There always has to be a second step

As hard as the first step was, it was inevitable that I had to take a second step.  

Let me be the first to tell you, that second step sure was a doozie.  It to date, has been the most painful, heartbreaking, and helpless experience that I've ever had, yet rewarding still. I was having a good day and went to work and came home and was playing on the computer when I got the call from my mom that my dad had coded in the nursing home.  He was up laughing and talking one minute and then the next time they went by his room, he was blue and unresponsive. In a matter of minutes, my life changed forever.  My sister (who is also my best friend and a huge part of my support system) met the nursing home staff and ambulance at the hospital with him and she went against his wishes (he had a do not resuscitate order) and had him intubated so we could get there to say goodbye.  The hospital was a small outfit and said he was "too sick" to stay there. They didn't have the staff or technology to care for him and that he needed to be transferred to a bigger facility.  So we had to send him by ambulance (because he was too big to fly) and risked him having a heart attack on the way to the hospital where I work.  When he got there, it took them four hours to stabilize him and it was six to eight hours of us just waiting before we were even able to go back and see him.  They put him directly in ICU and kept him on life support so all of the family could have a chance to see him before he left us and for his brother to fly in from Houston.  He passed on May 1st -- exactly 11 months ago today.  It was all so unexpected.  Gone - at the tender age of 52.  

For a long time, my sister felt guilty for going against his wishes and prolonging his life but I will forever be grateful to her.  Because of her decision, my mother, sister, husband and I got to spend the last days of his life with him. When he finally died, he was surrounded by the people that loved him the most and to me, thats the greatest gift she's ever given me.  As painful as it was, I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a second step in the same journey.  I feel like now, looking back at it, that the second step is what catapulted me towards the third step.  

My father was a large man.  He was 6'4'' (when he stood up straight) and got up to 600 lbs.  2 weeks before he passed, he was down to 420.  He died from Congestive Heart Failure and septic pneumonia.  His lungs were completely fluid-filled and his blood pressure was unstable.  A lot of his problems were co-morbidities - complications of being a heavy person.  Losing my dad and knowing how much he suffered his entire life from being big and realizing how much I am like him really made me take a hard look at my life, myself, and my future.  I realized that I have his body frame (yet on a smaller female build), some of his medical problems, and his sensitivity and if something doesn't change, that I'm on the same path and headed in the same direction. 

I know everyone has their time and it was just his time to go but it was still the hardest step for me in this journey and in my journey of life in general.  I know loss is something everyone faces but it seems like our choices in life creates our path to our future and I have made the decision to start holding myself accountable for my own choices.  I want to make better choices for myself so I can be a better person, a healthier person, and get the chance to follow my dreams.    

With the first step, a journey begins

In October of 2009, my journey began in the body of a 513 pound woman.  I had the swine flu at the beginning of the month and could've died and then the next week, they gave me a new drug and I went to work and almost passed out on my way out to the car.  My husband came to get me and rushed me over to Urgent Care.  I apparently had an allergic reaction to the drug and it sent my BP through the roof and completely out of control. I was rushed by ambulance from the little outpatient clinic at a different branch of our hospital to the big ER of the main campus of the hospital I work in. The typical thing that happens when obese people - especially morbidly obese people go to the doctor, they blame everything on your weight.  I was flash-judged by the ER physician who told me it was my weight (SHOCKER RIGHT?) and he actually said to me "Congratulations, you have high blood pressure". They pumped me full of diuretics and gave me a medication for the high blood pressure - which apparently I am also allergic to and the blood pressure medication actually caused a cellulitis effect to my legs. They sent me home anyway, not doing anything about the cellulitis and made me walk out of the ER from the very back.  I wasn't even walked out or wheeled out by a nurse.  I left there feeling short-changed, betrayed, and disappointment in the facility that they treated a fellow employee that way. To the ER doc though, I was just a morbidly obese person in denial who wouldn't help myself and that was very frustrating to me.

Under a lot of pressure from my co-workers and my 6 specialists/physicians, I saw a local bariatric surgeon. He was supposed to be the "it" guy that introduced bariatric surgery to the area.  I went excited and convinced that I was a great candidate for surgery and he could help me.  When I finally met him, he was arrogant, kurt, and showed no signs of compassion for me as a person, especially one of his patients coming to him in desperation for help. I left there madder than a mashed cat.  He told me I had to lose 115 lbs to prove that I "wanted it" bad enough and he said "well you should be able to do that in 3 months"... Really?  THREE months? 115 lbs?  The equivalent of a small person? I didn't even give myself time to digest it because the more I thought about it, the madder it made me.  The audacity that this man had to have those kind of absolutely unrealistic expectations was mind boggling to me.  I responded purposely with no thought and I said "If I could lose 115 lbs in 3 months, I wouldn't be here. Furthermore, if that were possible, hell I could be a size 2 in a year!"  At that point, I was so frustrated, disappointed, and disheartened that I stormed out of his office and never went back to him.  I just put the whole thing on the back burner.