Road to Healthy: Why I Chose Weight Loss Surgery

Before you get all judgy about my choice to have the gastric sleeve I’m going to give you a little background.  In the past few years, I lost close to my entire family.  My brother, Mom, Dad, both sets of grandparents, my aunt and my best friend all passed away.  I was a care taker to my parents who both died young.

Obesity runs in my family, and while taking care of family, I stopped taking care of myself.  I was a VP of a fortune 500 company, a caretaker, the money maker and a newlywed.  For five years I watched loved one after loved one die.  I gained 70lbs over the five years, I’d diet and then gain more back. Then my Dad passed, I knew I needed to make a change. 

I spent 18 months looking into my options, working with a dietitian and giving so much blood for testing.  I learned I was insulin resistant, pre-diabetic, had Sleep Apnea, Hidradenitis Suppurativa, Pernicious Anemia, Hashimoto’s, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and autoimmune gastritis. 

Two years into my marriage and we wanted to start our lives and have children. My body wasn’t in a healthy place to get pregnant and PCOS wasn’t going to make it easy.  I needed to change. I heavily researched the gastric sleeve for my dad, when it dawned on me that I qualified for it too.

Well the diets weren’t working and I felt like a failure. I saw dieticians, Weight Loss Doctors and gurus.  I was put on Qsymia and Contrave, weight loss meds, which helped, but as soon as I stopped, I gained the weight back instantly.  A doctor put me on a 800 calorie diets and exercising like crazy, which was stupid because I was getting dizzy, nothing was working.  I later found out that Insulin resistance and PCOS makes it pretty hard to lose weight and I wasn’t necessarily failing; However, I didn’t have the proper tools. 

I take full responsibility for the weight I gained.  My 5’4” frame ballooned up to 259 lbs. at my heaviest and a BMI of 44%.  I needed desperately to get my shit together so that I don’t die prematurely as well.  Cancer runs in my family and getting to a healthy body weight would definitely help my chances of not getting the Big C.  In fact, most of the aliments I had, would get better with weight loss.

What’s sad is it took me a long time to figure out I was that big.  I carried weight well so I felt I looked decent in a mirror and my husband loved me unconditionally. 

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But looking back It was a few things that made me realize it was time to make a change.  I was playing on the floor with my god baby and I was so out of breath and getting up was more difficult than it should have been. 

At my Father’s funeral and old family friend rubbed my stomach and asked my due date… I wasn’t pregnant and I had Spanx on, not to mention being a mess because I just lost my Dad. 

The day I knew I had to get it together was at a friend’s baby shower 5 months ago.  I arrived and a 3-year-old ran up and rubbed my belly, she thought I was the Mom-to-Be.  OMG I was mortified, but to be honest I’m so thankful for that kid because I finally decided that I have no option but to lose weight. 

I met with 2 surgeons, and decided to begin the process of getting the Gastric Sleeve, which would end up being the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  The process was long and a lot of work just to qualify for the surgery, it wasn’t a quick fix. Bariatric Surgery empowered me and gave me my health back.

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