I have struggled with weight all of my life.
Well, almost. I was a normal sized baby, but by the time I was 2.5 I was already 50 pounds. By the time I was 6 I weighed 89 pounds (44 is average) and by the time I was 11 I weighed 200. I always thought that my weight trouble started at 9 when I hit puberty, but reading back through my medical records, I realized that it started much earlier.
I have a new appreciation for my childhood doctor after reading through all the notes he took, trying to get my parents to get serious about my weight. He wanted them to take me to a dietitian at the hospital and to help me get more active. It never really happened. He also recommended that I think about a gastric bypass when I was in my last couple years of school, but it was pretty new and I still thought that all I had to do was eat less and I would lose weight, though thinking back now, I see the stupidity in that thinking.
Because of the bullying, I tried starving myself in 7th grade, but it didn't help. In 8th grade I missed 22 days of school because of the cruel bullying, but instead of realizing something was wrong, the school nurse just rolled her eyes when I came in complaining of headaches. I wasn't lying, I was having migraines that lasted for a week at a time.
Even though I weighed almost 350 pounds when I graduated from high school, I was always very strong and pretty active. I was fortunate enough to be an exchange student in the former Soviet Union my senior year and lost about 80 pounds when I was there, but I gained it all back plus more in the next few years.
I didn't matter what I did. I exercised, I watched what I ate, I just kept getting bigger.
At the age of 28 I hit 400 pounds.
For the last 14 I have gone up and down between 330 and 430, recently hitting my highest weight at 433.2. I have generally thought of myself as fairly healthy. Growing up I had terrible ears and had a lot of ENT problems, but generally was pretty healthy. Things took a turn for the worse in 2020 when I was hospitalized with blood clots.
Things continued to get worse this last year. I have arthritis in my knee which has made it very difficult to get around a lot of times, and I still have issues with my lungs, recently having a trip to the ER because my oxygen was down to 79%. Life has suddenly become very difficult. It's getting harder to work, and to pretty much do anything.
This past spring I had quite a bit of blood in my urine and after a CT scan they discovered a 6mm kidney stone, a fatty liver, gallstones, and degenerative disc disease in my lower spine. This news hit me like a ton of bricks and I knew that I had to do something.
A work friend had a gastric bypass and she was doing so well, after about a week of crying I decided that maybe surgery was the way to go for me. I checked out her surgeon and decided to move forward in finding out about surgery.
I decided to allow myself to get help and not hold myself to unattainable standards, and in September of 2022 I had my consultation with the surgeon. Since then I have been working towards meeting all the criteria for my insurance, but I had to wait for our new insurance to kick in, which happened today!!!
Surgery will finally be happening this year!!!
I decided to share my journey and I hope that it will help someone.
So, hop on and ride the sleeve bus with me.
(Also, enjoy the t-shirt I got to wear to surgery!😁)
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