 4, 1991. I was in love. I wanted her to be mine. I took care of her like she was mine and as she grew up, I often tried to be her mother.

My younger brother was three at the time. He was the sweetest little blonde-haired boy ever. He was my buddy. He let my friends and I dress him up in my old clothes. We made him play house with us. He was my tag-along and I didn’t mind.

My older brother and I had a tumultuous relationship. We fought constantly because we were so close in age and as we got older, we knew each other’s hot buttons. He’d call me fat. I’d call him stupid. This went on and on and on. I’m positive we drove our parents nuts.

Dad was still working full-time. Mom wasn’t working at all. Money was sometimes tight, but we made it. We had nice things and I honestly cannot remember wanting for anything.

My parents were concerned about my weight. It didn’t seem to be getting any better; in fact it was getting worse. My parents didn’t exactly know what to do. They would try to set boundaries with me when it came to food, but they felt bad because there were three other children in the house who didn’t need those boundaries with food… I grew to resent my parents for constantly monitoring my weight and what I was eating. I know it pained them to do it, but they were doing the best they could. Childhood obesity is not something that was talked about then and so to the best of their ability, they continued to do what they thought was best for me and my health.

When I was twelve, my mom took me to Diet Workshop with her. Then we tried a therapist. After that, another therapist. Weight Watchers (a couple times), the soup diet, all to no avail. I was still very active. I played soccer and volleyball until I was 14 and I enjoyed it. I had plenty of friends. We had our average pre-teen problems, but I was mostly happy.

My weight was starting to affect me, though, how it never really had in the past. I was still teased in school occasionally; never regularly or a lot. But as I grew older, I noticed that I couldn’t wear the cool clothes the other girls were wearing. The boys weren’t interested in me like they were in everyone else. I was awkward to begin with just because of the normal early-teen angst, but the weight made it worse. I had frizzy hair, had never put on make-up a day in my life and even if I had been able to buy the cool clothes, I’m not sure I would’ve even known what to wear!

And now we reach a part in my life story where even I am beginning to bore of hearing it. The old, non-blogging Anne would wrap up quickly, skipping the high school years, and jumping right to present time. But what’s the fun in that?

High school became one of the best periods of my life. I started my school journey in first grade at a Catholic school and somehow ended up freshman year at the local public school. Even I surprised myself by embarking on this unknown territory, the largest four-year public institution in Ohio—Oak Hills High School. I am still not sure what made me so brave as to leave the people I had known for eight years (some longer) and start over in a school where I would eventually graduate with almost 800 people. But I’m so glad I did.

Kelly was the first friend I had when I went to high school (which at this time, the freshmen were located in the junior high). We were both new to the school and didn’t know anyone. She was quiet; I was not. She was athletic; I was not. She played sports; I did not. I was a straight-A student; she was not. We somehow found ourselves at the same lunch table and the rest is history. Despite our known differences, we were perfect for each other. We were a good balance.

We each had separate groups of friends or “acquaintances” that we would hang out with. Hers were the more sporty, sometimes “bad kid” type. Mine were the more smarty pants “semi-dorky, but popular” type. It’s hard for me to see myself as anything other than my weight, so it always surprised me that Kelly wanted to hang out with me and that she stayed friends with me, despite my extremely large size. I think at this time I weighed probably 200+ lbs. I was more grateful for her friendship than I could ever try to explain.

My parents were still concerned with my weight, but approaching the subject only caused drama and often ended in a screaming match. I wasn’t getting regular exercise anymore at this point. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t like exercising. I was more interested in other extra-curricular activities…

Half-way through freshman year, a red-headed misfit from El Paso, Texas entered the scene. Her name was Shelby and she was so quiet that when she talked, I could barely even hear her. She was in my Geophysics class and being the welcome committee for the school (this is a joke), I felt it my obligation to make her feel included. I introduced her to Kelly and there was never any question—she was going to be our friend. She opened up eventually and we realized she was hilariously funny, fun to be around and slightly deviant—which is something Kelly and I weren’t used to, but couldn’t wait to explore. The three of us would be best friends for five years.

Sophomore year came at the high school. It was enormous. It took me two weeks to actually like it there. I didn’t see my best friends as much as I had wanted. We all met other people who soon became our friends, too.

Christina was in my journalism and biology classes. I knew a girl who dated Christina’s older brother. She didn’t think too much of Christina and neither did I at first, but we laughed so much in journalism class over my made-up quotes and sources that we immediately became friends. We were pretty inseparable. We sang our way through school productions, set the curve on biology exams, and had more fun laughing than I ever imagined two people could possibly have. To this day, she is my best friend. She is supportive, honest, genuine, funny and most importantly, she thinks I’m funny.

Graduation came and went and I spent the summer working at Kroger, hanging with friends and spending time with family. At this point in time, I weighed approximately 270lbs.

I decided to go to Wilmington College for a couple reasons. First—they wanted me. They were willing to pay a hefty scholarship and that was important. Second—they were close to home. Being so close to my family and friends was key. Third—the campus was small. As a morbidly obese person, I am always concerned with how far I will have to walk and will I be able to keep up? If I have to take the stairs, how many flights will it be? The list goes on. And it helped that my friend Marcus, whom I had met my senior year at OHHS in Sociology class, would be going there as well.

I absolutely LOVED college. I loved learning, I loved being involved and I really loved the social life. I made great friends and had a lot of fun. Campus was small and while there were always people who would judge me for being obese, I felt as though I fit in just fine.

At the beginning of sophomore year, I met a girl named Amanda. She sat by me in Sociology class and being the approachable, outgoing person that I am, I suppose she found it easy to talk to me. She was a year older, from the town, lived just off campus and was slightly bored with her off-campus life. She showed an interest in getting a little more involved in the fun on campus. Did I mention that I was the official Director of Fun? J We had many memorable times together and formed a friendship that has lasted to this day. She is a genuinely caring person. Maybe it’s her Quaker heritage or just her equal-opportunity personality, but she sees people for what they are on the inside and is not quick to judge a book by its cover. She understands me and often knows how I feel before I even tell her.

As a student majoring in Spanish, I was given the opportunity in 2003 to study abroad in Spain. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and I knew that if I had any hopes of becoming fluent, there was no question—I had to do it. At this point in my life, I weighed 330lbs. I had a TON of anxiety approaching this trip. It was a whole new world (key the Disney music…). I had no idea what to expect. I honestly thought I would go over and probably end up coming home. Deep down, I had no intentions of staying. To this day, I can’t believe I did it. I have no idea where my strength comes from sometimes (my mother says God).

I knew that going to Spain would require a rather long flight… I think nine hours, if I remember correctly. Flying is a source of anxiety for most overweight people. And this time I was flying alone. I no longer had a family member to sit by me. I was worried. Would I need a seatbelt extension? Would the person next to me be upset because they had to spend a nine-hour flight sitting next to a fat person? As it turned out, I rode the entire way next to a seven year old girl who spoke no English. She was traveling by herself from Puerto Rico to Spain. God works in mysterious ways. I think he was trying to tell me that if this little girl can do it by herself, so can I.

Upon arriving in Spain, I quickly found out that they had lost my luggage. Two suitcases with my entire life bundled up inside were nowhere to be found. This was devastating. I was crying too much I couldn’t even figure out how to call collect to the United States! A nice gentleman stopped to help me. I suppose it was maybe 2:30 a.m. when I called and woke my parents from a sound sleep to tell them I had arrived, but was going to have to go naked until they could track down my suitcases… You see, the average person would be upset, but would take the clothing vouchers from the airline and purchase some new clothes to hold them over. This was nearly impossible for me. Have you ever been to Europe? Ever seen a fat person there? Neither have I. Not to mention I was going to be living in a small mountainous city with not very many skinny-people clothing options.

My host family was wonderful and so was my director, Lisa. She gave me an old coat of hers and made sure I was ok. Javier, the husband of my host sister, helped to track down my luggage for me and it arrived just a week later. Still, I was terribly homesick. I had great classmates and had met wonderful friends, but I missed my family more than anything. For the first couple weeks I would call my mom every night from a payphone outside of our apartment building and cry. She refused to make arrangements for me to come home. She knew if she gave in, I would accept and she also knew I needed this in so many ways.

Spain was an eye-opener for me. We walked EVERYWHERE. And not to sound cliché, but it really was up-hill both ways (OK, maybe just one way, but the hill was big and kinda scary). We went on many excursions with our group of 12 students. This was really difficult for me because I simply could not keep up. As mortified as I was, I found solace in the fact that I had so many truly nice and genuine supporters in my fellow classmates. There was one instance where a classmate had stayed behind with me and the teacher asked if he was feeling sick too and he replied, “No, es que ella es mi amiga,” or in English, “No, it’s just that she’s my friend…” My heart melts just thinking about it.

As I said before, it’s difficult to see myself as anything other than a fat person, so for people to be so kind to me or to truly accept me and want to be my friend, it makes me emotional.

So I made it through Spain. I was SO VERY PROUD of myself. I still am. It was quite an accomplishment. I said goodbye to my host mother on April 16, 2003. That was the last time I would see her. She passed away in 2008 before I had a chance to make a return visit. She was a beautiful person and helped me so much. When my own mother couldn’t be there, she was the next best thing. She once told me I was a beautiful girl and if I could just lose ten pounds, I would feel so much better. I thought this was cute and I was not the least bit offended. I really see it as a compliment that she thought ten pounds would do a world of difference. I know she will be watching over me on this upcoming journey.

The rest of my college career is pretty uneventful. I graduated cum laude in 2004 with a degree in Modern Language (Spanish) and a minor in English. I worked and worked and worked. I got my real estate license in 2006—something I had always wanted to do. But I knew it would be difficult. Showing houses means going up the stairs. The last thing I wanted was for clients to see me exhausted from walking up a flight or two of stairs. And I really didn’t want them to have to follow me up the stairs and have my large behind staring them directly in the face. But I succeeded despite my own fears.

Over the past few years, my weight had ballooned. By the end of 2006, I was up to about 400lbs. I had tried a few years before to have Gastric Bypass Surgery and the psychologist didn’t think I was ready. I was about 23 years old. I had broken my foot and cracked a tooth on Cinco de Mayo just a year before; this was clearly because of alcohol. I was young and I liked to party. The doc wasn’t impressed with this. He thought I wasn’t quite mature enough to change my lifestyle. I was furious, but looking back, he was right.

So by this time it was two years later and I was clearly much more mature (hint of sarcasm). I had grown some, physically and metaphorically speaking. I felt like I had my life together. The one thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to lose weight. My parents felt my struggle. They wanted me to be happy. I had no insurance at the time. It is nearly impossible to find insurance when you’re morbidly obese. No, they didn’t refuse to cover me; they just made the cost so outrageously high that it was practically unattainable. The gastric banding process was gaining popularity and my parents decided they were willing to pay for the surgery out of pocket. This was music to my ears. As a self-pay patient, the process was quick. I went to a seminar in mid-January and, $17,000 later, I had surgery on March 14, 2007.

The aftermath of the lap-band surgery was the most difficult for me. I know now that I had false expectations of what life would be like after lap-band. I wasn’t prepared for what happened. I was expecting to come out of surgery a new person. I wouldn’t be hungry. I wouldn’t want food. I would lose weight…. Well…. I was hungry. I did want food. And I didn’t lose weight. The band is simply a small, hollow, tube-like band that goes around your stomach. It has a port attached to it that allows injections of saline to fill the band, causing the band to become tighter and hence, restricting your intake of food and hopefully, staving off hunger.

The problem? The band is simply placed on your stomach during surgery. You wait approximately six weeks to have a “fill,” and even then, it’s often a small one. So there was absolutely no change in my appetite. I was not prepared for this. Every month or so I went back for a fill. Eventually I got to a point where I was starting to feel some restriction. The band was finally starting to work for me. But… I realized there were some things I had trouble with. Bread, French fries, pasta… they would all make me throw up. I had to quit eating them. This I knew. But it wasn’t easy. There were a handful of other things that would cause vomiting too. It was really difficult for me to break free of this addiction to food.

I guess I immaturely thought that it would be easier. I have recognized my addiction to food for about ten years now. And like any other addiction, it’s hard to break. I would argue that it may be even harder. I equate it to telling an alcoholic that he or she has to drink six beers a day, but it can only be non-alcoholic beer. Do you think that would be easy for them? In this country we are sympathetic to those people with drug and alcohol addictions. We have places for them to go for treatment (often for free). But we shame obese people into thinking that they should be able to do this themselves and that if they have surgery, it’s the easy way out. The insurance companies are changing and beginning to realize that treatment in the name of weight loss surgery is a good option, though.

So why didn’t it work for me? Well, I went back and still had more fluid added to my band. Initially, I was throwing up practically everything I ate, but I was losing weight so it didn’t faze me one bit. But after a while, I noticed I was losing my hair… I began to feel sick… I hated throwing up. And it got to the point where even when I could keep something down, I found myself wanting to throw up anyway. And I did. I was now bulimic.

Unfortunately, even taking fluid out of my band didn’t fix the problem completely. It was too loose. I could eat what I wanted. And I did. I had lost about 70lbs, but had slowly gained most of it back. I got my band filled again because I figured if I was going to throw up anyway, I might as well lose weight. It didn’t work so well this time, though, and slowly I put back on the weight.

In 2010, while working at a local hospital, I went to see a bariatric doctor. He did a barium swallow and decided that my band was overfilled. He took out all of the fluid and let my band rest. When I went back in, I was anxiously awaiting a fill. He had different plans. He told me he wanted me to make some changes first and commit to a healthier lifestyle before he did that. I was furious at the time. I went back the next month and he put a little bit in my band—not enough to make a difference—and he sent me home with a “come back and see me and we’ll see how you’re doing next month.” I didn’t go back for quite some time. And with my stomach practically back to normal, I put on an additional 30lbs and was back up to my original pre-surgery weight of 405lbs.

Eventually I began to worry myself. I hated being that weight again. It was somewhere I never thought I would be again after lap-band surgery. I was depressed.

It's important to mention here that I have never been at a loss for support. I have a wonderful relationship with my family-- yes, even my older brother. I have many close friends and many acquaintances, all who I believe truly care about me. I see Kelly a few times a year and Christina and Amanda continue to be my best friends. Sometime in the mid-2000s, I met my cousin Kevin's girlfriend, Kim, who has since become his wife. Never in a million years would I have thought that we would be as close as we are today, but she is an unending source of support in everything I do. We have a mutual understanding of each other that some search a lifetime to find with a friend. Like most of my friends, she gets my humor and I love that she is always up for anything. She is a helper. If you are in need; she is there to help.

But even with all of the support and love and encouragement that surrounds me, my weight was oppressive and couldn't be ignored. I saw it everywhere I went-- in the mirror, in the car reflection, in the little kid staring at me in the grocery store, in the airplane seat, in the amusement park ride, in the clothing stores... My weight was not an idle bystander, but an in-your-face bitch that wouldn't leave me alone. I had to do something.

I had been seeing a therapist and we had done a lot of work on figuring out my reasons for eating and how my brain works. Our sessions were often eye-opening. I learned a lot about myself through this process—things I hadn’t realized before. In early 2012, I decided I’d had enough. I went to see my doctor again, but my goal was not to fill my band. I hated my band. I wanted it out more than anything in the world. And I was hoping that he would be willing to remove it and do another surgery in its place.

He wasn’t on the same page. He didn’t know if I could be successful. I needed to prove to him that I could lose weight and make changes and that I was committed. I was really frustrated. I wanted instant gratification. But I put on a good face and decided to give it a go. I needed to lose weight regardless, so this was going to be beneficial for me anyway.

So over the next six months, I returned. I had some good days and bad, but overall, I’ve lost about 30lbs. The doctor agreed to do my surgery on August 28, 2012. He will remove my lap-band and hopefully do a gastric bypass or gastric sleeve surgery. With lap-band patients, it is difficult to know how the stomach is until you get into the body during the operation. Depending on swelling and scar tissue, the doctor may or may not be able to do the second surgery right away. There is a chance I will return home with no surgery and will have to come back a month or two later to complete the second round.

I am hoping and praying with all my heart that I am able to have the two surgeries at one time. I am ready for this. More ready than I will ever be…

Do I still have your attention after all that reading? I hope so. Stay tuned for weekly updates where I share my triumphs and tribulations as I embark on this new adventure of weight loss.

How did my story resonate with you? Please—feel free to share your own stories and feelings.

One Girl's Story of Life After Weightloss Surgery

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Almost there...

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Backstory

About Me