renazy
To tell the whole story would take more space than I really have so we will start with the year 2000. In that year I had reached a weight of 350 lbs. and was so miserable I could not even make myself want to do anything. I had became a prisoner in my own body. I was married to a person that had the same weight problem but was too lazy to do anything about it. My body was shutting down my internal organs and I had two wonderful children that I really needed to be here for. I was on state medical disability and spent more time in a wheel chair then I did anywhere else. My family doctor stated that I really needed to try to lose weight and that she did not know what we could try next without considering weight loss surgery since I had tried all the other methods with NO luck.
I decided that I really wanted to live life and take any kind of help I could get to continue on. I read an article about the gastric bypass surgery and decided I needed to check into this. By the time I got into a meeting with the doctor and got approved to sit in on a meeting it had been a year of battles with the husband and the insurance company. Finally went to a meeting with Dr. Mark Shina. The first impression was not the best with this doctor. It was not his fault that I felt this way it was just that I think that doctors should have a great bedside manner and that was the first thing he stated during the first meeting. He stated that he probably would not remember who we were after the surgery not because he had memory problems but because once you had the surgery you changed so dramatically that he could not remember the before. That really hit me weird because I did not know anyone that had the surgery and did not understand how this could be that the changes would be so dramatic.
It took Dr. Shina and his assistants almost 2 yrs to get the Indiana State Medicaid office to approve the surgery but they did and finally it was scheduled for April the 1st of 2003. This was not a good date for me since April fools day always brought bad things to my family but according to Shina I did not have much time if I wanted to stay alive.....So fine I agreed. It was all set for the hospital in Louisville at Suburban.
My husband at the time decided that my life was going to change too much and that my personality was already headed that way and that he did not want me to have this done but I had to if I wanted to LIVE. I just had to do it and if it ended the marriage then so be it...
I went to the hospital on April the 1st of 2003 to become a new person and start a new life on the way to becoming healthier and smaller. The weigh in that morning was 489 lbs. and boy did that surprise me. While waiting for the approval I had gained another 140 lbs in the 2 years of waiting. But okay I decided there would be no more gaining, I was on my way to a different life. I laid there while they put the IV in my arm and began to feel dizzy and disorientated and found my eye lids falling. What seemed like seconds I found myself waking up and thinking man that seemed like a quick surgery, as I tried to feel my stomach I noticed it was fine, nothing had happened and I was in recovery. As I laid there Dr. Shina appeared and told me to calm down and he would tell me what happened so I did, the whole time I still had the pipe down my throat and could not speak. He said to me that before he could do anything the anesthesiologist had punctured my esophagus with the NG tube and I stopped breathing and they had to bring me back from the line of death. He said that he was too afraid at that point to cut on me. I laid there in the hospital recooping for 2 weeks and at that point I was scared to death to go back and have the surgery.
I went to Dr. Shina two weeks later and he told me that I had to have the surgery or I probably had a month or so to live. He told me that my heart and my other internal organs were being smashed by all the excess fat. I had no choice if I wanted to live. So I talked to my kids and they wanted me to do what ever I needed to do to live. So they rescheduled the surgery for April the 21st.
I went back to the hospital and actually had lost 7 lbs from being scared and worried. The surgery was on my mind all the time and here it was the day of again. I laid there worried that something else was going to happen. To skip through some of the horror I will just say that I did it and when I woke up this time it was to the ICU unit at the hopsital and I found out that I was losing blood and they did not know why. I was pale white and Dr. Shina said to me that day that I was the exception to all the rules since he had been doing this surgery. I started coughing about 3 hrs after that conversation and remember my sister sitting there screaming for the nurse. The nurse would not touch me at all and my sister kept telling them that I was choking on something. She then reached into my mouth and pulled out a baseball size blood clot from my throat. I would have died that day if she had not been there. I thank GOD for her every day that I wake up.
Two days went by and Dr. Shina had to scope me to see where all my blood was going and it ended up being a rip in the intestine where they rerouted my system. The first week was so rough on me. I lost 60 lbs. and looked better but worse if you can understand it. I felt good for loosing the weight but it was too fast. I remeber going to Winn Dixie to pick up some of the protein shakes and some jello on the way home from the hospital and my pants fell to my knees at the register. They all looked at me and was embarrassed for me but I was laughing while explaining that I had just lost 60 lbs that week. They were amazed.
To skip ahead some my life got better and worse at the same time. My health started straightening itself out but my marriage ended and I got off disability and went to work.
I now have a grand daughter named Mia that I would have never met, I got to see my son graduate and my daughter will be soon. I taught them both to drive and have seen my son turn into a handsome man. We actually work together at the same employer. Life is alot better and my health is also. I do have excess skin to have take off and will when I am ready but as for now I hold strong at 176 lbs. I still have issues with dumping and times when I do go a few days without eating and that seems to start the weight loss over but for some reason I just can not get under the weight that I am at currently.
My sister is scheduled for surgery on October 31st of this year for gastric bypass and you better bet I will be there.
This is my story and if anyone has any questions feel free to email me at any time.
