Ruby_Trout
I am a 36 year old single mother of two wonderful daughters who are four and six. I am gainfully employed as a high school teacher in a small town of approximately 3000 people. I grew up in this small town and moved away part way through Grade 11, but returned at 34 to be near my parents and other family.
So, the question you are dying to know the answer to, “Why do I want bariatric surgery?” Well, the prospect of dying from obesity or obesity related illness(es) before my children grow up is hardly palpable. I don’t want to leave them. I love them dearly. I also love life and feel I have many roads to travel before God claims me for Heaven. One must ponder with a degree of trepidation the statistics that clearly state that an obese person is six times more likely to develop gallbladder disease, 5.6 times more likely to develop high blood pressure, 3.8 times more likely to develop diabetes, two times more likely to develop osteoarthritis, and12 times more likely to have sleep apnea. Morbidly obese individuals also suffer from higher rates of cancer, including but not limited to: prostate, breast (pre and post menopausal), cervical, endometrial, bowel, esophageal, pancreatic, kidney, and ovarian cancers. The facts aren’t pretty. The statistics are hardly favorable.
Here is my story:
As a child, I was always quite active. Yet, in spite of that, I seemed to always carry a little extra weight. It was not a lot, but enough to make me slightly bigger than the other children and enough to make me a bit of a social pariah. I learned very quickly that being fat made a person socially unacceptable. At the end of Grade Six, I had really had enough of the fat jokes and social isolation that I felt had followed me through school. I changed schools and put myself on a very rigid diet. I kept up the sports that I had participated in previously as well. In addition, it also happened that the school that I was now attending did a walk/run around the block in fair weather months and the ENTIRE school (yes – the staff too) did aerobics in the gym in the winter months. I was also more socially accepted at my new school and that worked in my favor too. As the year passed, my self-esteem grew and my waistline shrunk. The “new” me was a far happier person as was evidenced in every part on my life. My marks went up, I had a great group of friends, I had lots of after school activities that I was involved in, and I was no longer teased about my weight. My mother would probably tell you that life at home got easier too: my brothers ceased to tease me about my weight; I was less oppositional and more willing to listen to reason. Some of that was age, I am sure, but I was also more settled about my life. I had found success in places where I had not before.
I managed to keep my weight under control until after high school. But, sure enough, with college came the dreaded “freshmen fifteen.” Only for me, it was more like thirty with a few friends who arrived later. I was enrolled in a Physical Education program at college, but in spite of a huge amount of activity, more than three hours daily, I was unable to get a good grip on my weight. In fact, I spent much of my seven years at college and university fighting with my weight. I would lose and gain, lose and gain. There were complicating factors of course. When I was stressed, which was a lot at university, I ate. When things were bad with my boyfriend, I ate. When I was celebrating, I ate, and when I was bored, I ate. I knew things were getting really out of control and so I got myself referred to a dietician for weight management counseling. I did manage to shed the weight that I had gained, but in true yo-yo dieting fashion, I gained it all back again. At the beginning of 1995, I weighed 209 pounds. By the time my final year of university came to a close in May 1996, sure enough, I lost the weight once more. I got down to a respectable 172 pounds. Still a few pounds beyond what I should have been, but I felt great and was very active.
The following year, I got offered a job out of town and took it because I didn’t want to be unemployed that year. I gained a lot of weight because I was eating poorly, spending too much time at school (I am a teacher), I was depressed because of money issues and also because I was separated from my boyfriend. I ballooned to a personal high of 220 pounds. My job ended in February 1998, and I moved to
Then, I got pregnant with my first daughter (while I was training to run a marathon) in spite of taking birth control. I tried hard to keep my weight in check during that pregnancy, but with pre-eclampsia that is a difficult task. Though I was definitely overweight, it hardly looked like I was pregnant at all. In fact, when I delivered a month early, many of my co-workers were stunned to find out I was even pregnant. It was only afterwards that people commented that they thought I had just gained a little weight. With my second daughter, I was obviously pregnant but my pre-pregnancy weight was not too much different than my weight at full term. I think I had gained about 10 pounds. I was due in August, and in June at an awards ceremony where I was given an award for innovation in teaching, people were unaware that I was seven months pregnant. A month after delivery, I weighed less than I did before I got pregnant!
Since then, however, my weight has steadily risen. I admit my part in this. I have used food as a crutch to support me through the failure of my marriage. I have used food to comfort me when being a single parent seemed like too difficult a challenge. I have used food for entertainment when I was bored and to distract me from my heaps of marking. Though I am moderately active ( I walk, swim, and bike), I can say with surety that I eat more calories than I wear off in a day. I don’t intend to, but I know it is a truth.
Recently, I made one more attempt to lose weight. Starting in May 2007, I made a concerted effort to reduce calories, increase activity (even going so far as hiring a nanny four days a week for three hours a day so I could go swimming, walking or to the gym) and see my doctor regarding my weight. I decided to do this because I had gained ten pounds in the past year. My reward for being more active and watching my calories? Another five pounds of weight. I now weigh a whopping 272 pounds (at 5’7” tall) and have a BMI of 43 which puts me in the extremely obese category. It makes me cringe to think about it. I also notice that I suddenly don’t care what I put in my mouth, as it seems I am destined to gain weight anyway.
If you knew me, you would say that I was a very self possessed, intelligent, humorous, and an articulate woman. You might wonder how I ever got to this point. Truth is, I don’t know. Overall, my ability to lead a fairly full life seems, to the unknowing person, relatively unimpaired. However, if a person looked a little closer, they would see that I have plantar fasciitis on both feet, my knees are swollen all the time, my back aches so badly some days that I can hardly move, my neck aches, and I have arthritis. Perhaps the most urgent reason for timely access to this surgery, is that I don’t sleep well because I have moderate to severe sleep apnea. That is perhaps the scariest part about being obese. Every night, I stop breathing approximately 13 times a minute. Sometimes, I stop breathing for 60 seconds or more at a time. My blood oxygen levels frequently drop below 79% over my sleep period. It causes me deep seated anxiety knowing that tonight when I go to sleep, I could potentially die and leave my children motherless because I am overweight. As you can well imagine, feelings such as these don’t really encourage a person to WANT to sleep.
In addition to these previously mentioned conditions, I have become amenorreic, missing my cycles for months at a time. I also have shortness of breath when I do any strenuous physical activity, I suffer from clinical depression, I suffer from stress incontinence (there is nothing like peeing your pants when you are a grown woman – it makes you feel so ridiculous, ashamed, and unsanitary) and, although the least of my worries, my asthma acts up more regularly. Though I am obese, I have not yet developed diabetes (which runs rampant in my family on both sides), nor have I developed hypertension (which also runs in my family), nor am I currently showing any signs of coronary difficulties (which has also reared its ugly head with overwhelming regularity in my family) though my family physician strongly cautions me to be very careful. At 36, there is no way that I should be suffering from this many ills.
I am conscious of the fact that though I dress well for my size, people are repulsed by me. I hear people constantly whispering, “If she would only lose some weight, she would be so beautiful” or “She would have more opportunities for work (or social prospects) if she would lose some weight.” These comments and their ilk have been very hard on me. For a long time, I just pretended they didn’t exist, but the fact is, that they are growing harder to ignore. Partly, they are harder to ignore because my emotional ‘skin’ is wearing thin. Partly, they are becoming harder to ignore because I know they are the truth. I look at photos of myself and I don’t recognize the person in those photos. I just got my school photos back and I was so shocked at the roundness of my face. I don’t know the woman in the photo. My physical self in no way matches my internal picture of who I am. There is a serious discrepancy that I can not resolve without timely surgery.
Right now I feel like I am at a crossroads. I have to make some radical changes or I will die from obesity or an obesity related illness. Right now, because I am still relatively healthy, is a good time for me to have surgery. I can not wait in BC for another three to six years. Consider what that is likely to cost the medical system. I can guarantee that if I have to wait for a bariatric surgical spot in BC, I will need knee surgery on one knee (if not both knees) for sure. I will also require large chunks of my primary care physician’s time to deal with various weight-related issues. It is highly likely that I will require more medications and possibly other surgeries as well. I will also likely be unable to continue working as a teacher. I have already had to stop teaching Physical Education because I can not do an adequate job of it. The reality is that my ability to do my job is already severely impaired. I am waiting for the day that I fall asleep in class because I can hardly stay awake some days since the deprivation of deep sleep has begun to fray all the parts of my being. I have difficulty managing teaching full time because of the energy required to put together lessons and also because of the extra time required to mark. Lucky for me, I have a lot of independence in my job – otherwise, people would be far more aware of my lack of energy and attentiveness than they are now. It is not uncommon for me to start marking and find that I have fallen asleep for an hour or more. Could you imagine how parents would feel if they knew that their children’s education was being compromised because their teacher couldn’t stay awake? The last time I remember having a good sleep was in February 2001 (I was winter camping just outside of
An additional unwelcome side effect of the lack of sleep is that I tend to ‘lose track’ of thoughts in mid-sentence. Though I appreciate the extra exercise that going up and down the stairs three or four times to do a simple task like getting towels for the girls after a bath brings with it, I can hardly say that the feelings of ineptitude and negative self talk balance the scale. It is also a frightful thing to be in mid-sentence in a classroom full of sixteen year olds and forget what the lesson is about. It certainly doesn’t help in getting things done efficiently on a daily basis, there is no doubt about that.
In addition to the above mentioned issues, there is the emotional toll that feeling out of control is taking on my health and sanity. The depression I have is definitely linked to how I feel about my body and my size as well as to the negative self talk and also to the lack of decent sleep. In the last few months, I have had to request that my depression medication be increased and then changed, because it was not working effectively.
Consider, also, the toll that carrying all this stress is having on my children. My unhappiness definitely has affected my ability to be the best parent that I can. I know this. My energy level at the end of the day has an enormous effect on my child rearing abilities. It is difficult to offer my children my full attention through bath time and homework when it is taking all my energy to make them dinner and just get through the end of the day. Plus, my attitude stinks – I am not patient enough.
As well as the aforementioned stressors, I don’t feel like a very good role model for my children or for other people’s children. In fact, I feel like somewhat of a hypocrite when I am telling my students that eating well and being physically active will lead to life long good health. I can hear them sniggering when I say this because I am delivering a message that I clearly don’t embody. I can hear their comments running through my head, “Apparently, she hasn’t taken her own advice…” or “So when you gonna start?” or “Isn’t it a little late for that now? I mean, have you looked in the mirror lately?” or “I will never be as fat as you, so why bother?” ... and on and on. Not only that, but I am embarrassed when I get on a plane, because I am approaching the ‘end’ of the seatbelt and I infringe upon my neighbor’s personal space. It is crazy, but I am scared to go out for dinner some places because I am afraid that I won’t fit into some chairs that have arms on them. Also, I frequently bump into things, which causes unnecessary bruising, because I don’t really have a good idea of where my body ends anymore. In my mind, I am a much smaller person. For example, in September 2004, I went to a wedding with my mother. I remarked to her that I felt as beautiful and proportionate as the bride looked. Without thinking, my mother quickly quipped that I was no where near her size. She didn’t even think about what she was saying, she just pointed out the blatantly obvious (and had that “Oh crap, I really blew it this time look” on her face before she finished the last words). I knew what she was saying was right, but I merely wanted to point out the difference in how I felt about myself versus how I presented myself to the world.
I know the risks involved in the surgery. I have researched heavily, asked lots of questions, and I am, for lack of a better phrase, dying to be normal. I just want the outside of my body to match how successful I feel inside. I just want to grow old and watch my children have children. I just want a normal life. Right now, I don’t have a fighting chance. I know what the graph of weight versus age looks like: for every pound that I am overweight, I lose approximately three months of my life… that equals about 40 years in my case (ball park figure). If the averaged life expectancy of a woman is about 82 and I subtract 40 years, that means I have until I am 42? No, because I have yet to factor in the decreased life expectancy for a person with diabetes, heart disease, or various types of cancer… that doesn’t give me much time to fix the problem. Right now, there is an urgency that tells me the time is right. I have dealt with the demons that have plagued me for so many years. I am ready and willing to make changes and sacrifices for this to happen. I know that I will have to become a priority in my own life for this to be successful. I have cleaned the proverbial ‘plate’ of my life so that I can do that. Now is the time for me to repair the damage of years of abuse of my body and soul. It’s worth it. I am worth it. Please consider my request carefully. My life depends on it.
In the
