Somewhere between 2008 and 2010 I had bariatric surgery to install a Lap-Band. I honestly don’t remember which year it was, it was a different lifetime. I didn’t really want the lapband, I wanted my then husband to tell me I didn’t need it and my safety was more important to him than my appearance. That did not happen. Fast forward many moons, the lapband did its thing, I lost a lot of weight, I went from a size 22/24 to a size 6/8. I reached that size while living off of iced lattes and cocktails. I was far from healthy. And I kept losing weight, and losing memories. I was having early stage neurological damage from lack of nutrition. I couldn’t eat solid food, what went down came back up. What’s really crazy is during that time I was going to every restaurant in town, writing reviews, living it up, or so it seemed. Appetizer, excuse me I need to run to the restroom, dinner, desert, whatever, into the bathroom I would go and up it would come. I would drink two to three cocktails before eating anything solid because that at least relaxed the muscles around the band enough for me to get some food down and make it to the toilet before it came back up. So gross.
I found a surgeon to remove the fluid from the band, that was not easy. I had the band placed in Maryland, I was now in Washington state about 3000 miles from my surgeon. I was and still am very grateful for the surgeon I found. After he removed the fluid from my band I immediately gained a tremendous amount of weight. Within three months I had gained 80 lbs!!! I felt like I was starving all of the time, no matter what. Now, I am set to have the band removed the end of this month. That’s almost 4 years after my new surgeon told me it needs to come out.
Why has it taken so long? Fear. Fear of surgery, fear or gaining more weight, fear of letting someone take a piece of “me” away, because I’ve had that sucker for at least 14 years now and it is a part of me. There’s a whole lot more to the story from an emotional perspective and it’s all tied into past relationships and trauma, I don’t want to focus on that. Right now, I want to focus on moving forward, not looking back.