Intro

After way too much thinking and a lot of shameful feelings, I am going to be having bariatric surgery. Despite there being no real shame in the surgery, I feel the stigma deep within me and it makes me feel like a failure. I am sure this belief makes a lot of people avoid having fatty surgery. Fat shaming is a huge problem and more often people who would benefit from surgery or even a trip to the gym are hiding out in their home and in their own skin. I am not encouraging anyone to get out there and show your rolls because I don’t want to see them— I don’t want to see my own—but we need to break free of the guilt to be able to build a healthier self.

I am writing this blog to help someone else out there who is like me and wants to know more about the bariatric journey. I have begun my appointments to ensure I am healthy enough to put my body through this life changing surgery. The decision did not come easy and I am still unsure about going through with this. There is not enough information available on what happens before you get the surgery and all the weird things that happen during and after recovery. I kept hearing about something called the “foamies”  and read so many different descriptions of what it is that I still picture a rabid fatty in my head. After asking several doctors who said they had no idea what the “foamies” are I found one who finally told me the truth. When you get the gastric sleeve or bypass, sometimes during the early stages you may get severe acid reflux and since it has no where to go, it comes up and looks like foam. This should be public knowledge, the more you know the easier it should be for a person to make an educated decision on what to do with his or her own body.

There are three surgeries, the Lapband, the Vertical Sleeve Gastronomy and the Gastric Bypass… since I like having a stomach and not a tube connected from my mouth to my ass (please don’t take me literally on that… but close enough) I chose the gastric sleeve which leaves me with a portion of my stomach and I don’t have to come in once a month to have a needle stabbed into a plastic apparatus under my skin to tighten a band around my stomach. My first few appointments were a Deep Vein Thrombosis Ultrasound which is pretty standard, a bariatric Psychologist, the nutrionist, a chest x ray and an EKG. It sounds like a lot, however if you go to Bellevue Center for Obesity & Weight Management as Bariatric Surgery Centers of Excellence *snicker* they will make multiple appointments for you in one day, however be prepared to miss a lot of work, school or whatever it is you do during the day. As my journey continues I will go further in depth into what some of the appointments consist of, my concerns, the decision making process and if there are any joyous moments I may discuss those too.

A little more about me and what to expect from this blog: I am offensive but in a honest way. If you do not like the term fatty, then maybe this isn’t the blog for you. I will use other terms that might upset people but we (both you the reader/commenter and I the author) cannot and will not please everyone. However, I will have no problem deleting a comment if it is highly offensive or upsetting someone else. Feel free to ask me questions about the visits or the surgery, just remember all I can offer in an answer is my own experience.