Resentment, Determination and Trepidation

Let me start out by saying I don’t know if this will be the best thing I’ve ever done or the worst mistake of my life; but “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao-Tzu.

And so my single step started at the bariatric surgery weight loss information session about a month back where a surgeon stood before a room of hopefuls, like myself, and after giving the facts said that this surgery has to be all about you.  And that you needed to be selfish.  Was this man seriously standing there preaching to me, a nurse of 8 years who has done nothing but take care of everyone else, to be selfish?  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

The weeks following the seminar leading up to the surgical consult I reflected on my weight loss journey–more like steep climb and swan dive off a rocky cliff.  I was not always a “fat chick.”  Once upon a time I was actually much thinner, although always on the chubby side of normal I never felt as isolated as I do now.

In high school I was always trying to loose that stubborn 5 or 10 extra pounds that the doctor had put in my head that I had to loose, but they always followed that with but you’re active so don’t worry about it too much.  Well this extra 5 or 10 pounds turned into the freshman 15 and that came about because I preferred ramen noodles, cheese doodles and Ben & Jerry’s to anything gross that came out of the school cafeteria.  After my first year away I came home and tried various ways to loose that freshman 15, but the weight just seemed to stick and get worse.  One day I stepped on the scale and couldn’t believe the number I was seeing.  291 pounds was a crazy number to me and everything felt like it was spiraling out of control.  I needed to get real about this and soon.

Now on the way to the consult and super nervous, it feels like I’m actually having surgery today.  I filled out the barrage of paperwork weeks ago and been nothing but anxious since.  I’m expecting the flood gates to open and to have a total breakdown right there in the surgeons office.  The only thing I do know for certain of the three popular weight loss procedures: lapband, gastric sleeve and gastric bypass I’ve settled on the gastric sleeve.  Hopefully the surgeon will see eye to eye with me on that choice.