Trying to Survive

 Don't get me wrong - I know my eating habits are mostly to blame, here.  I know I am an emotional/boredom eater kind of gal and I have to figure out why I eat before I can stop doing it.  I know that now and am so ready to face whatever that it and try to change it.  But my eating habits are not the only problem, anymore.

 Just a year ago, I was thirty pounds lighter and hiking and fairly active.  I went to see a doctor for some stomach trouble I had been having for a few years and they found seven, muffin-sized polyps in my upper stomach - it's extremely rare, the doctors involved told me that in thirty years and fifty thousand surgeries, they had never seen someone's stomach in the shape mine was.  In addition to the polyps in my upper stomach area, I had hemmorhagic hypertrophic folds all through the lining of my stomach, likely caused by the long-time use of pain medications I took for migraines.

I had to have surgery to remove the polyps and stop the bleeding in my stomach.  Because I have sleep apnea, they should have tubed and kept me tubed in recovery for my breathing (I had stopped breathing under anesthesia for the endoscopy that found the polyps), but they didn't.  They gave me a lot of pain meds, and I ended up in ICU after I did a code blue in front of my husband and mother in law. 

Since then, I have been unable to exercise - first they told me no exercise for six months after the surgery, but even if it had been six days, my health deteriorated to the point I could no longer walk from my living room to my bedroom without being unable to breathe.  By February of this year, my inability to breathe deeply had gotten so bad, I could not put on my clothes without coming close to fainting.  I couldn't lift my arms to do my curlers.  I had stopped sleeping - I had gone a week without even a nap, and was retaining vast amounts of water in my legs and ankles.  I ended up in the hospital again, where they told me that the sleep apnea was so severe it may have damaged the right side of my heart and that may have damaged my lungs, but the tests all said that hadn't happened and at the end of days of testing, no one could tell me why I couldn't breathe or why I was holding water.  They gave me a lot of meds and sent me home - this time though, we had finally found a c-pap mask I could tolerate and I learned to use it.  They told me that I was so sick, that if something didn't change I would be dead in a year.

Ok - I have three kids.  All are either special needs or have medical problems - they need me to be there.  I went home and made friends with my c-pap machine and used it nightly.  The first couple of weeks I saw an improvement in my sleep, but it's been pretty much the same as it was before since then. I WANT to exercise, but can't breathe if I try. I stopped eating salt, I bought herbs, low cal diet books, started using Lean Cuisine, etc and eating lots of zuchinni and the weight keeps piling on because I can't move around enough to burn more calories than i take in.  So I started eating crap again.

I know this body - I am not well.  It's been five months since they told me I needed to change or else and I feel  - god, useless, hopeless, stupid, ignorant. I don't sleep, I can't exercise. The weight keeps coming on, my feet are beginning to look like something out of science fiction and the hardest part of the sleep apnea is the feeling of terror I experience seven or eight times a day when I wake, whooping for air, from a doze I fell into while working online (I work from home) or in the tub, etc - you wake with such a feeling of "I'M DYING- NO AIR- I'M DYING" - this incredible dump of adrenaline and other stress hormones into my system over, and over, and over, day after day.

I'm one of those lucky women who was once stop traffic gorgeous.  I used to want to lose weight so I could be beautiful again, or just invisible the way thin people can be (go into a public place and not be stared at). Maybe so I don’t embarrass my kids.  Now, I just want to survive and I don't think I will without the surgery.  It's not vanity, it's not a lark - I'm afraid I'm going to die and this is the last chance.  I need to lose a lot of weight, quick.  I'm all for changing my thinking, my habits, finding out why I eat when I don’t want to eat – but in the immediate, I need to lose a lot of weight or I am going to die.

I never wanted the surgery, before.  I don’t want it, now (I need it – big difference).  The side effects and potential complications scared me.  I would joke with my husband that I would rather be fat.  But here I am, ready to do the only thing left and I researched it a lot online.  I decided on roux n y – the gastric bypass.  I asked around and found the name of a specialist.  I did background checks on him and then did checks on the hopitals he is affiliated with.  I made an appointment.  Then, just to be sure, I called my insurance company.  I knew that with the severity of the sleep apnea, the pain in my knees, the breathing problems, they weren’t going to deny me, but just to be sure.  My BMI is over 50 – I’m in like Flynt.

That was yesterday.  You know the drill – my PPO does not cover weight loss surgery of any kind, no matter what, the lady on the phone told me. After I hung up, I went through about three hours where I was sure I was going to die and feeling generally sorry for myself.  Then I got on the net and found that, well, insurance companies don’t want to cover any of us for this anymore.  

Now I’m here.  I’m scared to death.  I don’t know what my next move is or should be.  I’m not the kind of woman who sits back and waits for life to happen to me – I make things happen.  But this stymies me.  How do I make those people care whether or not I live or die?