The Laundry List

The first day of the rest of your life is kind of like being born again. It's revitalizing, refreshing and rejuvenating. It's also frightening. There's a lot of pressure to have this "new" life surpass the old one in more ways than one. If you don't succeed, then you've failed at two chances in life and well, I think you only get three total tries, right?

After that Dr.'s appointment in the summer of 2007 when I had made my commitment to changing my life, I had a laundry list or sorts to complete before I could truly start over. First on the list: Cardio Evaluation. There's no secret that the obese are on the top of the list when it comes to heart issues and I had been in denial, hiding from that fact, for so many years that the EKG and stress test awaiting me were, well- causing me stress!

I sat in the waiting room at the Cardiologist very aware that I was not alone in my stature. I could hear wheezing, heavy breathing, the slow and steady pumping of an oxygen tank and the occasional candy wrapper being crumpled after consumption of its contents. I could feel my heart beating faster and harder; I was nervous, afraid. "You can beat this. This life does not have to be what you are destined for. You can bring about change." That was my mantra while I waited for my turn with Dr. Heart. Very Obama, yes?

When I was finally called into the office, I was hooked up to a machine I'd only seen on TV and the EKG began. "Electro-k(c)ardio-gram: (EKG, ECG) is a simple, painless test that records the heart's electrical activity." Painless? Well...it doesn't hurt the skin, but the psyche is a whole different story. The little lines blipping on the screen and the monotony of the printed beating of my heart were what I believed to be the looming proof of the damage caused to my young heart by the fat weighing it down.

After several minutes, the Dr. turned off the machine, yanked the little round discs off my skin and asked me to follow him into the next room. Great. A treadmill. He had me step onto the machine and strapped more of the circular discs onto my upper body. "Start walking." Unlike Ms. Sinatra, my boots were not made for walking, nor was my body, so this was definitely easier said than done. I put one foot in front of the other and slid the mat underneath me back, one step at a time. He slowly increased the speed, watching the machine that was monitoring my "stress" and watching me turn beet red while the sweat pooled under my arms. After ten minutes, he shut down the machine and reviewed the results.

A long pause...

"Well, you are as healthy as a Clydesdale!"

The words were almost cruel and they stung like icy water on a summer day, but they were also beautiful. My heart, had withstood the growing pressure and was healthy. Period. Check one off the list!

Next on my laundry list was the Psychiatric Evaluation. In order to have Gastric Bypass, a head-doctor must conclude that you are making the decision to undergo permanent change to your body of your own free-will and that the decision is made with sound mind and not an emotionally charged one. Whoever came up with that statement has never been overweight, nor have they been given the chance to change their body! The decision was nothing if not emotionally charged and the millions of tears I'd shed in the last few years while staring at my rolls in the mirror could attest to that.

I sat in front of the Psychiatrist, a short, thin, and awkward man with a very obvious bald spot under his comb-over. He resembled Ned Flanders in his sweater vest and khakis and mustache, but wasn't nearly as pleasant, more of a Moe in personality actually. He asked me a series of questions about my mental stability, told me he didn't agree with Gastric Bypass as a way out of my "condition", then signed on the dotted line confirming my sanity and in turn, crossing another item off my list. I really didn't care what he agreed with or not. He had no concept of what it means to be overweight and after one twenty-minute visit with me, really had no more of an accurate perception of the person I was or the person I wanted to be, than the perception that his comb-over was hiding his balding head. Check number two off my list, thank you and goodbye doc!

Next on my list was to check the health of my gastro-intestinal track. This required an ultrasound and a CT scan. Nothing too exciting here, very basic procedures, and aside from the drama with my insurance and the three week wait to get in for both procedures, I was deemed healthy enough to have surgery and I checked number three off my list!

Perhaps the most important item on my laundry list, was the requirement to attend a class on Nutrition, meeting with a Nutritionist and having her sign off that I was prepared and ready for the days, weeks, months and years after surgery. The class was held at Huntington Hospital and I was seated in a room filled with other Bypass hopefuls. I brought my fiance with me so that we could learn "what not to do" together. I shared the majority of my meals with him and we both agreed that while I was the one having the surgery, we were definitely taking this journey together and a healthy lifestyle was going to take teamwork.

The class was four hours long and was filled to the gills with information on protein shakes and drinks for the days immediately following surgery, the probable intolerance to many of the foods we had indulged in that led to our current situation, and the need to truly change our lifestyle to ensure that years down the road we would be able to maintain our soon-to-be lean physiques, preventing us from replumping into our previous forms. I clung onto every word and I filled my mind with as much information as I could possibly get. If I was going through this, I was doing it right. At the end of the class, we were asked to complete a test to evaluate our retention and likelihood to switch gears into a healthy lifestyle.

I passed. I wanted to. I needed to. I forced myself to do well on a test for the first time in my life (ask my high school teachers). I was determined to change my life and I wasn't going to let a test stop me anymore than I was going to let food continue to be my enemy.

Check number four off my list, my friends!

The remaining items on my list consisted of attending another forum class led by my Dr., paying a $500 education fee to my Dr.'s office (they said this was to guarantee continued participation and interactions after surgery to promote weight-loss success), getting the final approval from my insurance, requesting time off from work, buying all of my post-op meals, and scheduling surgery.

October 8th, 2007. Ready or not, skinny me- I was a-comin!