I guess I could say I got the inspiration for blogging from what I would call a close friend. I decided to "come out of the closet" so to speak. For the past year and a half I have been dealing with the ups and downs of dealing with a lap band. For the most part what that means is I have a band around the upper portion of my stomach to help me lose weight. I don't usually speak about it or at least the ups and downs of having to deal with it. So my decision to start blogging is coming from the need to maybe try and share what I have gone through the last 16 months. My plan is to be brutally honest including what my weight was and is currently along with what I have felt. This may take some time for me to get used to but I think this is the way to go.
So to begin my story I start at the beginning. I haven't always had a problem with my weight but it started basically just before my senior year of high school. I just started my first job at McDonalds, I guess you can figure out what that means. The worst part of working there was all the access to food. I didn't have any problem eating so I did. That was when my weight started going up and it just continued to rise all throughout my senior year and continued as well through college. I didn't just gain the freshman 15 I gained like 50.
Fast forward a couple of years to 2003 and I was weighing in probably at around 260 or so. I was looking forward to getting married and was so excited to be marrying my soulmate! Little did I know that 6 weeks before the wedding he would call the whole thing off because without going into great detail he got "cold feet". In the weeks and months following the break up I made a lot of bad choices in my life. Thankfully through the support of family, church, and friends I was able to get through that trying time. I also turned a lot to food and probably gained another 10-20 lbs. Fortunately for me I was able to work out the things that had held us back the first time and finally on October 29, 2004 I did marry my soulmate.
When we first got married children weren't very far from our minds. We did know that we wanted to wait at least a year or two before having any though. During that time my weight slowly kept creeping up and I crossed over into that 300 lb zone. When we finally decided that we were ready to start a family well you know what happens then. At first neither one of us thought much of anything when nothing happened but we both knew at that time we were having issues with Steve breaking his arm and requiring surgery and then again when he had to have his gallbladder out and so on. We finally realized that we needed some help and we were both tested and cleared of any problems. I think at this point was when I started thinking that my weight which at that time was probably 310 lbs was causing the main problem and I needed to do something about it.
I tried dieting but would only lose a few pounds only to gain it back plus a few more. I was discouraged when that would happen on top of being discouraged about not be able to get pregnant. I had talked with my Dr. and she had decided to start a few cycles of Clomid. For those of you who don't know that drug it just makes you ovulate more than one egg. Went through several cycles of clomid and nothing and again I was extremely discouraged and again my weight went up. After those cycles both Steve and I being as frustrated as we were decided together that we were going to stop everything and just "give up" for awhile. I think it was then that I really started to pursue the possibility of weight loss surgery.
I did all the internet research I could I went to a seminar and learned as much as I could and which option I would choose. I also got a lot of teaching from where I worked and I think that ultimately made up my mind of choosing to do the surgery. To touch briefly on the process of getting insurance approval depending on your insurance will depend on what you have to do. I had to go through several dr appointment including a pysch eval and seeing a cardiologist and going through a stress test. I also had to do a monitored diet. At first I thought yeah right there's no way I can do that but I decided to give weight watchers a try. I did the whole thing and counted "points" and watched what I ate and tried to excerise but at over 300 lbs it's kind of hard to exercise.
So I had made my decision to have the lap band not only for my own health but if anything to be able to get pregnant. What ended up pushing the whole thing a lot faster than maybe I was ready for was me needing to have my own gallbladder taken out. So on May 1, 2009 weighing in at my heaviest at 329 lbs I went in to have my gallbladder out and the lap band put in.......
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