11 months post-op with vacation pics

Next month is my first surgiversary!  This month my family went on our annual trip to the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio.  I can not even tell you how different this trip was compared to my previous ones... I was almost brought to tears several times.  First, let me show you some pictures from our trip in January 2012  This is actually after I lost 25 pounds pre-op.

 

I smiled in those pictures only because I knew that these would be my last pre-operative pictures of me in a swim suit.  I didn't want to look at them much then, but I kept them because I knew I would want to compare them to pictures I could take a year later.  Here are the ones from this year.

 

 

OK, so the visible difference is huge.  But that's not even the big change.

 

It started when I we first got there and my sons wanted to do the Flow Rider - a simulated surfing experience.  Surprisingly, I wanted to try to do it, too.  This year I didn't care that I would be the focus of attention as I tried and then wiped out (everybody wipes out).  It's funny when people wipe out, people laugh - and last year I couldn't have handled that.  This year, I went for it.  And yes, I wiped out, but I didn't feel like people were laughing at the obese mom who flipped off the board, they just laughed at the mom who flipped off the board like everyone else.  And that difference felt huge.  I laughed, too!  I felt like a different person.  And after I flipped off I jumped right back on and performed tricks the lifeguard/ teacher showed me.  Here's a sample...

 

 

Letting go of the board with one hand to grab my foot - oooooo!



 

Letting go with both hands to pose... aaaaahhhh!

 



 

On this one I actually not only got up on my knees, I was able to sit up without balancing on my hands!  For this I got applause from the crowd and the guards.  Applause!  I'm such a ham... I loved it!

 

But here's the thing - I loved trying something new and showing off, but they weren't the moments that got me so emotional.  It was when I didn't have to worry about whether I could fit in the inner tube.  And when a guard asked me to sit in front of my son in a raft because the heavier person sits in front - and I got to smile and say "Actually, he's heavier".  Like the moment I realized I don't need to read the weight limits for the rides anymore!  And when I realized that I had so much more energy this year that I had ridden on more slides (and climbed more stairs) in one hour than I had in an entire day last year.  Last year I spent most of the time watching, and taking pictures of everyone else.  This time, I participated.  And I asked other people to take pictures sometimes, so I could be in them!  I could cross floating lilypad bridge by swinging arm over arm (think monkey bars made out of rope) with ease - I even got competitive and beat the person on the other one.

My planning for eating was thrown off by a mistake with the reservation - apparently my mistake.  According to them, the room that we've stayed in the last two years with the full kitchen is not the African Queen Suite, but the Combination Suite.  OK, it just so happens that I've requested the African Queen Suite the last two years and been given the Combination Suite?  Whatever, I know what to ask for next year.  The problem was that with no full kitchen, a lot of my meal planning was thrown off.  My husband stepped in and helped (especially the first night, when I was planning on making a big pasta dinner for everyone else).  After giving up on making pasta in the coffee pot, he figured out how to cook it in the small microwave in little paper bowl - in about 10 batches, that took over an hour!  Most of my own meals I could adjust to cooking in the microwave, but it made me really glad I had packed some Quest protein bars as a backup.  All that obsessive planning came in handy! 

It was a great three day vacation, and this has been a great first year as a post-op.  I can't wait for my 1 year post-op appointment next month!
 

Bariatric Betty's 5K with pics

Yesterday was the big day; 6 months after beginning Couch to 5k I ran my first race!  It was a lot of fun, and I was thrilled to have my 12 y.o. son jog it with me (for the first half anyway, then I left him in the dust because he hadn't trained as much and needed to slow down).  The Jingle Bell Run is for the Arthritis Foundation - an organization I loved supporting because my dear husband has had rheumatoid arthritis since he was 12.  Here's a pic of all of us before the race.

I had a great NSV (non-scale victory) before the race even started - I traded in my pre-ordered Adult Large race shirt for an Adult Medium!  Woo-hoo!

The atmosphere was wonderful - people were decked out in all kinds of holiday gear - I gave in and bought a Santa Hat that said "Jingle Bell Run".  Everybody was given jingle bells to tie through their shoelaces along with their tracker chip, so there was a constant faint bell ringing the entire run.  There was a singing group doing Christmas carols and other upbeat holiday tunes.  Lots of families jogged or walked as a team, and I saw dozens of parents who ran or walked with strollers.  Here's a pic of us at the very start of the race.

The course was a bit of a surprise - from the map we had been given at registration I guessed we would have one hill about halfway through the race, and it would be uphill on the first half, downhill on the way back.  Nope. There were four hills (two repeated ones) on the course and that meant that we had to finish on an incline.  One of my friends ended up running as well, and she told me later "Boy, this was NOT a good race for your first - those hills were killer!"

 I'm happy to say for me it was more a psychological challenge than a physical one.  All my training was definitely more than enough to prepare me for this race - even with the hills.  Who would have guessed???  I jogged the whole thing, running 3.1 miles in just under 36 minutes.  Afterwords I felt really proud and happy, but my body was like "So, that was pretty normal..." How wonderfully unexpected.

This is me crossing the finish line...

I was inspired by many people in the race - there was a whole team of people from the University Hospitals Medical Center running in honor of an 8 y.o. girl named Taylor with Rheumatoid Arthritis. There were people like the mom behind me in the picture above who ran up and down those hills pushing a double stroller!  There was a wonderful 76 year old woman named Jean that I chatted with on the second half.  She runs races every weekend, so she's well known by most of the regulars.  She talked about how she had ANOTHER race today, and I couldn't have been more surpised. "You run two races in one weekend???" "Oh, just when they're small ones like this..."  LOL!  It's good to see things from a different perspective.  She said that so many young people are all impressed when they hear her age.  I told her that they should be impressed with her running all of these races even BEFORE they hear her age and she laughed.  She said she's glad to be able to run when so many people her age can't even walk much, but also confessed she enjoys seeing youngster speed up when they realize she just passed them.  ;) 

My son crossed the finish line just a few minutes after me and I told him I was so proud of him for hanging in there and finishing!  He was exhausted, but said "Mom, we have to start training on HILLS" so I guess he might be willing to do this again.

Doing it again... yeah, probably.  I didn't hurt afterwards (or this morning) so I think I might start looking for maybe a race every month or so.  It's way more fun than just jogging with my dog :)  But I'm not feeling driven to start training for a half marathon or anything.

There was another woman I met that left me with mixed feelings.  She was a friend-of-a-friend and when my friend introduced her she said "She's lost 100 pounds, you know!"  I laughed and clapped for her and then said "Me, too!"(well, rounding up)  We chatted for a little while and I found out that unlike me she didn't have bariatric surgery.  I was very impressed - to be able to lose that much without having the help of a pouch as a tool... that's rare!  She said two years ago she started walking two 5ks every weekend.  Then she started jogging them.  Then she started running half-marthons, and now does marathons as well.  Whoa.  Cool!  Then she explained that she is just working on keeping the weight off, so she has added Zumba a couple of times a week and recently personal training.  OK, so she is running at least two 5k races (if not a marathon) in addition to daily training runs, taking 2-3 Zumba Classes, and having a personal training session every week JUST TO MAINTAIN HER WEIGHT.  Uhhhhh. Great?  For her, it's great.  This is a really good demonstration of what happens to the metabolism of a formerly morbidly obese person.  To lose this much weight, our bodies and metabolisms change a LOT.  In her case, presumming she eats healthy foods in reasonable portion sizes, it means she has to become a fitness machine.  I am all for being active and staying active, but I would never want to dedicate every weekend of my life to running races.  They're fun, but I want to have time with my family doing other things.  I can commit to spending 30 - 60 minutes a day doing cardio for the rest of my life and having a severally restricted diet/ calorie intake.  For her, that wasn't a good choice.  Either way, there is no easy way. 

So I'm looking into doing the "Color Run" sometime this spring, and keeping my eyes open for other fun opportunities.  I heard that Coco Key (a water park in Sandusky, OH)  has a Santa Run that I can imagine the family enjoying this time next year.  Today I'll just be walking my dog a couple of miles and celebrating my father's 70th birthday and other every-day miracles.  Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating!
 

Bariatric Betty feels shame and pride

I'm coming up on my 6 month post-op visit in a couple days, but first I had my 9 year old son's annual check-up.  That was difficult.

My son has been struggling with his weight pretty much his whole life.  He is in the 99% for height for his age as well.  When he was 2 years old he had an incredible weight gain of 10 pounds in something like 3 months, and we requested a consult with a nutritionist after lab work ruled out thyroid problems and diabetes.  We kept a food log for a month and other than cutting out one serving of OJ a day (he used to have 2 because he didn't drink milk, so we got calcium added OJ), the nutritionist said we were doing a great job.  She wished that most of the kids she saw ate as healthy as him.

For the last 5 years we cut out juice altogether (unless it's a "treat" - like instead a bag of chips or dessert if we're eating out).  We've also paid close attention to serving sizes, making protein the priority, and helping him figure out if he is really hungry or just bored.

We've worked hard to keep him active; in addition to loving to ride his bike, play in the pool and on playgrounds, he's done over 4 years of karate and played community soccer for the last 3 years.  This summer we added baseball and the couch-2-5k training.  Last year his pediatrician said this was very important - that he's always going to be a big kid, but that we want to slow his weight gain as he grows and help him have a healthier lifestyle.  Our previous pediatrician (before me moved) had said the same thing, and had said that she would expect an average weight gain of 10 pounds or less a year for a kid like him.  I thought we did really well (especially since my surgery), and suspected he had gained less than 5 pounds in the past year.

First, the good news.  He only gained 4 pounds, so I was right about that.  But, I was wrong about how much he had grown.  I was just SURE he was 5 feet now, but it turns out that he's still under at 4 ft. 10 inches.  He only grew 1 3/4 inches this past year.  That's not a problem, because he's still the tallest kid in his grade!  What was a problem was that I was using the wrong number at home when I was calculating his BMI.  My using his incorrect height of 5 feet meant that he was overweight and had a decreasing BMI.  The correct height means that his BMI is 30.1, and he is officially obese. 

That crushed me.  My son is following in my footsteps in the last way I would want him to - to obesity.  After experiencing the joy of watching my own BMI drop from (morbidly obese) 43 to it's current (overweight) 27.8, seeing that he is just over the border into "obese" just about broke my heart.  I try to teach my kids so many good things, but he learned the lesson of overeating from me. 

His BMI is decreasing.  After I got home I realized I didn't know what his BMI was at his annual physical last year, so I calculated it.  31.2!  So in one year he has gone down 1.1 in BMI - a definite improvement.  And he's now on the border of obesity, instead of sitting solidly inside the category.  He's stretching out, can wear the same size as last year, and is definitely more active.  But that didn't stop that crushing feeling of shame; knowing I failed him by being the unhealthy role model I was for most of the first 9 years of his life. 

I am proud of the changes that I've made, and the ones I've helped my family make in the last 6 months.  I feed them healthier food, and we are all more active.  I know that he is absorbing the hard work he sees me doing, and listens to me talking about how much better I feel.  I feel that I have stopped the trend of increasing BMI and started to reverse it in him.  I knew he was overweight, and I had been trying to help him keep on the right path before I knew he was obese.  He didn't become obese at this visit, he became obese over a year ago, I just didn't know it.  Knowledge is power.  I didn't know how much I was hurting my body until I was diagnosed as a diabetic.  I didn't know I could live the rest of my life on a modified diet until I had to with diabetes, and the success I had in lowering my blood sugar gave me the confidence that I can change my life with the weight loss surgery and my new lifestyle.  I knew that even following the diabetic plan my life would be shorter and have a lower quality of life, and that meant the risks and sacrifices involved with weight loss surgery and living post-bariatric bypass were more than worth it. 


So now I will try to let go of the shame, and focus on the pride I have in the changes I have made in the last 6 months.  And the knowledge that he is almost NOT obese will be a great motivator to keep us all running, to keep me on my plan and be a good role model for him.  Because these are the lessons I want him to learn from me - that if you work hard, you can make good things happen.  You can be healthy, and find out that you're able to do things you've never done before.  The unimaginable becomes possible.

Yes, Bariatric Betty, there is a Santa Claus...

***If you missed my last post, I found out yesterday that my primary care doctor didn't have a record of my weight in 2008 or 2009 because I had started declining being weighed.  Just because I was too proud to let other people see how much I weighed, I might not be able to satisfy my insurance company's requirements to be approved for the surgery.

First of all I must thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.  They worked, and I got the information I needed today.  My husband had the wonderful idea of my trying to reach my old OB/Gyn to see if they had a weight for me in 2009.  I have been trying to reach them all day.  The nurses have been tied up (there must be a lot of pregnant women in labor today is all I can figure!) because I have been on hold for over 20 minutes twice before hanging up.  Both the medical record persons line and administrator's line went straight to voicemail.  On the latter's voicemail I started begging for them to just call me and tell me if they could just let me know if I had let them weigh me when I came in for my annual pap smear. 

Five minutes ago, the medical record person called me back and said I did indeed get weighed in December of 2009 - and (Thank you, God) my weight put me in at a BMI over 40.  She's faxing the info to Hospital C today.  All of the sudden, I feel like a boulder has been lifted off my shoulders.  I will be saying extra prayers of thanks tonight, and that includes to all of you who have been so supportive in your words, thoughts, and prayers. 

Great lesson learned - being too proud will cost you.  Maybe not now, but eventually.  Be honest with yourself and others, and take what's coming, it's the only way you will keep moving forward.

Bariatric Betty's pride goes before a fall...

So, today I reached my 90th day of supervised dieting.  Hurray!  I've lost almost 20 pounds and I'm very proud of myself.  I emailed my patient care coordinator at Hospital C to make sure she had received the records she needed from my primary care doctor from 2008 and 2009.  She wrote back and said she received a packet, but it only had records from 1998-2004.  This was a big problem, because I need multiple years of weight history showing my morbid obesity for insurance pre-approval of partial payment of my bariatric surgery. 

So I got ticked that my past doctor's office could have screwed up my request so badly.  I wrote out specifically what I needed on the record release request.  I calmed down enough to call them and explained that there seemed to have been a mistake.  The woman at first agreed and then pulled my file.  Turns out there was no mistake, except my own.

I remembered going through a phase where I declined to get weighed because I was so embarassed with my weight.  Apparently, that phase was from 2004-2009, because all of of my visits during then don't have weight recorded.  So now because I was too embarrassed back then I might not have enough documentation to be approved my my insurance company.  I have data from my doctors from 2011, late 2010, and then 2004 and earlier. 

This afternoon I was able to get a copy of my record sent electronically from my old weight watcher's location in Central Ohio.  That gave me a starting weight in 1/2008 and an ending weight in 11/2008.  During that entire 10 months I lost just over 20 pounds.  Versus the last 90 days when I've lost just under 20.  I hope my earnest trying helps.  But now I'm really worried that since we don't have data from 2009, I may have shot myself in my foot.  What if my reluctance to face my weight in 2009 results in my not being approved for surgery?

There's nothing to do about it, but pray and wait.  My P.A. that is coordinating my multidisciplenary diet will be writing up his summary and putting together the packet next week.  Then the hospital will submit and we will wait.  And pray.  And try to remember that things will happen the way they should, even if I don't get approved. 

So here's my advice of the day.  Don't decline to be weighed, or have tests done.  Because you can't predit what will be needed in the future.  I never thought I would be looking at having this surgery, and now look what happened.  Pass it on. 

Bariatric Betty looks at Sticks and Stones

...but names will never hurt me.  Right.  I am confident that every person on this planet has been teased, tormented, or verbally abused at some point or another.  And we all know it hurts. 

Being overweight seems to attract insults like a magnet.  Somehow our society thinks it's acceptable to laugh at someones weight,and some even call them names to their faces.  I have always hated the train of thought that says people need to develop thicker skin, or take it as encouragement to make a change in their lives.  Yes, there is definitely something positive about being able to assimilate into society and it's standards.  But why is it so hard to accept someone overweight? 

I think that many people continue to think that people are fat because they are lazy.  Or stupid.  That we don't know that eating too much and exercising too little makes us fat - or that we don't care.  Don't they understand that nobody WANTS to be fat?  That all of us have dieted.  We have all lost weight.  And most of us have gained it back.  Plus more.  That many of us would remain overweight if we even ate just the 1800 calories in the USDA recommendations.  In the case of those of us looking at bariatric surgery, we will be committing ourselves to eating under 1000 calories for 1-2 years.  And even later, we will probably not eat more than 1300 calories for the rest of our lives.  That doesn't seem so simple, does it?

I think what really bothers me is that people make judgements about others without having a clue about them.  Do they know that you've been exercising every day for the last month?   Or that you are losing a pound every week?  Or that you are going to have surgery to try and have success for the first time in your life by sacrificing your diet, your time, your money, and addressing your deepest issues.  No, they make assumptions based on your appearance that you are less worthy of their respect and kindness.

This reminds me of a story I read a long time ago.  Paraphrasing to the best of my memory:  It was about a man riding home on the train or bus.  Some kids were running loose; screaming, laughing, and falling into other passengers.  Through it all, he notices that the father is sitting there, doing nothing about their poor behavior.  Eventually the father catches the upset look and quietly says "I'm so sorry, I know I should tell them to sit down and be quiet.  But you see, we've spent the whole day at the hospital with their mother.  She's dying.  And after they were quiet all day with her, I just don't have it in me to be mad at them and tell them to be quiet again."  I've always remembered that story - that we DON'T know the story behind other people.  What they gone through.  What they are going through right now. 

Instead of being viewing fat people as funny, disgusting, or sad - think of them as brave.  Every step they take uses more energy than a healthy person's step.  They have frequently gone to work or bed hungry even with food in the house, in hopes they could be healthier the next day.  Their brain has different reactions to even images or descriptions of food - behaving much like an addict's brain when it is on drugs.  Those of  us who have considered or gotten weight loss surgery like a gastric bypass have risked our lives with major surgery to get healthy.  Most of us would probably consider brain surgery if it could cure obesity. 

Instead, look at us and somewhere inside you, think "Good Luck". 

And if that doesn't make sense, think of it this way.  Most of the adults in the U.S. are at least overweight now, and unfortunately more are gaining weight all the time.  Hope it won't include you and your loved ones.  Or that one of us doesn't sit on you ;)