This journey has been crazy, fun, exciting, nerve racking, stressful, caused some unease in my thoughts of my self control, but overall so far anxious for a new beginning! This journey began about 23 years ago when I was born in Richmond, VA to an amazing set of parents. When I was born I was as everybody says a big baby. If I remember the story correctly I was over ten pounds! I remember practically my entire life being big. My childhood included some of the typical being picked on but I always just ignored it and kept on with my life and hanging out with my friends. Now, the real struggle truly began when I was in high school. High school was the beginning of my weight gain. I gained my freshman 15 in my freshman year of high school not college. Over my four years of high school my weight continously increased as I was continuously dieting trying to resist it. By the time I graduated high school I weighed around 300 pounds. Now, it's always been hard to tell this because I'm approx six feet tall so the way my body carried my weight made it hard to tell that I weighed 300 pounds but I was still big compared to everyone else. The fall after I graduated I found out the reason for my weight issues other than the typical answer of it just being genetics (my dad's side of the family has a history of being over weight) and that answer was PCOS. I had no clue what that was, no idea what that meant, or how it even affected my body. My doctor proceeded to tell me that it's a disease where women can have cysts on their ovaries and that it causes major hormonal imbalances that have a wide variety of effects on your body. The one thing that stuck out to me when she was telling me this was that everything I ate essentially turned into fat! It was my ahh ha moment of finally having an answer as to why I was having such an issue with my weight. The next year consisted of trying a medication that completely made me nauseous and have bowel issues (let's just say that was no fun at all.) I finally quit the medication and decided I would try some dieting and exercise. At this point the yo-yo dieting really began. You gain some and then you lose some and then you gain it back again. Around the time that I was diagnosed with PCOS is when I started to look into the option of weight loss surgery. I spent a few years looking at having the Gastric Bypass surgery done. I just couldn't decide if I was ready to have a surgery at that point but the thought never left me. In 2010 I found out I was pregnant w/ my beautiful baby girl and I was weighing in at about 315lbs. I only gained about 15lbs during my entire pregnancy. However, if you looked at me I looked like I had gained much more. After Lorelai was born my weight slowly began to increase until this past year I hit 340lbs. Now, around Lorelai's 2nd birthday in October I decided it was again time to try and take control of my weight not only for me but for my daughter. She deserves to have a mother that has enough energy to run and play with her and be just as active as she is. This is when I dragged my mother along and we went to a conference at Boone Hospital about the Lap Band surgery. I gained a huge amount of knowledge and decided I wanted to give it a try. So, they went ahead and processed my application and we found out my insurance would cover 80% of the surgery cost and I would be left to pay for any pre op/post op visits and 20% of the surgery. This was kind of disappointing news only because at that point I just didn't have the funds to cover that. So, I choose to wait awhile and then in late January I decided it was time to get the ball rolling.....
Thus the true beginning of this journey (atleast the surgery part of it.) So, the very first thing you have to do is to have appointments with the dietician, physical therapist, and a psychologist. Somehow, I was lucky enough to be able to do all three of the appointments the same day. The next appointment was to go see the surgeon for the first time. This occured the following week for me. I think I was more nervous about seeing him than going to the rest of the appointments. At this appointment I found out I had already lost 14 pounds! I was super excited!! The surgeon then said everything looked good and I was okay to have surgery. After this appointment is when all the paperwork gets submitted to the insurance company and you wait for their approval. This can take a few days all the way up to about 30 days for them to give you an answer. This waiting time was the most nerve racking time for me. I was anxious to get an anaswer and really get things moving where I felt I could be 100% committed to this process. After two weeks of waiting I finally got an approval from the insurance company. I was extremely excited! Now, it was time to call and set up a surgery date and set up appointments with the Dietician, Surgeon, and to go have what they call a PASS appt done. The PASS appt is when they do blood work, xrays, and an EKG to make sure you are okay to have surgery. Also, in the midst of all this I began my low carb/no carb/high protein diet. This included protein shakes as well. Which finding a protein shake that I liked was hard but I finally settled on one. Secondly, in this phase of things I had to write down everything I ate and drank and then give it to the Dietician to look at during my second appt with her. Again, I was able to get my Dietician and PASS appt all on the same day. At my second Dietician appt I found out I lost another 6 pounds! This is really working.....The week afterwards I went to see the Surgeon for my Pre Op appt and he again said everything looked great and I was able to have surgery. At this appt I found out that I had lost another 3 pounds! That was in a week! This makes a total of 23 pounds since the beginning of this process. Meanwhile, while I was having the appt w/ my Dietician she gave me the schedule for the the pre op diet, and the 4 phases of the post op diet. Needless to say the Pre op diet started the Tuesday after I saw her and it's a clear liquid diet for 10 days before surgery! I have to say this has been the hardest ten days I have ever gone through. It has taken tons of self control and let's just say my life has consisted of nothing but water, tea, coffee, broth, sugar free popsicles, and sugar free jello! At this point I'm down to 4 days before surgery and I'm completely anxious and excited to see how this is all going to turn out.
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