I’ve read somewhere that the average adult American has no less than five medical conditions at any given time. I suppose I’m not different. I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low good cholesterol, anemia, and I’m constantly treading the line between diabetic and prediabetic. Diabetes isn’t necessarily a condition I am afraid of. I was a small child when Dad was diagnosed. I know it’s hereditary. I always knew I’d be a fat adult, so I saw diabetes in my future one way or the other. For a long time, I was too busy, too unfocused, too hungry, and too filled with excuses to do anything about it. The first time my doctor called me to let me know that I was straight-up diabetic, I wasn’t surprised, but I still felt really stupid. I could’ve been going to my trainer who was on standby, ready to work with me whenever I was available. I’d seen countless dieticians and knew exactly what foods to eat and what not to eat. Too bad that knowing better doesn’t always result in doing better. I didn’t tell Mom, I didn’t tell Dad, and I didn’t tell Ahmed. I didn’t tell my best friends. I didn’t tell my shitty boyfriend, either. I just wrote one cryptic Facebook status and moved on with my life. It’s not like anyone was going to find out. There weren’t any obvious signs.
A month after I was diagnosed as diabetic so was Ahmed. He stayed in the hospital for almost a week. I sat with my family in Ahmed’s hospital room and probably cried the entire time. (As I do.) It was hard to see my brother in the hospital, for one, but also I finally was devastated by diabetes. Just not my own. Ahmed was laid up in the hospital with tubes all over him, and I was sitting there in my cute little dress and purse getting away with not telling anyone. I felt horrible and guilty for being able to hide my diagnosis in a way that he, with diabetes on top of his weird blood disorder, couldn’t. I just kept crying.
I didn’t have to take insulin. I didn’t have to prick myself to check my blood. I had a friend in college who was born diabetic and would make a huge show every few hours of testing her blood. She’d do it in front of everyone and then announce that she had to have some of whatever candy or chips anyone nearby was eating. I was thankful I didn’t have to turn into her. My doctor was all like, “You can if you want, but you don’t really need to.” She was hella chill. She prescribed a drug to control my blood sugar. She told me that with diet and exercise, along with the medication, I could get my diabetes under control. She also wanted me to consider weight-loss surgery. She asked if I ever had. As if.
People think of weight-loss surgery as the easy way out. Maybe even I thought of it as the easy way out when I first started considering it more than ten years ago in between eating disorders. But then I failed as a candidate for the surgery and went back to puking. By the time I finally did stop throwing up, I was working at the phone sex office filled with plus-size women. Everyone around me was full grown and thriving . . . Oh, I guess you wouldn’t call simulating blow jobs and wetting your hand to slap the other hand with it to fake the sound of a wet vagina thriving but, shit, I felt pretty accomplished back then! I was fine. Being among those beautiful, black, plus-size women helped me to find my own beauty and I am grateful for that. While I was there, I made friends with a girl who was bigger than I was and working toward her surgery. She already had a surgery date but was told to lose twenty pounds beforehand. Every day I’d watch her come into work from the gym, force herself to eat healthy foods she wasn’t accustomed to eating, and leave work to hit the gym again before going home. I wasn’t aware that you had to work that hard to get the surgery. Like if you’re going to work that hard, why not just keep doing it instead of having surgery? I was young and stupid. I had yet to realize that whatever weight you are, your body wants to stay in the general area. Losing more than twenty pounds and keeping them off is extremely hard. My friend was going to take a month or two from work in order to heal from the surgery, but in the meantime, she had to take every and any shift possible in order to save up money to pay her bills during her time off. She also planned to take phone sex calls from home while she was recuperating. Yes! You can totally take phone sex calls from the comfort of your own home! Isn’t this world amazing? I couldn’t take that kind of time off and I couldn’t take phone calls from home. I decided that surgery would be what I did when I had exhausted all other options.
Several years later my doctor was telling me I needed to start seriously considering the surgery. I had just started the first season of The Big C, my first TV series. When I wrapped that, I had to start filming Tower Heist, my first studio film. I didn’t know when she thought I could take the time even to consider surgery, much less have it! My career was basically brand-new. And people liked me in this body. I might not have been that busy in a smaller body. Sure, there were the haters, fat-shamers, and plain old assholes who called me terrible names and then claimed that they were really just worried about my health. (Bullshit. No, they aren’t. My parents are concerned for my health. Fat-shamers are just shitty, unhappy people, and they know it so they have to make fun of others in order to feel better about themselves.) But for the most part, people seemed fine with and even intrigued by my body. Probably because I was fine with it. I felt beautiful and, in fact, I was on People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful list that same year. While I knew that I was more than just my body—fat, skinny, or otherwise—I wasn’t sure people who followed me would be aware of that. I was new to fame and I didn’t yet know how not to give power to criticism and judgment. I couldn’t even kick myself for not having had the surgery sooner, because if I had, I wouldn’t have been right for the role of Precious and I’d probably still be on the phone sucking my cheeks to imitate the sound of a wet vagina. (There are SO many ways to fake a wet vagina! I’ll give you a list later!) The surgery, when to do it, when not to do it, if I should or shouldn’t do it, all felt like a catch-22. Damned if I do, diabetic if I don’t. I decided again to give a really big push to lose weight naturally. It would take longer than surgery and I’d probably never get skinny, but I thought I could keep my weight in a manageable range. That’s what I wanted. (I didn’t want to be a skinny person. How would my skinny body support the weight of my huge ego?) I rehired my trainer. I started eating better. I got super into kale and shit! I started taking the stairs more. My weight went down and I was back to being prediabetic again. Then I got busy and distracted and hungry and lazy again. The weight came back. I went back to training and lost fifteen pounds or so again. Then I got busy again, but this time I was in New Orleans. It is impossible to have a bad meal in New Orleans! It is almost as impossible to find vegetables that aren’t sautéed in butter among other delicious yet unhealthy things in New Orleans. I gained back all the weight and then some. No regrets. As I mentioned before, the food in NOLA is crazy delicious.
I finally made an appointment with the bariatric surgeon my doctor wanted me to see. I told no one. Again. No family, no friends. The receptionist told me about a seminar that I would have to go to before meeting the surgeon. A seminar with other people. Strangers. I was arguably one of the most famous fat people in America. That’s a crazy category. Anyway, I didn’t want to sit in a seminar full of strange people. I’m also super bad at saying things like “Hi! I’m famous. May I have special treatment now, please?” But I needed special treatment, so I had my doctor call and talk to the surgeon and explain why I should be able to skip the line. You bet your ass I went into that appointment with sunglasses and a wig. To be fair, that’s like my normal daily wear. I’m never not wearing sunglasses and a wig. But that day I was extra sneaky about it. The surgeon asked me all the normal questions and weighed me to make sure I was a candidate for the procedure. He seemed really tired of me the whole time. Like he had much better things to do. I thought, Perfect! This guy doesn’t care who I am. He’s just gonna be super professional about this and do his job. But then, as we were finishing up the appointment, he asked, “So you’re a singer or something?”
“No. Just an actor.”
“You don’t sing?”
“No.”
&n
bsp; “My nurse said you had an amazing voice. You don’t sing?”
“Again, no.”
“But you’re on Glee. Don’t you sing on Glee? They said you were on Glee.”
Here’s the thing. Amber Riley is on Glee. Amber Riley is not me. Amber is black, young, and plus-size. Amber is still not me. We don’t even look alike. No matter the many labels we may share, she and I remain two separate people. Amber happens to be one of my really good friends. I’m talking grown-up sleepovers, fixing each other plates, flying out to birthday celebrations, and borrowing each other’s wigs. She’s my homie. I will still be incredibly offended if anyone confuses one of us for the other. Not because I don’t want to be compared to her and her greatness, but because it’s racist. Anyway, this surgeon was now basically dead to me. I didn’t want him to do my surgery. I was actually still figuring out if I wanted it at all, but I knew this guy wasn’t the guy for me. He should’ve stopped asking after the first or second no. I was already a ball of anxiety about the procedure. I was alone. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone for privacy reasons, and to know that the staff there was talking and giggling about me, and not even the right me, turned me off. The surgeon told me that I would have to pass the psychological evaluation before going any further.
Good, I thought. I’ll just go ahead and fail my evaluation like before and then I won’t have to do any of this. Surprise! I passed! Seriously. I was not planning on passing. I told the truth about DBT therapy and the eating disorders. Sure, by now it had all happened almost ten years ago, but I didn’t realize that I would present the perfect picture of mental health. Now I had a decision to make. Move forward with someone I was uncomfortable with, find another surgeon, or just get super serious about losing weight naturally again.
After straight-up napping on it for a month, I chose option C. I took a few months off to eat whatever I wanted, and then I got super into training. It truly felt like my last chance. I could almost feel sickness one step behind me. Maybe even death. Ugh! That’s sooo dramatic! But it might have been true. Five years of secretly living with diabetes comfortably was starting to feel weird. I was afraid I couldn’t keep it up for much longer. Ahmed had ended up in the hospital again. Mom was now sick with some kind of infection and was dropping weight really quickly. When she’d first started slimming down after a lifetime of being heavy, she took it as a blessing. She started to worry a little later. She told me she’d been hitting the gym and eating grapefruit and stuff. I was suspicious since I never saw her eating anything but Oreos and boiled eggs. I had no idea she was sick. I was out of town a lot and she just didn’t tell me. Even when she ended up in the hospital, she was there a whole day before a friend of hers called to tell me. See where I get it? Everyone I loved was getting sick from a lifetime of eating like a POW survivor. My secret and I were probably running out of time.
The story of how I got to the bariatric department of UCLA Medical Center is long and filled with uninteresting twists, so I’ll spare you. I’m just glad I did. I wanted the surgery, and for the first time, I knew it. I realized that after eleven years of saying, “Surgery will be the last resort,” I was finally here. At my last resort. Another huge difference that let me know I was serious this time was that I told my favorite friend, Kia, I had an appointment to see some doctors about the possibility of weight-loss surgery.
“Okay. You know I don’t like doctors and hospitals, so tell me when our appointment is so that I can go pray and meditate on it before we go.”
“‘Our’? ‘We’? Nah. You don’t have to come with me,” I told her. She looked at me like I was stupid and rolled her eyes.
“Girl, let me go light this incense and meditate on our appointment,” she said, leaving the room. She was going with me. End of discussion. No matter how many times I insisted she could stay home or in the car or go to brunch during my appointment, she sat right next to me in that doctor’s office at UCLA Medical. I am forever grateful she didn’t listen to me.
The team at UCLA Medical is amazing! They were so cool and kind while explaining things to Kia and me. My surgeon said I’d have laparoscopic bariatric surgery. They’d go in, cut my stomach in half, sew it up, and pull what they took out of there. I almost asked if I could take it home with me in a jar, but I figured that was kind of weird. This surgery would reduce my stomach and limit my hunger and capacity to eat. After three weeks, my brain chemistry would change and I’d want to eat healthier. The surgeon said that the medical profession didn’t know exactly why that happens due to this surgery, but it does. Whatever! I’ll take it! Laparoscopic is kind of a scary word. I think it means that the surgery is somehow done with lasers. Fancy. Everything at the hospital was so fancy. I had an appointment before surgery with four different people, two surgeons, another doctor, and a dietician. When I arrived, there was a greeter waiting to take me up to the medical suite where my appointments were. Instead of sitting in the waiting room, I was ushered into an exam room. I stayed there for every single appointment and each doctor came to me. That’s fucking service! I’ve never seen such a thing. As much as I sometimes complain about being so recognizable, I was very grateful for this privacy and for these people making sure I could get the surgery and heal and be back at work ASAP.
The scariest part about all of this—more than the two-to-three-night hospital stay, more than the lasers beaming into my stomach, more than having to rely on everyone keeping my secret—was going back to work. The surgeons said that I would lose weight really fast at first. I would be shooting season three of Empire in three months. I had a very established body in seasons one and two. I knew I’d already look different for the first episode and that by the last show of the season I might be completely unrecognizable. Viewers would notice. Should the writers address it in the script? Wasn’t I supposed to give the show’s creators a heads-up that I was thinking about the procedure? How could I do this to them? Was I a horrible person? What about the costume department? I was going to start shrinking during production. Just when they thought they had my size, it would go down and they’d be foiled again. They’re all great people! Why would I do this to them? Shouldn’t I take the time to consider what I was doing to the show?
“No,” Kia said.
Just no. Kia is THE BEST! She’s right. This is my body! Mine. Yes, I had a job, several jobs, but my number-one job was to make sure that I was healthy. That I was alive. Explaining my changing body to viewers, the costumes fitting—that was all someone else’s job. My cast and crew loved and supported me, and I was sure the inconvenience of my morphing body would be outweighed by the pride they’d feel for my handling my own shit and getting healthy by any means necessary. Or . . . maybe the surgery wouldn’t be a success. Maybe I wouldn’t lose any weight at all. Maybe everything would stay the same. Maybe there’d be nothing but my health to worry about. Forever.
My appointment with the bariatric team was on April 7. My surgery was set for May 9. That’s what the professionals call “fast as fuck.” I had to lose ten pounds at least before the surgery to help the laser get to my stomach. I didn’t super know what that meant. I just got my ass in gear. Ten pounds is actually pretty easy for me to lose. If that’s all I need to do. Unfortunately, I had a million things to do, so Kia helped me find and hire a private chef. That’s hella fancy, y’all! Kia also found a boxing trainer to help me work out. After a few weeks of this regime on top of working at all kinds of stressful things that I usually stress-eat through, I was exhausted! I couldn’t wait for the surgery. It was going to be nice to veg out for a day or two.
On my birthday I had Popeye’s chicken and biscuits, fries, and a Dr Pepper. Later that day, I was at a wedding so I drank plenty of champagne and tequilas with lime. I was going to miss food and booze. After surgery, I would be on a liquid diet for three weeks as my new stomach would not be able to handle much. Then my brain would tell me to crave salad instead of pizza . . . allegedly. My lifelong relationship with food had to change. This was sadder th
an I thought it would be. The way I lived, the way I thought, the way I ate, the things I did with my friends and family, the way I watched TV, the way I self-soothed and celebrated had to change. I would have to do all of those things without food. I didn’t know how, but it would kill me if I didn’t figure it out.
The day before the surgery was the beginning of the liquid diet. Kia vowed to do it with me. I loafed around all day reading a script that Nick Cannon had written for me. The character was a plus-size girl who is called fat ass and hippo. I thought how glad I’d be when my body was no longer mentioned in script ideas for me. “My body is not a character description.” My good friend Amber Riley once said that. I would call Nick in a few days and have him remove those names. Boy, would he be pissed by the time we shot the movie. I called my mom but didn’t share anything about the operation, and then Kia and I went to bed pretty early. We had to be at the hospital at 3 a.m. the next morning. In the middle of the night, I woke up, showered, and packed a small bag for my hospital stay. Before getting in the car, Kia anointed my head with oil and we prayed together for a successful surgery. I was filled with butterflies but kept imagining them being shot down with the surgeon’s lasers. We listened to the radio and sang along on the way to UCLA. We were both scared. I was glad to have someone to be scared with. When we got to the hospital, we checked in; I changed into the hospital gown, took two selfies, and waited for the doctors. They came and I reminded them that I needed to make it out of surgery. “Do everything you can to keep me alive. Even if you have to kill someone else, do it. I have to survive!” My surgeon chuckled and said I’d be fine. I believed him. I worried a little about no one in my family knowing I was having the surgery. If I died during the procedure, they’d not only be shocked and upset, they’d be pissed at Kia! That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person. She calmly sat with me, and reminded me to have “faith over fear,” and helped me breathe through my panic. Soon I was in the operating room, and after what seemed like even sooner, I was in recovery drifting in and out of consciousness.
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