Help if you can.

[MilkweedSnifflez 2]

Many of my close friends and family know that I have had a battle all my life. A struggle that has been at the forefront of each and every day that I can remember of my life. Something that I know many of you can relate to and also struggle with. Weight. For all of my teenage years and into my adult life I fought every pound my body so readily gained. I was active, I rode horses every day, I played sports, I camped, and I hiked. I grew up on a farm, so throwing hay and carting buckets of Water and grain was any every day normal for me, however, as active as I was I gained weight at what seemed to be astronomical speeds. I was always the heaviest of my friends, even though I ate far less and much healthier foods than they, growing up on the farm, we ate home grown everything. I didn't chow down on the Cookies, cakes and fast foods my thin friends ate and yet, there I was 50-75 pounds bigger than all of them. I can remember in 8th grade I weighted 185 pounds at 5 foot 3 inches tall at that time. Every minute of my life all I thought about was how I worked so hard and stayed so active and yet I was heavy. When I was 19 I became pregnant and my weight went from 190's to 240 plus. I was able to lose a bit of the "baby weight" and got back down to around 210 pounds. Three years later, and after every diet known to mankind, from weight watchers to metabolife, I was pregnant again, this time ballooning up to 270 pounds. I was on depression medications afterwards. I was sick, very sick from the depression and literal pain of morbid obesity. Many years passed, and many more diets came and went, Atkins, The Zone, Jenny Craig, South Beach, slim fast, fasting, dexatrim, low carb, low fat, high Protein, phen phen and hgc diet, I tried them all. In that time I was never able to maintain anything under 200 pounds. At 32 years old, I went through a terrible divorce, and I don't know about any one else but divorce was like a living death for me, I gave up on myself at that point. In 2010 and weighing 256 pounds I finally found some hope to all the endlessness. I was able blessed to have family and friends and insurance see me through a life saving lapband surgery in April of 2010. I finally had the extra push and the help I needed. Though I did not lose weight fast, 5 pounds a month or so, I was healthier. My blood pressure returned to normal, my pre-diabetic blood sugars returned to normal, I did not have to have a cpac machine, my joints ached less and I felt pretty great all around. (My photo is after my surgery, after I had lost some weight and felt almost normal) So than why, you might wonder am I here today? Two months ago my lapband "slipped." It is not in the right place in order to help create the pocket of my stomach as it once had. Basically there is no restriction. Not only has this caused me to gain almost 40 pounds in 2 months, I am no longer able to feel a feeling of fullness. I still eat healthy, as anyone who has had weight loss surgery knows, you have to go through nutrition courses and relearn how and what to eat, my issue is is that even after I have eaten my salad, I feel as though I have eaten nothing at all, there is no satisfaction, no full feeling and so one salad becomes two, becomes three, and so on until I am in literal pain and a whole head of lettuce is gone in one sitting, not to mention the tomatoes, cheese, diced chicken, onion, zucchini and what ever other topping I can find to eat with it. I have gained weight back so fast that my bones, muscles, joints and ligament scream in pain in a constant. In just the past two months I have went from 177 pounds to 227 pounds. My blood pressure is on the rise, and as we all know all the other health risks associated with morbid obesity are close at hand. Another complication my lapband has caused because of the slippage is sever heartburn, acid, re-flux and gurd. Those in themselves have life threatening side effects, esophageal cancer at the top of the list. Though I have insurance, it does not cover the full cost of the surgery I need to have the band removed and replaced with a gastric surgery. I know this is a lot to ask of anyone, and to some it may even seem selfish, but I am a 40 plus year old, married, mom and I am not asking this in order to win any beauty contests. This is not cosmetic, in fact I never had the excess skin removed from my last surgery (which is now filled in again) because this is not about appearances. It's about a person, many of you may know in one form or another that just wants to spend the second half of her life healthy. A life not waking up to the fears of diabetes, heart attacks, uterine cysts and cancers that are so often coupled with being morbidly obese. And to not have to carry that tag ("morbidly obese") of death every day of what could be a shortened life. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, thank you for reading this far, thank you for your understanding, and compassion, you are a rare gift, and I mean this sincerely as there are some even in my own home that persecute me for even writing this. You are my hope and my salvation.

Sincerely, Liv.

https://www.gofundme.com/livs-surgery

Edited June 9, 2017 by MilkweedSnifflez
added information