Weight 290 - same as last week

Staying the same at this point is a success, at least I haven’t gained this week.

I met with my NEW cardiologist yesterday.  I like him, he was very patient, took his time, went over my past records and we talked a lot, and not once did he make me feel stupid or humiliated.  

In a nutshell he said - it has been medically proven that there are many factors that contribute to weight, and that I shouldn’t feel like I failed - hormones, body chemistry and even the fat cells themselves all work against releasing fat and genetically some people have a great deal of difficulty, if not almost impossible, situation to overcome.  That having lost 100 lbs and then being stuck at 190, may be all I can accomplish, and that is ok.  Gaining it all back so quickly is a problem and he will do everything he can to help me get the medical care I need to lose whatever my body is capable of losing.

He has referred me to a specialist at the University of Penn that specializes in the stomach surgery.  My first step is to find out if my insurance will  cover it.  Two years ago when I looked into it, I was only allowed to go to one hospital in New York and that was too far away - but my doctor said insurance companies change policy rules almost weekly or monthly so I should check it out.  If the insurance won’t cover the experts at U. of Penn, he knows of someone locally who is good and we can try that next.   If not, it may mean going to New York.  But the bottomline is, I will not live a very long time like this, so something has to be done.  Granted no one can say how long I have to live, but where I am now will definitely shorten my life expectancy by a lot.

My hubby is totally against the idea of stomach surgery.  We will have to have some long talks about it before I make any final decisions.

I explained it him to him like this - I have three choices -

  1. I can either spend the rest of my life starving and fat, resisting any and all food while every one (including him at times) tempts me and pushes food at me to taste this, nibble on this, give in it’s a holiday, etc.  and hoping for the best that on my own I can drop a pound or two, but facing a much shorter life span.
  2. Or I can just say the hell with it and just eat normally, gain even more weight, and face a much shorter life span.
  3. Or I can have the stomach surgery, be able to not be hungry, eat small amounts of very highly nutrious foods, drop whatever pounds my body is able to, and most likley increase my life span.

I have wanted weight loss surgery for years now, and with a doctor being supportive and even highly recommending the procedure I may be able to get it.

If nothing else it would be a great relief. Finally I won’t be hungry, and I will have an official “do not feed sign” hanging on chest so people will leave me alone! and stop telling me to eat more. The doctor did tell me though, that my body may never lose that much, that I have to mentally and emotionally be prepared that I may still have a lot of fat to carry for the rest of my life. I told him I could handle it - as long as I could tell people to go shove the food up their butts and leave me alone I would be happy. As long as I could medically show people that I have indeed done everything I possible could and that I truly do NOT eat that much, including my primary doctor who tells me to eat less even when I was only eating 800 calories day. If I’m fat forever so be it - but I will be able to proudly prove that I’ve done all I can.

But first the insurance company hurdle, then long talks with hubby and then,hopefully, I’ll make my first appointment and see what hoops I need to jump through with surgeon to get approved.

It’s too soon to get my hopes up yet, since I’ve been down this road before and run into dead ends, but I can least explore and see what happens.

NOTE: my laptop if fried, and my desktop is totally wonky so I haven’t been online that much lately, so my apologies to my Entrecard dropping buddies and fellow bloggers.

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