Another Surgery

Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated!  I have been absent from writing because I had to have an urgent surgery done before it turned into emergent.  After struggling with abdominal pain for a week, I was finally directed to the emergency room.  Matthew was at work and Bean was getting ready to leave for her mission trip.  I called a dear friend and she was able to drive me to the ER and stay with me all day until Matthew could come to the hospital.  She made me laugh and kept me going all day.  I finally had a CT scan done that showed that I had two hernias and one of them was what they call incarcerated.  It had loops of bowel entrapped within it.  That is what was causing the pain and what needed to be addressed urgently.  The incarcerated hernias can quickly become strangulated and they can kill off your intestines quickly.  Within 6 hours your bowel can be gangrenous and kill you!

I was blessed in every direction by good caretakers, a surgeon who told me he was damn good at what he does and that I would be in good hands.  He is a bariatric surgeon, unafraid of going in on top of someone elses work.  He did the surgery laproscopically, inserted mesh to reinforce my old surgery incision, and repaired both hernias.  I have eight holes from the surgery.  Thankfully the pain continues to improve each day and even more thankfully, I get to take a shower today.  I am feeling more than just a little dirty!!

Matthew washed my hair for me on Wednesday morning and it was such a relief to have it clean.  I will be happy to have my entire body clean!!  My brain is ultra foggy and so I haven’t really trusted myself to write until today and I had to keep it all very basic!  It may be a few more days before I blog again, but no worries, I am still here!!

Itching For Change

Have you ever been in a place where you hated everything about your life?  All the clothes you loved to wear before are suddenly ugly.  Your hair can’t do anything right.  Those shoes that you loved before are suddenly uncomfortable and hideous.  Every bite of familiar recipes and foods taste bad.  I have been in this place before and I am seeing that type of place again.  Maybe not quite as bad as what I have described, but pretty close.

I’m ready to shave my head and buy a set of wigs, replace all my shoes, have major surgery to revise my body, buy all new clothes, and quit eating all together.  I hate the bed I sleep in, I hate the color of my furniture, I don’t like anything.

What I really dislike is the discontent.  It’s horrible to feel that way.  I can’t pin point why it started or when but I’m at a loss about how to fix it.

My hair really can’t get any shorter than it is.  I don’t like coloring it, especially here in CA because I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t want to bleach it before adding the streaks of color.  My hair person in Ohio did such a great job putting streaks of red and such in my hair without bleaching it out.  I want new clothes but when I go shopping I can’t find anything I like.  I want new shoes but I can’t find shoes that I like.  I want a new bed but it’s not in the budget.  I want a new couch and love seat but again, it’s not in the budget.

I am really hoping that my upcoming trip will help me to reset.  Being in the midst of women who are so much like me and yet so different will be refreshing.

It will.  Won’t it?

Weighty Matters

Over the past several weeks, I have been asked by three separate people for advice about talking to their loved ones about losing weight.  My response to all of them has been different.  Why?  Well, I thought about that last night and I feel like the response has to be different for everyone because everyone is in a different circumstance.  I have also been trying to give advice to someone who is about to undergo gastric bypass.  I have determined to never recommend a person to have this surgery but when they make that decision for themselves I do give them advice from what I have learned since having it.

I think anyone approaching their loved ones about their weight has to be extremely careful because it’s easy to come across as unloving and the loved one might take it as an attack on who they are.  I know I certainly did.  Every time my husband would suggest exercise or not eating something that wasn’t exactly good for me I would misconstrue his intent and I didn’t want anyone trying to control me.  It took my doctor telling me that I was going to die to change how I felt about who I had become as an obese person.

Advising a parent as an adult is completely different from approaching a parent as a young adult or teen.  Confronting a spouse, totally different and consulting a friend needs a delicate touch also.  We can’t always change their minds, but we can possibly make them think from another point of view and hopefully they will see that a change needs to be made.  Seeing the need for change needs to come from within and if it doesn’t come from within then it doesn’t last.

Everyone feels differently about weight.  I have a completely different view than I used to have.  Before I lost weight I constantly thought about having a body like I had when I was younger.  It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was better than what I had become.  Once I had experienced true obesity I have come to a place where while my body isn’t perfect, it’s a lot more healthy than it was and it’s going to carry me a lot farther into the future than my old body would have.  There are days when I see my reflection and wish that I could have the magic surgery to smooth out the lumps and lift the things that have fallen.  Then there are the days when I see myself and think about the major improvement that has been made, it’s not “perfect”, but I’m okay with that.  It sure is a reminder that I never want to go back to the old self.

Taking control of diet and activity are the best ways to become healthier.  Our choice of food and portion control is the best way to fuel our bodies.  If you take a dinner plate and divide it in half, fill the lower half with veggies.  Half the upper part of your plate and in those quarters you want whole grains or complex carbs/starches and the other quarter should be low-fat protein.  If you approach every plate in that way you can cut your calories, be full and never look back.  The more color on your plate the happier your eating will be.  Parking farther from the door of the stores, walking more, doing more, increasing the activity little by little.  All the small changes are what will make the difference to becoming more healthy.

I know the mental blocks that can happen.  I know the bouts of coping with stress and sadness the old way, munching.  There have been times over the last 4 1/2 years that I have dropped back into the old habits of dealing with stress and depression.  Then I wake up and get back on track.  There are some people who can eat the same thing every day for years.  My husband is one of those people.  Every day he has the same basic breakfast with very few variations.  He doesn’t mind eating grilled chicken, veggies, and sweet potatoes for lunch for a month.  I, however, have a problem with even eating leftovers.  I must have variation, frequent variation.  There are only a few things that I can eat as leftovers.  I have come to realize from speaking with various people who if you are like me and aren’t happy with routines in food you will be more likely to be overweight while those who can eat with little variation are more likely to be fit.  I have seen more evidence of this in recent years.  IF you can change your mindset about food, the control is yours.  So we have two sayings, those of us who have lost massive amounts of weight.  “Eat to live not live to eat.” and “Control the food, don’t let it control you.”

It is not simple.  There are so many facets for each one of us that it’s hard to break them down and analyze.  Instead, each person has to analyze it for themselves.  Some of the basics are the same though.

• 1.  Fresh food is good for you food.
• 2.  Processed food should be avoided for every day living.
• 3.  Keep the food closest to its natural form and use natural ingredients to season and flavor.
• 4.  The biggest portion for a meal should be vegetables and fruits, the more color on your plate the more nutritious.
• 5.  Meat should be low in fat, the size of a deck of cards, and chewed vigorously to make it easy on your digestion.
• 6.  Whole grains should be included in each meal.
• 7.  Water is the largest part in our body, drink plenty to keep healthy.
• 8.  Dairy is a good source of protein and if you can tolerate it include the low-fat versions in your diet.

Take control of your food choices.  Take control of your portion sizes.  Take control of your activity.  Taking control of these things will give you control over your weight and remember, there are no quick fixes or miracle cures.

 

Disease or Choice?

Is obesity a disease?

Is alcoholism disease?

Recently my husband, Matthew and I had a conversation about this and today something brought it to mind again.  Seeing as I have struggled in both areas I am only speaking from my experience.  This is just my thoughts, I’m not an expert in this field, I have just lived it.

When I was morbidly obese and given a death sentence, I guess I saw the benefits of my obesity being called a disease.  It definitely caused a lot of disease.  It caused my diabetes, it caused my fatty liver disease, it caused the joint degeneration disease to rapidly increase, it caused the cysts on my kidney, and it attributed to my depression.  It also caused my hypertension.

When I struggled with drinking too much, it caused a lot of trouble also.  It skewed my judgement, made me lose track of myself, and time.  It attributed greatly to my obesity and my depression.

Now, when I think about these things, I think that I can see why they are now being classified as disease, but I also think that it removes human responsibility.  It completely removes “action causes an equal reaction” rule when we talk about consequences.

If we over eat, we get fat.  If we continue to over eat, we get fatter.  We cause our bodies harm.  We hurt ourselves by not having self-control.  This is a result of our choice to eat too much of the wrong food.  If we do this long enough and yo-yo up and down we do cause disease that makes it impossible or near to impossible to lose the weight.  It becomes a disease, but it starts off with a choice.

It’s the same with alcohol.  See, I knew that it was in my blood to have a problem controlling alcohol usage but I didn’t pay it a lot of mind.  I chose to drink, I chose to not pay mind to the advice I was given and before I knew it I almost lost control over it.  It all started with a choice.

I can see where calling both of these things, obesity and alcoholism, a disease, would benefit a lot of people.  When something is called a disease, it removes personal responsibility.  Insurance companies are more likely to pay for the treatment of it.  People are less likely to judge your bad choices as that because they say, “Well, they have a disease, they can’t help it.”  It’s a cop-out.  I don’t believe it and I will no longer be buying into it.  I may stand alone but that’s okay, it’s better to have a clear conscious and stand alone than to buy into something that you know is wrong.

When we are able to see clearly that we are making a choice in these matters, we can begin to heal from our choices.  Do I think that food and alcohol can be addictive?  Yes.  Do I think that we have a choice of whether we allow that to happen? Yes.  Addiction happens when we allow the things we are addicted to, to have control in over us.  It doesn’t stem from disease, it’s not a matter of having willpower to withstand it, it comes down to choice.  Do we choose to do what is right for ourselves or do we choose what makes us feel good at the moment?  Do we choose health or the sickness that these bad choices bring?

Disease or Choice?  I guess every person has to choose for themselves.

Reflecting

Today I was reflecting on my recent health scare and how I felt about what was going on.  I find it to be a good practice to reflect after an experience like that.  It’s all about learning.

When I first saw the doctor, I knew that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what was happening to my body.  I wasn’t worried, I just wanted to get to the bottom of it.  Then I went for the results and when the doctor listed all the possibilities I did get worried.

I kept thinking that my girls still needed a mom, that my husband still would like me around .  I couldn’t rid myself of the fear of being a burden to them, or worse yet, leaving them.  THEN, I came to my senses.  It’s not up to me when I leave this earth.  My days were determined at the time that God started knitting me in my mother’s womb.  If He decided it was time for me to leave this old earth, I would, and you know what, He would provide for my girls and Matthew.

I had to be patient and wait for answers.  In the meantime, I let myself rest and I tried hard to focus on healing after my knee surgery.  In fact, that surgery was a blessing.  It forced me to sit and wait and relax.  Being held down was just what I needed.  Although I was chomping at the bit to be up and around, God knew what I needed.

The day arrived to get the other test results.  Those results that would take cancer off the table.  I was so relieved, so thankful.  Today I received the notification that I can make my appointments with the cardiologist and my gastroenterologist.  Just to make sure that there isn’t a bleed, and that the heart issue is all anemia related.

No matter what the answers are, I know that God is handling the details and I can sit in peace.