Nov 23,2009
Having reached my 60th birthday and given in to self-medicating with food all my life, I am considering the Lap-Band thing. Just read the Dr. Oz book You - Controlling the Waistband and learned that the morbidly obese have only a 7% chance of success with diet and exercise. So far I have managed to control all by body's signals with drugs: 1) for diabetes, 2) for high cholesterol, 3) for high LDL and 4) for low LDL. It’s been a life of hating exercise and even the word "diet". Everything that defines Metabolic Syndrome. Everything, that is, except high blood pressure.
A few weeks ago, even that started to increase. I think that was the wake-up call. What happens when the drugs are increased until they no longer work? I can't afford to retire; waited too long before I started my 401k account. Can't afford not to have insurance... Medicare benefits suck. With the lousy drug benefit, I would go bankrupt or be unable to take prescriptions that would just hasten my death. I really have no passion in life, even to the point of saying that dying from a disease would be fine. But perhaps that is just an excuse not to change my lifestyle.
I've half-heartedly tried diets since I was a teenager; always gained back the pounds and then some. Food is my best friend, my nuturance. Vacations are remembered. not by the Eiffel Tower, The Coliseum, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, but by restaurants and memorable meals. My honeymoon in Hawaii is remembered for coconut pancakes, plum pot soup, and Pina Coladas.
To be perfectly honest, a while ago I told my therapist I was not willing to give up my food and now I am re-considering. The Lap-Band is not magic. It is just a tool to help your will power; just keeps you from eating too fast or too much without barfing. Instead of reaching for a cigarette, I reach for a connoli or a creamhorn. How am I going to fill my spare time, my boredom, my need for nurturance? How am I going to get started exercising. They say these are the hardest habits to break. Am I truly ready to make the change or am I just fooling myself?
My therapist and I will need to pull all this apart and use a microscope to peer in to every corner of my being. I need to make every attempt to change before getting banded; to prove to myself that I really, really have the strength to choose a different path in these, perhaps my last 15 years of life. Do I want to suffer and continue down this self-loathing life of mine? or do I want to stay around and make a difference, somewhere, to some one?
