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8 years of banded life; starting over with open eyes

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You're beautiful

I stand in front of a mirror in a small exam room around 3:00 pm, nude under a cotton robe. This place has to be fancy, I think to myself; Normally I was handed a stiff tissue paper smock. Even the floor here is carpeted, and not the cold linoleum of so many doctor's offices. It took three hours to get here because I got horridly lost trying to make the other surgeon's appointment, which needed to be canceled. I am a little road weary and feel ridiculously comforted by these small details.   I look at myself, holding the robe closed. I see a girl with a thin neck and angular face, who sort of resembles me. She has a neat sunny, lemony bob haircut, blown straight until it's soft and shiny and moves with a turn of the head. I've seen this girl a lot the past few years, but am always startled that it's actually me. With the June humidity, I can see evidence of natural curls trying to reform by one temple, as if trying to remind the world that it had been there 100 lbs ago, and will not be forgotten and denied like the plus sized shirts I once had to sport. This has been a long journey; longer than most.   Plastic surgery signals the end of this road. Three and a half years after surgery I am still dragging on and somehow prolonging the end, for no reason I can figure out. But I will put one foot in front of the other, and continue to try to decipher the internal love language between my body and emotions that produce food cravings as their child. I will never stop trying to intercept their messages. I believe this will occupy me the rest of my life. Fortunately, it has become a background murmur, and is manageable.   This search for a plastic surgeon to tie up the loose ends, as it were, feels as much surreal as it does mechanical. I'm going through motions. I'm going through emotions. But I don't feel present. It's as if someone else is pulling me along, lifting my hand to pick up the phone to make an appointment, tearing off my clothes in rarely expressed comfort, with more faith in a surgeon I'd just met than men I take to my bed.   I'd been to three plastic surgeons in the past year, looking for someone who would inspire me as both an artist and a surgical genius. So far, no dice. But the goal of a tummy tuck and a breast lift seems to be the last piece for lasting peace. Once I have this, I tell myself, I can't keep holding off on dating, waiting, ignoring I'm 32 and alive under this two-sizes-too-big skin that kept me alive during a slow and imminent suicide attempt. I can't keep hiding from life, or being angry when I'm hit on, or being sad when I'm alone, or continue to justify food as an acceptable source of intimacy. Once this surgery is done, I must live with it; it's me. There is no more fantasizing about how I could look. I'd look the way I would continue to look well into my elderly years.   Kind of frightening for someone who spent her life since age 12 writing romance fantasies where she was a slim, normal bodied girl with no scars. I'm well aware of this body image issue, and I'm becoming aware that I'm keeping myself from the end so I don't have to face an unknown and possibly different future than the one I'd obsessed over and wrote about in as many incarnations as I had inches of unnecessary skin.   Here I am at the last office I plan on being in for a while. Plastic surgeon #4.   And I'm looking at my naked body, imagining what he will tell me that I haven't already heard before from the last 3 surgeons. I wonder if he will treat me like a self-indulgent headcase, or a low intelligence moneybag, or condescend when I play dumb and ask him the same basic questions I ask all my surgeons, like I haven't already done all my research.   A funny thing is happening. I open my robe and stare at the body that I like more than I used to, a body I actually look at more than I used to. I see myself differently today, and I'm not sure why. I look at my large breasts, showing the effects of being a D cup and sagging more than I'd like, but relatively youthful and full. My belly actually has deep grooves in the abdomen of a 4 pack I have been building through core exercises, but which is muffled by the layer of belly fat I still need to lose. I poke at the indentations where my skin is attached to my muscle, amazed at the slightly distorted evidence of my health bursting through. I do work out; I finally noticed it shows. Perhaps it shows like an overstuffed favorite loveseat who has lost its buttons but still holds the pillowed indentations, but it shows.   For the first time in my life, I think, "Wow. Not bad." I'm not looking at my flaws, like the dimpled orange peel flesh of my abdomen, or the way the flesh pulls out like silly putty from being stretched beyond saving. I'm looking at the beauty of me just as I am. It's comforting and weird.   I turn to the side and am shocked to see that the normally flat butt I complain about and lack of lumbar curvature that lends one a perky bottom are actually acceptable, passable, and rather curvy. Totally no J Lo, but not a wan Kate Hudson either -- or the back of Jessica Simpson. Maybe slightly Julia Roberts, or a younger Diane Keaton. I lift the robe. Are you kidding me? Really? Is this what I look like? This isn't horrible at all. Certainly I need the post weight-loss nip/tuck but what the hell have I been---   Dr. Capella asks if I ready, voice distant through the door.   "Come on in," I said loudly.   He sits down on his rolling stool and we get right down to it. I open the robe. He does not fall off his stool, crying out in horror, clawing at his bleeding eyes. This is a great start. I feel something a little foreign wrap around me. Body confidence. I am in front of a huge mirror that covers the wall, fluorescent lighting and a man I just met is not only looking at my nude body, but touching it and seeing possibility that I would never even entertain.   "This," Dr. Capella said, tracing a light line over a good handful of my midsection. "Is all coming out. You probably have about 15 lbs of skin on you, actually."   Fifteen? Fifteen? I start doing calculations. I'm technically 15 lbs lighter and without the skin would probably be in a 12, not a 14. Holy crap!   He goes on to tell me, " You're young, and you're going to not only heal well, but fast. You're a perfect candidate for the body lift and mastopexy."   "Can I stay a D cup, do you think?" I ask nervously. Some doctors recommended I get a reduction and implants.   He actually snorts like an amused horse. "Your breasts are gorgeous. Look. Here's what they'll look like. The skin is great." He proceeds to manipulate my breast and shows me the plump, round, perky profile I've been fantasizing about since I was 10 and got my first underwire bra.   He goes on to look at my behind, flanks, back, and commented several times on the good condition of my fair skin (I believe it's because I turned vampire and simply never set foot in the sun). He shows me how when he pulls up the back of me, how it will dissolve the annoying roll under my bra, how contouring the top of my hips will accentuate my womanly curves just sitting there waiting to be unearthed.   "I am interested in looking good in tailored clothes," I say, continuing to look at my body. "I've long given up on looking gorgeous naked, but I want to be smooth and lean and proportionate in clothes." I'm turning this way and that, sucking in my belly and marveling at the cut of my ribs showing for the first time in my life. Marveling that none of the bone-crushing shame at looking at myself, much less with another person there, was choking me.   He gives a strange, rueful little laugh, shaking his head a fraction, and then catches himself. As if he knows I don't yet see what he sees. "You're going to be gorgeous. You've got relatively minimal sag, and you're young. I can give you a flat, contoured belly, smooth buttocks and thighs, and your breasts are going to look fantastic. You have the raw materials already here. And," he adds, gesturing to my face. "You're beautiful. Just...believe me. Total package. You are going to love the results."   You're beautiful.   I stared at him for a long moment. I expected a little bit of ego stroking. After all, for $15 - 20k for the procedures I wanted, I anticipate a bit of salesmanship. But there I was, flat-haired from driving in the humidity, purple circles under my eyes that my hastily applied concealer didn't actually conceal due to my late rise that morning. And I had to be one of thousands of women who walked through there. And why even bring my face into it? We're talking about my body. He's only getting paid from the neck down on me.   I look back at the mirror.   I believe him.   The first person, really, I believe. I feel like, for the first time, I am being truly seen under the loose skin and the belly pouch and the arms that totally need a lift down the line. Someone actually sees me and I don't have to scream, or be funny, or be "life of the party", or overly intelligent, or anything else to get noticed. He isn't stroking my ego; I feel like a piece of clay out of which he sees the swan, and he knows exactly how to mold the clay to get the result. And he's humble enough not to slap my face off my skull for being dense about it.   I dress and we reconvene in his office, looking at pictures again. "Now that I know what you look like before," he says. "Here's what you'll look like after." He proceeds to fill my eyes with round, perky, natural looking D cup breasts. Flat bellies that would allow me to wear hip huggers, belly shirts, hell, even a belt. Natural looking waists, not the "tube" effect of some body lifts. Scars in proportion to pubic hair line and belly button. Picture after picture after picture. Very few asymmetries. I think there was one out of the bunch.   I found my surgeon.   I might have found something else, too.
general_antiope

general_antiope

2
 

The Rearview Mirror

The rearview mirror is my best friend. I'm always consulting it, flicking between the road ahead and what has just passed. For me, I'm obsessed with understanding and learning. I never take "I don't know" as an answer. There ARE no mysteries, there is always a reason. Maybe we don't understand it at the time, but that's what rearview mirrors are for; they are the teacher's answer key. And the more I know, the better I get.   So here I am one week from getting my band replaced and am glancing at the rearview of my band failures and successes. I feel very different than the first time I was banded, and it's made even clearer by the new people I am befriending here on LBT. All the questions and the anxiety and the excitement, it's like looking at a photograph. It makes me smile and I'm probably more excited for their journey than they are, knowing what's coming.   I want to be a good leader, a great example, and most of all I want to not repeat my own mistakes (for I am still a human leader). I wasn't perfect on the band like many others I see. I have a food addiction. And the first step in anything is owning up to your misses.       I remember the first few months with the "magic fill" - I was a kid in a candy store, eating cookies and ice cream or high fat stuff. I would MARVEL that literally, two squares of a Hershey's bar would satisfy me. I would fold up the candy bar and put it in my desk drawer. I'd open the drawer just to look at it and boggle at the fact that I didn't WANT it, and I could say no. That never, ever happened to me. I destroy food like Godzilla with a hangover. I would sneak ice cream as a 7 year old when my mom was in the shower. The taste of food was unparalleled joy, all the time. And I enjoyed my bad food for a while when I was newly banded, because I had power over food for the first time in my life.   I did eventually get too cocky and the band would interrupt a nice dinner I'd made or purchased, and all the food was put away because I had to PB, or just felt awful. Try having something stuck on a date....ruins the mood. I needed to go through that embarrassment and wake up call to get back in balance. Play time was over, it was time to work. Then I got in line with the band; roasting chicken thighs and carrots for dinner, portioning things out. Talking more with whomever I was with and letting food fall to the background. I never felt deprived because my food choices were just that - MY choices. It was so empowering I cannot even describe it. I literally felt like a normal person because my relationship with food was changing.   This time around, I'm not even interested in bad food, or the permission to have it in small quantities. I have tasted normal sized clothing, I have tasted normal relationships with food, and I absolutely hate where I am now. I'm 40 lbs less than my heaviest, but I feel worse than I ever have. For 6 months now I've been heavy (half the time with a baby...the last 2 months of pregnancy were awful!) or healing from a c section, and lugging around more fat with sleep deprivation. I used to feel GREAT! I want to feel GREAT again.   The band makes me feel GREAT because I feel in control. I am out of control now. And rereading my past entries, I fought and fought for stability with a constantly failing band and a less than ideal mindset.   I am blessed and lucky to have a second chance. I'm not squandering it. Open eyes, looking ahead and behind, changing the bad and repeating the good. It's not all daisies on the journey, but yeah, when you get there, it's a freakin' field of flowers
general_antiope

general_antiope

2
 

Taking it for granted

My realignment is just about done, and I'm so glad. This weird penchant for losing control and letting my bad choices rule me is getting old, fast.   I have fill scheduled for Friday and I'm going to go, regardless of how my band feels. My liquid diet didn't work out yesterday, because I was tired and lazy and didn't do a damned thing around the house. I finished feeling sorry for myself and fairly bounced out of the bed this morning.   It always makes me smile when I'm doing my menu for the week. It takes so very little to nourish me, and I can't believe I'm picking veggie burgers and protein shakes. And looking forward to it! The band is truly amazing.   My trigger this time was an abandonment/rejection. Someone I cared for has basically disappeared from my life. I said goodbye to him out loud this morning, and it's like a weight was lifted off me.
general_antiope

general_antiope

2
 

Peanut Butter Kandy Kake Ice Cream

I've been saying for several weeks now that the food bender is over. It wasn't, but I believe that if you say it enough, it becomes true. I meant it every time. And finally, it is TRUE! I am officially back on track, my loves.   I read this LBT Mag article about guidelines for the band, and boy I really have been flinging myself off the band-wagon. I've been drinking while I ate. I'd eat too long. I'd eat emotionally. I'd tell myself I need the calories but then eat too much of it. But it's all good. The positive in this situation is:   a. I never stopped trying b. I was honest with myself when I fell flat on my face. I think I just enjoyed eating for a while. c. I never blamed the band, or anyone. I knew it was my issue. d. The band actually saved me from gaining any weight.   I'm pretty happy with how I handled the last month. Pre-banding, I could never have gotten through it without self loathing, disappointment in myself, and maybe blaming my band for being "broken." Again, I will say it a million times, I am so thankful for this little silicone belt of love on my belleh. It is a welcome friend. It's doing it's job, so I will do mine...by always being willing to look to see how I'm contributing to the problem.   Interestingly enough, the first time my weight loss stalled for 6 months, it was indeed the band's fault...I'd gotten unfilled accidentally. We thought there was a leak, turns out there's no leak in my band, but for 6 months I was completely empty and didn't realize it. It was over a year after I'd gotten the surgery so I wasn't going for monthly visits. I survived. And I'm alive to tell the tale, and I've still lost weight after it.   I'm beginning to think that I'm experiencing all these setbacks, extra-long-shortcuts and such just so when i get to the end, I can really help new bandees (something that gives me complete joy) with all kinds of setbacks. Look, this isn't your only shot. It isn't the answer to all your problems. This is a hell of a leg up, though.   I think in order to be successful with the band, you just have to surrender. Surrender your ego with whether you have willpower or not, surrender your guilt with food, your shame of your body, surrender your expectations of "when" you will have your new life to lead. Your new life started when you made the decision. It's gonna take years to deprogram yourself. So why beat yourself up if you eat a damn cookie? You're just prolonging weight loss. Maybe you should ask why you went for the cookie. I have, many times...and I am slowly understanding myself. If I fall down again, I will get right back up.   Cause I ain't ever going back to where I came from, and that fact alone is enough to make me weep with joy.   So the bender. It has actually resolved now. Here I am, not drinking with my lunchtime meal and I've gotten about 4 cherries and 1 whole pecan down. And here I sit and wait, for the food is experiencing a traffic jam in my neck. I want to drink. I realized just now that all this time I have been drinking. Even small sips of water to "mush up" the food is making it go down faster. It crept up on me...maybe a sip here and there if I'm eating bread (oh yeah, she eats bread, she loooooves food) and now it's insinuated itself without me knowing. And we go back to "conscious eating" again. It's the damned unconscious eating that seems to get me time and time again. The only thing to do is just keep going back to the basics.   My band is also still too tight. I will give this a month or two, because every band has a cycle of restriction when in the body. If I am following all band rules and am eating this little, I'm getting an unfill. I'm at 4.1 in a 4.0 band, and I was previously at 4.4. yes, I've been overfilled. Didn't know that!   As a side note, it's a weird feeling to be full at the top of my stomach, and be uninterested in eating another cherry, and then feel my lower stomach growl, even though it's faint.   Seriously, I still love my band Where else can you get this ability to make the right choice? I am losing the weight. The band's just taking the crazy voices away in my head who want Peanut Butter Kandykake ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner     Which, by the way, if you want to fling yourself off the band-wagon once in a while, is a COMPLETELY satisfying way to do it.   Not that I'm endorsing it   but I enjoyed it. And that time is now over.   189, here I come!!!
general_antiope

general_antiope

2
 

Oh No! The Band Got Boring!

I started out 8 years ago telling people about the band. I was excited, I had researched the hell out of it and answered/resolved a lot of my fears, and was adjusted (pun intended) to the idea. For the most part, I got positive or no comments, but very few negative comments about my decision.   Once I was banded, and losing weight, it started to become less novel and more of an everyday tool. Nothing exciting about that. It's like that sparkly pink ink pen that you coveted as a kid lost its magic once you started to write with it...and write...and write...!   The same thing happened with the band. I loved it, it worked, but it was a harsh master and would ruin events if I didn't follow the rules. It would make me decide whether I wanted to go out on a given night. It became so big and familiar to my friends that it practically needed its own chair at the table. My friends would ask if a restaurant was okay, what could I eat, and basically make a fuss with the best intentions that became, frankly, tiresome.   But the band got boring around food, too. The novelty of eating tiny amounts like I had one of those enviable "bird like appetites" in public waned. There I was, talking, nibbling at my meal, eating healthy for the band (but under-eating to the rest of the world) and the waitress would come over and ALWAYS ask me if everything was okay. It got embarrassing after a while. I would start out by joking that I was a slow eater and a fast talker, then moved to asking for a doggie bag at the beginning of the meal and pretending I wasn't hungry, and finally started "sort of" lying and saying I had an issue with my esophagus and had to eat small meals and quantities.   Explaining the band to complete strangers was just too exhausting and time consuming...and I became embarrassed again explaining myself to waiters in front of the same coworkers and friends. It's like the band was this huge elephant in the room. (lol) For me, though, the sparkly pink pen had lost its luster and it was just a writing implement. There were more interesting things to say and learn and do rather than discuss my digestion and caloric intake.   I think this turning point of my relationship with the band had it good and bad parts. The band becoming every day and boring was great because it was working in the background, and I respected it, and we both were happy. But it was so unbelievably easy to start forgetting that yeah I might need calories but it DID NOT need to be a chocolate chip cookie. That's when you start learning how to eat around the band, because the sheen of respect has worn off.   I want to remember this going into my rebanding.
general_antiope

general_antiope

4
 

Misinformation is everywhere

Personal observation. There is so much data that can prove why you shouldn't get the band as much as there is data on why you should. I really feel sad for people who hate bypass patients, or sleeve patients who hate the band. Whatever "camp" you're in, stop spending all this energy being angry at other camps and heal that hurt inside.   Life is precious. Anger is a wasteful emotion.
general_antiope

general_antiope

2
 

I Love My Band! :d

This week-and-a-half-long food bender is finally over. Thank GOD. I ripped ff my pyjamas this morning and said "OK, we're done wallowing, let's deal with what we did this week and make a plan."   One pound.   I only gained one pound??   I even had Taco Bell last night! Good God! And I bet it's the salt that's keeping me at 194.   My body keeps giving me gifts. The band is really amazing. Had I done this kind of bender before the band, I'd easily gain 5 - 10 lbs.   So I have one day left in May. I started at 199.5, I'm now 194.5, and I am fasting for a physical and may stay on liquids the rest of the day. I wanted to get to 191 with how fast I had dropped the weight the first week in May, but I'm QUITE happy with 5 lbs lost.   Let's see if I can get to 194.0 tomorrow, and then be on a solid band diet through next Friday, for my fill with Dr. Ren.   As for why I went on the food binge, (because I always want to know why and understand, I never accept "I don't know" as the final answer) I think it relates directly to a sense of abandonment. Someone I cared for very much has left me abruptly. The eating began after the first two weeks of not hearing from him - as if he disappeared.   It's always been juuust at the edge of my consciousness, feeling rejected, feeling unworthy, and turning to food to comfort me. I have decided to get over that now. It ran its little course, and I am now back at the helm.   Amazing, though, that the band really deflected the kind of damage I could have done. One pound. LOL. I love it!   I LOVE MY BAND!!!!!
general_antiope

general_antiope

1
 

Another lesson in patience

It's funny. When I first decided/was approved for the band, I couldn't contain myself. I wanted the new life immediately, I wanted it now now now and I could not stop thinking about what life would be like 2, 4 years from having the band inserted.   Looking back at my journey, I can see the whole bigger lesson in patience. It happened in its own time, my wishing and obsessing did nothing to hurry it, only making it seem longer.   Now I'm facing plastic surgery....facing it eagerly, I should say, and I just figured out that it will take me longer to comfortably afford it. I wanted it done by December, for my 33rd birthday, but what's another 3 months? The same kind of panicky there-has-to-be-a-way-I-can-have-what-I-want feeling that plagued me as a morbidly obese woman tried to grab me again with money and charging / financing this surgery before I was really ready to. I can't believe I'm so zen about it.   I guess the patience lesson is finally being learned   Oh my god I'm gonna have Plastic Surgery in the spring!! What a killer summer I'm going to have!!
general_antiope

general_antiope

1
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