The Day of Surgery Part 1

I am almost one month out and finally have the energy and focus to update my blog. Here is Part One.

I woke up early, showered, crammed a few things into my bag and took off to the hospital with my parents. We get there, get into the prep room and I'm given a bag for my clothes, a gown and slippers. I changed, and got up on the bed, those things are weird feeling. My parents came in, sat with me. Did I add that I was freaking terrified? Man I was scared to death laying on the bed. A couple nurses came in and out, set up the IV bag, but didn't put it in yet. We waited a long time, mainly because we showed up early. After a while a nurse did come in and set up my IV.

Now the IV is usually put into a vein in the hand, well she said my veins were too small so it was placed into my left arm. I was told to keep my arm straight. It did hurt a bit, strange feeling.

After another long while I was finally wheeled out, my parents had to stay behind. I was placed in the recovery room to wait. It was a dark little corner. I was so tired, with a huge headache and my heart pounding. The anesthesiologist came in and gave me a little rundown of what was going to happen. He asked if I was nervous I said yes, he asked if I was scared, I said yes, he then asked if I was very scared and I told him that whenever the bed was wheeled around my teeth would chatter and my limbs would shake. He said okay and vanished, leaving me in my dark corner with the curtain pulled. Above me was an aqua/sea-scape light, I think the light moves and it looks like the fish are moving, my lights were off however, it made my headache feel better.

My surgeon came in, checked how I was, asked if I was ready, I simply said I was nervous. She told me what was going to happen and things like that, things I cant remember now since I'm almost a month out and was very scared then. She left, said she would see me in a few. The anesthesiologist came in again and told me he was giving me a shot of something into my IV that would make me feel a little funny. Indeed it did. After he left I laughed quietly to myself for a minute straight, and to my great relief my fear really toned down.

Finally it was time. I was wheeled into the OR and they told me to move myself on to the table. I did actually, they said I was doing good while I was moving, they were very nice and so was the medication I was given. The last memory I have before the big black was moving on to the second table, I don't even remember laying my head down. I don't remember anyone telling me to lay back and count backwards or anything. That was that.

Waking up I felt nothing but pressure and pain. I was so confused. Im not sure how much time went by. I remember whispering "excuse me" to all the nurses that were near. One heard me, I remember asking if there was anything to do to help the pain. Im not sure what he did, if anything, and Im not sure how much time had passed before I asked for help again.

The next nurse to cross my path was a female who stood to my left and proceeded to tell me that the pain was normal and such. Nothing was done, dont know if anything could be done. I drifted in and out after that.

I was told a few times they were going to move me any second once a room opened up, after a while one did. Lucky me, a private room set in the back, I heard it had a great view but my bed wasnt far enough back to see out the window.

So there is part one, tomorrow I should be updating on part two.

The Fabled First Post

Well here it is, and here I am. My name is Kat and I'm from California (obviously.). I am twenty-two years old, college graduate, and currently unemployed. Why? I'm waiting for something quite drastic to happen in about two weeks. It's really the focus of this blog, of everything in my life at this moment. I'm in line to have gastric bypass surgery. It will be in the first week of December.

That is what this blog is about. This has been such a long road, a road only understood by those who have traveled it, or who are currently traveling it. For someone on the outside, you can never truly understand. Being obese is becoming more and more common in our country, yet most of us try to hide from it all I've noticed. We withdraw into ourselves and keep a tight barrier around the whole subject. I broke my barrier recently around the end of June, when I suggested to my doctor that I was interested in weight loss surgery.

I have *always* been overweight. The reasons that people come up with are usually the same; being lazy, eating too much, not moving around, wont stop eating and things like that. Note...that the people coming up with these reasons have never been obese. They don't know what its like to digest food different, to have the chemicals in the brain process hunger differently, or simply to struggle with the fact that our bodies are dying from it.

I was one of the people who did not believe that obesity was a genetic disorder, or even a disease, until my surgeon explained that obesity is pretty much the mirror disease of anorexia. Think of it this way folks...no healthy living organism on this Earth wants to willingly kill itself. A person who does drugs knows it may kill him, that's its rotting his teeth or poisoning his blood...he knows, but its the addiction, the part in the brain that can't handle not having that drug. Food is the same way, you hear of people even over one thousand pounds...no one is happy like that, the body itself is near death, no healthy person willingly wants to kill themselves like that. Perhaps that's not the best way of explaining it, but if you move the pieces around you may start to see the big picture. Being morbidly obese is the result of food addiction. Sadly people like me have been ridiculed so much throughout time that the disorder itself, and the treatment are being ridiculed.

People say (note, yet again, the ones who say the following are not obese) that weight loss surgery is the easy way out. We don't have to work to lose weight, we just sit and eat as much as our new tiny stomach allows us. If we simply stop eating we will lose weight, gosh why can't we just stop? Those two subjects are what medical professionals scoff at. 1) The weight loss surgery journey is one of the longest, most stressful, and most costly experiences. 2) After surgery we have to work our entire lives just to maintain a healthy weight. We will never be perfect, our skin will sad, we will have scars and stretch marks, and we will always have the "fat person" brain which tells us we're still fat and subject to ridicule. 3) When a person stops eating, the body believes its being starved, so it goes into survival mode, locking down everything even the fat. You cannot lose weight by simply not eating, unless you don't eat for many days, and then you are doing nothing but ripping the nutrients from your body and causing muscle loss.

So there's it all in a nutshell, one Ill likely crack open later in other blogs to pick apart.