June 19, 2019 – Wednesday
My story is a mess. Here’s a quick rundown and reminder of this process. Trust me, I need to see this in black and white myself.
2012 – At 291 pounds, my primary care doctor sends a referral to the bariatric surgeon. I meet with the surgeon, jump through the hoops, attend all the meetings, and get denied by insurance twice before finally getting approved.
2013 – I have surgery on Wednesday, March 27th at a surgery weight of 308.
*I end 2013 at 211 pounds, for a 9-month loss of 97-lb.
2014 – By the end of February, I lost ONE SINGLE POUND more, and then fought against inexplicable regain.
2015 – I had braces placed on my teeth and by the beginning of March, I have jumped to 230lb. No one seems to think it’s possible that the braces have disrupted my eating.
2016 – I had facial reconstructive surgery in January, at a high weight of 262-lb. I was stress eating over the holidays, in anticipation of the surgery. Relationship issues, stress and face, mouth and jaw pain led me to starve myself down to 231-lb by August, but…
2017 – I stabilized, hovering around 247-260 most of the year. My now-husband and I had reconciled and eventually moved back in together, relocating to a small, country lake community.
2018 – I sustained a fall down a flight of stairs in late April that left me temporarily disabled, housebound and depressed. I basically leveled out around 274 until late May, when I abruptly and without warning gained 9-lb.
My pregnancy was insane. We were planning a November 2019 wedding, but bumped it up to August 2018. If you’re tracking, that’s about 6 weeks to plan! I was misdiagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy around week 16, and was given the sobering choice of continuing with the pregnancy and risking my life and the well-being of the fetus (if it lived at all), or terminating with the hope that there was no permanent damage to my cardiovascular system. P.S. I’m also severely asthmatic, with a less than 50% lung capacity without drugs. Knowing that this was most likely the last chance we would have to have a child together, we waited to decide until after the anatomy scan in October.
Luckily, the symptoms associated with the heart condition were able to be controlled with different asthma medication, and it was determined that I didn’t have to worry about dying from that during this pregnancy. However, at week 21 I started showing signs of failure to thrive and pre-eclampsia. Long story, short – no one expected this baby to make it 30 weeks, much less 40 and by 36 weeks, I was hospitalized. She was born (perfectly healthy, by the way) at 37 weeks, at the end of January 2019.
2019 – At the birth of my daughter, I was 340-lb, 45-lb of water weight had slammed on since the holidays, and was completely gone within 10 days post partum. It was supremely hard to see those numbers again. My lifetime high weight was 347-lb in 2003. I made the mistake of thinking that because that initial water weight loss fell off, the last 5-lb would also just take a hike, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think that catches us up.
So here I sit, 2, 275 days post-op, with a net surgery loss of 20 POUNDS.
I’m not going to sugar coat this: I’m scared.
I need to lose this weight. When you first have surgery, it’s so much fun to watch the weight just fall away. Yes, it’s work. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s mental. And painful. And so very weird. But…amazing. You feel like you’re actually *doing* something *right* for a change. But – at least, for me – it’s all a lie we tell ourselves. WE are not doing anything. THE SURGERY is doing ALL OF IT. You’re just (hopefully) being reprogrammed to not eat garbage or stuff your face, and hopefully dealing with emotional traumas with a therapist or support group.
But one day, your surgery – your sleeve, your pouch, your band – will go down for a nap, and it will be up to you to sit at the controls.
I’m here, SIX YEARS LATER, head in my hands, completely flabbergasted about what direction to take. I’m FORTY with a newborn. I was fully expecting to have grandchildren in the next 5-10 years, not a new child of my own! If Granny takes a dirt nap at 60, it sucks but my boys will be near 40 by then. If Mama takes a dirt nap at 60, and you’re only 20… Who will guide my daughter through her early adulthood? Yes, she will be a young adult but as I recall, the twenties and most of the thirties – how do you say it? SUCK! I need to live to 80, at a bare minimum. And not an old, decrepit 80. A wild, long grey curls blowing in the wind from my convertible muscle car, 80.
And I’m not as healthy as I could be. I finally started rehabbing myself from the fall over a year ago. I saw a chiropractor throughout my pregnancy but I was not cleared to exercise due to the cardiovascular system issues I was dealing with. I’ve been going to the YMCA with my family, but it’s not enough.
I know I need to figure out my diet. You’d think it’d be an easy fix, but it’s tripping me up. By the next post, I’ll have this figured out. I’ve been loosely following keto for nearly 3 years. I started intermittent fasting after the baby was born to try and stop some of the zombie-eating at 2 a.m. and it does help…when I remember that I’m “fasting”.
Until next time… 
K