THE WHYS OF MY SURGERY!
Why did you decide to have Bariatric Surgery?
My friend if you are here because you are looking for information about surgery, or if you are trying to decide if it is going to be a good idea for you, I would really love to be able to share a little bit of my story.
I was always a bigger child. I was typical blonde haired, blue eyed little chunka bubba, only for me the chunka kind of never left and I would remain that way for quite a lot of my childhood.
Truth be told, I was like so many other people in my family. "Built to survive a famine" is what the doctor once said to me when I was still quite young, and those words never ever left me. I remember asking my dear old Aunty what the Doctor meant by what he said, and she, known for being a cranky old soul, but she was never anything but kind to me, said, "Oh don't worry about him" and she made up a rather unflattering rhyme using his name to try to make me laugh.
I remember being teased for being fat for the first time when I was 6 years old. I hated school so much for that reason. Kids can be really cruel! But my childhood had other sad things in it that taught me to run to food. Food was safe, predictable and something that was used in my family as a way of dealing with emotions.
Sad? Cuppa and a cake. Angry? Cuppa and a cookie. Celebrating? Cuppa and a slice. And on and on it would go. I was an excellent student, and I learned to eat my feelings because that was more acceptable than talking about them. By the time I was an adult my broken coping mechanisms saw me weighing in at about 3 kilos heavier each year and growing! I tried so many times, and I always felt like such a failure because even though I would lose weight, I would always gain it all back and 5 or 10 extra kilos. I even had a lap band put in in the hopes that may help but that too was a terrible failure. I felt so profoundly hopeless and broken. It took a series of events for me to finally decide that I needed to do something about my weight and that was when I decided that I was going to have gastric bypass.
I wanted a different life. I wanted to be around to see my children grow up. That was nearly 6 years ago now. It has not been an easy road. It has been filled with challenges BUT it has been filled with hope, with new discoveries about myself, with new opportunities and I have been able to be an active participant in my life rather than just watching my life from the sidelines. I have no regrets except that I waited so long to go down the route of bariatric surgery. I am more than happy to answer questions if you have any. All the very best with your journey. I wish you much courage and strength!!! It is worth it.
Before and after
