Joslan S.
Like a lot of people, I have been fat for most of my life. I was a big kid who grew into a bigger adult. Through not being active, except for eating, I tipped the scales at 488 lbs. Since most doctors’ offices don’t have barriatic scales I did not know how much I really weighed.
How did I get to this point? I had been scheduled for a gastric bypass in 2002, but a medical center technical snafu, the surgeon going from bypass to a more lucrative lap-band practice and my father dying, I never got it done.
In the meantime, depression overtook me and life took an ugly turn. My weight skyrocketed, my diabetes got out of hand (and all the lethargy and evil associated with it), this caused me to crash totally, for the first time in my hectic life. I ended up quitting grad school before finishing the Ph.D. program I had worked on for years, my life was filled with the blues, I was too sick to work, and took so long feeling crappy that I could not qualify for disability, my marriage failed and (to boot) I developed a lymprodemic tumor that is not shirking even as I loose weight.
I guess this was my "rock bottom", though one day did not seem markedly worse than the next--at least it moved me to try to get my life back in my own hands. I have lost over 70 pounds over the last 7 months by eating small meals throughout the day and exercising. I am scheduled for a RNY gastric bypass on March 4th 2010 by Doctor Peter Crookes at USC University Hospital.
Since I've never been hospitalized I'm a bit scared of the whole thing, but I have faith that things should turn out OK for the most part.
