Becca W.
I guess everybody has a story... My surgery was Dec. 28, 2005, but my WLS story started before that even.I wrote about it as a side bar to an article I wrote for the daily newspaper where I work. Here it is:
"It was probably my fat tongue that pushed me over the edge. I'd been going through the motions on a 'just-in-case basis,' as in I still hadn't decided for sure I was going to have my innards replumbed, but at the least, the testing would be done just in case I decided to have bariatric surgery.
Being one to overanalyze and research to death just about everything, I knew the risks of gastric bypass and I was scared. But I was scared to go on like I had been, steadily gaining weight despite trying tons of diets and weight-loss programs. In some ways, I was lucky. I didn't have the co-morbidities that often accompany obesity: stuff like high blood pressure, diabetes and sleep apnea, though I was heading in that direction. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning.
I've always been at least chubby. My earliest memories are of living in a small island nation where corpulence was a sign of prosperity. The Jamaicanns fawned over my best friend and me, chubby white girls with Jamaican accents. Adults would give us sweets and spoil us to the point that older kids would send us to see what kind of tasty treats they'd ply us with. Of course, the kids' plans often backfired because the pastries, patties and other goodies we'd score would be half-eaten by the time we returned. Jamaica was the last place my weight served any sort of benefit.
I didn't understand the taunts that came after we returned to the States when I was 5, although surprisingly enough, I didn't get them often. I stayed pretty active as a kid and teenager, mostly swimming competitively. In the summers, I participated in junior lifeguard programs that involved running and swimming on the beach all day. And still, I gained weight. In high school, I worked as a lfieguard and taught swimming lessons and still gained weight. When I went off to college and in the few years that I remained in the Bay Area after school, my roommates were always surprised that my eating habits matched theirs and yet, while they stayed mostly the same, I gained weight. That's not to say it wasn't my fault. My diet was far from perfect. Fast food was convenient food and for a while, it was a staple. And then I REALLY gained weight.Oh, there were brief periods when I didn't. I'd try diets and lose some here or there but never enough and never quickly enough to stay motivated.
I finally gave myself an ultimatum: I was going to try one last time and if I wasn't successful, I'd look into surgery. Because I'm writing this, you might guess the outcome. I'd done well and was on my way, having lost about 50 pounds when I managed to hurt my back and was laid up in bed for longer than I care to remember. Slowly, all that weight came back ...and it brought company.
It took about a year and a half for me to revisit my promise to myself. First I attended an information seminar given by the doctor who would become my surgeon. Then I scheduled an appointment with him. The doctor and I had a long talk about my reseons for wanting the surgery, my weight history, and even a little chat about our shared alma mater before he sent me off with a list of diagnostic tests I'd have to take. But I still wasn't convinced.
The death rate in gastric bypass isn't steep compared to other major surgeries, but the way I saw it, that was for any unnamed group. By my way of thinking, I, as an individual patient, had a 50-50 chance, given there were two options: to die or not. So I stalled in making plans.
Eventually, though, I called and set up the first of my appointments for all the pre-op evaluations and such. I made plans with the nutritionist first. My insurance company requires at least six months on a supervised nutrition program so I thought I'd better start with that, just in case I chose to move forward. I didn't want to later come to the decision and then have to wait another six months.
What followed was a series of pokes and prods and general exams, the worst of which was the sleep apnea test. When the sleep doctor walked into the examination room and gave me the once over, he announced that I had sleep apnea. Then he looked at my tongue --my 'fat tongue' -- and was sure.
"Haven't you ever noticed your tongue is fatter than everyone else's?" he asked.
My family and friends can all attest to my big mouth - especially when it comes to arguing my eclectic political beliefs- but no, I'd not been tongue-inspecting lately. He explained that tongues, like other organs, get fat as we gain weight. I'd never given any thought to it, but it made sense. And as silly as it may sound, it depressed me.
I already had stopped wearing certain clothes in public -- short sleeves and shorts -- because of my fat arms and thighs. I was already the one with the "cute," but never pretty, face - because it was fat. Now on top of it all, I had a fat tongue. I left the doctor's office sad, dwelling on the fat tongue comment, and it was then I knew I wanted surgery.
When I went back a few days later for my sleep test, sensors were attached all over my body, then I was told to just sleep normally. Yeah, right. The great number of wires connected to my skull alone made a modern-day Medusa of me. Apparently I managed to sleep well enough to determine I did not have the sleep apnea the doctor thought I did.
"HA!" I wanted to yell in the face of this white-coat-wearing, fat-tongue-complex-inducing medical maleficent. Instead, I just said thank you and left.
My surgery was Dec. 28 at St. John's in Oxnard. These eight-plus months have raced by and the pounds, 140 of them so far, have melted. I realized the other day that were I to want the surgery at my current weight, I'd no longer qualify and that was somewhat empowering, though I know that 'normal' people would look at what I still have to lose and gasp.
Perspective is a funny thing.
I can't say it's been easy. What I can say, after trying all the other options, is that I'm convinced it was the only thing that was going to work for me. And I don't know I would have died early after developing those co-morbidities, but odds sure leaned that way, and I'm glad I've changed my lifestyle -- just in case."
Sept. 10, 2006
Copyright, 2006, Ventura County Star
