I'm still pre-op but I thought I'd go ahead and share a little bit of my past which may resonate with others as part of how I 'got here' to this point of being overweight maybe to protect myself from the world. Let me preface this by saying I'm not trying to make anyone feel sorry for me, I don't feel sorry for me so you shouldn't either. The end of the story (minus weight loss) has all turned out GREAT and I'm around here because I'm ready to take my fat suit off for good.
I grew up as a pretty poor, child of divorce, with a mother whose alcohol and drug problems were beginning to become apparent. My step-father, a controlling and verbally abusive BIG MEANIE, made most of my pre-teen to teen years a litany of how stupid, ugly, lazy and fat I was and how I would be attractive if I just 'took a little pride in myself'. I was the Cinderella of the house from a really young age, doing the grocery shopping, cleaning and everyone's laundry... but Prince Charming was nowhere in sight back then.
That's a pretty short summation of years of pain but the underlying feelings of abandonment by a parent and near daily reinforcement of a negative self-image are probably familiar to a lot of us.
As I got older I became my Mom's 'partying buddy'. By older I mean barely a teenager. It's hard to really understand that what you're doing is wrong when your parent is leading you down a path... though by no means am I saying that as an adult we have no responsibility for what we've become regardless of how we got there.
After crusing along comfortably, using drugs 'recreationally' with and without her, I had another 'trial' in my life. In 1999 I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (aka PTC, aka Fat Girl's Disease). For anyone who's not familiar with the condition you can find more information at
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The short version is that the pressure in my head was 3x normal and my eyes were beginning to 'die' from a lack of blood flow.
When you have IIH the main thing you hear from every doctor is that you could basically fix yourself if you lose weight. As I'm sure most all are aware, some doctors have a better way of expressing this than others. By the time I'd seen all the associated specialists for my condition I basically felt as low as I ever did as a kid. Like many other people I couldn't manage to lose the weight even though it was causing me such extreme pain! I became very depressed and very addicted to the pain medication that the doctors were giving in such copious amounts. The pain of IIH is compared to the pain one experiences with a brain tumor or a headache worse than a migraine.
My condition was finally brought under control in 2001 with a ventriculoperitoneal shunt procedure since I didn't respond to any medications or the brow-beatings I took regularly from my physicians to lose weight.
At 6 weeks post-op I checked myself into rehab upon realizing that I was monumentally depressed and had lost all control over the medication. I had a 'lightswitch' moment where I realized I was in no pain yet the urge to take the medicine (oxycontin, it's a pretty well known drug) was beyond anything I could handle alone.
In therapy there I finally started to understand that my childhood wasn't quite right, I became able to be angry at my Mom which I'd never been able to do previously. I learned so much about myself that eventually I even learned to love myself enough to let someone else love me!
Now I'm 32, happily married to a wonderful french guy and the last hurdle I see to fulfilling my true potential is to become healthier and start taking part in life to it's fullest. I've read a lot of posts here and it's helped me to understand a little better what I'm in for but most of all I'm really glad I found a place where people will be able to understand what I hope will be a duality... the FAT me and the REAL me. Eventually I'd like to kick the FAT me out on her butt, but first things first, I have to find the REAL me.
Angel's Story - What's eating me...
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