I Shout This Surgery From The Highest Rooftop!
September 24, 2013After Her Weight Loss Surgery...51-year-old Bernadette Grunz Has Lost 170 Pounds!
When I started my journey I was 308 pounds. As of this morning, I am 138 pounds so I have lost 170 pounds in one year and four months. I heard about bariatric surgery at Good Sam from my primary care physician Dr. Robert Kahn.
I had my bariatric surgery, which is the vertical gastric sleeve on March 7th 2012 at Good Samaritan Hospital and the surgeon was Edward Cussatti, MD. Well, since the surgery my health has changed tremendously. I can walk, I can run. I do a lot of jogging. I've done two 5K's. I can breathe better. I feel better. I think the part of me that was not pleasant was the unhappy, low self-esteem I had. I tried to make up for being so obese by being a person hard to get to. Now I take in as much as I possibly can take in. I enjoy the compliments.
Then and Now
You always have to make excuses and defend yourself because when you are overweight people use that as a way to bring you down even more. People stare at you and look at you differently. Now when people look at me, they are looking at me and not at how overweight I am. I look in the mirror at me differently. I see a small person. I see a more confident, more self-assured person than I was a year and a half ago.
For me, my final chapter of my weight loss journey is plastic surgery to remove the excess skin that I have from being so overweight. I carried my weight mainly in the lower part of my body. When you are five foot tall and you have lost 170 pounds...you have a lot of skin. A lot of skin! I feel that what would make my self-confidence the best and make me a more confident, happier person is to have the excess skin removed. So that's going to be my next and final journey.
In reality, there is no final journey. This will be part of my life forever.
I go to bariatric meetings every other Monday night. I take pride in speaking to people. I am a very big advocate of the surgery. I shout this surgery from the highest rooftop...
Click on the video to meet Bernadette and to hear more of what she has to say!
http://youtu.be/qSiP7uWcxlg