Always the big girl

Isn’t it funny, I don’t remember making the decision to have weight-loss surgery. I remember talking to my doctor about it, and I remember hearing that the wait list was huge and it would probably be years before I heard anything (I’m in Canada. Nova Scotia had, for a long time, a grand total of ONE bariatric surgeon.) but I don’t actually remember thinking “okay, you can do this!”

But, that was ten years ago, so I’m sure I did.

No, Canada’s health system (god bless the health system) isn’t TEN-YEARS-slow. The one bariatric surgeon left, and his replacement brought his waiting list with him, pushing people farther down. I’m not really sure how many times that happened (I was having babies and living life) but in March of 2018 I got a letter in the mail inviting me to a seminar, where I would meet the surgeon, the dietician, the nutritionalist, people that had had the surgery before, and thirty-forty other people who were interested in becoming healthy through vsg.

After I got done oh-my-Godding, I went.

I’ve been fat my entire life. Well, not my entire life. Probably the last “skinny” picture I have of myself was in fourth grade. Then I got big, and stayed big. Fast forward through college and meeting my husband, and I was in a size 20 when I got married. After two kids, I was in a 24. Pushing a 26, even.

I hated it, but between the asthma in my lungs and the arthritis in my knees, I wasn’t really able to exercise much. I tried most of the big-name diets, and got really, really good at losing the same twenty pounds over and over again. I’m sure you’ve heard this story before. Most of us who are bigger have been grappling with the same desperate see-saw between disease and self-hatred. And diabetes ran rampant through my family.

I’d managed to avoid that particular problem so far, but my doctor was muttering things about being ‘pre-diabetic’ and ‘the older you get, the harder it’s going to be to lose this, Jess!’ and other dire things.

And I was sick of the way I looked, sick of the way I felt, sick of being tired.

The question was, what was I going to do??

Always the big girl

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The decision

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