WLS Page 20!!

January 29, 2002 A very close friend in Texas has been having some problems with losing too much weight. She was put into the hospital and they inserted a feeding tube. She now receives 2000 calories a day plus anything she might eat. This is a very emotional issue for both my friend and me and she is still confused about what is going on. She has people that she knows and they tell her how wonderful she looks and then she has others that tell her how horrible she looks. She thinks she looks good and really really really does not want to gain any weight but Dr. P has other ideas. She is a real trooper and if she did not respect him so much she would of just walked out of his office and never scheduled another follow up appt. But she is trusting him with her life so she is trying to understand that this is just as stressful for him to have to make this decision as it has been for her to accept this decision. She let everyone know what was going on for no other reason than to inform others in our group that things like this could happen. Some of it was by choice, some of it was by genetics. All of her blood work was good, she was drinking and eating what she thought was enough to keep her body going and really happy with her weight loss and then before she knew it her mind had control of her body and it was making dumb decisions and the mirror was like a carnival mirror and she no longer could see what everyone else saw and the "I just wanted to lose a couple more pounds and then a couple more" took over. If anyone would of told her that she would be in the hospital with a feeding tube within 16 months of her surgery she would of laughed them off. But this can happen and it is just a scary as being overweight with no control. She is now home and getting back on her feet and has more strength today then she has had in months. Thank God. She is in my thoughts and prayers.

I too have gone from one extreme to the other. From morbidly obese to under weight. I'm 5'3" and small boned and according to the met life scale my ideal weight is 130-134. But I weigh in at 113-116. I go to the gym 4-5 times a week and workout for about 2 hours. I love working out, it feels great! I have become a shopping fiend and if I just lost a few more pounds I could wear those size "0"s. Yes, I said size 0, for the first time in a very very long time I can wear those sexy clothes that I see everywhere. I stopped weighing because for me the numbers on the scale didn't mean anything, it was the size of the clothes, the 2's, 1's and 0's!!! I have to admit that I have been using the weight loss to cover for all the other crap that has happened to me. The stroke, the bleeds and now the MS. At least with the weight loss I have control over that, and we all know how important control is. With the MS I have the worst fatigue and have difficulty with balance. I had been thinking that if I weighed less it would help, you know, less to carry and less to balance, does that make sense? Well it did to me. It's actually the other way around, if I was at a stable weight (even 120) my body would work better, more efficiently and that would help with the fatigue and balance. As it is now I have to take medication for them. When I have my PS I will lose 10-15 pounds of skin and even I have to admit that 100 pounds is not good. I'm now terrified that I'll end up in the hospital with a feeding tube also. How could this have happened??

As anybody with weight issues knows, the brain can play tricks on you. Even after losing 215 pounds I can still see that fat person in the mirror, not all the time, but sometimes. Now it's not a food issue so much as a number issue, either the numbers on the scale or the size number on the clothes. My food issue now is forcing myself to eat. Why would I go to all the trouble of having surgery to loss the weight and then eat? Making myself understand that now I have to eat to LIVE is very difficult. It's been very easy for me to cut myself off from my support group because of the distance, they don't see me, so they can't say anything about how much I've lost. I know if they had known what my friend and I had been going through before it got so far gone, they would have jumped in and kicked some skinny chick ass! Support is so very important in this journey. Even after 18 months. Maybe even more so now, becoming a new person is not easy.

In becoming the new me, I have discovered a lot of things. I no longer have to hide from people, some people like me for me, that's a new concept to me! I like to have fun and laugh. I love being around people now. There is so much to do and see in this life, I don't want to waste a minute of it.
I'll keep you posted,
~Jan~