Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Starting the journey to weight loss surgery - Part 1

If you would have asked me two years ago if I would ever consider weight loss surgery, I would have said no. It would have been an absolute, unequivocal denial that Angela DeWispelaere would ever consider surgery to help with weight loss. And it would have been an absolute denial of the previous 30+ years of diet rollercoasting that I've done in my life. I'm the only morbidly obese person I know that has been fat since 3 years old, started their first diet officially at 8 years old, endured anorexia in high school to get the weight off, transitioned to bulimia through college and my 20s to slow the weight gain, and successfully lost over 500 pounds over the course of my life.

And of course, gained 500 pounds back...and then some.

No, I'm not 500 pounds...but some times it feels that way. And at certain times in my life I really wondered if I would be one of those pitiful women that I was scared of becoming who actually were 500 pounds.

After I had my son Daniel in January of 2010, the way I looked at my weight loss journey changed dramatically. First when I got pregnant, I was delusionally hopeful that somehow pregnancy would "reset" my hormone issues (polycystic ovarian syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and pituitary tumors). When I became pregnant, all of a sudden I felt "normal" in terms of my appetite for the first time in my life...very ironic. I only gained 21 pounds during my pregnancy which was completely amazing and I hoped that when I delivered that the weight would come off easily, that breastfeeding would aid the weight loss, and I would magically become this thin person. Okay, yes, it was delusional - but yes, sometimes I actually thought that. Reality was that, yes, I lost the 21 pounds easily. Within two weeks I was at my pre-pregnancy weight of 288. But my dream of breastfeeding came to an abrupt halt. My hormone issues impacted my ability to produce breastmilk and I stopped pumping after one month. I started Weight Watchers 6 weeks after delivery and lost four pounds immediately and then...stopped. I would experience 1/2 pound up, 1/4 pound down, 1 pound up, 1/2 pound down. I spent weeks and weeks of this. I'd done Weight Watchers successfully many times, losing 70 pounds at least twice. But now, at 284 pounds, I wasn't losing any weight. I went back to work and started just using Weight Watchers Online but eventually the stress of going back to work impacted my ability to even track. Slowly over the course of a year, I worked my way back up to 308 pounds (eeeeeekkkkk!).

That's when I had one of those ahh moments. I was 40 years old, over my self-imposed barrier of 300 pounds, under the worst stress of my life, and desperate for something to change in my life. I'd been taking nursing classes with anticipation of entering nursing clinicals in May 2012. Through my classes, bariatric surgery had come up several times. In my classes, obesity was talked about in terms of it being a disease. For me, I still consider it a symptom of other disease but it was the first time that I took a long hard look at what would happen to me over the long-term if I didn't get the weight off. Now that I had Daniel, I knew that it was time to consider other options. In September or October of 2010, I looked into the Lap Band procedure. It was termed the least risky so I did some research, watched a lot of online videos, and started to have hope for the first time. Then I contacted the Poudre Valley Bariatric clinic and found out that my employer's insurance would not cover the procedure. At that point, I was heart-broken. I was just starting to get hope again. I decided to enter Allergan's contest for Free Lap Band surgery...but I didn't get it. So in January of 2011, I had given up hope and started on yet another weight loss program.

On January 17, my world changed. I got laid off! :-)

I smile because it was one of the best days of my life and was one event that, to date, changed everything. Fortunately in December, my husband decided to sell his business and started a new sales job. When I got laid off, we knew we would have to switch to their insurance. At the end of March, my employer's insurance ran out so we moved to my husband's insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield.

It is now May. Ten days ago I was finishing up my Anatomy and Physiology 2 class online. We had a previous discussion during one of the units about obesity. One of my ignorant classmates made the mistake of jumping all over people who become obese and those who end up considering surgery. The student basically took the position that obese people were lazy and that surgery was the "easy way out." I wanted to reach through my computer screen and strangle her! So on Monday, May 2nd, for some odd reason I started to think about bariatric surgery again and did some research.

To hear the rest of the story, read Part 2! :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment