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My Story
Meet Our Members - Personal Pages
Pages are filed alphabetically by the person's BSCI username.
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More to come.... |
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| Nov. 2002 - I was so mad at my friend for taking this! |
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| A friend & I (I'm on the left) in the preaching robe I wore at my highest weight! |
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| As with so many others, I have fought weight issues all my life. I was a chubby toddler and fat child. At age 12, my mother and my pediatrician decided that I needed to lose 60 pounds. I was put on a diet and given diet pills. When I lost the 60 pounds, the doctor thought it would be funny to tell me I needed to lose more. When I burst into tears, he told me I was too sensitive!
As I went through my teenage years, I gained that weight back, and then some. Of course, the doctor(s) kept me on ever-stronger doses of diet pills. During my senior year in college, I threw away the pills because I was fed up with feeling on edge and hyper.
My weight fluctuated all through adulthood, with the result of always increasing. I began to deal with various "co-morbidities" -- my family's osteoarthritis (knees); high blood pressure; depression; sleep apnea. My primary care doctor suggested WLS, but I refused -- I had heard too many horror stories (mostly from many years ago). I became more and more miserable and hopeless.
The turning point came in 2002. At a regular appointment for a physical, my doctor gently pointed out how much difficulty I had maneuvering and again suggested WLS. I reluctantly agreed to check it out and she made a referral. I was hoping I would get an appointment so I could get information and ask questions. However, that practice had you fill out all kinds of forms and have all kinds of tests, and then they would make an appointment, which would be quite a bit later because of the backlog of patients. That completely put me off, and I did nothing further about it.
In September, I went on vacation with friends on our annual trek to Maine. I had reached my highest weight of 384 pounds (I'm 5'4" tall), with a BMI of 64. It was a horrible experience - for me, and I'm sure for them! Everything I did was painful, and I was constantly cranky and whiny. (That those friendships have continued says a lot about what good friends I have!)
Not long after, I mentioned to one of my friends, who is a nurse practitioner in private practice, that I was thinking about WLS, but was very wary. She suggested I check out a program nearby that she had referred patients to. She was extremely impressed with how well they were treated, and how well they did.
So I went to a informational meeting 2 weeks later. Sitting in the room (which was crowded), I felt a sense of peace I hadn't felt in a long time. I realized that I was finally in a place where I did not have to try to pretend to be invisible!! (and realized just how much of my energy went to trying to do just that!) The next morning I made an appointment to begin the process.
On January 30, 2003, I had a long-limb open roux-n-y. My recovery was smooth, with no complications. And the weight just kept falling off. My energy increased, and I began doing things I hadn't done in a long time - walking, exercising in the pool, simply enjoying doing things that had been so difficult. Blood pressure went down, and the settings for my CPAP (for sleep apnea) were cut in half.
more to come later.....it's really late! 7/13/06
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