Had my appointment with Arkansas Rehab

Well it was yesterday ( 1st ) and it was not real promising. The Dr. I saw said that she wanted to be realistic with me; that they have gotten really strict about who they would pay for this surgery for. I explained that I had no money, no job and my insurance was NOT going to pay for anything and this is my last resorce. And I don't have any other options. So I guess all I can do is try. She said that even if I met all their terms on the list and even with a lot of co-morbid conditions they could still say no. BUT, even if they said no that she could get me into the weight loss clinic. That I would have to go once a week for one year. She said that a healthy weight loss would be long term and 1 or 2 pounds a week was reasonable. REASONABLE!!??? I said ok. Suppose I could get there every week for one year? Suppose I did lose two pounds a week, every week for one year. At the end of the year I would still be morbidly obese!! Then what? She said, Well you will have changed your eating habits by then. I asked how many people she knew that had lost oh say 100 pounds and managed to keep it off six month, much less a year, much less five years? She said she didn't know of any personally but there are people who do it. People do it all the time. People who are serious about loosing weight and getting healthy do it. OH by the way where is this weight loss clinic I asked? She says Little Rock. LITTLE ROCK! Uh, did I mention that I am presently unemployed? Did she know how much gas cost now? Even if I could afford the gas every week for one year, my vehickle has 112,000 miles on it? I can't afford to drive to Little Rock every week for one year. She also ask me if I was taking anything for depression? I said no ,not yet. Did I ever feel depressed she asked? Well, yes of course I am depressed about my health. It's depressing not to be able to do anything. Not to be able to work and take care of my family. It's depressing that my insurance will pay for alcoholism treatment, drug abuse and even penile erection problems, but doesn't consider my immediate life threatening condition a priority. Did I loose sleep worrying about things or haveing things racing through my mind she asked? I said no, I loose sleep because I am sleeping sitting up in a chair, I loose sleep because I am in horrible pain, because I hurt so bad. Did I ever consider doing harm to my self or any one else? I paused for a moment and said I've never seriously considered it. She insisted on weighing me. I tried to explain that I couldn't be weighed on her scales. She insisted and well guess what? She couldn't get a reading. I explained that I was weighed at UAMS in October and that I think it was 370 something then. But that was before Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am sure I have gained weight since. She said she couldn't even figure my BMI without being able to weigh me. I asked her why she couldn't just put down 370? She said she needed to know how much I weigh. I asked her if she was going to go with me to a truck scale to weigh or what? She said no. I said then how are you going to know how much I weigh? Isn't 360 ( which is as much weight as their scales will measure ) high enough of a BMI? Not to mention that I obviously weigh more.She said they needed to know how much I weigh to figure my BMI. Well DUH! ( is what I am thinking ) I'm not stupid! Talk about depression. Why should I be depressed? Why on earth would I be humiliated? Lets just see if I can find a truck or cattle scale and take along a few wittness, perhaps a notary republic to see HOW MUCH I WEIGH! Did I ever think about harming myself or someone else?!!! Oh and did I mention this doctor might weigh 110 soaking wet! I am sure that has nothing to do with anything. She asked me if I could have three wishes what would they be?? Well I asked if she meant in general or just personally. Nothing like world peace or something? She said strictly personal. I said that I have never been thin and beautiful so my desire is not vanity. I just simply want to be healthy. I want to feel good, and not be in pain all the time. To be able to move and be strong. To have some sort of a normal life. To be able to weigh on her scale would be great right now. I wish I didn't have to be here asking for help. I wish people, doctors included would look at the whole package when they see someone like me, and could truely know what kind of hell life is when you are this big. I wish they knew how much people like myself suffer on a daily basis and were more compelled to show compassion instead of indifference or disdain. And nothing personal, but I WISH the folks who decided this year long doctor supervised weight control program was manditory would have to live in my body for one month , just one month, much less a year. Oh I am sorry, does that constitute wanting to do harm to someone? Because it is very painful in more ways that I can say. I guess I should rethink that wish, huh? And oh, I'm sorry. I guess that was more than three wishes. Well,you can take your pick. She said I would be hearing from my case worker in a couple of weeks. I told her thank you for her time and for seeing me. I told her I would continue to try and get them all the information they needed. I would continue to be humiliated if necessary. I will do whatever they want if they will just please help me. I mean if I don't meet their qualifications, who does? JUST TELL ME WHAT I HAVE TO DO. Then I walked out to my vehickle and cried for ten minutes. You know some days you can just stuff it in and pretend it doesn't matter. And some days it hits you like a brick wall. It's amazing how the world can come crashing down on you when you realize no one is going to help. It is my fault, I did this to myself. And I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Oh, it's not a definate no yet. And maybe I am still being nieve and hanging onto what little thread of hope I have. But what choice do I have? It's this or give up. You know what makes this even harder? My husband is actually happy that they probably won't pay for this. He is not at all comfortable about my having surgery. EVEN WITH ALL OF MY HEALTH PROBLEMS!!!!He is one of those people who think I should just eat less and exersize more. He has infact said this many times. He has never been more than 20 pounds over weight in his life. He has trouble staying on a diet long enough to loose the twenty pounds he has gained in the past couple of years. And yet he still thinks all I have to do is eat less and exercise more. Well, gosh folks, I ask you, why do I make life so darn hard on myself? Why can't I just eat less and exercise more?

hello bonnie, please don't be so hard on yourself. i don't know how you are feeling, but i can tell you that if you want this bad enough and it's the lord's will then it will happen for you, and i will be praying for you. if you ever need to talk or ask me anything please feel free. god bless and take care - amanda

Thanks Amanda, You are very sweet.

Ok, I really dont know where to start. Before I had my surgery I weighed right at 300 pounds. I sit in the Seminars for St. Vincent Bariatric Clinic. Dr. Ozment is very informative and explains alot fo the psychological aspects of the surgery and/or obesity. The seminar is free. I strongly encourage you to go and listed to what they have to say. Another good point you have to remember is the weight didnt get there overnight, therefore its not going to come off overnight. Its a willpower thing. The surgery makes you have the willpower that you are not strong enough to do on your own. If you are truly dedicated and really want to lose you can start dieting and lose, once again not an easy battle. I strongly encourage the surgery, it was the best thing I ever did. But it forces you to eat like you should. I still dont eat right. So I do know how hard it is. If I dont eat right I suffer the consequences, which at times can be very embarassing. If I go out to eat and eat something that wont go down or eat to much, I try to play it off on a runny nose or something that I need to go to the bathroom for. Believe me after you lose the weight you dont want people you have just met to know that you are overweight. It is embarrassing sometime just as much as being overweight. And then the questions you get and looks. If you look at me before and after i look like a totally different person. Now unless you looked at me while I was naked, you wouldnt be able to tell I was ever big. Ok the situation with your husband, alot of men when there wife/gf is big, it is a confort zone. They feel like they dont have to worry about them being left for maltreatment, or another man, or for whatever reasons. It is your comfort zone, even if you are not happy in a way you are because it is within your norm. I know alot of women who there significant other doesnt want them to do it, alot of that is stupidity and selfishness. They say well the side affects of the surgery, no its not the side affects of the surgery. Think about the side affects of being severely morbid obese. I went through a divorce after my surgery. I was in a miserable marriage. I had low self esteem, and he definitely didnt help matters. he never told me how pretty I was or anything like that. He was overweight also, not severely but he was overweight. After I lost the weight things started to change for the better he wanted to have more to do with me and tell me how good I looked. Well **** It was too late. I had the attention from others by that point. Then I had to listen to him say, people that would have never had anything to do with you fat are trying to talk to you, what about me I loved you when you were fat also. Well that certainly may be but, I just as well as others try to see a person from the inside of whats in there heart, but you have to have an attraction of some sort to get you to want to know them. He is still bother ing me till this day. He has issues. He said the surgery caused us our problems, no sorry dude the surgery gave me the confidence that I needed to leave your sorry ass. My self esteem rose as I started to walk out and heads turned. The attention was/ is wonderful. If you cant get the surgery, or even if you can, go out and get the South Beach Diet book, very good diet tool. My whole family is overweight and my brother and his wife have been on it, and it has proven to be effective. Also I went for my follow up yesterday and Dr. Ozment told me to buy that book and eat y it that it would be a good tool. I lost a total of 150 pounds very rapidly. I have gained 20 back, just because there for a while I got sick and I drink cokes and such. So last night I went to get the South Beach Diet book and I am going to start. It is very very hard to get the amout of protein you need on a daily basis after surgery. It is a minimum of 60 grams. I cant tolerate meat no matter how slow i eat or how much I chew. It will not go through digestion process. It will got hrough mastication and sit there in pouch till I puke it up. Yum Yum huh. I still eat meat though, I like meat. Just as I did before the surgery. It cannot choose what you eat. And trust me yuou will want it. I think i have said enough for now. Good Luck...

Thanks Shelly. Isn't the South Beach Diet a lot like the atkins diet? I have researched the surgery to great detail. I know it would be a terrific tool. I just don't know how to get it without being rich. I am still hopeing that Ark. Rehab will pay for it, but I am not holding my breath. In the mean time I will be trying the low carb, high protien diet. I just have to get to feeling better. I need to be able to move and not just exist. I can't go on like this. As far as my husband goes, he loves me. He is always telling me how much he wants me and how beautiful and desirable I am. I just think he's nuts! It is me that thinks I am not desireable. I am not happy being obese. I am not happy with the way I look and feel. I do not feel desireable. We have been married for 25 years now. I married him when I was 16 years old. He was 19. He treats me well. He just doesn't understand. He has no frame of reference I guess. I mean one can be simpathetic, but unless you have experienced this kind of weight you really can't know the pain. You know what I mean?

Man, Bonnie you sound just like me. This sh*t sucks! Isn't it totally ridiculous how a thin person such as her can sit there and tell you that you would change your habits if you really wanted to lose weight.... What a B*tch! Probably never been more than 5 lbs. over weight ever in her life. She is probably one of those people who think fat people are just lazy. I am so freaking sick and tired of all of it! And seriously, are you depressed? well hell yes you are, good god look at the health problems that you and the rest of us have. It is sickening!!! Absolutely disgusting. I am one of those people who used to be thin, so much in fact I did some modeling in my teens. I won pageants and boy did I ever get attention from the opposite sex, and some from the same sex lol .. BUT! I was also a pretty person on the inside. I remember looking back when I was 16 I had gained 15 lbs. and increased my aerobics from 3 days to 7 days a week, and ate a staggering 500 calories a day. I was literally dying to be thin. I got thin again and stayed that way for a while. In my early twenties I started putting on weight again and would not eat for days at a time, I starved myself thin. And although people thought I was beautiful, they didn't know my ugly secret, of starvation, bingeing and purging. Finally I let go of all of that and ate normal, and well..... I got fat. I then started Phen fen, wooohooo lost some weight, and I was beautiful again, but then they took it away from me, so I got fat again, even fatter this time. Damnit I just can't win. I started smoking and the weight gain stopped, but when I quit I gained A lot more. So I started smoking yet again, said to myself what the hell, I am going to die from being fat, why not enjoy a smoke while I'm at it. I tried to have this surgery, but it's not going to happen, not for me. I am on the low carb diet now, doing pretty good I might say, but I still wish I could have the surgery, then all of the trying this and that would be over, I would have the tool I needed to help me stay healthy. I was just told by my doctor, if I don't lose 100 lbs. in the next year I will be in a wheelchair. So I ask all the skinny people of the world, all of the judgmental people, and all those who think they are superior, just what the hell makes you think you have any right whatsoever to tell me I don't want it bad enough, or I am lazy, what gives you any right to discriminate against me? I was like you once, I was thin, I was active, I was beautiful, I was able to walk normally and I was able to sleep normally. I was admired, I got second looks walking down the street, I am the one you saw in magazines and wished you could look like, yeah that was me, and look at me now, still wish you could be like me? well I wish you could. Then maybe you would see it is hard, it does hurt and you are nothing more special then me, and maybe some day, if god so chooses you will be just like me, going through this daily torture, this daily battle and asking why do I even try. And to finish, not to make anyone mad or anything, but I am very jealous of those who get approved, and those who have had the surgery, I am hurt... Why not me God? Why not me? I still cannot fathom her asking you if you are depressed, I mean wouldnt she be, it is a constant battle just for me not to blow my head off. I have to laugh at how pathetic the whole thing really is. They will pay to get a mans penis hard, but not to save my life....

Thanks LIsa, I was never thin. But I was fairly "" looking at one time. You know. I always thought I was fat. I am 5'3" - 5'4" and I used to weigh around 140-160 So I always struggled even then with some pounds. But nothing like now. I too used to smoke. When I quit, I gained 85 pounds in the first year. I dieted, lost weight, and gained weight again. Then the asthma kicked in with a vengence. The doctors seem to only get any real help from steroids and it never seems to get stablized with their asthma drugs. So I am on a combination of many asthma drugs and steroids. Have been for several years now. I have gained so much weight on the steroids! Now I suffer from all the side effects of the weight too. I went to the doctor today about this sore on my leg. I nicked it shaveig in January. Just a tiny little nick, right? Now it is the size of a quarter and not healing at all. So he looks at it and says it is some sort of varicos thingy. You need compression hoses. Insurance usually pays for this kind of thing. Well, guess what? IT IS AN EXCLUSION on our policy!!!! They don't pay for this kind of stuff. It is going to cost me minimum of $65 for these hoses. They can't be sure just how much until they measure and fit me for them. I ask him if it is weight related. He said well, it certainly won't help, but is heredity to some extent. Once again I am reminded that I am on my own here as far as my insurance is conscerned. I am prepareing my house for this low carb diet. You know, I looked a little while ago and realized that one of my cabinets only has carbs in it. Nothing I can eat on a low carb diet. We eat lots of pasta and I love to make bread, also instant potatoes and pudding mix, oatmeal..ect.ect.. So I am packing it all away. Takeing it to the Jackson house. If these folks around here want to eat, they are going to eat what I can eat. They can have their junk, but not here. I have a good friend who is going to let me use her cattle scales. I am going there Monday to see exactly how much I weigh. That won't be nearly so humiliating as a truck scale or something as it will be just us two girls there and she will take it to her grave. I guess the first goal I will set for myself is to lose enough weight to be able to be weighted on a normal scale. You know as far as the question of me wanting to do harm to myself goes. I wanted to tell her ( that doctor ) about this movie I saw once called "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" Have you ever seen it? If you haven't then don't but I just saw a little bit of it. It was about this woman and her kids. She was morbidly obese. She hadn't left her home for some time because of her weight and because of how others looked at her and treated her. And one of her kids nutted up because of peer pressure from some other kids and wanted her to go upstairs to her bedroom so I guess they couldn't see her when they came over. She slept on the couch in the living room and basically lived on the couch. She did. She was so crushed for her kids that she did. Anyway to make this story shorter, she died that night. I guess her heart couldn't take the strain of going upstairs. And the kids burned the house down around her body rather than have the EMT's or whoever make snide remarks about her size. And anytime I ever think it would be easier if I wasn't around I think about that. Weird, huh? I think about how many people it would take to carry me out, or how many men it would take to carry my coffin, or some sick person makeing crude remarks about my poor dead body. And ofcourse there are my children. They love me and would miss me even though I am obese. Plus, I just plain want to live. There is so much I want to do. So much I love doing. When the Lord calls me home I will go and I know it will be fine. But until then, I want to live and be healthy and strong. Not necessarily skinny or beautiful. Just be able to live well with some quality of life.

Bonnie, Well, I am so happy that you have decided to start the low carb diet, I just had a yummy tomatoe and bacon sandwhich (bacon in between two tomatoe slices) When I started I had four full bags of food I had to get rid of. The first day on the diet was murder, but if you get to craving sweets (God bless dr. atkins) There are these awesome atkins candy bars that you can have for your snacks, you can get them at the grocery store. There is also this wonderful low carb pasta that I got from Kroger. I am full all of the time, this diet (dont know why its called a diet) is so easy, I know you have the will power, so I am sure you will do just fine. Don't get discouraged and don't feel like you can't have the occassional ( dr peeper for me) coke, because you can and you dont need to punish yourself. As a matter of fact I make a gallon of tea with 3/4 cups of sugar and have that with my dinner every day. YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT, when you feel like cheating, it DOES NOT ruin your whole diet, just slows your weight loss for a couple of days. I have lost another 2 lbs, and feel great! My energy has increased and I am starting to walk again, not far, but it is a beginning. If you have any questions or just need someone to talk to, please email me. And good luck!