WLS After 50: Fit And Fabulous At Age 62!

December 7, 2012

WLS After 50:  Fit And Fabulous At Age 62!

“At age 53, in 2002, my life and weight had become unmanageable. I had steadily and easily added 10 pounds a year for over 10 years. Do the math on that, and you can see I was over 100 excess pounds. Why? I had gone through incredibly stressful times since 2002 when my husband was ousted from his job quite unexpectedly. This unfortunate job loss couldn’t have come at a worse time.” -Marilyn Hall

We had sold our house and still waiting for a new house to be built. We were still living in a motel and had three weeks to go before we could move to the new house. During that seven-week stay, while waiting for our new house to be ready, we were forced to board all our beloved animals, including five horses, one donkey, and two dogs, but we had the three cats with us.

We were awakened early one morning by a distraught call from the owner of the horse boarding facility: our mare (who delivered a colt six weeks earlier) was not doing well.

We raced to the boarding facility, quickly got her loaded up in the horse trailer, and sped off for a two-hour ride to the nearest equine emergency hospital. We weren’t sure she’d make it there, but we kept going. Finally, after arrival and the vet checked her, we were given the news: some sort of contaminant had gotten into her system and it didn’t look good. We left her with the vet, but, unfortunately, he couldn’t save her; she died two days later. Now what to do with her motherless foal?

We knee-jerked and quickly bought another mare who could be a substitute mom for this very young baby. It wasn’t a match made in heaven; not all mares want to take in someone else’s child, as we quickly learned. But, as time passed, she began to accept him little by little. He was the sweetest little thing you ever saw. We named him Rocky. When Rocky became old enough to be weaned and eat regular food, we discovered that he had an irregular esophagus and he had a lot of trouble swallowing. Again, we went through a battery of tests with equine specialists. I’ll spare you the details: Rocky could not be saved either; he died in the arms of the vet’s assistant. We were beyond despondent, to say the least. How did we cope? We cried a lot and I ate.

After that fiasco, and with my husband being out of work, we had to sell the brand new house we finally were able to move into. We lived in it for nine months in total. For some very odd reason, he could not find another job. He’d get close, but then it would not manifest. So when there was nothing else, and I mean nothing, he accepted a very low paying job with an equine manufacturer as a salesman. He was given his choice of territories to relocate to; mind you, the company didn’t pay for any of this. We chose and moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, only because I knew one person who lived there. We left California on a rainy night, December 21, 2002, and arrived in Colorado Springs on December 23rd for the most depressing Christmas ever.

We ate our pain away, and I kept adding the pounds.

After living in Colorado for approximately eight months in a rental house where we could keep the horses with us, we couldn’t make it there. Nobody was buying equine equipment in the winter! My husband called his brother, and it was decided that we would move to Central Oregon to be closer to my husband’s family. We had no idea what we’d do for a living since my husband had been in the electronics business as a high-level manager, but that wasn’t going to help him in Oregon. He went to work with his brother learning the finish carpentry trade. He was a fast study, and soon was helping on various jobs and doing well. However, his true talents were on the business side, so he put his energy into reorganizing his brother’s financial affairs with an emphasis on getting new clients. It was a booming time in Central Oregon between 2003 and 2004, and residential building was going on everywhere. Things were starting to look up.

We’d sit down and eat our emotions at night, along with a lot of wine to enjoy a little mood elevation.

I had to go back to work. I hadn’t worked in a law office in five years, and when I did it was in California (different rules, laws, and procedures), but nevertheless, I had to find a job to make up for the missing income. I was lucky, I got a job quickly and within 30 days I was trained on their system and procedures. That was the good news; the bad news was that I got on the wrong side of one of the attorneys, and I was let go. What a 30-day whirlwind that was. So once again, I got lucky and found a new job in another well-known law firm in town, but the job required learning an area of law in which I had no experience. I faced a big learning curve, but I eventually caught on. During this time, my husband would swing by for lunch, and we’d run out and have a burger or some other fast food meal. I added approximately 20 more pounds. My weight was upwards of 200 at that time, which was 75 pounds over where I should have been for my 5’7” frame.

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