Kari_K
Well, let me begin by saying that it has been a long road to where I am now. I was always a "chunky child" and teen. I lost a significant amount of weight and was thin for the first time in my life after the birth of my first son, but that was 26 years ago. I was 198lb when I went in to deliver him and came out of the hospital 3 days later weighing 175lb (don't ask me how I did it, I wish that I knew) Of course, I had just turned 18yrs old) By my 6wk appt, I was 150lb (after fad/crash dieting) and 2 mos later, I was 130lbs. I stayed there for approx 2-1/2 years. I was married (at 17) to a man at the time who thought the measure of worth was related to how little you weighed, took me 20yrs to get smart and leave, but this another story onto itself. Anyway, by the time I was 20 I wanted to have another baby. I was about 150lbs going into that pregnancy and thought that I would be able to lose the weight just as easily as the last pregnancy. So, instead of eating the salads, soups, and yogurts that I ate with the first pregnancy, I ate anything that was salty and sweet - devils's combination ! I was 200lbs when I delivered my 2nd son. Of course the weight didn't come off as fast. I had lost 23lbs when I left the hospital with the first pregnancy, this time I had lost only 5 or 8 lbs, can't remember now. I do remember how disgusted at myself I was and how betrayed I felt by my body. Didn't it know that it was supposed to drop 20+lbs before I left the hospital. Well, the weight didn't come off easy either and I never got back to that 130lb weight again, ever. I was miserable, I was depressed and ashamed, and had a husband (we were living out of state away from both of our families) who didn't support me and complained about my weight daily to me, most of the time in not so nice of terms. As you know, if you are or ever have been overweight, that didn't help. I tried to keep busy and diet like I had in the past, by using starvation fad diets. And, as you also know, those don't work in the longterm. Oh sure you can lose alot of weight, unhealthily, initially, but you can't sustain that diet forever. Even if you start to eat healthy, you will gain it back and then some, because now your body is trained to hold onto every ounce of energy it can and stores it as fat. I battled with my weight since. The lowest weight that I have been since my second son was born at 20 years old was 170lb and the heaviest was 318lb when I had my first consult with Dr Sanchez. I got down to my 170lb level while in college in 1988 when I was getting my education for nursing. I had a 4.0gpa, didn't want to lose it, and integrated some exercise classes - swimming - into my class schedule. If I wanted to keep that gpa, then I was going to have to do well with the exercise classes. It worked, I went to Jenny Craig and had lost approx 30+ lbs and 22inches. I felt great. While I was doing this, I wasn't doing it fast enough, evidently. While at school, my then husband thinking that he was helping (?) threw away all of the clothest that I could currently fit into (size 14) and kept all of the size 9/10's that he had bought me the year before. He thought by buying those smaller size clothes, then I would work faster at losing the weight. I went along with it, as I was tired of fighting and would do anything to shut him up. The only clothes that I had left that fit me were the ones that I was wearing that day. Thank God for my friend and classmate, Laura, she was approx the same size as I and gave me some of her summer clothes (this was late fall when he did this). So I went out and bought some clothes, which started another fight....it was all my fault, once again. (Ironically, it was after watching an Oprah taping with Dr Phil who was counseling a woman & her husband. The husband was abusive and had refused to go to the counseling with her. Dr Phil told her that he wasn't going to change, so she had to decide ... if she wanted to continue the same life and same misery=stay with him. If she wanted to take a chance on becoming happy, or at least to not be abused, then it was time to leave. It was like he was talking right to me, and the lightbulb went off. After all, only 2 wks before after our anniversary, he had left me a letter saying that if I could get back down to size 9/10 clothes, he would take me to Hawaii and we would review our vows. How absolutely friggin romantic, huh? Well, I finally left and filed for divorce on 11/4/99 & I immediately lost 160lbs (too bad it wasn't off my body!) (my children were 19 & out of the house & 17 still there - in hindsight, I wish I would have taken him with me, but hindsight is 20/20) I then began eating healthy and going to the gym as a way to work off nervous energy and stress. I weighed approx 270lbs. I got down to approx 250lb and was going to the gym every am, working out for 2- 2 1/2 hours between my cardio and weight training. I had renewed confidence, I was going to work and getting support from my friends and coworkers and getting acceptance from not only them (who seemed to like me no matter how much I weighed) but, also from new sources, other men. Wow....what a motivation. I wasn't looking for a longterm, or even short-term relationship at that time, I was having fun being out on my own for the first time in my life - it was ME time. Little did I know that romance was right around the corner. He was my EMT student and I his nurse preceptor (some may say that I took advantage of my position of power - hahahaha, just kidding) We started off as friends and then it went from there. He didn't judge me by my weight and I truly kept expecting him to change thinking that it was too good to be true) And, we have been together ever since and now have the angel that you can see on my homepage. He just turned 4 years old. He is the light of my life. I loved and still love my older boys tremendously and miss them terribly as they live in Michigan and I in California, but there is just a special bond with this one. I don't know if it is because I know that he is my last, or that the time goes by so quickly - so that I am savoring every little thing that he does, whether it is because I am with a new man who treats me great, or if it is that I am older and have more life experience and am more financially stable..... probably a combination of all of it. But, the pregnancy for him wasn't easy. By the time I had my first appt with the OB, I weighed in at an awful 311lbs. I had diabetes and didn't know it (insulin resistance) I had been gaining weight over time, and my doctor kept blaming it on the birth control pill. I should have listened to that little voice in my head telling me that the 40+ weight gain in the course of 2 years wasn't normal. I will never ignore it again. Anyway, I didn't gain any weight throughout the pregnancy, except towards the last month of my pregnancy. I was becoming pre-eclamptic and starting to retain lots of fluid. I gained 15lbs in the last 1-1/2 wks, my doctor said that is it, we are going to have to do a c-section. Well I gained some more weight while in the hospital due to the amt of IV fluids that they gave me during the delivery when my blood pressure dropped. I had pitting edema up to my waist. Approx 2 wks after my delivery, I began to pee it all off and lost 37lbs in 4 days. But, since the weight has crept back on and despite repeated attempts at weight loss programs I have gained it all back. I had tried numerous plans in the past = crash/fad dieting, WW's, Jenny Craig, Atkins, South Beach, LA Wt Loss, etc, etc.... I was successful with all, but once I stopped the diet, I slowly gained back all of the weight lost plus some that it had hooked up with while it was away from me. "Hey Mom, look what I brought home!" There were rough times during the pregnancy that didn't have to do with me. My husband got injured on the job while working as a paramedic helping a 500+lb woman out of her bathroom after she fell after getting out of the shower. He had a huge inguinal (groin hernia) that he had to have surgerically repaired under emergency basis. He has had complications with the mesh that the surgeon used to repair the hernia and had ended up with a spinal cord stimulator for pain control after battling the pain for 2+ years. While off work, he was collecting minimal workman's compensation and then eventually that was cut off (long story) It has since been settled in court - but as a result of the injury he has lost the ability to continue a career that he loved and that was EMS and firefighting. he has a lifting limit of 100lbs. So, in addition to the pregnancy, I was dealing with being the only one working and supporting the family. Well I lost my job unexpectedly and it was absolutely traumatic. In the end, it ended up being the best thing, as I started doing travel nursing and ultimately came back to my home state of California where my mother lives. We currently live in the coastal town of Aptos which is between Santa Cruz and Monterey. Beautiful area with lots of stuff to do. I digress though.... I have noticed a steady decline in my health for the last 3 years - diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, etc. Lack of exercise due to activity intolerance - chest pain and shortness of breath with exertion..... It was time I did something about it as I want to be around for a long time. not only to be there for my little son, big ones, too; but to grow old with the man that I am deeply in love with. I started asking around work if our insurance paid for gastric bypass surgery after I became a permanent employee of the hospital that I had initially had a travel contract with. I was told yes and then I have been moving forward towards my surgery date since. I have had a multitude of pre-op testing. I have had ekgs, blood work, sleep studies, cardiac stress tests, psychological evaluation & therapy to help me with my relationship with food - to use it as "eating to live vs living to eat", and dietary consults. At this time, I am waiting anxiously for my surgery date to come. It won't be long now, approx 2 wks. I have been approved through my insurance company. I have gathered support from family, co-workers, friends and now I hope to use this website to not only help myself, but to help and encourage others. So, here opens another chapter in my life.... thanks for reading my novela....hahahaha !
