The difference a year makes
I was chatting with a friend recently, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year and I realised it’s been ages since I gave an update on The Great Weightloss challenge and I really should have written this last month since it would have been exactly one year since the surgery but I guess better late than never right? Exactly, that’s what I thought too. (more…)
Innovative Online Book Tours
{EAV:1b7b8ffe500d4ad3}I am thrilled to announce that I have just been accepted, over on Just Heard, Just Read, Just Seen as a Online Book Tour Host (yes those are Winnie The Pooh capitals, no I’m not correcting them – move on) for Innovative Online Book Tours.
I’m really excited about this as I’ve been working really hard to grow my blogs over the past few weeks. I’ve overhauled how they look, I’ve updated them, I’ve tweeted them, I’ve Facebooked (oh look I know it’s not a word but it’s late so for tonight – just move along, nothing to see here) them and I have joined what feels like a million blog communities. In fact, girls and boys, I’m starting to feel like I’m something of a social media tart. But I swear I’m not a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of community member, I’ve been logging in faithfully every night to each of them. In fact by the time I’ve visited each of them there’s no time left to write or blog. Ooooops.
So, I am very excited to see it starting to pay off in small ways. My traffic is increasing, my book review requests are increasing ( hmm those who can, write – those who can’t, review? Let’s not go there…), and of course becoming Online Book Tour Host (oh look Winnie strikes again).
For those of you who don’t know, basically publishers organise for blog owners to ‘host’ an author and/or book during its release. This can mean an interview, a review, an excerpt, a give away, or a guest blog from the author. It’s an all around win situation – the author gets exposure, the blogger gets exposure and readers get great material.
Of course, all of this means I need to order – let me think – oh another 24 hours in a day should just about do it. Reading, reviewing, editing, blogging, posting, tweeting *pant, pant* – and that’s all before I head downstairs to make breakfast for The Offspring, put on my suit and head to the day job, or kiss The Man of The House good morning.
Am I super woman? Hell, no. I’m nuts is what I am.
Seriously though – there is method in my madness. I love to write, I love to connect with people, and I love the cyber world. It seemed to make sense to start building my writing career in a way that worked with those components. While I admit it would be nice to be making more money at it - used to have a guitar teacher in France, who used to roll his eyes and mutter “Angelique, your problem is you want the moon and you want it yesterday, which should tell you something about my patience level – I have to say that I’m feeling creatively quite satisfied with myself.
In other news, we’ve had a sad couple of months here at The New Beach House. Both our darling old slobradogs have left us for the doggy playground on high – Fitzy in January and Barney just a couple of months ago. While it was very sad, having to say goodbye to them it was a comfort knowing they had good lives, were very much loved and brought much love to everyone.
The Terrible Twins and Rosie now have full run of the place. The Twins spend a lot of time curled up at my feet at my desk while I write. My writing desk is upstairs in our bedroom, looking out over the water – and as the chimney runs up through our room, it’s lovely and cosy on blustery day (sigh, NZ winter is looming, dammit).
The Offspring are all settled in school for the year and doing really well. Master 19 – and I’m sorry but no he is NOT turning 20 in September, I don’t care what he says – is doing brilliantly in his third year at music school and has a lovely girlfriend named Sammi, who we all adore. Master 13 is enjoying being a high school student (I think) and has taken up parkour – aka free running, aka driving your mother’s blood pressure through the ceiling. Miss 11 is loving being in the senior grades at primary school and to the horror of all the men in her life, turned into a teenager while they weren’t looking. The cute little girl is gone and a rather formidable (not to mention beautiful) young woman is emerging – look out world is all I can say.
Next week is my one year anniversary of my sleeve surgery – I’m trying to think of something special to do to celebrate it both in the real world and something to share here with readers. Especially as over the past year I’ve lost a little over 50kg….I am literally half the person I used to be. Stay tuned.
See you a little further on up the road guys.
Lifelong Challenge: A little further on up the road
So here we are in the first week of August – eight months down, four to go and as my kids take great delight in telling me: Christmas is in sight. Think I may enter hibernation now and be done with it.
Despite being roughly three quarters of the way through winter here in New Zealand, the bougainvillea still hasn’t lost all of last summers leaves and we still have Monarch butterflies laying eggs; really I shouldn’t complain. But I’m going to anyway. It’s freezing. Admittedly many bariatric patients feel the cold quite severely during the first year following surgery so that may account for some of it but in truth it is more because I like the heat of summer. I was made to live in the tropics I tell you.
The exciting news on the weight loss front is that I am now down to 73kg – that’s a 32 kilo loss since I first met with the GP for referral and 16 kilos since May 9. Which works out at a little over a kilo a week – I can’t complain about that. I can keep most protein down now as long as it isn’t deep fried and I don’t eat too much of it. My current favourite lunch is a hard boiled, duck egg – and since we have a pair of Indian Runner ducks, there are plenty of those to go around. I still struggle with carbs but can eat a little plain pasta as long as I neither rush it nor overdo it. Very spicy food doesn’t agree with me and nor does very greasy food.
Just like the calendar – I now have less weight to lose than I have lost and I’m very excited by the possibility of being under 70kg for the first time in my adult life by the end of the month, so stay tuned.
It’s NOT that simple is coming along slowly and I hope to have a first draft complete by the end of August/early September. So if you see me lurking on FaceBook or Twitter or listening to (drooling over)Springsteen on YouTube – do me a favour and boot my butt back to the keyboard will you?
My two cents on…a weighty issue
As I work on my book, It’s NOT that simple, I am discovering weight seems to press all kinds of buttons with all kinds of people. All of which proves my point, that it is NOT that simple.
The thing that is starting to make me a little ratty (hence the pic) is the reaction I get from many people to my decision to lose weight. I was never that surprised at the reaction to my decision to have weight loss surgery – people often don’t like that which they don’t understand.
What I am surprised and disappointed by is the reaction by many people to the desire to lose weight at all. There appears to be a growing perception that if you want to lose weight, the following statements are also always true:
- You don’t love yourself
- You want to look like Angelina Jolie or whoever the latest cover girl is
- You have a distorted image of how you really look or how you will look after the weight loss
- You are confusing health with media inspired beauty
- You had a Barbie doll very young and you aspire to look like her
First up, while some of these things may be true for some people, not all of these things are true for ALL people, so people please don’t assume they are. Before I go any further and my mailbox gets filled with irate messages – I am not saying these issues are not valid. They are – in the correct context. Don’t get me started on the images and ideas that are being marketed to our young people – both boys and girls. But that is a separate issue to the one of why an obese person makes the decision to do something about their weight.
Speaking for myself, I never had a Barbie doll, I work in the media so I am somewhat cynical about front page celebrity pics, and I think I have a fairly sane image of what I’ll look like when I get to my goal weight. Let’s get real here guys: I’m 44, I’ve had three children, and I’ve just had gastric sleeve surgery. I’m not going to be a Playboy Bunny now am I? Nor do I want to be.
That leaves loving oneself. I will put my hand up and admit that I didn’t especially love myself at 105 kilos. I hated how I looked. Clothes never fitted properly, I always looked like a chipmunk with cheeks full of peanuts, and I felt like crud. I knew then, and I know now, that I was smart, and sometimes funny, and I can, when I try, string words together in a way that people enjoy. None of that changed the fact that I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror.
You can argue that perhaps I needed to learn to accept and love that mirror reflection. On occasion I could appreciate how I looked in a certain outfit – but it always came with the subtext “for a big girl”. I hated that subtext almost as much as I hated the flab that hung off my legs and belly.
What I see in the mirror now isn’t perfect. It has stretch marks and scars and it’s still carrying around an excess 25 kilos but I don’t shudder when I look at it.
I know men and women who really aren’t worried about how their bodies look, but they would like to be more physically active, or fitter. I get that too.
I hated walking up stairs. It made me sweaty and out of breath. Worse than that – it made me feel ashamed. A flight of stairs and I’m breathing like I just ran the New York marathon? Really? I’m supposed to accept and like that?
Now I don’t even blink when I have to climb stairs or go for a walk or do anything physical.
Obesity carries its own mental and emotional issues and scars. That I won’t argue with – I carry enough of them to know better than to try. But just as losing weight isn’t as simple as eating less and moving more, the reasons behind losing weight are more complex too. To dismiss an obese person’s desire for a healthier body and life as being entirely based on something as superficial as wanting to look like a plastic doll, does obese people a huge disservice.
We may be carrying too much weight, but that does not mean we are stupid. Nor does it mean we are immune to the constant barrage of conflicting messages. One day we’re told lose it. The next we’re told to learn to love ourselves. Two days after that we’re told to aim to lose just 10% of our bodyweight. The next message is that a stable weight combined with a good level of fitness is better than being skinny and unfit.
Enough already. If someone is asking for help with losing weight, how about helping them? I’m all for being open eyed and realistic about goals and the routes and the whys and the wherefores – but for pity’s sake actually help. Ask your patient/friend/sibling/parent/child what you can do to help. What are they trying? What are their expectations? Why do they want to lose weight?
Be constructive – and you never know what you may help someone discover….
One month down the track….
So…I’m one month on from surgery today. I weigh 81.5 kilos and I feel great. I’m walking every day for at least 40 to 50 minutes and I’m slowly reintroducing my yoga routine. I’m baking and cooking – which is ironic given how much I avoided it prior to my surgery. And I’m writing – I’ve passed the 10k mark on “It’s not THAT simple” – and to celebrate I’ve started redecorating my writing room so it’s warmer and reflects what I do and who I am more.
A month ago I could barely walk my daughter to school without being exhausted for the rest of the day. Now I can buckle five kilometres and be ready to start again. I love that. I love that my new watch is going to be too big before long – there are only two holes left on the strap. I don’t love that my engagement ring is in danger of falling off at any moment however – it’s even too big for my middle finger (leave it alone) and when it’s feeling particularly precarious I slip it on my index finger, but I suspect that will only be a temporary measure at best. Hmmmm…..I wonder if this means I get to go jewellery shopping….
Working on this book is proving challenging – well more challenging than I anticipated. It never ceases to amaze me the buttons that are pushed when you bring up the word ‘weight’. What does amaze me is who the people are whose buttons are pushed….wow. I’ve managed to annoy Weight Watchers already with the suggestion that ” because not one size fits all (pun intended) I want to highlight different programmes available to people in order to reach a healthy weight”. I was informed that not only does Weight Watchers work for everyone, but if I had not succeeded with it, the problem was me, not the programme. Hmmmmmmm…let me think, I was training for a duathlon, I was following the Weight Watchers programme to the letter and I put on four kilos. I accept that my body seems to require very few calories so yes in that sense it is about me – but in that case, their programme does not suit my case. In which case, one size does not fit all….
Jenny Craig to my surprise – this is what I get for having preconceptions – has been very open to dialogue and helping me gather the information I’m looking for.
I have to say it’s an exciting adventure and I’m enjoying it - the healthier and fitter I feel, the more I wish everyone could feel this good.
Nearly half way there - from this to this
Lifetime Challenge: And we’re over the bridge
Yes folks – the big day has been and gone. At last.
On Monday May 9 2011 – I’m considering declaring it my new birthday – I rocked up to the Manukau Super Clinic at 8.55 with Dennis and was shown through to the theater. My first task was to answer the following questions: Full name, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, partner’s name, partner’s number and best of all “what procedure are you having?”. My second task was to wait for about forty minutes and pretend I could concentrate on doing a SuDoKu puzzle while Dennis read a boating magazine. I think I filled in three squares and mostly just stared into space.
At about 9.45 a nurse wandered out with a file in her hand and started walking up and down the row of patients, clearly looking for someone. After a couple of times back and forth, she stopped and called “Is Angelique Jurd here?” When I said yes she did a bit of a double take and checked her file again then shrugged and ushered me through to the scales. I used to hate scales – now I love them. Those babies announced I weighed 89kg – 16kg down from the 105 I weighed when I first went to my GP begging for help; 12kg down from the 101 I weighed when I was first seen by the bariatric team.
Next stop was the pre-admit room where I got given the sexiest (not) little hospital gown to put on, along with a pair of ever so charming white stockings to help prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Dennis tried very hard to keep a straight face - at least I think he tried, he wasn’t overly successful I have to say. Then I had to answer a set of questions: Full name, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, partner’s name, partner’s number and best of all ‘what procedure are you having?”. Hmm – moment of deja vu. The nurse was a bit perplexed for a moment – she was supposed to take my blood pressure and had brought in the cuff they usually use for the bariatric patients but which was too big for me. She’d never had that problem before – neither have I to tell the truth. You see the thing is we all make assumptions when we are dealing with obesity. People would look at me and wouldn’t see someone who weighs over 200kg so I therefore must not be morbidly obese. The truth is I am 1m52 and my ideal weight is between 47 and 55 kg – the lowest I have been in the past 20 years is 69kg and as I’ve mentioned I had ballooned up to 105. My BMI this time last year was 45. Anyway, she got another cuff and although my blood pressure wasn’t low – it never is dammit – it wasn’t worrying.
Now it was time to wait for the anesthetist - who luckily wasn’t far away. Andrew was very nice – but before he could explain what was going to happen he had to ask me some questions: Full name, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, partner’s name, partner’s number and best of all ‘what procedure are you having?”. Nerves were making me giggle at all the repetition and he laughed with me. When he left his technician came in.
And asked me a whole pile of questions: Full name, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, partner’s name, partner’s number and best of all ‘what procedure are you having?”. She then asked me if I understood what the procedure meant. I said they were going to cut out most of my stomach and throw it in the bin. She blinked, then grinned and said “pretty much yeah – I think you’ve got a handle on it.” Her next question floored me – rather than throwing it in the bin, would I like to keep it and bring it home?
Let’s get something clear – I don’t cut umblical cords, I don’t freeze placentas, I don’t keep baby teeth and I sure as hell do not want to keep my stomach remnants. I was a little more polite when I told her that though….
From there, they sent Dennis off to begin his wait and took me into theatre, where Andrew asked me – yes you got it: Full name, date of birth, address, phone number, cell phone number, partner’s name, partner’s number and best of all ‘what procedure are you having?”. I must have rolled my eyes because he explained they had to keep asking as a safety check that they had the right patient for the right procedure. I’m sure that was meant to be reassuring but somehow…well….it just wasn’t…..
“How are your veins?” Andrew asked.
“Not great – blood tests are always a hassle,” I replied. And they are – my veins just don’t like to pop for some reason. Andrew said something about how he was an ace at getting even the most difficult vein to pop and started tapping the back of my hand. Then he jabbed a small local into the back of my hand and got ready to drop the anesthetic line. It is somewhat embarrassing what happened next. I don’t know what he hit with that needle – but let me assure you it wasn’t a vein. It was either a bone or a nerve and I screamed. Loudly. It was excruciating - probably made worse by being nervous – and Andrew knew it wasn’t going to work. He was really apologetic and said “okay you’re right, your veins don’t like to pop – we’ll drop it in the elbow crease.” I didn’t even feel the local let alone the line being put in – my hand was too damned painful.
They then asked for me to be given some oxygen and the next thing I knew I was hearing Andrew saying “come on Angelique you have to wake up. Come on Angelique you have to wake up. ” I have to admit my initial thought ran along the lines of ’bog off’. My very next thought was “oh boy I am going to be very sick”. I must have had that particular thought out loud because there was a rush of nurses, doctors and Andrew sticking me with things, hooking up drips and generally behaving in a somewhat panicked manner. I don’t know if I did throw up – I don’t think I did – because I went back to sleep.
It was supposed to have taken half an hour for me to wake up and in the end it took around two and a half. Evidently I respond very well to hospital drugs….
I spent the rest of the afternoon dozing off and on back on the ward and didn’t really wake up properly until 6.30 Dennis brought the kids to see me, which was great and made me feel a lot better. They oohed and aahed over the five holes in my tummy – let’s hear it for keyhole surgery – and were impressed with the drip hooked up to my arm. Not as impressed with it as I was – it had a regular bottle of liquid paracetamol dripping through it which was fantastic.
My BP spiked overnight and I spent the night wearing an automatic BP cuff that did it’s thing every fifteen minutes or so leaving me with a badly bruised right bicep. By Tuesday morning they had decided they’d better let me take my BP tablet and within an hour the numbers were much more reassuring.
My challenge for Tuesday was to sip my way through a litre of water – a tablespoon at a time. It might sound easy but when you have a stomach roughly the size of your thumb – it’s a little tougher than you realise. So I developed a routine of ‘sip and walk,boys, just sip and walk’ (apologies to the Madagascar penguins). I’d sip my tablespoon and walk up and down out side the room. Josh came to see me and we spent much of the afternoon going up and down, up and down, up and down. I managed to finish the litre and was rewarded with dinner – clear chicken broth, a small up of orange cordial and a small cup of chocolate sustagen. I managed about a teaspoon of each and they were delicious – they had flavour and they weren’t Optifast.
Wednesday breakfast was the best though – they delivered a single weetbix with a small carton of milk and some orange cordial. I had to mush the weetbix up as much as possible – think baby food – and see how I went. I managed around two maybe three teaspoons and about the same of the cordial and it was wonderful. It felt like eating real food. Best of all, because I was able to keep it down, they said I could go home.
I have been extremely lucky – I have had very little pain and almost no nausea apart from that first moment when I woke up. I have pain killers and nausea tablets but have only had to take one and a half panadol since coming home and two nausea tablets. I was also very lucky to escape the shoulder pain many patients experience from the gas that is used to inflate the stomach cavity. My weight is down to 87.4 and my BMI is now 37 – I’m no longer morbidly obese, but seriously obese and that alone is worth celebrating.
I’ve been for a couple of walks and although I am tired when I have done them, overall I feel better each time I do one. I had about a half a cup of banana smoothie this morning for breakfast and it took about two hours to drink, but I got it down and kept it down so I’m happy with that.
All in all the painful stuff is over now. Now I get to live a new life and so far, less than a week in I love it. I feel energetic, alive, and happy. It does feel great and I’m loving every second of it.
So now I can get back to what I love doing – hanging out with friends and family, listening to Bruce, practicing Buddhism and Yoga, and of course writing.
Thank you to the many people who sent me good wishes, prayers and loves – it has really helped get to where I am now – and I think it’s just going to get better and better.
Lifetime Challenge: Only four days to go
So here I am – four days to go until surgery, 14kilos down since I was referred and counting the minutes. The home straight to all intents and purposes. Which of course is why I came down with a cold. I battled it out over the weekend and thought I had won the war – but no – a sore throat kicked in yesterday and I had no choice but to head to the Doctor this morning.
I’m glad I did -and anyone who knows me well knows it is not often you hear me say that. I’ve never seen Dr Starr before and I was all prepared to do battle, which to be honest was unfair of me. In my defence though I will say that after years of battling people’s ideas of what causes obesity, I tend to be a little wary. This time though, it was my bad. Dr Starr was lovely - very supportive and encouraging. She checked my throat, pronounced it slightly red and wrote a prescription for some antibiotics. Normally, she said, she wouldn’t have given me anything but she didn’t want to risk giving the surgery department a reason to delay things. Normally, I replied, I wouldn’t be there but I didn’t want to risk giving the surgery department a reason to delay things either.
Then it was time to check my blood pressure. Now Doctors and I have been having a fight over my blood pressure for the past five years. It has got steadily higher during that time and as such the medication has been steadily increased. I kept asking if it could be so high because of my weight and not one, but six, Doctors told me point blank it had nothing to do with my weight. Blood pressure this high was clearly a genetic thing. Did my family have high blood pressure? Well both my mother and my grandfather yes – and both overweight. All that proved, according to the people I saw, was that it was genetic.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing. If it’s genetic – it’s genetic. But I have this gut feeling it was more about my weight than my family history. So for a while I stubbornly refused to take it at all – which simply proves that for a supposedly intelligent woman, I’m sometimes not that smart. The result was waking up one morning with a shocking headache that nearly landed me in hospital. I took a painkiller and went to the market with the family. About half way around said market I turned to Dennis and suggested I needed to see a Doctor. Uh huh, he replied somewhat distractedly, when would I like to do that?
“Now,” was my answer. I’m not sure what was going through his head when he looked at me, but I know we got to the nearest Saturday clinic in double time. I also know that I felt decidedly - not good. There is no other description. There they hooked me up to a monitor and we discovered my blood pressure was 200 over 114. Even *I* know that’s not a good thing. The problem was they couldn’t do anything there because the authority number on my medication is held by the local pharmacy. I remember the Doctor telling Dennis to “go straight there – do not stop anywhere on the way – we’ll fax the prescription – and make sure she takes the tablet immediately.” He must have phoned the pharmacy because they had one out of the foil waiting for me when I got there.
But I digress – my point is it was a stupid thing to do and it just added fuel to the argument that my problem was genetic. I agreed to never do anything quite so stupid again and stopped fighting them.
Fastforward to this morning. Dr Starr took my BP and asked me when I had last taken a tablet. Somewhat shame faced I had to admit I hadn’t had one in over a week as I had run out. To her credit she didn’t yell at me (though Dennis probably will when he reads this). She was impressed however as my reading was 130 over 80 – which is the lowest it has been in around four years and that’s with not having taken any meds for a week. Or so. I suggested this might support my theory that it was connected to my weight – and she agreed. What she has asked me to do, however, is go back on the meds anyway for now and let’s see what happens as the weight comes off. If it is the weight, it will soon be obvious and we’ll be able to stop the meds completely. If it’s genetic, I’llprobably be able to go on a minimal dose at least. So…three cheers for Dr Starr.
Which brings us to Monday. I still don’t know if it’s morning or afternoon but I guess sooner or later someone will let me know. You’d think. Okay going on past experience – if I haven’t heard by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll phone them.
I am over Optifast in a way you would not believe. Over the taste, the mixing and the whole concept. I would like some flavour and texture please and thank you. I would also like some damned millk and of all things a slice of salmon. It can be wafer thin – but I would like some. Or a spoonful of yoghurt. Or one of the tamarillos I bought yesterday. I don’t really care which. Just gimmee….
Not much more to say on the subject really except….BRING ON MONDAY
Lifelong Challenge: Newsflash – I am sane.
So today I met with the team psychologist to establish if I am “in a good and stable place for surgery”. Good thing they didn’t do this check two weeks ago when I was still furious….
The psychologist was called Olivia and was nothing like Lucy from Peanuts – she listened, scribbled a lot and seemed to get my humour (I can’t decide if that’s good or bad – so you know….) In short, she was very nice.
We talked about my relationship with food – she had the grace to laugh when I said “well if it was sane we wouldn’t be here would we?”
We talked about my motivation for wanting the surgery – getting my health back, playing with my kids, setting a good example for my daughter, buying decent clothes. Oh and let’s not forget speaking for people who can’t speak for themselves.
We talked about my relationship with my kids – I think they rock, they think I’m old. Translation: totally normal.
We talked about my relationship with Dennis – I know he loves me and this operation isn’t about that. In fact if the kids, Dennis, my friends and my sister and mother weren’t there, Olivia might have something to really write down.
We talked about whether I drank alcohol (yes), do drugs (nope – never even smoked a cigarette), and how I felt about sex (I’ll spare you – if you know me, you’re already laughing, if you don’t know me, you can figure it out).
Finally I was declared fit for surgery and told I could go home.
And that is to all intents and purposes the last hurdle to jump.
Now it’s just a case of waiting until May 9.
Lifestyle Challenge: Countdown is back on…
Well it looks like we have lift off. Again. A phone call from Kate last week put me back on Optifast, and today I had the echo-cardiogram that everything hinges on. Let me tell you about echo-cardiograms – they are similar to the scans you have when pregnant (guys – sorry but it’s the only analogy I have) in that they use similar equipment, the gel is just as cold, and they use pretty much the same procedure. That however is where the similarity ends.
A pregnancy scan simply requires you to lay on your back (I’m going to resist the obvious subtext there – well for the main part anyway) for ten minutes while the cold gel is smeared over your belly and you goggle at the future bundle of joy. An echo-cardiogram requires you to be shifted into a variety of positions while the technician tries to find your heart on the screen. If you’re wondering why this could be difficult – think about where your heart is situated. Left side of the chest right? What is on the left side of your chest if you are a woman? And if you happen to be a well endowed woman – which I do happen to be if you don’t know me – this presents a problem.
The scanning equipment can’t pick the heart up through the breast so it needs to be moved. The breast, not the heart.
The technician was a very lovely young woman who happened to be battling morning sickness (expecting her 3rd child in three years – I’m not sure the nausea was entirely related to hormones) but nice or not – there is only so much delicacy to be had when having to manipulate, twist, push, shove, and jiggle a 3kg mound of breast tissue out of the way. Especially as that particular piece of flesh does not take kindly to those actions. Particularly when it has to be subjected to such treatment for nearly an hour. You don’t even get a pretty picture or a video at the end.
Once it was over – for which I at least was very grateful – I had to wait a half an hour for the results.
And the results are….I get to go in for the surgery on May 9. I don’t yet know if it’s morning or afternoon – but hey that’s splitting hairs.
In other exciting news – I am now down to 93kg – which is …wait while I count on my fingers….12kg since I went in to see the original GP.
Lifelong Challenge: Where to from here? (Part Three)
This isn’t just about me or about my surgery anymore. Nor is this about those people out there who say they are happy and healthy with their large size – and if they are being 100% truthful, then I am happy for them. This is about the people like me – and my sister, and my mother – who have tried everything and for whatever reason it hasn’t worked.
This is about all the times people have felt it’s okay to make a comment about how I look or my size or the food I eat – and if they do that to me, when I’m at the lower end of the scale, what to they do to those people at the higher end?
This is about all the times people have assumed that if you are having this surgery you are looking for an easy out. Easy? There is nothing easy about it. And nobody – certainly nobody on the public system – who is having this surgery chose it before trying everything else there is to try.
This is about all the people like me who have to listen to the self righteous tell us “get your nose out of the feedbag and stop wasting tax payer money.” WE are taxpayers. I am a self employed, freelance writer. I have paid more in tax since I started working than this operation is going to cost – and not once did I stand outside a state funded methodone clinic, smokers clinic, alcohol unit and say “hey just get over it”. And there is no difference.
And this is about all the amazing people who support us - who know all we want is to find a way to be healthy and in control of our bodies again. The people who send us recipes and links and advice and suggestions and kind comments and hug us and know that it isn’t that we haven’t tried.
It’s about my kids who love me regardless of how I look and who put up with the comments about their “fat mother” and who protest I’m not. It’s about Dennis who ignores my scolds to “not touch the squishy stuff” and tickles me anyway.
It’s about my mother and sister who have already been through it all.
Most of all it’s about all the people who won’t get this surgery. The ones who get criticized and/ ignored, the ones who don’t know how to break the cycle of feeling ashamed and not being able to keep the weight off . The ones who try everything, every day. The ones who eat to cover up pain. The ones who eat out of habit. The ones who just don’t know any other way of being. Some of us fit all those criteria, some of us fit only one.
This isn’t about PC, don’t hurt our feelings nonsense. We know we are fat. We know there is a problem and we are trying to solve it. So just for five minutes could everyone - the Dr’s who can’t decide between try harder and learn to love yourself as you are, the self righteous who know it is only about eating less and moving more, those who are so sure we are just as one person kindly told me ” lazy, fat slobs with your head in the feedbucket” – could you all just shut up for five minutes and listen. That’s it – just listen. You don’t have to tell me – any of us – how wonderful we are, or how we are really not that bad, you just have to listen.
And maybe if you listen properly you might learn something – and that is we are trying to change our lives and we are begging for help.
It isn’t about getting the surgery for everyone either. If you can move the weight and keep it off without surgery, I’ll be there celebrating just as loudly. I don’t care how people get their health back – I just care that they do. If you want to talk – you contact me on angelique@angeliquejurd.com – and if you want to criticise, you can find me at the same address. I’m not afraid of your criticism or your judgement any longer – and I’m not going to be quiet just because someone’s judgement of me is hurtful. We have an obesity problem in this country and we need to address it and we need to do that now.