So I've decided that as I approach my birthday (October 30th) I would like to do kind of a review of the last year, as well as maybe a more in depth look at what led up to the last year. Around my birthday I always take time to reflect on who I am now, and who I was the year before. It's kind of how I keep myself on track and make sure I am growing and progressing as a person.
Please do not feel obligated to read this entire post... It is LONG , but mostly being done for me as a form of therapy. Sometimes I think I really should see a therapist. Maybe once some of my debt is paid off.
Lets start with 2008. I was fresh out of a job, and had started seeing someone I like to refer to as Commander and Chief F*tard. To be referred to from here on out as CCF. CCF and I were never an official item in that he never really asked. However, every waking hour that he was in NY was spent together. His home was being forclosed on and our relationship started out as a way for me to fill my jobless days. I had a huge SUV that was not being put to good use and in the hours we spent together either packing, talking, watching tv, or cooking together I began to fall in love with him. Well, he went out of state to work for a few weeks here and there and there were a lot of rumors that would circulate back to me about what he was doing at night. I was blind and believed him and by May I had had enough and decided to put my best friend on snoop duty. She added the other rumored girlfriend on Facebook who lived in Maine and we ended up finding out that I was actually the other woman the entire time. Broke my heart.
Right around that time entered someone by the name of Patrick, and I also started working at my current job. Patrick was all wrong for me, and me all wrong for him. However, he pursued me, others urged me towards him to help me get over CCF and I spent the next six months trying to convince myself I was in love with him and that my heart wasn't full of scar tissue, and that Patrick really wasn't that bad. Sure he never wanted to go to a movie and watch what something I wanted to see, sure he smoked weed and drank- but only sometimes, sure he would rather watch a foodball game that spend time with me when it had been almost two weeks since we had seen each other. Sure he fell asleep in my room for almost my entire birthday party. But the last straw- he wouldn't go watch New Moon with me. I'm sort of proud to admit he got dumped via a text message.
I celebrated me new found singleness and vowed that until I was right in my heart and head I wouldn't be dating anyone. Then came the real blow. I had kept in contact with a few people I met through CCF, they had become great friends. Well, one day I was sort of mooning over how much CCF had hurt me and how sometimes I still missed him and the friend informed me about something John had referred to me as several times. Now, understand CCF and some of his friends were all VERY into motorcycles. And I'm not talking crotch rockets- REAL motorcycles! Now to someone used to riding Harley's imagine the horror of having a friend catch you on a moped- no matter how fun they may be to ride. Yeah - well... That's what I got referred to as... A moped. Fun to ride but not something he'd want his friends to see him with. Which told me two things, A) these people who had become my friends were never really true friends in CCF's heart, and B) I was used.... Thoroughly used, taken advantage of and worst of all- I had allowed it.
So back on my whole I'm single kick. I decided to do something about my weight because I knew that was what was really holding me back. I was a great person with a greater sense of humor and deserved happiness.
I went with a co-worker, Nikki to check out a little seminar on Medifast. I wasn't looking into it but she was and asked if I wanted to go with her. We were both big girls and I think secretly she liked having another big girl in the office- kinda like no longer odd man out. I was very intrigued by the Medifast diet, but it was SO expensive.
I had to do something my car situation. I was driving a car that on a good day maybe got 16MPG. I had just sunk over $1000 worth of repairs into it, and the warranty on the transmission was about to be up. I was in over my head with it and couldn't afford to pay $70/week to fill it up. So I traded it in for my newer car that gets about 25MPG city, 35MPG highway. My commute to work was split evenly between highway and city and it only cost $40 tops to fill at the time and I could go double the miles on it. I went on my first real vacation on years with my sisters Jessica, Rachel, and Alyse as well as my co-worker Nikki and her friend Nicole joining us. We had a freaking blast and to date I think it was my favorite vacation!
Two months later I decided to go back to school and money and free time became scarce. But a raise at work saw me in a bit more of a comfortable position financially and then tax returns came and I purchased a months worth of Medifast.
The first month saw me lose about 15lbs and drop down from sizes 22/20 to 20/18. Then I began to struggle a bit with the diet. It was too strict and I was starting to miss eating foods that didn't come out of a packet. But I went ahead and bought the second months worth.
One night I was laying in bed and ya know how itchy a freshly shaved armpit can get?? We I was scratching my armpit and it felt so good I gradually ended up scratching a larger area, lol. When I get down to about the part where the side of your bread meets your side I felt a lump about the size of a hard pea. I freaked! At the time I was only 25. I ran out to my mom and she felt it and burst into tears and next I ran to Jessica (the nurse sister) and her face told me how serious this could be.
Mammograms, PCP visits, and ultrasounds followed. At the appointment with my PCP to get a referral (it isn't normal for a 25 year old to need a mammogram so I had to see my PCP first) I told her about my Medifast diet and she told me that I should probably stop it until after we figured out what was going on with my breasts. It took two weeks to be able to get in for the mammogram and by the time I was there the lump was gone completely. Many doctors ended up consulting with each other and it was decided by the professionals that Medifast is made mainly of soy proteins and that my body did NOT like that amount of soy based protein and that Medifast was out of the picture for me.
At that point I had lost between 20 pounds on the diet, being down to about 270 from a start of around 290. The next year saw that weight pile back on and at 26 years old I ended up weight in at my known highest weight of 310 pounds.
At the end of July 2011 I agreed to do the hair/makeup for a bridal party as a way of a wedding gift. It was miserable! I hadn't been on my feet all day like that in years and bending and stretching and my back hurt so darn much. That night I met up with my friend Nick to go out to the local waterfront. I hadn't seen him in almost a year and was so excited to spend some time with him. Nick and I have been friends since our Freshman year of high school and we were always the kind of friends where no matter how long we had been apart we always pick back up right where we left off.
We ended up going out front to smoke a cigarette and we sat on the curb. I could tell he wanted to say something to me but was nervous and didn't know how. He asked me if he could say something without me getting upset, because he was saying it out of love and concern. Of course he was worried about the amount of weight I had put on in the year we had been apart. I was crushed. I was already hurting physically because of my weight that day, I knew it my head why it hurt so bad, and then emotionally I felt crushed. That night I cried myself to sleep for the first time in about two years. I prayed so hard that night for Heavenly Father to help me find a way to not hurt so badly and to guide me to a way to lose weight.
The next morning I woke up oddly refreshed, eyes swollen from crying, but feeling weirdly at peace. I pulled up google on my laptop and googled weight loss surgery. I was interested in Lapband. I read almost all day long. The next few weeks were spent researching, and gathering questions, and looking at before and after pictures.
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| Jessica and I |
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| American Bad Ass! |
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| Lyn, Joshua, and Danielle |
August 17, 2011 was my cousin Joshua's birthday and we all went to a Kid Rock concert at Bethel Woods (site of the original Woodstock) and had a blast. We took lots of photos that I hated looking at. I didn't recognize the girl in them. Her face had gotten so full, her belly so big.
August 23, 2011 I called out of work and spent the day at the pool with my cousin Noel. I remember the date well, because it's the day that NY had an earthquake. As Noel's son napped she and I nibbled on snacks under an umbrella'd table I told her I had decided to have Lapband surgery and that I had a seminar to attend the following week. (Now, Noel had also gained a lot of weight prior to her pregnancy and then there was the pregnancy weight and the weight that she put on as her marriage began crumbling.) Noel became very excited and told me she was thinking about doing it too, but wasn't sure how to go about it so I told her I had already found a doctor my insurance excepted and that she should just call around until she found one who took her insurance.
She ended up coming to my seminar with me and then to my first appointment with the surgeon. You know- that annoying appointment that takes hours because they basically do a complete physical before you even see the surgeon. I was down to 305 pounds from my high weight of 310 already. Well, we ended up learning that day that Noel would have to use the same surgeon I was going to because her insurance required a center of excellence- my surgeons office being the only one in our area- which happened to be an hour and a half from home.
During my seminar I had decided on sleeve surgery because it has much better results at reversing PCOS. Around this time my periods stopped coming. There was no way I was pregnant, obviously. So that meant my PCOS was advancing faster because of my weight. Noel unfortunately wasn't able to have sleeve because of her insurance, so she was signed up for bypass.
Noel and I set about having our nutrition appointments, checking off our clearance appointments with the cardiologist, pulmonologist, psychologist, and all that stuff. Her insurance required a 5% weight loss to qualify for surgery- where as mine just required an intense 3 month program supervised my a surgeon and a nutritionist. Around 2 months into the process they scheduled my surgery for December 8, 2011.
October 30, 2011 brought about my 27th year on earth. And for the first time in a long time I looked forward to the coming year. My surgery was going to change EVERYTHING! No longer would I be THIS girl!
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October 31, 2011
Costume to Work |
I was ecstatic, and I had lost about 9 pounds on my own following the nutritionist's diet plan. Then I got a call from the surgeons office saying that if I would like to have my surgery the same day as my cousin I would have to move it to December 5, 2011. I was 100% with doing it earlier! As long as it was a full 3 months and my insurance approved it- of course I wanted it done sooner!
Right around this time there was a major hiccup. Noel hadn't lost any of the weight she needed to lose to satisfy her insurance. It was the middle of November and there was a frantic mad dash to reach a doctor she had seen prior to her pregnancy when her weight was about 20 pounds heavier than it was currently- a letter from that doctor would work and prove she had lost enough weight to qualify. A few days prior to Thanksgiving that was all taken care of and Noel's surgery was approved. Mine approved a few days after Thanksgiving.
And there is my life pre-op. I plan to later do a post about the surgery itself and then another one about the last year.
