I've Got Friends In Low Places.....

Before surgery we do not break our friends into "Type Classifications" that is just not something we are taught to do, we either have friends, acquaintances or enemies it's that simple. It is not so simple after surgery, relationships are so multifaceted now that you can't break them down into the simple categories you once could, our surgery has brought out incredible changes in not just our own personalities but in everyone around us. I have learned that there are several of these new "Type Classifications" that our friends before and after surgery will fall into, they are as follows.

1) our "Skinny Friends" who had been comfortable in our obesity because they were guaranteed to look good next to us, they now feel they have to "Step it Up" to continue to look as good, IE we are no longer their token FAT FRIEND.

2) Our overweight friends that now feel left behind and may be feeling jealous that you took the step they don't have the financial means or emotional capability to do themselves. they may feel they have lost there connection with you since you can't eat with them like you once could.

3) The new friends who wouldn't give you the time of day before the surgery probably because you did not look good enough to be seen with in there eyes but now they want to be part of the "New You" train leaving the station...purely a publicity thing.

4) The "friends" who are waiting not too far away that didn't agree with our decision to have surgery in the first place and are eagerly awaiting the day we gain even an ounce back so they can shout the almighty " I Told You So"

I am sure that there are probably many more types but these are the most common ones I have found, this is not to say that everyone will fall into one of these categories and you can never trust any of your friends again. I do still have many friends that were my friends before my surgery and are still my friends, they were so supportive to me and they cheered me on every step of the way and for them I am forever grateful. this list is for those exceptions, of course they can exhibit one or more of those traits at any given time so please be careful.

One Step Back......

I was always a heavy kid growing up...SURPRISE! how many people who have Gastric Bypass Surgery do you think can say "Oh I was a skinny kid really" not many probably. The fact is overweight adults usually come from overweight kids and I am no exception. Did I eat poorly, was I inactive, did I suffer from emotional eating or did I have an endocrine problem? I like others fought with a combination of all of these and it would shape who I was to become and the incredible path my life would take. Kids can be cruel, I tell you this because my earliest recollection that I was fat was in elementary school. I vividly recall trying to run the relay in track and pass the baton to my teammate and being able to hear her saying to her friends "How come I always get the fat girl on my team! " do you know I actually felt sorry for her because I knew we never had a chance to win. Here I am a long way away from that 11 year old and all I wanted to do was go back in time and tell that teammate of mine how much of an impact on my life that one ignorant comment would make.

What Child Is This......

Elementary School....I hated Gym! I couldn't do anything the other kids could do, my sister was great in gymnastics but I could never be as great as her in that even on her bad days. The ropes and that wall with the pegs that you used to climb it was horrible, I had NO upper body strength at all so I could get only 2 pegs up and that was that.

What was worse than Gymnastics was Track & Field events...or as I like to call it Fat Kids Torture. I couldn't run to save myself from a burning building if I had to, and the thought of others seeing my jiggling fat was too much to bear so I did anything possible to avoid it at all cost..no lie to big, no accident out of the question, I wanted out of an elementary school hell called gym class.

I grew up in an affluent Westchester NY town that like others around the country had their good and bad sides of the tracks, but there it was rich and not so rich, pretty and not so pretty, skinny and well...FAT. so here I was a fat not so pretty middle class girl totally out of place and surrounded by girls I could never compete with on any level, let's just say that I prayed for the diet fairy to visit me every night.

So by the end of the 7th grade I began the first of many diets I would try over the next 23 years. My mother was a member of Weight Watchers so I started following her diet at home and by the beginning of the 8th grade I lost 65 pounds and felt better than I had in years. people looked at me in a completely different way, they were almost accepting me I thought to myself and that was good enough for me at least for a little while.

Flash forward to High School and I still hated Gym but at least here I could choose the easier classes that didn't require too much effort unless what I wanted to take was full, so I tried to stay with things like Archery,Riflery,Badminton,Golf...it wouldn't be until 3 years later when I almost didn't graduate due to poor attendance in said classes that I found out I had Asthma and could have had a medical excuse NOT to take it at all!!

Yes at the urging of the school nurse my mom took me to the doctor only to find out that in addition to the Ashtma I also had a Thyroid condition called Graves Disease or in lay terms an overactive thyroid so maybe the weight watchers wasn't completely the reason for my weight loss after all. So as they tried to regulate my thyroid with medication my weight fluctuated from extremely heavy to anorexic skinny until they decided to blast it with a radioactive iodine cocktail.

I leveled out for a short time and then my body did what happens sometimes in these cases, it killed off too much of my thyroid and I became under active. This makes it difficult to lose weight and usually what weight you lost being overactive reverts right back to where it was found in the first place. I developed a myriad of medical conditions to go along with my growing emotional insecurities that included sleep apnea, acid reflux, irritable bowel, high cholesterol......I had tried so many types of diets so many times that I had lost track, every time the weight came back and I sunk deeper and deeper into depression. my stomach was so messed up by all the medications I was on that it stopped working altogether and I was destined to live on more medications just so it would function the way god had intended it to.

Another few years forward to 2003......my life was about to change....FOREVER.