That's the saying, right? Gastric Bypass is NOT a quick fix. I do NOT take it lightly. In fact, it has taken me years to get to the point where I finally agreed to have the surgery. My health is not good. I was always the sickly child growing up...nothings really changed. If I'm talking to you on the phone and you sneeze, I'm probably going to get a cold! That's just the way it has always been for me.
Then, in my 20's a doctor said, I think you have PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) so they referred me to an endocrinologist. I went through all the tests to rule everything else out and based on a lot of testing, info. etc it was determined that yes, I had PCOS. They put me on Metformin and told me that I was now pre-diabetic. Oh joy! After learning about how PCOS affects your body, it made total sense why I couldn't lose weight easily. I've always struggled to lose weight but up until my 20's, I only had 25 lbs or so to lose. I would work-out like crazy, I've been on every diet known to man: the cabbage soup diet, Weight Watchers, NutriSystem, no carbs, etc, etc, and nothing ever really worked. One time I worked out with a friend who was getting married for like six months. She lost a ton of weight, and I didn't even lose a pound. It was very disheartening.
Fast forward to the end of my 20's when I met the love of my life, and we decided to get married. By now I was around 220 pounds...way over my usual 25 lbs overweight comfort zone.
How did that happen? Well I was working a desk job at a church where every meeting revolved around good Southern cooking! Snacks were everywhere, and life was pretty stressful in my 20's.
My grandparents who helped raise me weren't doing well, so they asked me to move in with them and help take care of them. I was working a full-time job and taking care of my grandma with Alzheimer's, paying the bills, cooking when grandpa would let me, etc. My pa-pa passed away, and I had to make the almost impossible decision to put grandma in an Alzheimer's facility so she could get the care she needed, stay safe, and allow me to continue working to support myself. I visited her almost every day and watched this woman that I loved dearly fade away slowly. Then my step-dad got really sick and passed away too. It was a tough decade.
I don't think I would have survived it if I hadn't met Chris. He was there for me like no one ever had been. He wanted to take care of me and make sure I was alright. That was very new because until then, it had always been the other way around; me taking care of everyone else. He loved me just the way I was, overweight and all.
We started working out together and eating healthier. I lost 20 pounds before our wedding. Once we were married, I went to the doctor to check on things. I was 29, and we wanted to have kids, but that can be challenging for someone with PCOS. When they checked my ovaries, one was twice the size of the other due to all of the cysts on it. During all the drama with my grandparents, I had gotten off my Metformin. So back on it I went, and seven months later, we found out we were pregnant.
I was so excited to be pregnant, but it was definitely not an easy pregnancy. I had terrible morning sickness that seemed to last forever. I developed high blood pressure to the point where I had to visit the doctor weekly to check on the baby, and eventually I had to go on bed rest. My blood pressure wasn't getting any better, so the doctor planned a C-section for 16 days before the due date.
During the C-section, my blood pressure went 200/100, but the doctor didn't believe the reading for some reason and blamed it on the cuff, even though I started seizing. They later told me that it wasn't a seizure, I was just cold...yeah right. So not believing the reading, he sent me to recovery with NO magnesium so that my body could recover all by itself. After three hours in recovery, they finally sent me to my room. I knew immediately something was wrong. I won't go into details, but it was obvious. Never the less, they released me after three days.
I went home and tried to lay in the recliner with my baby to go to sleep. She had really bad acid reflux, so that was the easiest way for her to sleep. When I did, it felt like I was drowning. I was scared, so my husband took me up to the Emergency Room. Turns out that the blood pressure reading was NOT a mistake, and by making my body recover without any help, I ended up developing pulmonary edema and diastolic disturbance. I coded twice the first night in the hospital and spent an additional seven days in the hospital recovering. A month later, I couldn't walk due to a pain. We went to the Emergency Room and had to have my gallbladder removed.
Well, all of that did something to my body. If loosing weight was hard before, it was doubly hard now. The high blood pressure has stayed with me and the pre-diabetes turned into type 2 diabetes a couple of years ago. It is controlled by pills, no insulin yet, thank goodness.
Also they figured out that I had an autoimmune disease called Graves Disease. So I took a radioactive pill to kill my thyroid and have been on Synthroid ever since. I laugh because a very small percentage of people with Graves are overweight, the rest are usually very thin. Just my luck!
Last year, I couldn't stay awake during the day to save my life. I would randomly fall asleep EVERYWHERE. I did a sleep study and sure enough, I had a very severe case of sleep apnea. So now I cannot sleep without my bi-pap machine.
So all of these factors have led me to the decision to have Gastric Bypass. More than one doctor has told me that if I don't do something, I won't live long enough to see my baby girl graduate high school. So for health reasons, I will have the surgery on March 15th.
I have done the mental health screening, had the four months of dietitian appointments, and I am currently on a liquid diet that I have to do for two weeks before surgery.
I plan on documenting the rest of my journey as a reminder for myself, so if I ever feel like slipping into old routines years later, I can read all that I went through and KNOW that food is not worth dying for, that I've worked too hard to be healthy to mess up! If this helps someone else, then that's an awesome bonus.
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