My Gastric Bypass Story Pt. 1

In December 2009, I started dating Ben.  I knew pretty much right away that he was the one.  He always loved me for who I was-  silly, crazy, tempermental, and overweight.  He continually told me how beautiful I was.  Somehow, from 2009 to December 2012, I had gained a significant amount of weight.  Probably about 40 pounds.  Not working out, never cooking and only eating food from a drive-thru will do that I guess.  We sat down one night on the porch and Ben asked me, very delicately, if I had ever considered lap-band.  I wasn't offended-  I knew he loved me and wanted the best for me.  It was during this conversation that I knew we would get married.  Ben said he wanted me to think about surgery for our future, as husband and wife and as parents.  He was telling me something I already knew:  I needed to change.  I had considered surgery before, so it wasn't a brand new idea.  My mom and I had gone to a seminar in late 2007/early 2008 and I never followed up with seeing the doctor.  I was pretty confident (and a little cocky).  My motto was, "if they don't like me how I am, they don't deserve to be with me anyway."  Which is true-  to a certain extent.  Hearing Ben express how much he loved me and wanted me to be healthy changed my whole outlook.

So later that same month I scheduled an appointment for myself and Ben to attend a seminar at St. Vincent's East Hospital.  I sat in the front row;  I wanted to know everything.  After the roughly 2 hour long seminar, I was so excited.  People had spoken about how their lives had changed and their health had improved.  I wanted that for myself and I was now sure that I wanted to proceed with the surgery process.

It took a while to get an appointment with Dr. Miles.  I didn't see him until January.  He informed me of the many things I needed to do for my insurance to pay for this and assured me that I was a perfect candidate for surgery.  The first (and most important) thing I had to do was visit my primary care physician and start my 7-month long doctor supervised weight loss.  I had to have an appointment with my PCP every month for 7 months and if I missed an appointment I had to start over.  So I started the process, thinking that the next 7 months were going to be the longest 7 months of my entire life.

Boy was I wrong...