Rolling In The Deep

I'm now a little more than two years out from my surgery, and my weight has settled around 164. No longer obese!!

It has been really, really getting used to being a "normal" size. To not ease slowly into every chair lest it breaks; eyeing narrow retail stores to see what I'm in danger of knocking over; walking down the street and noticing people staring at me without wondering if they're secretly weighing me in their minds.

I'm even wearing crop tops!

I recently started a new job and, lemme tell you, it is AWESOME not being the fattest person in the building. To walk up the stairs to my office without having to hide for 20 minutes while I catch my breath. To step on the elevator and not have people directly check the weight capacity and do mental arithmetic to see if I'll cause us all to plummet. I've even noticed people speaking to me more as a peer, as though they assume I know what i'm doing and am capable of understanding.

It's pathetic that it took losing almost 200 pounds to realize people didn't take me as seriously when I was fat. Iw was more than capable at my job, but I got the sense that my shallow colleagues assumed that not having my weight under control meant I didn't have anything else under control.

Since losing weight, I did deal with serious depression and ended up committed after a suicide attempt. Then my house burned down. I took two years to find a job. I got very badly addicted after so many pain pills following so many surgeries. I was robbed three times, losing literally everything I own.

But.. I've never been happier. I've found the love of my life, I have a great job now, my house is being rebuilt, and I'm a healthy weight for the first time ever.

I recently got a new tattoo, and the message means a lot to me. It's from the Lord of the Rings: "It's only a passing thing, this shadow. " How right you are, Samwise.

Pureed Food Heaven

**This post was originally from 7/18/2016 or so...I just totally forgot to publish it, and then my life turned into a freakin tire fire and I didn't publish anything else again until...well, now.**

I have never been so happy to eat mush in my entire life.

I'm finally on Week 2 of my gastric sleeve post-op diet, and so progressed to pureed foods yesterday. Thank goodness, because I was (not so) slowly losing my mind on full liquids only.

My mom took me to the store yesterday (I'm still not supposed to drive until I see the doctor for my first follow-up visit on Thursday--they want to make sure my stomach muscles are healed enough to hit the brakes in an emergency, and I should hopefully be off the painkillers by then). I stocked up on all kinds of awesome food to make the meals I'd planned this week. I was panicking a little bit, though, because I have pretty much made up my mind to go from vegetarian to vegan after my pureed food stage, and I realized how much of my cart was animal-based. I bought eggs, fat free sour cream, low fat ricotta, jello, shredded 2% cheddar, yogurt, greek yogurt pops, whey protein drinks, and 1% milk. That's a lot of dairy. To go from that to nothing is, well, a little intimidating.

The other thing holding me back from becoming a vegan is admittedly kinda dumb but I don't know how to get over it. I'm afraid it'll make me even more undateable. That is, less likely to find someone willing to put up with me. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've already had issues with people (guys more than girls) commenting during the first date that it would be difficult to be with a vegetarian. My ex-boyfriend actually lists it as one of the main reasons we didn't work out. In fact, I asked him about it while we hung out this evening (to watch the first few episodes of Stranger Things, which is SO GOOD! It's shot really well, the music is AWESOME, the lighting and style is super cool, and of course the plots/characters drew me in too). He said that most of his favorite camping meals, dinners to cook at home, and restaurants he loves are all centered on meat. Like, I don't care about that. I even took him to Fogo De Chao which is basically a meat ballet and I didn't bat an eye. But I guess it was just one more thing stacked against me. So what if I become vegan and then REALLY can't find anyone who wants to be with me? I know you're not actually supposed to say this, and you're supposed to have the 'right reasons' to lose weight and shit, but let's be honest: most of the reason I wanted to have gastric surgery and lose weight is so that I'll be hotter and land a good mate. I want to make myself MORE dateable.

Taken a Turn

Yooooooo. It's been awhile.

LOTS has changed.

I feel a little silly writing, actually. But I don't have many (any?) outlets and I'm going through some stuff and could really use a place to lay out my thoughts, recipes, schedule, etc. so here I am.

Quick recap: Super single. Dated several people (guys and girls) after leaving my girlfriend of 8 1/2 years, but we're still best friends and hang out all the time. I ended up buying the house from her, so I live here alone. Well, alone except my chihuahua, my foster minpin, my Maine Coon, and two bearded dragons. So no quite alone. My relationship with my parents hasn't improved, and has actually gotten worse, particularly since my sister had her second kid (this one with the neighbor she cheated on her husband with). I do still get pilonidal cysts but the ichthammol ointment has kept it from ever getting really bad. I went off of Weight Watchers and pretty quickly gained back nearly every ounce I'd lost. Like, shockingly fast. I had one bad weekend in June of 2014 where I got drunk and didn't track, although I was at like 205 pounds and so close to losing 100 full pounds and being under 200 pounds for the first time in my adult life, and the wheels went off until by March of 2015 I was back up to around 280 pounds, and I've hovered there ever since.

Last October, I went to my favorite amusement park for their Halloween event, and was super excited to ride on my favorite roller coasters. Of course, since I gained back so much of the weight I had lost, I was back to always comparing my size to everyone around me, and amusement parks have always held their own particular horror. I felt pretty safe, however, because not only was I with my ex-boyfriend (the employee one) who is a very sizable guy, but I was also with his current girlfriend, a well-known Instagram model famous for her seriously enormous ass.

I was wrong.

I sat behind them in the first roller coaster we came to, and watched with growing horror as the tiny high-school-aged attendant feebly pushed against the bar and told her the bar was not going to click twice. I watched as she struggled to lift herself from the small ride, and I felt the flush creeping up my neck as I began to frantically push my own lap bar into the fat of my stomach to hear the necessary double click. Didn't work. I had to get out too. And THEN...the guy we were with (her boyfriend, who was my ex) proceeded to ride the coaster himself, as we stood on the other side of the tracks, exposed to the awaiting riders, blinking back tears, waiting for his dumb ass to be done. Of course people were staring. I mean, they're waiting in line, nothing to look at until the loaded cars come back to empty and load again, except what's going on in front of them. And in front of them were two fat assed chicks, crying and waiting for their lame escort. Plus, this girl seriously has the fattest ass of any other person I've met in my life. She's gorgeous--lovely face, great hair, tiny waist, thin arms, decent rack--but her ass is like two seals in a circus. Like, bigger than two hams, for sure. Maybe like two duffel bags full of pudding. Anyway oh my god it's super late and I'm rambling. Anyway, it finally happened, I was too fat to ride a ride.

I pretty much immediately called the local bariatric specialists and looked into weight loss surgery for the first time in my life. My close friend had gone through gastric sleeve surgery and went from 330 pounds, wearing clothes that were too big for me, to 175 pounds and a size 6/8. Even though I had totally hated on her while she was first contemplating surgery, she really talked me into it and has been super supportive. The entire time I was on Weight Watchers, I was HUNGRY. The entire time. I just remained hungry. The idea of having surgery that would remove or reduce my hunger sensors was incredibly appealing. So while I've always dismissed weight loss surgery as 'cheating', I started to really consider it.

I ended up going to a seminar, submitting it through insurance, and meeting with a doctor. She basically told me everything that I guess I knew but loved hearing from someone else: that I DO know how to lose weight, I just don't have the tools to keep it off. And that losing weight would really change my life. The surgeon was extremely optimistic and made me forget all of my protestations. So from there, I had six months of supervised weight loss visits, during which time I needed to lose 10 pounds, and I met with the psychiatrist, nutritionist, and everyone else she suggested. After I had gone through the six months of visits, been cleared by the shrink, and met again with the surgeon, they scheduled surgery and I began the waiting game. My surgery was last Monday. So I am officially six days post-op from gastric sleeve surgery!

When I began going to the monthly visits, I had gotten up to 290 pounds (actually 294 I believe). After the six months, I was around 282. When they checked me in to the hospital on Monday, the scale said 270, which was not terribly surprising since I'd been on a clear liquid diet and was so hungry I honestly would have had trouble not eating even meat if it was put in front of my face. When I got home from the hospital on Tuesday, my home scale said 277. I haven't used that scale for a loooong time, so I don't know how accurate it is. But since Tuesday, I've now gotten down to 274 pounds. Three pounds is not a lot, but at least it's not gaining.

Anyway, I'd like to talk about my recovery, complain about my healing process, vicariously plan out meals I'll be able to eat once I can eat again, share victories, and basically get shit off of my chest since I don't really have anyone I can rely on now. Oh, and I wanna talk about how hungry I am.

Because, unbelievably, but maybe predictably honestly if you know my life, it didn't work. The surgery didn't stop my hunger. It works except in the rarest of cases. Well, hello! I'm a rare case. Now, granted, I am still on the liquid diet (which I am being really really good about) and I know I'm still healing and some of it is gas and some is head hunger. I know these things.

But I am still hungry.

Some things never change.

My Pilonidal Cyst Story

Gather round, children, and prepare to be amazed and revolted by this captivating tale of...a cyst. A really big cyst. A really big, gross, humiliating, excruciating, recurring cyst.

When I had heart surgery in August, I expected to be in a lot more pain than I was. However, after approximately a decade of dealing with one of the most painful and embarrassing medical problems imaginable, the surgery pain seemed to pale in comparison. No matter how much my incision hurt, or how much my cut muscles ached, I could remind myself that the pain of my cyst during a flare-up was so significantly worse that my surgery didn't seem so bad after all.

My pilonidal cyst is something I try to keep a secret from as many people as possible. It's just so awful. I already bared all, though, while oversharing about my topical yeast infections, so I might as well throw this out there. I'm having a flare-up right now, so it's all I can think about.

There is not much information available about  my kind of pilonidal cyst because everyone's cyst experience is different. I suspect that people with issues similar to mine just don't talk about it. So I'm going to talk about it. Prepare to be grossed out. I was going to post a picture of mine but it's still too embarrassing--just try a Google image search instead, and look for the most disturbing and painful unpopped pilonidal abscess possible.

At the beginning of my college summer vacation when I was 21, I started feeling like I had bruised my tailbone. I was drinking all the time while also taking Paxil for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (following a massive fire I was in and in which I lost all my belongings). I was blacking out multiple times every week, so I assumed it was entirely possible that I had fallen down drunk. My tailbone kept getting worse and worse, though, and after a week or so I could barely sit down. That's when I felt the lump rising. It was at the top of my butt crack, slightly to the right, and I could feel a squishy bump about the size of a walnut half under the skin. It was incredibly tender and hot to the touch. I tried looking it up online but didn't know how to describe it, so I didn't get any useful results.

After a week or so of increasing pain, it came to a head one night while I stayed up shaking and sweating. I think I was probably going into a state of shock or something. No amount of alcohol could dull the pain, and there was no position in which I was even remotely comfortable. I couldn't sit, I couldn't lie down, I couldn't even stand. I remember crawling to the bathroom that night because I couldn't get up, and I passed out from the pain. I woke up on the floor in a pool of sweat with the cyst bigger and redder and hotter than ever. The school clinic was closed for the summer and I didn't want to pay to go to the hospital, so I didn't know what to do. I was so scared. As it grew, I wondered if it was cancer. Or some kind of boil? Or like a chip from my tailbone broke off, lodged itself in my muscles, and caused an infection?

After I woke up on the bathroom floor, I tried exploring it more. It hurt too much to poke at it, but it really felt like it was a small balloon filling up with something, and that if I could just break through the skin it would come out. I gathered the equipment I could think of: a razor blade and a thumb tack (I couldn't find a needle). First I tried the razor blade. It was hard to see but I just numbed it with ice and tried slashing across the top with the razor. I hoped the infection was close enough to the surface that it would burst and I would be fine. Unfortunately, the infection was deeper than I thought and the razor only succeeded in hurting me. I tried the thumb tack next, but the pain was too bad for me to apply much pressure. I could get the point in, but it didn't go far enough in to help.

I stayed up all night, trembling and fighting to stay conscious. The next morning after fainting in the bathroom happened to be my first day as a summer intern at the library. I made it to the library with my roommate/best friend (the one I've mentioned who died so tragically and ripped my world apart) but I was literally standing up while driving there--I couldn't put my butt on the seat of my truck, so I held myself up with the steering wheel and drove as carefully as I could. Seriously, though, driving while standing is not a good thing. We made it there but just barely.

When we got to the library I hobbled in, still unable to walk or sit and wearing a skirt because pants would touch the cyst. We began the first day tour, during which I was still shaking and sweating and thinking of nothing but the mind-numbingly intense, throbbing, unrelenting pain. About fifteen minutes into the orientation, the pain just suddenly stopped. I could take a deep breath finally. I stopped shaking. My head cleared. I felt blissful relief.

Then I started smelling this terrible smell. It was like a container of week-old turkey salad (the kind with dark turkey chunks and mayonnaise) that was just pulled open. Just a strong, meaty, gross smell. I couldn't figure out what the stink was, but I was so relieved by the  overwhelming absence of pain that I didn't really care.

My best friend then grabbed my arm and he whispered for me to go to the bathroom. Thinking maybe I had food in my teeth or had started my period, I excused myself and went to the restroom. As soon as I got in the stall, I pulled down my jean skirt and felt hot liquid on my legs. I touched my butt with my fingertips and was horrified to feel them slipping in thick slime. I lunged out of the stall with my skirt down and locked the deadbolt on the main door (the bathroom was empty besides me). The smell was even worse with my skirt down, and I began frantically wiping myself with paper towels. There was pus and blood everywhere. It looked like someone had been murdered. Or like I sat on a blender full of animals and turned on the blades. Just totally disgusting. And it wouldn't stop coming. As I gingerly pushed around the lump, more and more pus and blood oozed out. It was this foul brown gurgling stuff, and no amount of paper towels was going to work.

I cleaned myself up as much as I could and fled the library, praying that no one would see me. I made it back to the apartment where I could see everything better in a mirror, and just kept pushing to get more and more nasty brown goo out of me. The sticky red blood mingled with the hot white pus to make a thick marbled brown substance, and the week of festering had made it smell like rot and death.

I was not in any significant pain from the moment it had burst in the library, so I could easily press my fingers around the edge to make the liquid pulse out. It took hours it seemed before I had coaxed all of the infection out, and the skin felt loose over the now-empty cavity. I did end up going back to work the next day and told everyone I had just thrown up, but I suspect they knew something was more awful had happened. I told my best friend that it was an injury from my tailbone and he was kind enough to pretend to believe me.

I dove into researching it more and finally found the most likely culprit: a pilonidal cyst. That means 'nest of hair' (I KNOW! So gross!) and I have read many comments claiming that the pain of a pilonidal cyst flare-up is worse than the pain of natural, undrugged childbirth. I believe it. The pain is intolerable, and the shame is unbearable. There's lots of great information out there about what it is (one of my favorites is the Pilonidal Support Alliance), but no one is really truly certain what causes it or how to fix it.

There are certain factors that are common amongst sufferers: they are mostly male, mostly overweight, and mostly very hairy. Poor hygiene, sitting too long, and not shaving can also affect your chances of having a flare-up. So, yeah, not exactly something I want to share: hey, everyone, I have a totally gross cyst that comes from being fat, lazy, dirty, hairy, and not a lady. So yes, this is another one of those gross fat girl things. Not all fat girls get them, but I don't think I would have it if I wasn't fat. I think my ass fat makes my butt crack deeper, which causes more hair and stuff to get caught in there, and apparently led to my current situation.

Now, some people have pilonidal sinuses, which cause them to weep out pus and blood, but they don't get the abscesses or cysts because the infection isn't trapped. Some of those people have to wear diapers because so much nasty stuff leaks out of their butt crack. I am here to tell you that I would MUCH rather have that than have my cyst. Instead of having a sinus, or a tiny hole that allows it to drain, I instead just collect the infected fluids in a cavity between my ass cheeks. This cavity gets bigger every time I have a cyst because the infection tunnels into my tissue, and because I don't have a sinus to drain it, I have to wait until the skin is stretched so incredibly tight because of the sheer quantity of pus and blood that the skin bursts open and sprays infection all over the place.

After that first eruption (my best friend and I called it my 'anal volcano'), I ended up getting a flare-up around once a year. It was usually a week of total torture--unable to move, unable to even wear jeans because of the pain, unable to go to work or drive or sleep. I kept it a secret from everyone I could. Sometimes it ruptures in the most awful places, like a gas station bathroom or on vacation. It's terribly inconvenient and ridiculously painful, but the surgery to correct it is also really painful, really awful (they sometimes sew a 'marsupial pouch' which sounds so so so gag-me-gross), and totally not guaranteed to work. Some people have had the surgery over and over and the cysts just keep coming back.

I have had probably 10-12 cysts since then, and I have taken care of most of them myself. I've spent a decade honing my care. I learned that antibiotics won't help, and nothing really kills the pain except getting it to pop. Sometimes if I take enough hot baths with Epsom salt the cyst will weaken and burst. Sometimes if I alternate a really hot heating pad with an ice pack, the abrupt change in temperature will cause it to rupture. Sometimes I make a compress of crushed garlic that is said to thin the skin and help the infection. The bad part is that, even with these remedies, it still won't burst until it's ready. I have to honestly feel like I'm dying for around 48 hours (that's after a week of intense but not near-fatal pain) before anything can make it explode. And sometimes they just never do burst--luckily, I have only been forced to seek medical attention for two of them.

Once the emergency care clinic doctors sliced me open with a scalpel but didn't go deep enough--some blood oozed out, but the cyst did not burst. I was in more pain from the scalpel cut, but after another day or so of the infection brewing, the cyst was stretched so tight that the weakened skin from the incision split open and it burst. Whew. The most recent time was also the most horrible. This cyst had been going on for almost two weeks, and it was huge and purple. I had gotten desperate and had tried cutting it with razors, scissors, needles, tacks, and even a syringe. Nothing helped. It was around the size of an egg, and I couldn't do ANYTHING. No walking, so sitting, no lying down. I had to miss work for a couple days and I was out of options. So I went to the emergency care and the doctor there was clearly horrified and disgusted. He could barely speak, but told me that it was beyond what he could care for, and told me to go straight to the hospital ER. He even called ahead to help me get in. When I got there (I rode in the back seat, laying down on my stomach and crying...there was no way I could sit) they gave me a pain killer but it definitely did not help. The ER nurse made me lie down and she just cut it right open. I felt the liquid gush between my legs and all over my back, but she didn't stop. Instead of allowing me that moment of relief, she told me that she had to scrape out the pockets of infection or it would just come right back. She stuck something in the gaping hole and I couldn't stop screaming. She scraped and the way the small pockets burst, it made me imagine them as the pulp inside an orange--those fat little envelopes full and ready to pop. But she just kept going. And going. I like to think I have a pretty high tolerance for pain after dealing with this for so many years, but she pushed me to new limits. I didn't think it would ever stop.

Finally, she finished scraping and started cleaning me out. That was horrible but not quite as soul-shatteringly painful. Then she packed the hole full of gauze and told me to have it removed in two weeks. When I got home, I couldn't even look at it. The single time I glanced at it in the mirror, I saw the bruised and angry purple flesh bulging around a curly gauze tail that was pink with blood. I felt more like a pig than ever. When I went to the doctor to take it out, I had to hold onto the exam table while he pulled it out--it must have been three feet of bloody gauze, and the feeling of it being pulled out of my body made my skin crawl.

Since that last ER experience, I have tried desperately to avoid letting my cyst get that bad. If I get any skin that feels like a scab I can potentially peel off, I do, because I feel like it makes the rest of the skin thinner and therefore easier to burst. I clean there regularly, I avoid sitting for long periods on my tailbone, I never wear thongs, and any time I start to feel tender around my tailbone I immediately start spraying Bactine and applying hot and cold presses.

Around a year ago, I had called into work and while explaining to my boss why I couldn't come in, I lost control and started sobbing hysterically into the phone. The pain and embarrassment were just too much together. I'm glad it happened, though, because she was able to introduce me to something that one of her former colleagues had used for the same issue: ichthammol ointment. It smells like tar and stains everything and makes an enormous mess, but it helps thin the skin and, instead of bursting, the cyst just kind of starts leaking out after a couple days. I've only used this treatment twice, but each time it worked like a charm. Since it didn't burst, I don't think all of the infection got out either time, but it got rid of my pain so I can't complain. I can't believe more people don't know about this. I wish I had found out about it years ago--it would have saved me some serious pain. I mean, pain so bad that I can't help but think about killing myself. Hopefully someone searching for a way to help their pilonidal cyst will stumble across this page and try the ichthammol ointment. It's been a true miracle for me, and I haven't even had a cyst flare-up for almost a year. The ichthammol is super cheap and I just smear it on and then cover it with a small cut up square of washcloth held in place with medical tape.

But...now it's back. And now the ointment isn't working. And now I'm terrified. Since my recent heart surgery, all of my doctors have stressed over and over how important it is to keep myself from getting any kinds of infection. Anything, even something as small as a cut in my gums, can potentially lead to bacteria getting into my bloodstream and forming on my brand new heart valve. So I'm really really scared. It's 5am but the pain is so bad I can't sleep. I'm sitting on a heating pad with ichthammol ointment smeared on my butt, but it's not helping. I had to leave work early for the past two days. I almost passed out when I drove over a pot hole on the way home. I went to an art gallery opening tonight but we had to leave because I was so afraid someone would brush against my butt and I'd faint or scream. I keep accidentally bursting into tears, and it hurts to do anything. Since the abscess is basically between my butt cheeks, every time I move my butt cheeks squeeze around it and it feels like torture.

I had hoped that losing weight would also let me lose this cyst. Since it's what I consider a fat girl problem, I thought maybe, just maybe, it would disappear. Enough hard work and I wouldn't have to deal with it again.

So I'm doubly sad that I'm still facing this awful thing. And I'm so scared. I don't want the infection to reach my heart. I'm hoping it will burst on its own. Otherwise...I might be back in the hospital tomorrow. I'm not one for prayers, but I'll be praying for a miracle right now.

Update: It burst! Woohoo! Ichthammol success again!

A Whole New World

So...it's been awhile.

I'm kind of a different person now.

Weight-loss wise, I'm still trucking along slowly but surely. Not much has changed there...I'm struggling with sweets, craving all kinds of shit, and compulsively tracking and weighing my food to keep within my daily Weight Watchers points. It's rough, yeah, but after more than a year on Weight Watchers, I feel like I'm sort of a pro.

Plus, I'm now at 219 pounds as of yesterday's weigh-in. That's 85 pounds down from 304! It's been a little more than a year (I started last August) and I'm still doing the 1-pound-up-2-pounds-down dance, but it's working.

The REAL change, though, is that I have a new heart valve. And this one WORKS! If you're not familiar with my health struggles, here's a recap: in 2007 I had a root canal that, unbeknownst to me, introduced some bacteria into my bloodstream. I became extremely sick and was hospitalized in December of 2007 with streptococcus, double pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, severe dehydration, malnutrition, anemia...not a pretty picture. The antibiotics didn't work, I almost died, and the bacteria turned into endocarditis on my tricuspid valve. Little bits were flecking off into my lungs and causing major breathing and infection problems and nothing helped. I eventually had open heart surgery in late January 2008 at the age of 25. While recovering, I caught mono and within a few months, the artificial heart valve stopped working. It was frozen in a half-open position which allowed blood to pass but which caused serious problems for me. I couldn't do any of the activities I used to do. I'd get out of breath walking up a single flight of stairs, I couldn't run or play, and my asthma got worse and worse. I rapidly gained 50 pounds and stayed that way, fat and sick, for about 5 years. Last August, I joined Weight Watchers hoping to lose some weight and become active again. I lost weight, but wasn't active. Walking was still nearly impossible for me. I was thinner but still miserable and totally sedentary.

This summer, things got worse. My oxygen was dropping down to 80% just walking out to my car (I started keeping an oximeter with me to check my blood oxygen because I always felt like I was just about to drown and could never catch my breath). My resting pulse was around 130 beats per minute. Those are not the signs of a healthy person. It became so bad that I stopped going to meetings at work because I couldn't walk there (I'm a department manager, so this was not so great for my job). I stopped making plans because I couldn't go anywhere.

Then I went to Bonnaroo in June. I've been to Bonnaroo 5 times before this year and each year since my surgery was a little more difficult. After losing so much weight (around 70 pounds at the time), I though I could handle parking in the 'normal' campground instead of the handicapped area. WRONG. We missed shows because I couldn't get there, it took us 2 hours to walk to Centeroo, and I was thoroughly miserable the entire time. It was the saddest Bonnaroo ever...which is even sadder because PAUL FUCKING MCCARTNEY WAS THERE and I was too busy just trying to breathe and not die to even enjoy the show!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, when I got back from Bonnaroo, I started going to my doctors and asking for tests. I needed to know if there was something else going on. My doctor and cardiologist and nurse practitioner checked my blood, my urine, did x-rays, EKGs, ultrasounds, etc. I'd been feeling like shit for 5 years, but it was like since I had lost 70 pounds, they were taking me seriously for the first time. The cardiologist said, "With how much weight you've lost, you should be feeling great." So instead of passing my symptoms (difficulty breathing, high pulse, severe fatigue, exercise intolerance, dizziness, etc) off on my weight, they started searching for real answers. I had them check for thyroid issues, vitamin deficiencies, lupus, internal bleeding, hepatitis, everything I could think of that would explain my problems and why I wasn't getting better.

They finally did a tranespophageal echocardiogram and determined that very little blood was actually flowing through my non-functioning mechanical valve. A cardiac surgeon met with me and wanted to try replacing it again. I was terrified. Seriously terrified. I mean, it was bad enough the first time. I wasn't sure if I could deal with the pain, the scars, the risks, missing work. However, I'd worked so hard to lose weight that I felt like I'd made a commitment to my health and I should try the surgery if they thought it might make my life a little better.

So I scheduled the surgery. I had to wait one month, and it was a fucking horrible month. I made all of my FMLA and short term disability arrangements, assigned my work duties to my employees and assistant manager, and made thorough user guides for all of my job responsibilities. To be honest, I was fully expecting to die during surgery. I spent that month making my final arrangements, writing out a will, gathering information for my cemetery plot, and saying goodbye.

The surgery day came and when they strapped me to the table in the operating room, tears were streaming hot down the sides of my face. I knew it would be the last time my eyes would be open.

But around 12 hours later, my eyes did open again. I made it. Well, just barely. That first night, my pulse kept dropping down to the low 40s and they had to put in a pacemaker to get me regulated. But when they turned off the pacemaker the next day, my pulse was steady. My blood pressure was good. I was alive.

They replaced the broken mechanical valve with a bioprosthesis from a cow. As a vegetarian for more than a decade, I was really upset about using a cow's heart. But I asked my friends and family and Facebook to have a Beef Free Day on the day of my surgery--I was overwhelmed to find out how many people committed to not eat beef that day. It made me feel better. We saved part of a cow, and part of a cow saved me :)

The surgeon was horrified by the condition of the mechanical valve. It's not like you can just peek in and see how your heart valve looks, so no one really knew how bad it had gotten. The surgeon was so blown away he took a picture of the valve to show my family...brace yourself for something seriously nasty. The mechanical valve they took out is below (shown from both sides).

Yeah...no wonder I felt like shit.

Within maybe 48 hours, I was able to get up and walk around. And I COULD walk around! Even with the bandages and open incisions, the IVs sewn into my skin and the telemetry wires coming out of every opening in my gown, I could walk. Once they got the catheter out, I started walking. That first day without the catheter, I walked halfway around the cardiac ICU floor of the hospital. I could not have walked that far before the surgery! The next day, I made it a full lap in the morning. Then I made another lap after lunch. That day, I ended up walking 6 laps around the hospital floor. I NEVER would have made it 6 laps around the hospital floor before the surgery! Seriously, I can't really express just how bad it was before, and how fucking amazing it was after. The fourth day, I walked 20 laps around the hospital floor! The patients in the other rooms all watched me and the nurses encouraged me as I shuffled around over and over, clutching the heart-shaped pillow to my chest incisions. They have markers every 25 feet along the wall, and one lap is 500 feet. 20 laps is 10,000 feet, which is nearly two miles! Sure, it took me all day...but I walked TWO MILES! If you've read my other posts, it took me four days to walk a single mile back in March. Two miles in one day is a total fucking miracle for me.

The fifth day, they sent me home!

I still had a long recovery ahead of me. They had to cut a bunch of muscles and nerves to get to my valve, so I can't lift more than 5 to 10 pounds. I have a total of 8 incisions (two of them very large) and 7 holes from the pacemaker, IVs, etc. I've been off work for just over a month now. But I AM RECOVERING.

My first week home, I had to have someone with me 24/7 in case anything went wrong. My amazing girlfriend, who had stayed in the hospital with me the whole time (just as she did in 2007 and 2008) took care of me when I got home. That first full day home, I asked her to take me for a short walk. We got dressed (in my sexy Velcro bra the hospital gave me, and with the heart pillow held tight against my chest) and we walked around outside for 10 or 15 minutes. Here's the crazy part: that was the first time we'd walked anywhere in the neighborhood in the 4 years that we've lived here.

After that, I started walking a little more each day. Some days the pain was bad and I could only do 10 minutes, but I still made myself walk 10 minutes where before, I would have just stayed on the couch. Then the neighborhood suddenly seemed small. We started going to parks near us. After the first couple of weeks, we even tried hiking. I went from not being able to walk from my car into my desk at work, to hiking for an hour without stopping.

Last weekend, we hiked for 4 hours and it felt completely amazing!

I've been eating a lot while I've been at home on short term disability so I'm not losing weight any faster, but I'm getting stronger. I feel healthy. I feel GOOD. I feel like the world has opened up to me. We went to St. Louis for a funeral and I actually felt guilty about not walking during the day we spent in the car. After the funeral, we went to the St. Louis Zoo and walked around for 2 hours. Before, we would have shuffled from one bench to the next and missed half of the zoo. This time, we went on every single path...AND we parked in the free parking down the street instead of wasting $15 for a close spot.

It really is a whole new world for me. There's so much I want to do now. I'm still in pain and I'm still healing, but I should be returning to work next week. Now I'm already planning to take advantage of our on-site gym and personal trainer for the first time since I started working there. I've completely stopped taking my inhalers because, as it turns out, I don't even have asthma...all of my breathing problems were cardiac-related.

Also, my cardiac rehab starts tomorrow. I'll slowly learn how to move my body again. I'll get faster, and stronger, and healthier.

I couldn't be more excited.

Bonus: here's a picture of me before Weight Watchers, and a picture of me last week. I still have a long way to go, but look at the difference! I might need a new cardigan soon!

Trauma Club

My mom is having heart surgery today. She has already had open heart surgery (as have I) but this time, she's having a stent put in to try opening her Superior vena cava. There is a good possibility that the balloon they're using to open the SVC could rip through the old scar tissue, causing her to bleed out or go into cardiac arrest. There's also a good possibility that everything will go perfectly and she'll leave with totally restored blood flow (or at least better blood flow than she has now...it can't get much worse than it already is).

My mom has worse luck than me. She has lupus, fibromyalgia, diabetes, COPD, sleep apnea, Raynaud's Disease, and she also had her open heart surgery for a freak reason: she lived near the airport for many years and the pulverized pigeon shit on the runways became airborne and entered her lungs, leading to histoplasmosis which caused severe scarring and started blocking veins.

On top of that, my mom is big. Large. Shorter than me but rounder. I still envy her, though. She was tiny and beautiful when she was younger. She went to modeling school. She was, like, 110 pounds. I'm jealous that she's at least had a chance to be thin. But then she got pregnant with me and never lost the baby weight. 30 years later and she's bigger than ever. I'm sure she blames me for making her fat just as I partially blame her for making me fat. In the end, I guess we can only really blame ourselves. Her fat drags her down as much as mine drags me, but her additional health problems make her situation even more grim. Not like anyone is going to convince her to lose weight (or stop smoking when she's on her third bout if pneumonia or bronchitis or pleurisy in a season, or wear gloves when her fingers go numb and turn white, or stop eating cookies for breakfast when her blood sugar is 250).

With all of her health problems, you'd think that going into heart surgery she'd be worrying about what could go wrong in the operating room, what complications they might run into, bad reactions to the anesthetic, waking up in the middle of the surgery and feeling everything...the usual concerns (for me, at least).

Not my mom.

Instead, the thoughts that have occupied her mind and driven her sick with anxiety are all pre-operative. She's had this procedure done before--although it was years ago, and the blood flow is much more restricted now, making surgery even riskier--and she still remembers the steps they took.

To insert the cameras and tubing, they go through her groin. This makes a scary procedure instantly transform into sheer torture. First, they have to wash you. THEY wash you. I know first-hand how miserable and humiliating that is for a fat girl. I had the misfortune of being rushed to the cardiac ICU to treat a blood clot on my artificial valve once, and they pumped me full of clot-busting blood thinners. Because of the risk of bleeding, they confined me to my bed for several days (I even had to use a bed pan. Seriously one of the worst things I've ever been through.) and, because the cardiac ICU is apparently sterile, I had to be bathed when they brought me in. They wouldn't let me get up or move, so I laid there in horror as a team of orderlies wiped me down EVERYWHERE. And when I say everywhere, that includes under my rolls. Yes, someone had to push my stomach up to sponge me off. If I could have willed myself dead at that moment, I would have.

Which brings me to the second step my mom is dreading. In order to have unrestricted access to the entry point near her groin...they actually tape up her stomach. They push it up and hold it in place with tape throughout the entire surgery. Once, around three years ago, my girlfriend unconsciously reached up and nudged my stomach while she was going down on me and I haven't let her go down there since. That's something I have to get over...otherwise, I may never have sex again. That's a depressing thought, especially when I have such a hot girlfriend. But touch my stomach and I will never forget it. Just like my mom, whose belly will be shoved up by a stranger this morning in a room full of people.
 

Lastly, they shave her "down there." This may be the second step, I don't know, but I do know she is incredibly embarrassed by having someone push her fat around enough to shave her pubic hair. I can't imagine anyone doing that to me. That seems like something else I'd never get over. I keep myself shaved anyway (at least when it's not winter, although there isn't much of a point if I don't let my girlfriend anywhere near there) but if someone else had to get down there and shave me as I stared at the ceiling, I might die before I even made it into the operating room..

So that's what's on my mom's mind, and on mine too. I'm a little scared for her (okay, absolutely fucking terrified) but I also feel really sorry for her. That's a lot to go through in a day. Not to mention the other pitfalls of being in the hospital...having people struggling to shift you from one bed to another; not having a hospital gown that actually closes around your stomach; being in a bed with a scale embedded and knowing that one accidental button push will reveal your weight to the whole room; having to wait for a wheelchair wide enough to fit your ass...

At least she won't be alone. And I really understand where she's coming from. My sister will be there too but she can't relate--even at her biggest, she was still the small one. She wears size 6 jeans and is still losing weight. She will never know what it's like to face what my mom and I go through. Good for her. But I do know what it's like, and it sucks. It really sucks. My grandma knows too, probably more so than me or my mom, and that makes me sad. It's like we're all part of a Fat Girl Trauma Club. It's a club I never wanted to join, and I'm trying like hell to get out of it. I wish I could get my mom out too.

A Little Background

I feel silly writing in secret, but I don't want anyone I know to read any of this yet. Mostly, I'm just embarrassed because I put down my honest-to-goodness weight, and I've convinced myself that no one around me has any idea I got up to over 300 pounds.

That's a milestone I never wanted to hit. I didn't even know until I was in the hospital earlier this year--they printed the weight that registered on the hospital bed (307 pounds) and I vowed then to lose weight immediately.

I didn't.

Instead, I began slowly transitioning my wardrobe from 2x to 3x. I stayed far away from any scales. I avoided going to the doctor because I knew they'd weigh me. I wore stretch pants and forgot about owning any pants with buttons.

But then I reached that size.

The size where I couldn't go to the amusement park and actually play with my nephew because, for the first time in my life, I couldn't squeeze the safety bars down far enough to click. I only avoided the park ride walk of shame thanks to some very helpful and equally embarrassed ride workers who would use their full force to lock me in. That's such an awful feeling. I've always been conscious of my weight at amusement parks. Always checking out the line to see if anyone ahead of me was my size or bigger, praying that I fit, pretending to enjoy rides when the bar is pinching my fat so badly that I had bruises for weeks. But having my fears realized and having to actually avoid rides for fear of not fitting--what was hurtful, embarassing, and sad because I'd love to take my seven year old nephew on every ride he's brave enough to try. I'd lost touch with how big I really was...or am. I started feeling like the fat lady in a cruel Victorian circus sideshow. I stopped fitting into my life.

Oh yeah, and airplanes. I rode from Puerto Rico to my home state with a cardigan over my lap to hide the fact that my seat belt wasn't buckled. I didn't go to the bathroom the entire time because I didn't want anyone to notice. Worst plane ride of my life. I was terrified the whole way and I couldn't move because I was clutching the belt in my lap. Of course, being uncomfortable on plane rides is nothing new.

I don't even know how I got to over 300 pounds. Less than 10 years ago, I had smirked when my friend weighed herself at my apartment and the needle flew right up to 300 and then a little past. She figured that she weighed 300 pounds, but I knew the scale couldn't go up high enough to tell her an accurate weight. I privately gloated over that for weeks--sure, I was fat, but I wasn't that fat. I was never happy with my weight, but at 230 pounds at the time, I was still confident and I could almost always find someone in the room who was my size. Not anymore. I don't even remember how my body ballooned from 230 pounds to over 300. I was sick several years ago, had some complications, and ended up in the hospital for a few months. I had open heart surgery immediately followed by a case of mono and became totally sedentary for around six months. I also avoided doctors while I was recovering (Not smart. Duh.). So when my clothes stopped fitting, I joined Weight Watchers at work a year or so after my heart surgery. I was stunned to find that I was 280 pounds. I freaked out. I don't remember 240-250-260-270. I lost 20 pounds in two months with Weight Watchers, got bored, and gave up. For a couple years, I just pretended that my weight was probably the same. I stopped looking in the mirror, stopped being intimate with my girlfriend, stopped caring I guess.

Once I realized I was close to or over 300 pounds, I got scared. I was scared for me, scared to die early, scared to never see my dreams realized. I always wanted to write a novel (I still do), but I've always known the story would be loosely auto-biographical. How could I write about myself without writing about my weight? Not possible, since my weight and my body consume my brain most of the time. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having difficulties writing about any part of my life until after it's over. Sure, I can write a great poem or short story about a relationship in my life, but not until we break up and I get a chance to reflect. I want to write about my life, and I really think it'll happen one day, but I won't be comfortable writing about my weight until I'm looking at this body in my rear view mirror. I'm staying strong, sticking to the Weight Watchers plan, and hoping that day comes sooner rather than later.