If you had told me during my freshman year of college that just one and a half years later, I would have lost 200 pounds, I probably would have called you crazy. I never thought that would have been possible. But guess what; that's exactly what happened.
Since I was just a small child, I've always been overweight. I was always the fat kid at school. I played football and basketball, however, and that seemed to keep me in relatively decent shape, but there was still no denying that I had a weight problem. Then, due to an unfortunate injury my freshman year of high school, I stopped playing sports and my weight exploded out of control. Over the next four years, I would go from being around 300 pounds and pretty active to over 400 pounds and going nowhere fast.
My weight eventually peaked towards the end of my senior year. I had reached almost 440 pounds (437 to be exact) and my physical condition was deteriorating fast. My blood pressure was extremely high, my knees and ankles were bad and getting worse, and my mental state was also decreasing rapidly. This was when my dad first suggested the possibility of me getting a weight-loss surgery done.
It would take a while, but my dad eventually found a doctor he trusted and got us in touch. After my first appointment, I was so so SO excited. I knew it was exactly what I wanted. The surgery that I had selected is called a duodenal switch. The short explanation is that they made my stomach smaller and re-routed my intestines. (For the long and detailed explanation, just google it.) Basically, I would be extremely malnourished and that would cause me to lose weight!
My insurance made me go through a six month monitored process to make sure that I was serious about wanting to lose weight and would be able to make the necessary changes after my surgery. It was a slight bummer, and it ended up pushing my surgery date back over a year. Time flies by when you're excited though, and before I knew it, it was time.
July 15th, 2016 was the day that my life changed forever. I was so excited the night before that sleep was impossible. I had to be awake really early, so it didn't make much sense to sleep anyway! I had to be at hospital at the University of Missouri (enemy territory, i know.) by 5:30 to get checked in. By 7 A.M. I was under anesthesia on my way to the operating room. By 4 o'clock I was awake, and true to the surgeon's word, by 6 o'clock they had me standing up and attempting to walk around. I spent a week in the hospital, and then I was free. A few days after that was my first follow up appointment and I was already down 35 pounds!
In the beginning, it was really rough. I couldn't eat anything other than protein shakes and broth for a month, then I was able to work up to yogurt and cottage cheese. It was a so frustrating at times because I couldn't have more than an ounce or two in my stomach for months. If I got too much, it would cause tremendous amounts of pain and usually would cause me to vomit everything back up, which was also really painful because I had just had gastric surgery.
After 6 weeks, I graduated to eggs and blended food. At two months, I was able to eat soups, lunch meet, bread, and other extremely soft foods. Every month or so after that I was able to graduate up a step and began to be able to eat more and more foods. After six months I was able to eat anything I wanted again, just in extremely small amounts still.
At six months, I was also down 130 pounds. By my one year, I had lost 170 pounds, and on December 20th, 2017 at my one and a half year I officially had hit that magical number. I finally had lost 200 pounds.
As time has gone on, my weight goals have also been come and gone. As I've surpassed them, they've changed and become further and further away as my weight loss began to slow down. At first, the goal was 50 pounds. After that, 100 pounds, then 150 pounds, then 200. Now that I'm down to 237 pounds, I'm not sure that there will be another weight goal. Instead of focusing on the numbers, I think it's time to focus on just reaching a point where I'm truly happy with myself.
My original long-term goal was to be able to ride a roller coaster again, which I hadn't been able to do since summer before my sophomore year of high school. I was literally too fat to ride a roller coaster and that was an absolutely terrible feeling, so the day I was finally able to ride one again I almost cried I was so overjoyed.
My dad and little brothers had stopped by Springfield over the summer of 2017 on their way to Silver Dollar City and picked me up to go along for the ride. At first, I was TERRIFIED. I was so hopeful that I would finally be able to return to my adrenaline-junky ways and enjoy roller coasters the way that I used to, but I honestly had no clue at all if I would be able to ride them or not. Luckily, I fit just fine and had one of the greatest days of my life. This coming summer, I hope to finally return to Six Flags and experience all of the roller coasters and rides that I used to love so much.
Some people think that weight-loss surgery is the equivalent of using cheat codes in video games, but I'll tell you from first had experience that that is not true at all. Even though it may make the weight come off faster, it has its own sets of ridiculous trials and tribulations that someone who hasn't had surgery could never understand. The inability to eat and drink, go out and have fun with friends, feeling absolutely terrible physically, having my hormones completely out of wack, and dealing with crazy mood swings are just a few of the issues that I've put up with in the past year and a half.
It has been one hell of a ride, but the ride isn't over yet. I can't wait to see where I am at two years, three years, and so on. I pray that soon I'll be confident and learn to love myself. For now, I'm just taking it one step at a time.