ButterflyWings
Let's start way back in high school, shall we.....
I have always been the tallest in school and just about everywhere else, but I never had a problem with my weight until I married right out of business school and got pregnant. I gained 55 lbs carrying my son. When I was 8 months pregnant, I was hit head on by an elderly woman who crossed over the yellow lines. My son is a miracle! He was not injured at all however, I had a dislocated right hip, badly banged up knees (kneecaps shifted and ligaments torn), a bruise of the steering wheel on my chest and my head shattered the windshield, so I had a lump and concussion for a while.
Well... needless to say, I couldn't have surgery to repair my knees until after I delivered my son. By that time, there was so much damage to my knees that I have since had 5 surgeries between them and have little or no cushion within my joints. (Exercise is and always has been an issue). I joined Nutrisystem after I had my son and my first surgery and lost 60 lbs. I was even in the local newspaper, I looked so great. But..... you know what happened next.... kept it off for about 2 years (because of a stressful, not so nice marriage) and then gained all of it back and more.
Slowly over the years, my weight was up and down as I struggled as a single mom. I tried Weight Watchers a zillion times, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem(again), Optifast, Grapefruit Diet, Atkins Diet, soup diet, and so on and so forth.
Then something wonderful happened in 1994. I met my now Husband and Love of My Life, Marc. I weighed in at a whooping 250 lbs when I met him and he saw ME! Not my weight! We married in 1995 and over the next 11 gloriously happy years, I gained another 100 lbs. I don't know how or why or where it came from, but it did!
I have been researching WLS since 2003. I have been to seminars in several areas - read every online newsletter, feature, who's who in the doctor world. You name it. I still was unsure as to which surgery to have and what would be best for me. Then one day I heard an ad on the radio about the doctors at Surgical Intensivists who were having a WLS Seminar at Westchester Medical in Valhalla, New York. I thought, "what the hell, what's another seminar". Boy was this ONE DIFFERENT! These doctors really cared and answered every question and explained everything in detail. My favorite thing that I took from that seminar was this.... "When you are morbidly obese and your BMI is >40, you have a VERY VERY SLIM chance of losing all of the weight on your own and keeping it off. WLS is like your RESET BUTTON." Isn't that Great!
A Reset Button - that is what I have been praying about for years. With all of the diets I have been on, I KNOW what to eat, I KNOW how much to eat and I KNOW about exercise and how important it is, but ALL I NEEDED WAS A CHANCE TO START OVER AND DO IT RIGHT THE SECOND TIME! This surgery was going to be my second chance - MY RESET BUTTON!
Well, that's brings me to now. I had my first appt with the Doctors on December 20, 2006 and moved forward with my pre-op requirements. Thankfully, my insurance approved my surgery with only one little mishap with paperwork and HERE I AM!
