Why bariatric surgery is so necessary

Here I am, after some days' hiatus, spent on my back in bed thinking sadly that this is why bariatric surgery is really necessary for me.

My hip gave out. Not my back, which it usually is; the joint of my left hip. First stiffness and weakness, then soreness, then a couple days' serious pain, spent in bed barely able to hobble to the bathroom on two canes, struggling with this aging, molasses-speed laptop to cover my classes while knowing my pay will be docked for sick leave for all these days in spite of me working like crazy to take care of the job. And also knowing I'm spending my "boss cred" on this when I didn't even dare take a day for a doctor's appointment-- because I know shit like this happens to me so often. One day I'm fine, and then boom, I'm writhing in pain and stuck in bed for some indefinite period, because my body's skeletal structure just can't handle the load.

It was really miserable this time. I haven't been able to lie on my right side for any duration for some time, because the wide point of my pelvis hurts so much from the pressure. Well, this time it was the left hip I hurt, and lying on it was making it get worse, so I had to lie on that right side, as the lesser of two evils. I could just picture the tissue there turning into a bruise of ketchup-like consistency as it throbbed. And the left throbbed, too, because I pushed through the stiffness all day Tuesday and then rushed it Wednesday night to make it to my once-a-week class. Ice and ibuprofen finally helped, and I can only hope it was enough by Monday.

And yeah, I'm whining, sure-- but I wanted to whine about this one appropriately so I could come back and look at it later, after I get on the liquid diet, and also after I've had the surgery and there's no going back, so I can remind myself about the dozens of times I've been stuck here like this, miserable and not able to do anything but wait the inflammation out and hope that it won't stick around long, and hope that the next time isn't coming soon. But I know it is, and it will be my back, or my knee, or my hip... and I won't fit in wheelchairs, and nobody can lift me to help me, and my body just keeps crushing its infrastructure more and more.

Anyway, maybe when I look at this and remember this, the diet and the surgery stuff won't seem so bad. Because if I don't lose the weight, I know that this ceiling is going to get more and more familiar the longer this goes on, until I have no job and no insurance and no hope of ever losing this damn weight, and there's nobody who can or will help me when I'm down like this.

Bariatric surgery: the humble beginnings.

I've been wanting to talk about my process with bariatric surgery here-- the whys, wherefores, and hows. So here I go, to get down as much as I can before I have to get back to work (I reserve the right to actually do some personal living amidst all the essay grading, dammit).

How did I decide I wanted this surgery? It was actually a set of events that covered several years.

First off, my friend R. had roux en y gastric bypass. She talked about it a lot on her blog. It was a tough process for her, obviously, but she had good success with it. I have never had good success with any form of weight loss, so I was intrigued-- but the horror stories about surgeries gone bad were scary, and roux en y was pretty new, and I was leery. Still, it sat in the back of my mind.

Fast forward a couple of years, to the height of my association with Evil Ex Romantic Interest. From observing his patterns with other people close to him over several years, I knew my weight was likely the only "big thing" (bad joke, right) keeping him from trying out a relationship with me, and despite all that careful observation I had not yet allowed myself to realize what a disaster that kind of relationship with him would have been; I thought I had it in me to make ours end differently if he'd just give it a try. With this kind of faulty thinking buoying me to attempt desperate measures to get inside his britches, I formed the idea that I would go ahead and get the surgery if my current diet didn't work.

Within a couple of months, though, this fellow had changed from handsome prince to evil ex, and as a result of that and ongoing job/life woes, I went into a major clinical depression. Weight loss surgery got put on the back burner again, and I gained a LOT. :P Antidepressants will do that to ya. My pre-existing PCOS, hypothyroid, and fatty liver conditions will, too. Put them all together and you wind up with about three good-sized human beings walking around on one set of very unhappy feet.

After about two years of recovery from my severance of relations with the evil ex, I learned one of my friends, K., had undergone gastric sleeve surgery. She had really good results and recommended it highly; I could see how much better she felt-- and psychologically, too, not just physically. She was a different person, and a much happier one. Definitely food for thought, because frankly, from where I am now, I can see the end of the road coming fast, and it involves a lot of misery, culminating very prematurely in a size 4X coffin and some very unhappy pallbearers.

Then I came in to work one day and my co-worker M. was in the hall. I hadn't seen M. out from behind her desk for a long time and was flabbergasted to see only about 1/2 as much of her as I'd expected. "What are you doing? I need to be doing it too!" I said, and she referred me to the local city hospital's weight management center.

Thus started the long road I've only gone a few steps down, so far.

Right now I tend to think of bariatric surgery as a sort of "magic bullet." That's when a cop gets wounded in a way that puts him on easy street; he winds up not having to fight crime on the street anymore, and he can draw hefty disability payments and do more or less whatever he wants, if he's able-- but wow, there's a lot of serious nastiness you have to go through to get there, and a considerable amount of crap you endure as side effects for the rest of your life. So yeah. I know there's going to be a lot of unpleasantness, but when it all settles out, things will (I hope) be a hell of a lot nicer than they are now, in ways that really matter.

Next time: The First Meeting, plus Big Insurance Companies Are Heartless Bastards.

Bake sales and snow

Bake sales are an inherently flawed method of fundraising. They depend on people who don't have money and time to donate both to making baked goods that cost as much or more as they are sold for by children who nag people to buy this stuff in the name of "raising money"-- and the clientele get fat. Plus, there's all this dubious sanitation on the part of the cook and the people who cut and wrap. So instead of contributing to a bake sale, the organizers and their associates should just skip all the intermediate steps, donate the cost of a sheet cake to the deserving organization, and everyone involved would do a lot better.

It was golden when I woke up, with morning light pouring through my windows. But by the time I got out of the shower, there was only a thick mist of fine snow. There's still some snow, and you can see a fleeting glimpse of blue behind the clouds at times. Not much in the way of sun, though. It was 80 degrees yesterday, so this is a rude and unwelcome change for most. As for me, I wish it had been enough to close school because good GOD, I need a few days to catch up on grading.

Yes, I should be grading right now. And aren't you a keen observer of detail.

Formerly The Cynical Potter, now The Cynical Crafter. I don't know why I'm bothering with a blog; I'm desperately dull and complaint-heavy as a blogger and I don't think anyone is likely to still be following me here (not that I had more than a few following the blog, if any, to begin with), but Facebook simply isn't cut out for longer posts and introspection.

Maybe I'll babble enthusiastically about various types of crafting projects. Maybe I'll complain about the ridiculous amount of vocabulary associated with looms. Maybe I'll get myself in trouble on the job by wailing the agonized, wounded battle cries of an underpaid, overworked teacher whose students usually don't care enough and whose admins don't either. Maybe I'll agonize over impending bariatric surgery. I'll almost certainly swear a lot.

Lessons learned from LiveJournal would indicate that a blog isn't a really secure or reliable forum, but vanity insists flinging self to the four winds is desirable....

One good thing I've done already here is ditch yet another forgotten, long-abandoned association with The Evil Ex-Romantic Interest (who would hastily point out he was never a boyfriend and would even claim he never encouraged me, no matter how much he baited me by dangling implicit possibilities of his attentions in exchange for me working to promote his career). The blog I used to work on sometimes for him is no longer associated with this account. So if you happen to be here, watching me, as a remnant of a different time, one in which I was under the spell of a selfish and dishonest longhaired harper, you'd best defriend me now, because that association is no longer, and any possible future mentions of said harper will not be even slightly polite. So, no hard feelings, but if you're still wasting your time on him and you friended me because of him, don't let the door hit ya on your way to the defriend button.

I had a vague idea of posting something about spring and the way the flowers are already fading, or about how I've got to deal with an ill-conceived and vituperative student complaint today when I have less than no time and energy for it, but I've got to get to work and I've spent all my time already. C'est la vie!