Adventures in weight loss surgery and beyond

After much tearing of clothes and gnashing of teeth, I have finally come up with a blog that will let me document my adventures in weight loss surgery and beyond.  I hope this will be a place, too, that I can explore my thoughts and feelings while making  huge changes in my life.  For those of you who decide to follow this, I hope you might learn what a difficult task I am undertaking and I hope you will be positive and supportive of me during this time.  So, let me begin.

I have been overweight for most of my life and all of my adult life.  I'm sure there are many reasons for this.  One is because I am a Burgamy, I'm sure.  I doubt I will ever be small, but I would like to be a healthy size for my body frame.   Aother reason was the way I was brought up to eat. Southern style, with a lot of fried food and vegetables cooked in grease.  We always had bread and a dessert with every meal.  This certainly is nobody's fault.  It's just the way it was. I was always on a diet, even as a child.  Lastly, there are emotional reasons.  My life growing up was not easy - but who's is, right?  I won't go into a lot of explaination, but I'm sure that eating was a way of protecting myself from difficult situations and it was a comfort to me.  Enough of all that.

I am morbidly obese.  Doesn't sound pretty does it?  I am way over what I should weight for my height.  I could say that I should just be taller, but that's not the answer.  I am at an unhealthy weight and because of that I have high blood pressure, gastric reflux, sleep apnea, and painful joints.  I'm sure there is more, but I'll stop there.  I have been on more diets than I can count.  You name it, I've probably tried it at some point.  When I was younger I could lose weight fairly easy.  The problem is it never stayed off.  I would gain it back and more usually. I have been thinking about gastric bypass surgery for a long time.  My sister and my niece, both have had this surgery.  Both were successful to begin with, but my sister has gained a good bit of her weight back.  My niece has done well.  At the time when they had their surgeries, I was not convinced that it was all that safe, and if it was the right thing for me.  I have done a lot of research about the procedure and the results thereafter.  I wanted to be sure before I  took on such a drastic step.  All that to say, I feel comfortable with my decision to have the surgery and feel like it is the best course for me.

I plan to take you through the steps of what all I have to do to be eligible for this surgery. There was 3 different surgeries that are done for weight loss.  I chose the most drastic, but also the one with the best results for someone who needs to lose a lot of weight.  I'll go into all that later.  I plan to take you through pre-op, surgery and at least one year after or my goal weight.

So, if you were bored to tears reading all this, maybe this isn't for you.  I would not be upset with anyone who chose not to follow me in this adventure.  A lot of the reason I am writing a blog is just for me.  I thought some of you would like to follow my progress and maybe even learn something about me and the challenges of wanting to make a betterbonnie.  Stay tuned.  More to come.