So.....what happens next doc?

After all the talking, the thinking, the weighing up pros and cons the decision has been made. I’m having surgery. I thought that was the hard part done; I couldn’t have been more wrong. In the past few months, I’ve come to find that I had some rather large misconceptions about bariatric surgery.

See I had researched already, it’s not like I had gone into this blind but for some reason, I thought all of the hard work started after surgery. If you even call it hard work…and this where my misconception #1 was smashed.

Having Gastric Sleeve surgery is not the ‘easy way’ or ‘cheating’.

This is pretty damn serious and no joke. Sitting there with the surgeon reading over all of the potential complications is pretty jarring. Making the decision to have surgery isn’t a quick fix and easy option to lose a bit of weight quickly. It is a complete and total overhaul of your life, but I still had those nagging thoughts in the back of my head that I was taking the cheats way out. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time examining my own reasons for why I’ve thought in the past that weight loss surgery is the easy option.

Reason 1 - Other people lose weight with a healthy eating diet and exercise.

If they have been able to do it why couldn’t I. Am I a failure and that's why I’m having to cheat and have surgery?

As I mentioned in an early post; my body is fuuuuucked. I’ve had eating disorders for as long as I can remember. I’ve straight up damaged my oesophagus from making myself sick for so many years. I lost a full octave in range when it comes to singing, and I’m now pretty much banned from having music playing in the car and only listening to podcasts and audiobooks so I won’t sing along and flare up my throat again. Like seriously, who doesn’t think of their car as their own personal karaoke studio where they are free to belt out the high notes and totally dominate right? Sadly, this isn’t supposed to be me anymore…I think I’m getting off track.

Eating disorders, on top of PCOS and Fibromyalgia, have made trying to balance my weight, let alone lose it, become a next to impossible task. I watch what I eat, I have very long stretches where I’m a clean, green pure food eating machine. I practically live at the gym and what do I get for it? Next to no weight loss at all. Just because something works for some people doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. We all have bodies that are built differently, have gone through different stories and wear different battle scars.

It is not a failure to turn to weight loss surgery. It is just merely another tool to have in your arsenal in the war to regain control over your body.

Reason 2 - I’m highly competitive and I don’t want to cheat my way to victory.

Again this ties so closely into reason 1. I know people that have had weight loss surgery and I’ve seen their success but my painfully competitive nature looked at them and thought “I can beat them and do it all on my own.”

It’s taken me a wee while to learn that my life is not a competition. This isn’t The Biggest Loser (which is a terrible show if you ask me). There is no prize for losing weight faster than someone else, or without the need for surgery to aid me along. Who the hell do I really think I’m competing against other than my own personal demons.

The more I’ve been digging into everything around having surgery the more I’ve accepted within myself that this is no cheats way out. It is going to be a damned hard road with a change in lifestyle that will be with me forever.

So, now that I had made the decision, started addressing my own misconceptions the journey began. I had already done a lot of research myself into different doctors and clinics in Auckland that did gastric sleeve surgery, read a lot of different reviews, spoken to people that had previously had surgery and had decided on Auckland Weight Loss Clinic so it was extra comforting for me when my GP recommended them and wrote a referral for me. We were on the same wavelength, good things happen we our thinking is aligned. I went along to have all of my blood tests done that my GP knew they would want to look through and it was then something I kind of brushed aside from my mind for a while. For all of the thinking, researching and prepping I had been doing it suddenly became something that I just stopped thinking about…until the phone call came.

I won’t lie, I was nervous when I finally got the call for an appointment with my surgeon. This was the person that had it in their control to actually turn around and say to me that maybe surgery wasn’t right for me. There could have been mitigating things in my health that precluded me from being a good fit for surgery or he could have turned around and said that yes I was a great fit and it would be all good to go making this whole process suddenly be very real indeed.

My first consultation in October went well with my surgeon. It was reassuring to feel that I gelled with him quite quickly. I didn’t get a ‘hot shot, know it all surgeon’ vibe from him, nor an ‘old school, stuck in my ways, not willing to accept new techniques and skill training’ vibe either. In fact, my surgeon was very open, comforting, knowledgeable and said I was a great fit for surgery. Yes, I have health issues, but not the kind that increases surgery complication risks. Despite my size, I’m quite fit, I have a good sense already of what to come and apparently…I ask smart questions, so go me.

When he then turned around and said that there was an available date for surgery on the 30th of Jan I thought he was joking. Something as momentous as this it felt like there should be a longer wait. Back in October, the date felt crazy close. Now in December…exceptionally, scarily close.

The date was tentatively booked in because before it could be confirmed there were more blood tests, a first consultation with the nutritionist and one with the health phycologist.

Misconception #2 - Anyone can just decide to have surgery and go do it.

Meeting with the nutritionist was easy. I had no qualms at all about that. Hubby came along with me since he would be affected by my new eating set up after surgery as well so it was good he was there to see what we both are in for. Meeting the health psychologist however was not as easy. This was the one that had me worried.

See, she has the power to talk to my surgeon with recommendations that I might not be a good option for the surgery; or at least to delay it. Do I have completely unrealistic expectations of what’s to come? Do I have underlying body dysmorphia that the surgery would only exacerbate? Am I not mentally prepared for what this surgery would mean to my long-term future? Am I just batshit crazy?

I’m one of those people that are comfortable being a little bit less than normal. I like what I like, I’m a bit of a geek, I’m a bit off centre at times and you know what; I like it. Prior to going to the psychologist though I suddenly was afraid that all of my little quirks and being comfortable with laughing at myself and how I look would be perceived wrong and suddenly I would find I wouldn’t be able to have surgery. Sometimes when I get these fears in my head next to nothing will help in removing them.

In the lift heading up to my appointment, I kept saying “act normal, be normal” which I thought I was saying in my head but was actually saying out loud…so that probably made me look less normal.

I.Was.Nervous.

I think it lasted for all of about two minutes after I met her and we started talking.

For anyone who’s never been to a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a therapist it’s great. It’s like a talk show where you are the only guest and it’s all about you. For some people that may be a daunting prospect, but for a self-confessed talker like me it’s great. Very quickly my fears went away as we talked about why I wanted surgery, what I hoped it would accomplish for me, what were some of the things I wanted to do after I had surgery. Very quickly it was established that I was going into this with my eyes wide open, that I’m very consciously aware of the fact that I will probably have a body resembling a rolly dog by the end of it (more on loose skin later), very aware of what my eating will look like after surgery and that it is going to be a hard road ahead of me. I’m going into this from the mindset of ‘this is to give me the body I need to keep up with the rest of me and to see me through a hopefully longer, healthier life.’

So with that, I was signed off, I’m not crazy after-all, my surgery date went from tentative to confirmed pending the results of my final pre-surgery consult and I’m on my way.

The fact that there is still so much to do before surgery, that was not what I was expecting.