Monday, July 2, 2012

Part II: Why'd Ya Do It?


So, why did I let me insides get cut up and re-arranged? A fine question! I wanted to, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, I was horrified that my son had to spend time in NICU because of my weight and diabetes, and I was scared when I couldn't get my blood sugar under 300 no matter how much insulin I put in my body. Those are the reasons I called up the doctor and went to his seminar. In the seminar I pretty much decided gastric bypass was the choice for me since it touted an 85% cure rate for diabetes!
During the process where I got poked and prodded and learned more about my body than I ever wanted to know, I considered going sleeve instead, but that thought died with my upper-endoscopy. Years of high blood sugar had given me gastric paresis, which in short should have made me lose weight but alas it wasn't to be. Since food was staying in my stomach for 18+ hours every single molecule of sugar was leeching into my bloodstream wreaking havoc with my blood sugar, it was a vicious cycle and there wasn't any way to put a stop to it without surgical intervention. The medication they can give you to make your stomach empty causes irreversible tics and seizures if taken for more than 90 days. No thanks. Because gastric bypass surgery takes away your pyloric valve and gives you a stoma instead, this surgery became the answer I needed. Gravity does the work my vagus (sp??) nerve can no longer perform.
Guess what, it saved my life!
Could I have done it on my own, probably not, but I am doing it now, I just have a little help thanks to my surgeon. It's not easy, I don't have a lot of feeling in my stomach, so it's hard to tell when I'm full. Just like any other "dieter" I have to watch what I eat and exercise, slacking off had consequences that I have to live with, just like any one else.
Now it's time to get ready to have our second and final baby. The people who know what I went through to lose my excess weight constantly ask me if I'm sure I want to ruin my body with another pregnancy… Umm, not planning to ruin my body, my belly is already wrecked from obesity (loose skin and stretch marks) I've lost all the fat from my boobs, what exactly is pregnancy going to do to hurt my "problem" areas? Stretch out the skin with baby and milk? Bring it on I say!! Though the external is incidental. The reason I got this body was so that I could have a healthy second pregnancy. I don't want my next kid to have to spend 10 days in NICU because I'm too obese to keep my blood sugar stable and it has to be delivered 3 weeks early and exist on tubes for a week. No thanks, already survived that hell! I'm doing everything I can to give this kid a better chance. Sure, there may be something out of my control to go wrong, but I need to know I did everything I could to make his/her birth and life as good and healthy as I could, in fact I already have. I've read that children born to mothers as WLS have a lower risk of getting diabetes later in life than the children born prior to WLS. As guilty as I feel for not giving my first born this chance, I'm going to give it to my second born.
So now you know what I did I chose this road, and I don't regret it for a minute.

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