Evie21
My story started several years ago when I decided I wanted to get pregnant. Funny that a WLS story starts out by talking about babies but the truth is, that is what sparked my journey. Babies. So I was a young wife in her early twenties making the biggest decision of her life right? Wrong. After several years of pregnancy attempts, doctors visits, stress, depression, drama, and just about every fertility drug under the sun, I finally was blessed with a beautiful baby girl. She was adopted of course but my heart was nonetheless hers. My Destynee. After Destynee's 4th birdthday I began to have that feeling again of wanting to be a mom. My heart ached for another beautiful baby and yet everything medicinally that could be done had already been done with surgery the last option on the table. I had to make a decision. I'm sure I could have succeeded in vitro fertilization but the truth of the matter is, how much of a success would a 268 lb woman have if she became pregnant? I was looking at a future of high risk pregnancy from day one, with my medical history listing all of the familiar signs of obesity such as sleep apnea, high blood pressure, blurred vision, swollen limbs, polycystic ovarian syndrome, just to name a few and with the addition of pregnancy, I was risking not only my life, but the life of my unborn child if i did concieve! I had to sit back and take a long hard look at my choices and decide what I was going to do. Truth be told, I had accepted my obesity at that time and the fact that I would be big till the day that I died. I am a proud big beautiful brown woman, lol! I'd recently become accepting and proud of my volumptuous figure and took pride in dressing myself in the flyest fashions and wasn't afraid to show it to my family and friends how big could be so beautiful. My confidence was evident in my successful career and home life. But the harsh realization was that my health issues were beginning to spiral out of control and, ultimately, were robbing me of my dreams! It was then that I decided that in order to stand an actual successful chance at life, I would have to relinquish my present dream of being a mom again and focus and being alive to make plans for my future and my childrens futures-both present and future. So I set the fertility treatments aside and set an appointment to attend a conference for Dr. Adam Goldstein, a LapBand Surgical Specialist in May of 2010. His seminar was extremely informative and his services as doctor were unparalelled for his field. Unfortunately, after 6 months of strategic planning, 22 lbs of weight loss and a pile of doctors visits, xrays, sonograms, etc later, I decided to change my surgery to RNY instead of Lapband. This happens to several patients that come in unsure of what is the best option for their life and after careful consideration, I realized that RNY was best for me. So I saw DR. Boynton in Lumberton, NJ in Dec 2010 and he became my new surgeon. So that's where Im at today! After the past 2 months of fighting with bad secretaries over paperwork and finally having to create my own file of medical paperwork to pick up their slack my file was submitted to the insurance company and was approved yesterday! (Feb 10, 2011) So now my next Doctor's appointment is scheduled for Thursday at 2:30pm for me to schedule my surgery date with the surgeon DR. Boynton ( who by the way is also a terrific doctor but was unfortunately blessed with a terrible assistant who is responsible for organizing and collecting the paperwork to be submitted to the insurance companies and doesn't assist at all!). I am hoping to have the surgery on the 14th of March so that I will still have a few weeks to celebrate my daughters and husbands birthdays before I begin my journey. I can't wait!
