My biggest disappointment as a fat mom was pictures, or the lack thereof. When my children were born, I did the obligatory hospital photos with them, me looking dazed but happy alongside my pink newborns. And even when we first brought them home, there are shots of me outside holding them with the stork in our yard announcing their birth, giving them their first bath, or simply gazing into their tiny faces. But very soon after, I started to do my usual: avoiding the camera at all costs. I, as a fat woman, became the official picture taker. In other words, I avoided being in the shot by being the one behind the lens, which is really ridiculous when you think about it—my husband makes his living as a photographer, for Pete’s sake! But I could not stand seeing photos of myself, hated the thought of leaving tangible proof behind that I was ever that big. Remember: In my mind, my situation was temporary; I was always on the verge of unlocking the mystery and finally getting the weight off.
Yes, I regretted not having pictures of me posing with Emma in her first Halloween costume, or a photo of Eli and me as he met the Easter Bunny for the first time. Pictures and videos of all my children’s birthday parties will show my mother-in-law or my mom presenting the kids with their birthday cakes, waiting for the candles to be blown out. It’s a job I should have done as their mother, but I was too embarrassed to get in front of the camera, so I stayed behind it. It made me sad, to be sure, but I figured, or at least hoped, that there would one day be plenty of pictures of me with my kids, once all of the weight was gone.
In my darker moments I beat myself up for once again letting down the ones I love. Of course my kids will notice I am not in any of the pictures. Will they wonder if I was even present for their big events? I put so much time and planning into birthday parties and Christmases. Will my children ever know how much effort I gave to make their lives picture-perfect, including leaving out photographic evidence of their big fat mother? I used my guilt to further torture myself, providing proof that in addition to having a husband I didn’t deserve, I now added two wonderful children whom I had no right to have in my life.
In the moments I tried to feel better, I would remind myself that my kids were too young to realize what was going on. I didn’t have to be embarrassed around them, because they didn’t know what fat meant or that Mommy was morbidly obese. But we all know that kids are far more perceptive than we give them credit for—mine certainly have shown me that time and time again. One day, when Emma was barely two, I was on my way out the door to pick her up from preschool when I spilled Coke on the front of my shirt. I hastily changed and hurried off to her school. As soon as I walked into her class, she came up to me and said, “Mommy change her shirt?” She remembered that four hours before, I had worn a red shirt and now I was dressed in black. And she was two! What else did she notice? I wondered. Could she see that her mommy was bigger than all the other mommies? Did that make any sort of impression on her? I started to really contemplate what my being so overweight meant for my children.
I wanted to set a good example for Emma. I so didn’t want her to struggle with her weight and her appearance like I had as a child—and I certainly would never want her to evolve into the mess that I found myself in as an adult. On the one hand, I was very strict with what she ate and the food choices that she was allowed, but what would happen when she was old enough to challenge me? How long before she realized I was setting standards for her that I didn’t bother to keep for myself? And Eli—I know it sounds childish and stupid—but I wanted my son to be proud of his mother, to feel good about having me meet his friends. Were we that far from the your-mom-is-so-fat jokes among his peers? Would I see the day when he didn’t want me to pick him up in front of the school, afraid of what others might think?
I knew being a fat mom would only grow tougher. Eventually I would have to put on a bathing suit, for heaven’s sake. Michael wouldn’t always be there to take the kids swimming for me—eventually I’d have to figure out how to get them to the beach and pool. And wearing a T-shirt over my bathing suit as a cover-up wasn’t going to work, I learned. Years before I had kids, Michael and I went with my brother, his wife, and their young daughter to a water park. Normally I would never have agreed to such an outing, so afraid was I of having to wear a bathing suit in public. But we were on a beach trip with them for a week, and I really wanted to see my then-three-year-old niece enjoy her first trip on a water slide. Michael convinced me to go, and I agreed, thinking I wouldn’t get in any kind of water, I would simply watch from the sidelines. Even though I’d managed to go the whole week without one, I did actually wear a bathing suit, just in case, but I put a T-shirt and capri pants over it, thinking I would never, ever take them off.
Well, I don’t know what in the world happened to my senses, but by the end of the day, I was tired of looking at everyone else have the fun; I wanted to participate. Michael could hardly believe it, but I followed him and my brother up the big, winding staircase to the tall, swirling water slide. My sister-in-law and niece cheered me on, staying down at the wading pool to watch me slide down. I couldn’t believe I was doing it, but I figured one time wouldn’t hurt, and besides, I planned to still wear my T-shirt over my bathing suit. Plenty of people did that to avoid sunburn, right? For once, I decided to let go and have some fun.
We got to the top, and I watched my brother go down the slide, then Michael. When it was my turn, the young teenage boy manning the slide stopped me. “I’m sorry ma’am, you can’t wear your shirt on the slide.”
What? He said something about how my shirt could get caught and I could get stuck. I was mortified, but I didn’t have time to stand there and debate what to do, there was a line of people waiting for their turn. I sure as heck wasn’t going to draw even more attention to myself by trying to argue with the kid. I quickly took off my T-shirt and sat down at the top of the slide, putting my shirt across my body. I was thinking (hoping) it would provide me enough coverage.
Of course, you know what happened. The slide was twisty and curvy and wet and jumbled and I got thrown all around. Before I knew it, I hit the daylight and the wading pool in one big splash, legs all akimbo, my T-shirt crumpled in my hands, providing no coverage whatsoever. I’m splayed out like a Thanksgiving Day turkey, and the best part is, I have my whole family there waiting for me, taking it all in. Michael immediately stepped in to help me, while my brother turned and walked away as discreetly as he could. As gracefully as possible, I stood up in the water and got the heck out of there as fast as I could, ringing out my T-shirt and putting it back on, sopping wet. Humiliating doesn’t even come close to properly describing the situation. It would be years and years before I dared to don a bathing suit in public again.
Watching on the sidelines, fully clothed while my kids swam, or trying to cover up my body with a T-shirt, was not going to work as my kids got older. And it wasn’t just water parks or Santa trains at the mall that I had to fear.
Before I had children, I learned that as a morbidly obese person, I had to avoid amusement parks at all costs. Growing up I had always loved visiting fairs and thrill rides, always game to try the latest and greatest roller coaster. As I started to gain weight, I suppose it didn’t occur to me that not all of these attractions would be available to me. When I’d reached about 250 pounds, Michael and I visited Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. They had a brand-new roller coaster at the time called the Alpengeist—it was one of those that ran on rails above your head and your feet dangled down. The lines were long and the day was hot, but Michael and I were excited to ride, so we settled in for the wait. As I looked around, I started reading all the signs that said how the Alpengeist wasn’t for everyone and how you should avoid the ride if you were pregnant or had heart trouble. Well duh, I thought to myself. My own heart dropped to my knees, however, when I read the other signs. They said that “some larger passengers” might have difficulty fitting on the ride and that there was one row of seats reserved for “larger riders.” I gulped. I felt silly, because it hadn�
��t occurred to me that I might not fit on the ride. I hadn’t had any trouble with the other coasters at the park, but this was a newer, fancier ride, and apparently it had restrictions. How would we know where the line for the larger seats was? Would I have to humiliate myself and ask? Plus, could I even bring myself to tell Michael I was worried about such a thing? I looked at him while he people-watched, oblivious to my worry. I made a comment about having a headache, trying to set the stage for a possible bailout.
As we inched closer, I strained to see where the larger seats were and which line we needed to go to in order to get them. I didn’t see any signs, so I just started to look for “the larger people,” and sure enough I noticed the beefier men tended to go to the row in the middle. As deftly as I could, I steered Michael toward that middle row, waiting for him to figure out what was going on. He was oblivious. As we stood and waited, I wondered what would happen if I was too big for the fat seats. Would I be asked to step off the ride? Surely that had happened before, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine it happening to me. I would be so devastated, so embarrassed. My heart pounded and I felt nauseous. Michael finally commented on how quiet I was, but then went on to tease that it must be because I was scared of the ride. I played along, not wanting him to know the real reason for my fear. All I wanted to do was throw up and run away.
It was finally our turn. I got into the fat seat and held my breath while we waited for the harness to automatically come down. Mine did, and it fit me—just barely. I was safe. Michael didn’t know any better. I’d managed another escape.
I knew a life with kids wouldn’t provide many chances to avoid fat pitfalls. I felt I had to get the weight off—and fast—to avoid further embarrassment and humiliating my kids. Life in the (fat) mommy lane would not get any easier.
10
Last Straws
I’m a big believer in signs. Fate, destiny, religion—whatever you want to call it—I think it’s real and true. Whenever I have a big question mark in my life, a crossroads I am trying to navigate, I pray to God for answers, and then I sit back and wait to see what happens. Surely something will point me to where I am supposed to go. Somehow, I will find the way.
When it came to the possibility of having gastric bypass surgery, however, I didn’t want to see the signs. When I look back, fate was screaming the right thing at me, but I refused to hear the message. I’m not sure if it was stubbornness or fear or a little bit of both, but I just didn’t want to accept that surgery was the route I needed to take in order to save my life. I ignored the signs for a long, long time—almost until I couldn’t deny them anymore. Everything I tried to lose weight failed miserably, and at the end of 2007, I was very near crisis mode.
I was seeing a nurse practitioner about my diabetes. Actually I’d been seeing her for a couple of years, ever since my son was born and I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She first put me on a few different oral medications and advised me to keep track of my blood sugar numbers. I only took the meds half the time, and I couldn’t bring myself to perform regular finger-stick tests. I suppose you could call it denial, although I was quite aware of what was happening to me, both physically and mentally. I just couldn’t accept that at thirty-three years old, I was a diabetic for the rest of my life—that my daily existence would involve checking my blood sugar, taking medicine, and saying good-bye to certain foods forever.
I kept thinking that there had to be a different way, a better outcome for me. I felt if I could just lose the weight, if I could only get a hold of my morbid obesity, then the diabetes would take care of itself, would disappear forever. Even though the nurse practitioner told me that now I was likely too far gone for that to happen, I simply chose not to believe her. I went in every month to talk about my “progress,” giving excuses for why I hadn’t brought in my blood sugar numbers. No worries, she told me, she would just perform blood tests to see how I was doing. And the news wasn’t good, not at all. The various oral medications she’d put me on were not working, my blood sugar was way too high. Of course I wasn’t helping things out with what I was eating and drinking—I was up to more than a two-liter of soda a day, plus all the high-carb, sugary foods on which I’d always binged. Each month she set out a new plan of action, and every single month, it failed. I was getting much, much worse.
Enter Sign One. In December of that year, I attended a seminar held by two local doctors who performed gastric bypass surgery. I’d promised Michael I would look into the procedure, and even though I still very much felt as though it was not the solution for me, I knew that I at least owed Michael the effort of finding out more. Truly, I believed I would go to the meeting and gather enough evidence that this was not something that would work for me, and I would be able to take that proof to Michael, getting rid of the idea once and for all. To me, the thought of having the surgery was out of the question. And sitting in the lobby of the health center, looking at all the others waiting for the seminar to start, my beliefs were reinforced, at least in my mind. There were easily a hundred people there, and for once, I was not the largest one in the room! Sad to say, but that was a habit I’d picked up in recent years: scanning whatever public place I was in to see if I outweighed everyone else. Increasingly I found that I was indeed the largest person, and I would use that realization to further beat myself up. But leave it to a gastric bypass seminar to show me that there were, in fact, people worse off than I was. Heck, one person was even brought in on a rolling hospital bed! I couldn’t help but eavesdrop as one of the coordinators explained to the man’s loved ones that you have to be relatively well, physically, in order to undergo gastric bypass surgery, and perhaps now was not the best time for that person to be there. Yikes!
I was pretty nonchalant as I waited for the seminar to start, leafing through the literature, only half interested, really. I wanted to hurry up and get it over with so I could put the whole idea behind me. One of the doctors took the podium and gave a brief, generic welcome. And then he threw out a statistic that stopped me cold in my lined-with-denial tracks.
Ninety-five percent of those with type 2 diabetes who have gastric bypass surgery are cured.
I gulped. He had my attention.
The doctor continued with more impressive information about how a gastric bypass can improve one’s life, and it was all well and good, but nothing spoke to me like that first bit of information. Cured! No finger sticks, no glucose monitors, no medication. I was now thirty-five, and I could be free of diabetes, seemingly for the rest of my life. I could hardly breathe, I was so excited by the possibility.
I opened my ears, and my heart, and really listened to the doctor, really read the charts on the PowerPoint monitor. It was mostly stuff I already knew, having read a lot about the surgery over the years. When he came to the part about the patient’s responsibilities after the surgery, I perked up once again. If I were going to even entertain the idea of having this procedure—and I still wasn’t sure I was—I definitely needed to know in what ways it could go wrong, what would cause it to be unsuccessful. I’d started to hear about people having the surgery, losing their weight, and then years later starting to gain the weight back. This was unfathomable to me. Why go through all of that—the risks of surgery, the expense—if only for it not to work? To me, it made no sense.
And then came the second stat that would stop me cold: The number one reason gastric bypass patients regain their weight is because they don’t give up carbonated drinks.
That piece of news was every bit as breathtaking for me as the diabetic cure. No more soft drinks? Ever? Talk about unfathomable. There was no way I could envision my life without Mountain Dew. That sounds like a ridiculous statement, I know, but please understand: I didn’t drink coffee. Soft drinks were how I got my get-up-and-go in the morning, how I relaxed in the evening, and what I used to drink in all the hours in between. I didn’t drink alcohol, I rarely enjoyed fruit juice—it was all soda, all the time. I knew it had a lot to do with my weight proble
ms, and it certainly had everything to do with my inability to get my diabetes under control. But I just figured one day, when I was finally able to get a handle on my weight, I would switch to, and grow to love, diet soda. I knew plenty of people who said once they made the change, and really stuck with it, they hardly noticed the difference. I just always figured that would be my story, too. But no, the doctor said carbonation of any kind stretches the stomach and a small stomach pouch is what allows gastric patients to consume less food. Years of drinking sodas could stretch it back to where it was before, a fate that I couldn’t imagine living after possibly going through with the surgery.
I almost got up and walked out right then. Remember: To me, there was no way I could go through with having the surgery with any sort of thought that I would fail. And I couldn’t imagine my life without soft drinks, period. As excited as I was about the news for diabetics, I really thought the no-soda rule sealed the deal for me as far as not having the surgery.
I stayed for the rest of the meeting, and at the conclusion I signed my name and phone number on the sheet for a possible appointment. But as I left the seminar, I felt resigned to the fact that this surgery was not for me, just as I had thought when I arrived. I had the evidence I needed to show Michael that it just wouldn’t work. But I wasn’t nearly as happy as I thought I would be. I left the health center and hit the first fast-food restaurant I could find. I ate the double cheeseburger, fries, and onion rings as quickly as I could. I didn’t care if I smelled like fried food when I got home. Who was I trying to kid anyway? I was now hopeless and sad, convinced that the one ace I had in my back pocket, gastric bypass surgery, was now gone to me forever. Sure, I’d been looking for any sort of sign not to have the surgery, but I always kept the idea as a last resort. Now I was convinced my last straw was spent.
Designated Fat Girl Page 15