SleevaDiva

My story? Well, no doubt my story mirrors many of the members here, having spent the majority of my adult life with that horribly embarrassing label of "morbidly obese". Yeah, I remember the first time I saw my medical record showing that disgusting phrase! Being a tall woman (5'10") did help distribute those 378lbs (and wasn't that an easy excuse for me to use!), but a BMI of 54 told that health-devastating story all by itself. Oh yeah, I did ALL the fad diets, bought all the expensive exercise machines, joined so many different gyms, read oh so many books...yeah, I could do it, I could lose weight like a PRO once I put my mind to it, lost 180lbs with MediFast back when Oprah made it famous, then but put all 180lbs PLUS an additional 50 or so back on as soon as I returned to those nasty old habits! Oh yeah, start a new diet, lose 50-100lbs, gain back 150lbs...no, I did'nt fool around! Lose 100, gain back 125-150, year after year of yo-yo dieting, til one day I went to the doctor for back pain (imagine that) and tipped the scales at 378 pounds...378...so stupidly close to 400...400?...Me???400??? Amazingly enough, that was 15 years ago, so my poor body carried around all those disgusting pounds...yep, I had given up. I had completely thrown in the towel and just lived as a FAT person until my guardian angel, a 35 yr old son of a dear friend, talked to me about his gastric sleeve. His success was so obvious; he had lost nearly 200lbs, looked and felt FABULOUS, and pushed for me to consider the surgery. I balked, I bargained, I justified my fatness, I hid behind the "danger of anesthesia"...then I woke up and bit the bullet. That was back in late October of 2013, and since I had to private-pay for the surgery (insurance declined, of course), I underwent the procedure just 3 weeks after the first visit with my surgeon. Luckily, I never did develop diabetes, but my pre-surgery labs did show a pre-diabetic trend, along with ridiculously high cholesterol levels and resting blood pressure high enough to require a triad of medications for adequate management. Add sleep apnea, exercise intolerance and significant joint pain to that pre-surgical checklist...I was a ticking health time bomb, and the sleeve gastrectomy (thanks to Dr. Terry Scarborough) was my salvation!
 
Heaviest weight=378lbs, BMI=54
Current weight=147lbs, BMI=21
Surgery Date=November 11, 2013
Weight on date of procedure=320lbs
One-year anniversary weight=175lbs
Projected two-year anniversary weight=145lbs
 
Today's date=October 20, 2015, weight=147lbs; total loss=231lbs