Stephanie H.
My story is the same as many here. I'm heavy, very heavy. I guess they call it Super Morbidly Obese what a shock it was to hear the Dr. say that!
I first started this process three years ago but they wanted me to lose 35-40 pounds before they would give me the surgery. I really had a hard time with that concept. I mean if I could lose 35-40 as needed I wouldn't need surgery. I told my nutritionist that I thought it was cruel--they wouldn't tell an anorexic to gain a few pounds before they would help them. Needless to say, I couldn't lose it for all sorts of reasons (excuses). First I blew my knee out and had to have surgery and then my hip went not to mention the arthritis I have in my back. I can't stand for more than 5 minutes at a time without excruciating pain so exercising was hard. Plus I couldn't seem to stay on any sort of a diet for more than a week or two and then I'd blow it.
Then I was laid-off from my job and shortly thereafter I had a TIA (mini) stroke in August 2009. They did an MRI and found that I'd actually had 6 of these strokes and didn't even know it. After many tests they decided that I have a hole in my heart called a PFO which is actually very common and that's "probably" what caused the blood clots. So now I'm on Coumadin for the rest of my life. I was also officially diagnosed with Type II Diabetes around the same time. I was so sick that I actually lost 15 pounds!
This February I had an appointment with the Dr. that works with my obesitiy clinic and he decided that I was too much of a risk for the surgeon here in NH so he refered me Tufts in Boston. He said that 15 pounds would probably be enough of a loss for them to do the surgery.
I had my appointment with Sunny Shah on March 31st . She was so nice and a very beautiful lady! I told her flat out about all of the problems that I'd been having losing the weight and said that if she required me to lose anymore I would just quit because I'm sick of trying. She said that she would like for me to lose 40 pounds HAH! but she would be happy with 20 and that she felt that if I knew I had a date scheduled that I'd be more inclined to work harder to lose the 20 pounds. So she scheduled my surgery for June 7th. I left there ecstatic!
