Designated Fat Girl (19 page)

Enter Sign Two. As I stood there in the kitchen, belly full and heartsick, the phone rang. It was the gastric bypass doctor’s office—they’d had a cancellation. Would I like to come in the next day? I wiped my tears and got out my pen, writing down the time. Yes, yes I would.

I’d come home from the seminar and told Michael about the soda requirement. I’d told him that I didn’t think that it was
realistic for me to give up soft drinks, and I really thought that was true. But he’d suggested that I should at least go see the doctor and see what he had to say one-on-one. I agreed, and then I promptly put it out of my mind. The holidays came and went, I was fatter than ever, and now my nurse was threatening me with daily insulin shots. I’d never felt so desperate. I still wasn’t sure gastric bypass was for me, but I was ready to go and hear what the surgeon had to say.

I went to that first appointment still very much in let’s-wait-and-see mode. But when I got there, I realized that my accepting the appointment made everyone at the doctor’s office think I definitely wanted the surgery. At no time did the nurse ask if I’d thought things over or if I had any questions or concerns. She simply went about telling me all the things their office would be doing to get me prepared for the procedure, and all the steps I would have to take to make it happen. I know I could have resolved this by simply setting them straight, but I didn’t, and I really don’t know why. I knew there were lots of steps to complete before actually having a gastric bypass, so I guess I figured there was plenty of time to apply the brakes. After the nurse got my vital stats and gathered my insurance information, she remarked that I could have my surgery in a matter of weeks.

I was floored. All of a sudden this was a lot more real. Yes, I was still devastated from the visit to my diabetic nurse the day before, and I felt more desperate than ever to find a solution to this problem that wouldn’t seem to go away, no matter how hard I wished it to. But a gastric bypass in a few weeks? The very thought took my breath away.

The nurse described all the testing I would have to undergo before the procedure: psychological evaluation, pulmonary testing, a possible ultrasound on my legs to look for blood clots. And of course, I still had to get approval from my insurance company. She told me she’d make all the appointments for me and call me with the dates, and she asked me to go to my regular physician and gather documented proof that I’d been morbidly obese for five years in a row. Sadly, I wasn’t worried about meeting that requirement. But the other stuff just kind of left me speechless. The surgeon saw me briefly, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. I shared with him that I was worried about giving up soft drinks, and he reinforced what he’d said at the seminar: It was, indeed, a deal breaker. He wished me well and told me his office would be in touch in a few days with the answer from the insurance company.

I left his office more confused than ever. They acted as though it was a done deal, I was having the surgery. And I, stupidly, went along with it, for reasons that still weren’t clear. Maybe I was still freaked out about the whole diabetes thing. Perhaps I was attracted to a solution that seemed so … permanent. At this stage of the fight, I was so weary, so tired of battling the same demons over and over again. But inside I kept reminding myself why I couldn’t go through with it:
Having the surgery feels like the easy way out.
Although after getting more involved with the actual process, it was starting to occur to me that there was nothing easy about it. Still, I wanted to solve this problem on my own. To me the triumph was greater if it was at my own hand, not at a surgeon’s.
If I have the surgery, the victory won’t be mine,
I told myself.
Or would it?
Back and forth—that’s how I went for days.

In the moments I was really scared, I looked for signs to turn me around, to show that this wasn’t the way. I convinced myself that the insurance wouldn’t go through, or if it did, that my out-of-pocket expenses would be too great. Since I’d decided to stay home with the kids and only work part-time, our money was pretty tight, and I really didn’t think I’d be able to cover the bill for the surgery. Again, I was a believer in signs, and I kept waiting for the signs to tell me that having a gastric bypass was not the way to go.

Enter Sign Three: The nurse called a couple of days later to tell me that my insurance company had signed off; I would only be responsible for 20 percent of the costs. Normally this would be good news, but I was worried about that 20 percent. I called the hospital to get an estimate of the total charges and was devastated to learn that my share could still be as much as five thousand dollars. There was no way we’d be able to swing that, or at least that’s what I told myself. I vacillated between being disappointed and relieved, it all depended on what the day’s events were and where my mood lay. But in talking it over with my mom, she pointed out that my insurance probably provided an out-of-pocket maximum that was much lower than five thousand dollars. She urged me to look into it, and I did, although somewhat reluctantly. I thought I’d found the sign that told me what I was supposed to do, and here was another window of opportunity. And of course, Mom was right: My out-of-pocket maximum was well below five thousand dollars. The bill would come due right around the time Michael and I would receive our sizable tax refund. We could make the payment with no problem

I did have some pause when I received a letter from my insurance company. They reiterated their decision to approve my surgery, but they also wanted to make something clear: Excess skin removal was in no way covered by my insurance, so I better not expect it. Okay, the letter didn’t exactly use those words, but the message was very transparent: If you have this surgery, don’t call us when you lose all your weight and have a ton of skin left laying around. We won’t help you.

I’d never really thought of this possibility. Sure, I’d seen documentaries where gastric patients, or even people who hadn’t had weight-loss surgery but who had lost a ton of weight, were left with folds of unsightly excess skin. Many folks paid tens of thousands of dollars and endured painful procedures to rid themselves of this eyesore. Was that something else I would have to face? Would I go through all that surgery, recovery, and weight loss, only to trade in one bad problem for another? If so, I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to do anything about it; we were cash-strapped to be sure. And now my insurance company was letting me know there’d be no help on their end.

I tried to use this as a sign against having the surgery. To be honest, I was looking for reasons, desperate to find a way out of taking what I still considered to be a drastic step. How could I have this surgery, knowing it would leave behind such a horrible problem? I wanted to lose weight and feel good about how I looked, not be even more grossed out by what I saw in the mirror. I started to think that if I found a way to lose the weight on my own, through diet and exercise, then the chances of having hanging skin would be greatly reduced. To me, that was further argument against having the surgery. I started to
work in this information with Michael, trying to set the stage for a possible withdrawal on my part. He didn’t say anything. I think he thought he had done all he could, and he was just hoping and praying I would do the right thing. Only, I wasn’t sure what that “right thing” was.

Around this time, we went to my mom’s for a weekend visit, and my brother, Jimmy, and his wife, Mandy, came over with my niece, Chloe. I’d always found it really easy to talk to Mandy about my weight struggles—she never seemed to tire of me complaining about not being able to do anything about my body. She really listened, offering hope and encouragement. She is also someone who isn’t afraid to tell you what she thinks, even if it may be a little tough to hear. I’ve always known this about her, and I think that’s why I sought her out as someone to talk things over with, particularly when it came to weight loss. She’d followed my saga for years, and I’d been giving her updates about the gastric bypass journey by phone. Now face-to-face, we talked endlessly about the pros and cons. She asked a lot of questions, and I shared with her all the reasons why I wanted to go through with it and all the ways in which I was starting to think the surgery wasn’t for me. She listened and nodded as I told her about having to give up soda and about the excess skin. I told her I couldn’t face the prospect of having yet another surgery and especially couldn’t afford to pay for it all by myself. I wrapped up my argument by telling her that the more I’d thought about it, the more I decided I was just going to have to find a way to lose the weight on my own.

“But Jennifer, how long have you been trying to lose weight
on your own?
” Mandy asked. “Has it worked yet?”

My sister-in-law wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t said a thousand times to myself over the years. And yet, hearing her say these words, at this time, made me really stop and listen. She was right, of course. I’d been trying to lose weight for almost sixteen years. I’d had minor successes here and there, but for the most part, I had been spinning my wheels, letting the pounds pile high and my health deteriorate. How long could I afford to let this go on?

That conversation really swung things around. Every time I tried to talk myself out of having gastric bypass surgery, into letting myself try to lose weight through my own devices, the arguments rang hollow. I knew I was at possibly the biggest crossroads of my life, and the path I chose could very well determine how long I lived.

The next few weeks were filled with various appointments. I had to have a pulmonary test to check my lung capacity; I passed. I passed a psychological evaluation, which ironically enough, was with the same therapist I’d seen years before. She told me she thought this was a wonderful thing for me but wanted to make sure I didn’t have unrealistic expectations. I assured her that I didn’t think having gastric bypass surgery would magically solve all my problems. I didn’t, however, share with her some of the lingering doubts I had, basically because I didn’t really think she would have anything to add to the discussion. I’d already analyzed everything so fully, it really was just a matter of making up my mind. And more and more, I was leaning toward yes.

At home I broke yet another toilet seat. Split it, right in two. It gave way under my weight, and it had happened more
times than I like to count. How many toilet seats had Michael broken? Come to think of it, I’d never heard of anyone else causing this to happen. And yet, here I was—again—having to tell my husband about it so he could install another one. The sad thing was I couldn’t even bring myself to be embarrassed anymore. I was starting to feel numb to all of it: the fact that I couldn’t bend over and tie my shoes, the sad realization that I was too heavy to climb the attic stairs to put away the Christmas decorations—all of it. I used to cry and bemoan all these humiliations, but I was now starting to get used to them, they’d happened so frequently. And that, perhaps, was the scariest thing of all—that this state of being was starting to somehow feel normal, that it didn’t shock me into action, no matter how futile that action later turned out to be. At least I would be making an effort. But now I could no longer muster up the energy to even try.

In my dreams, I was never fat. Even if a dream was disturbing in other ways, I was always the slightly chubby teenager, never the morbidly obese woman. That, too, started to change. I’d wake up and realize that not only was I heavy in my dream, but that my weight wasn’t central to the dream’s plot, it was just a matter of fact. That took my breath away. It was like my subconscious was slowly giving in to the inevitable. I was screaming inside, begging to pierce through and hear my own objections. But I was walking through my life as though I was underwater, and I couldn’t hear or feel anything.

It was terrifying.

In all the years I explored the possibility of taking some sort of antidepressant, I was always asked if I’d had any suicidal
thoughts. The answer was always no, and it was the truth. It had never once occurred to me that I should end my life—I never consciously thought that I would be better off dead. But in these desperate days, I started to realize that what I was doing to myself wasn’t that much different than suicide. I was taking actions that I knew would cause me harm, that would eventually make me die. And I wasn’t stopping those actions. I knew all the steps to take to lose weight—for all the hocus-pocus tricks I’d read about and tried over the years, I knew it simply boiled down to eating less and exercising more. But I couldn’t make myself do those things, no matter how hard I tried. On the contrary, I couldn’t stop gorging myself on greasy, fatty food, couldn’t prevent myself from drinking gallons of sugary sodas. At the beginning of 2008, it almost felt like I was trying to accelerate the process, as if I knew there was no way I could make it stop, so why not bring it on sooner? Was I, in fact, ready to die?

Some people define addiction as a condition in which a person can’t stop doing something that causes him or her harm. Over the years, I longed to be defined as an addict, because then it would be okay for me to get help. Addicts have rehab, they have medication, they have experts to help pull them out of the messes in which they find themselves. But our society doesn’t recognize food addiction as a real condition, does it? The magazines, the television shows—they are constantly telling us that if we really want to lose the weight, then we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do the work it takes to achieve that goal. Any weight loss achieved through diet drugs or through surgery is considered less-than. How many times
had I seen the cover of
People
touting stories of folks who’d lost one hundred pounds or more
All on Their Own! No Surgery! No Drugs!
I spent sixteen years convinced that I had to find the way, that my weight loss would only count if I did it without anyone’s help. And now, at the beginning of 2008 and at some 335 pounds, I was starting to realize that I might not make it. I couldn’t do it on my own. I couldn’t stop myself. I was an addict. I needed help.