January 2012, my hair was falling out in gobs; all the new clothes I wore during the past three years no longer fit; and I was devasted by the passing of a beloved friend, the loss of my job, and the return of 90 pounds that seemed to have arrived much faster than overnight express. In less than a year, I went from 365 pounds to 235 pounds swimming laps, walking several miles a day, and eating high protein meals. Those strategies no longer worked. I had no money to support my healthy habits and my 5'3' frame ballooned to 320 pounds.
I went to my family physician for help. He just shook his head then agreed to manipulate my thyroid medicine to see if that would spark my metabolism. Instead of losing weight, i developed simple hyperplasia of the endometrium without aptypia, and my OB-GYN used the results to tell me I had pre-cancer and required a hysterectomy. I got a second opinion. Another OB-GYN said I would die if I had the surgery. He said, "Your weight posed to great of risk for surgery."
After qualifying for federal assistance, I went to the Cleveland Clinic to visit my endocrinologist. He suggested that I have bariatric surgery. He said my imbalanced hormones overwhelmed my ability to manage my weigh and there was no pill known to man that could stabilize all of themt. He beleived the surgery would help remediate many of my issues and offered to prevent my insulin resistance from progressing into diabetes. Family history on my father's side proved that threat was very real.
I was open to visit the idea of having bariatric surgery, but I was not completely sold by it. My youngest sister underwent gastric bypass and later developed RA, fiber myalgia, and depression. Although my sister lost 160 pounds, she never acheived her ideal weight and her bypass now compromised her ability to assimilate her medications. For those reasons, I decided to consider having the vertical gastric sleeve operation. It was presumably more effective than lap band surgery, but less devastating than the bypass.
My family physician agreed to set up the nine month supervised diet my insurance required to make me eligibility for surgery. unfortunately, he habitually missed recording in his notes that we had been struggling with my weight issue for months, so the start date of this diet became a little obscure. I also began a series of preliminary visits with the Bariatric Center at the Cleveland Clinic who caught on to my doctor's record keeping.
Ironically, after my first few appointments at CCF, their staff seemed to talk me out of having the surgery. I was told by their psychologist that it was wrong for me to lose more than 2 pounds a week; it was wrong to think that the surgery would ever help me achieve my ideal weight; and she believed i needed to learn to accept that i was going to be fat for the rest of my life. I conferred with the internist for the department who also told me the surgery was not really a "tool" for ideal weight loss. i was told the lowest weight I could possibly achieve may be 200 pounds.
That news was unacceptable. After enduring years of being brutally scrutinized and discriminated against by teachers, coaches, emloyers, parents, and many others who believed I should weigh 110 pounds--this news seemed to defeat the idea of using this surgery for weight loss. "At my age, the charts say I should weigh close to 125 ponds."
"You need to forget the charts," said the CCF psychologist. "They are just hypothetical."
"OK." I replied. "i have had two bioelecctrical impedance tests over the years. Both indicated that I should weigh 130 pounds."
"Forget it!" The psyhologist said. "You will never be able to attain it."
"I drove the 65 mile trip home from the clinic wondering, "Should I do it?"
CCF discovered that I had a severe vitamin D deficiency. After having a months worth of vitamin D at 50,000 IUEs per week, my hair no longer falls out, my finger nails are long and strong, and I have begun to lose weight--at least 40 pounds since this July. I have limited my carbs and have been eating between 100 and 135 grams of protein per day. i now have the strenght to lap swim and walk. I have begun to lose between 3.5 pounds and 5 pounds a week depending on how hard I train. "Should i have the surgery?"
My endocrinologist said the surgery would also prevent me from rebounding as fast and as much as I chronically experience. "Should I do it?"
