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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005 |
Location: Tucson, AZ |
Surgeon: Alexander Villares, Phoenix, AZ |
Age: 27 |
Posts: 452 |
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Tiffany's story
I am so thankful for this forum, and it has helped me tremendously. I think I would be lost without you all!
I was born in Michigan but I grew up in Lompoc, California. I am only 24 years old but I have struggled with my weight my whole life. I was overweight as a child; I even had my 2nd grade teacher make fun of me. In 3rd grade I couldn’t find any pants in the children’s section for me, so I had to borrow some from my Aunt, who wore a size 8. That is pretty big for a very short 8-year old.
I guess my eating problems all started when I went to visit my grandparents for a month when I was 8. My Mom had always been very restrictive with what/when I ate, because I have always been overweight. My grandparents let me eat whatever I wanted. I had ice cream every day, I remember eating 3 bowls of cereal for breakfast, 2 pbj sandwiches for lunch, etc. I gained 15 pounds that summer. When I came home my Mom was so upset. I never lost that weight, and I just continued to gain. By the time I was in 9th grade I was up to 178 lbs at only 5’2” tall. I was made fun of a lot.
In 1995 at the end of 9th grade I got really sick of being fat so I started to exercise like crazy. I got into karate, and I was obsessed with food. I would exercise every day for at least 1 hour. I would watch very closely what I ate, I only allowed myself 20 grams of fat per day and 1200 calories. By the time I turned 15 and started 10th grade I was down to 135 lbs and I felt really good. But it took a lot of yo-yoing to get that low. I still have weight records from that time, I would go up and down drastically every month.
I still felt fat and wanted to lose more weight though. I started to get in trouble with boys a lot and I got into major fights with my parents. I remember exercising a lot at that point and going days without eating. I got down to 128, but my parents sent me to live with my Aunt & Uncle in Michigan for the remainder of 10th grade to get me away from my “bad influence” friends. I was devastated, I ate the whole time. I stuffed my face every chance I could get to make myself feel better. In 2 short months I went from weighing 128 to 152 pounds. That was a lot of food.
After that, I never got skinny again. My parents let me move back to Lompoc with them at the start of my 11th grade year but I was so ashamed that I had gained all that weight that I got depressed and I would use food for comfort, and I lost and regained 10 lbs over the next few months.
That is when I met my husband (In 1997, yep, I was 16 at the time and he was 17) He would take me out to dinner and lunch all the time, and I gained another 10 pounds. We had so much fun, and he didn’t care about my weight. I was up to 160. Which I know isn’t bad, but it was size 14, and when you are a teenager that seems very bad.
I turned 17 the summer before my senior year, and I started to take really good care of myself, and I was exercising normally and eating really good. I got down to 150 again, but at the end of the summer I started working at Baskin Robbins. Yeah, HORRIBLE job for someone with a weight problem to have. At that time also, my parents started going through a nasty divorce and put me and my little sister in the middle, my Dad actually tried to kill himself on Christmas of 98. We were downstairs cooking Christmas dinner while he was upstairs slowly dying. My little sister found him. He survived but had to be institutionalized for a few weeks. It was so hard, and I turned to food. I gained 30 pounds my senior year dealing with that divorce, and eating all that ice cream at work.
In February of my senior year, when I was weighing the most I had ever weighed, which was 185, I got pregnant! I was so upset, I had plans to go to college and my now-husband, then-boyfriend and I had planned on getting married after I graduated college, but now we had to do it sooner. So in May of 1999 we got married. I was still 17, and 1 month away from high school graduation. We had been together for almost 2 years and we had planned on getting married anyway. So we did.
Well I took the fact of eating for 2 literally. I ate SO much food. I also worked 3 jobs. I dropped down to just one when my husband got a better job, but I worked at a deli/frozen yogurt shop. Didn’t I learn my lesson at Baskin Robbins? Nope. But when I was 6 months pregnant my doctor put me on bed rest which didn’t help with my weight gain either. I went from 185 to 230 when I delivered my son in Nov. 1999. At my 2-week checkup I was only down to 207. I couldn’t believe it and I was so depressed. I had post-partum depression big time.
OK, so when our son was 2 months old my husband left for Air Force basic training. He was going to be gone for a total of 6 months for training, and I promised myself I would lose the weight by then. I tried lots of diet pills, and walking, but I actually ended up gaining weight in the end. He got stationed in Anchorage, Alaska and when we all moved up there in June 2000 I weighed 215.
We lived up there for 3 years and I went through major depression. I couldn’t handle the darkness. The loneliness. I gained weight, all the way up to 239 pounds. In the fall of 2001, I was fed up and I paid to see a doctor my insurance wouldn’t pay for to try Phentermine. I paid almost $2,000 in doctor bills and I got down to 205. I was doing really well, but then my husband went on a TDY to England in 2002. I got really depressed again, and I gained all the weight back minus 9 lbs while he was gone. The bad part was that I lied to him the whole time and told him I was still losing. I figured I would snap out of it and start to lose again. But no. He was so disappointed when he came home from England and I was fatter.
I pretty much averaged out to be about 225 through yo-yo dieting over the next 2 years. In 2003 we got transferred to Tucson, Arizona and I thought living in a hot, sunny climate might help me. Nope. I gained weight here, despite going to school full-time and working full-time too. I went from 225 when we moved here in June 2003 to 247 in June 2005.
Shortly after we moved to Tucson, I met a girl who was about my same size and who had military insurance too. She told me she was in the process of getting WLS. She said Tricare had approved her for it, and that there were 2 other women on her block that had it done through Tricare insurance too. We quickly became good friends, and she kept telling me I should go to the doctor. I did, and I got a referral. I had thought about this surgery in Alaska, especially since my step-dad’s 2 sisters had gotten it done successfully at that time. But I had no idea that military insurance would pay for it at all.
During my first visit to get the referral, the doctor actually mentioned WLS before I even got a chance to. He told me that he thought I would be a good candidate, and that I should look into it or else in 20 years when I am in my 40’s I will be sitting there with my bag of meds complaining about something else wrong with me.
The referral never came to me in the mail, so I chickened out. I got scared. A few months later, I went back to the doctor only to find out he had transferred to another base. I had to see a different doctor. He was totally against WLS, he even told me Tricare wouldn’t approve me so don’t bother. He actually told me to HIRE A PERSONAL TRAINER!!! OK, hello doc, there was no way we could afford a personal trainer!!!!!! I just said “OK” and went immediately to change my PCP. The next doctor told me he only gave referrals for WLS if your weight was over 400 lbs. I told him, OK in a few years then, LOL! I then went through almost all the doctors in the clinic. All of them said no, until I came across a woman doctor. I cried in her office, and pleaded. She told me to try one more time on my own, and then call her in 1 week and if I failed again, she would put in the referral. So, of course I called her in a week and she put it in for me. That was March 18, 2005. The process after that went so incredibly fast. I had been watching my friend I told you about through her whole process, she had surgery in Feb 2004 and dropped 104 lbs. She looks great now, and she has been a major source of support for me, but she moved away a week before my surgery because her husband transferred out of here.
I went to the seminar on April 1st, had my consult on April 28th, I had no problems with my psychologist, when I told him I was majoring in Psychology he started to talk to me in technical terms and I understood him and I think it made him happy. LOL!
Anyhow, I had to do all my pre-op testing (blood work, upper GI, EKG, etc) on my 24th birthday on June 8th and my surgery was on June 21st. My husband has been so supportive of me throughout all of it, I am so lucky. We have a pretty good marriage; I hope it can survive my weight loss. I almost feel like I missed out on the chance to be a young adult, because of my weight. I just can’t wait until the day when I look like a normal person, and people don’t discriminate against me because of my weight. Last semester I took a class entitled “Racial and Ethnic groups” and it dealt a lot with discriminations and prejudices. My teacher said that discriminating against overweight people is the last form of acceptable discrimination. It is so true.
Thanks for reading my story.
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~Tiffany
6/21/05 Lap RNY
5'3
247/132/149
Preop/lowest/current
In maintenance... now I'm yo-yoing up and down 10 lbs or so. I'm trying to find out how to stay at a set weight, it's rough.
www.myspace.com/tiffanyrae81
Last edited by mfergusont; 07-11-2005 at 07:30 PM.
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Working hard to take it back off and then some.
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