Yesterday I got an appointment with Dr. Unitan for a referral for a sleep study to see if I have sleep apnea. I was going to have a sleep study like 2 years ago, but didn't go because I didn't want to be alone and my mom wouldn't pick me up at 5:30am when the test was over. I am glad things are different this time.

I am wondering something. My hubby has Kaiser Permanente insurance. WLS is covered, as stated in the benefit book. But, I think, it is Pacific Administrators that they get the insurance from, or pays for it or something. See, we are kind of confused on that. I guess he should call up and just ask, he is afraid of saying anything about me wanting surgery and then they would deny me getting on his insurance.

To get on his insurance I will probably have to go to work so we can pay. Ugh! That is a scary thought. I have no energy, and the medication I take makes me sleepy. And I don't know if my social disorder is controlled enough but dang....I want the surgery! I need the surgery! So I guess I have to do this, for the surgery.

On Friday, 7/12, I got my packet of information from my doctor. It has the information that we had looked over at my appointment and a "Severe Obesity Surgeon Evaluation and Management Program Contract for Participation". This has different sections like nutrition education, exercize, family support/psychological issues, and medical matters. I am currently making a list of "things to do" from this so I will be totally compliant with whatever may come up.

I am getting so fed up with my weight. Having to ask people for help for simple tasks....stuff I can do if I didn't hurt so much. I hate it. On Sunday we had to go to the store and I have to use an electric cart to get around the store. It is a-fucking-mazing that people will see you coming down the isle and then step right out in front of you. Hello!! I am driving a motorized vehicle, get the hell outta the way! I can't stop on a dime. But the worse part is when the cart began loosing power and I am going at a snails pace through the store, geez don't run into the pork and beans. Finally I abandoned the cart in the middle of the store. Fun days abound.

I am also having a problem of a wet kind. For about the past 5-6 months I have been experiencing severe urges to urinate. It is like, la de da...I GOTTA PEE NOW!! and then find a bathroom. Now I can't even hold it. I am waking up wet at night. This sucks!! I don't know what is causing this, although it might be something called stress incontenence. I need to read more about it, but if it is, I sure hope it goes away with the surgery.

You know, that is another thing that is tweaking me out. All of the sudden I am "after the surgery this" and other statements like that. I guess I am kind of supersticious because I think that saying things like that will jinx things. But I guess it is the truth that I am putting a lot on the surgery, or should I say, I am putting a lot on myself after the surgery. Sometimes I wonder if I will be able to do all the things that I am supposed to. If I wanna live, I guess I gotta.

Today I got a call from my doctors office and was given the number of who to call for the sleep study. So I did that, now I just have to wait for them to call back. Tomarrow I will be calling the optomitrist for an appointment.

Today I felt crappy, it might be my period coming on, I just didn't feel normal. Probably couldn't be that I was up 6 times last night peeing!! Geez get me a catheter or something!

Searching the internet I found an interesting site, www.obesityhelp.com. Here I have found a wealth of information and a fabulous support group. I have been tooling around there reading information and such.

Then 7/2 I have an appointment with my doctor. I told her that I wanted to get pregnant before my earily 40's. She, without saying anything, went to the computer and began looking for something. I saw a page come up that said "Bariatric Surgery". She asked me if I had ever concidered surgery, I was very happy and told her that I was very interested in surgery. We looked through the page together and found that I had the como's. We hit a snag though when it mentioned that the surgery wouldn't be covered by medicaid, the only insurance I have. I wasn't upset though, I told her that being on disability I might be eligable for medicare which I do know would cover the surgery and I would look on the internet and see what I could find and keep her up to date with my discoveries.

So that night I came up with a plan of attack.

1. See if I am eligable for medicare.

2. See if my hubby's Kaizer insurance would cover it.

3. Turn in my ticket to work and get a job and hope that insurance covers it.

4. Put out an ad in a local paper asking for rich people to pay for my surgery and they could use it as a tax write off.

5. Get out on the street and beg for money.

So I was pretty sure about medicare, I mean I am disabled, I should get medicare. I called the Social Security office 7/9 and was told that I don't qualify for medicare because I am on SSI and you have to be on SSD and have worked a certain amount of "work units" . I found out later that night from a friend on the internet that she didn't work and is on SSI and has medicare, but that is ok.

Oh yeah, I called my friend, Karen who is a surgeons' assistant and spoke with her about my decision. She is stoked about me chosing this. She has done lots of them. She said that she knew Dr. Emma Patterson, who I recognized from obesityhelp.com's doctors list. She said that Dr. Patterson knew of all kinds of jobs that had the insurance that covered the surgery so she would ask her about that. I was quite happy.

The next day, 7/10 I got my husbands updated Kaiser benefit guide. Right there on page 2 it says "the services descibed in this section are covered only if they are medically necessary and provided, prescribed or arranged by a KP physician.....Bariatric surgery (excluded only in groups under 50)" Yippeee!! My hubby's groups is thousands strong!! My doctor is already onboard with the surgery. The only problem is that I still need to call the insurance carriers to double check that they will pay, and I have to wait until April 2003 to get on his insurance. Also, it will be a couple hundred dollars for me to be covered, but we cannot pay for that. So I have 2 options:

1. See if SS will pay for me to be on my hubby's insurance. Back before I was on SS, and was on medicare, the state paid for me to be on my hubby's insurance because it cost less per month than what medicaid would pay. Maybe something like that might happen.

2. I could work and then be able to pay for the monthly payments and the absurdidly high co-pays so I can see my doctor. But ya know, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

So I call up my doctor's office and leave a message letting her know that if I get on my hubby's insurance that the surgery will be covered and could she please print out that information about bariatric surgery we looked at. Today I got a call from my doc's nurse. She said that my doc printed that out and is sending it to me. She also perscribed some pre-op tests that I can take at my leisure. But she did say that at over 70 BMI that I would not be a candidate for surgery so I would have to loose weight too get below 69 BMI. And she refered me to a weight loss group (costs $165 to go!) that I need to go to. So I was stoked! I only need to lose about 25lbs. to be below 69 BMI. I guess I will have to use the credit card to pay for the weight loss group. I will go next week to take the tests. I am very happy so far.

Right now I am learning more about the different surgeries and such. I have read that the more you do pre-op the easier it is for recovery. So, today I stoped drinking pop and eating chips. After that is out of my system I will say goodbye to chocolate (sob!!). Next will be sugar all together. I don't really do milk, but I do like ice cream. Oh well. I am commited. I am learning deep breathing and how to cough after surgery. I am finding out about nutritional needs after surgery, vitamins for the rest of my life. I already take a handful of vitamins now, so that will be no prob there. I do still have to have a sleep test, so I guess I will call about that tomarrow. Forward ho!

Ok...now let me interject something here. I don't recommend every person who is fat have the surgery. I still think of it as something that is very drastic. Remember, I am "fat bastard" fat. If I don't have this surgery, I don't know. I don't like to think like that. All I know is that for me it is something I need. When you are concidered for surgery they look and see if you have any comorbidities..which to me are the real reason's to have the surgery. For me my como's are sleep apnea (not diagnosed yet), arthritis, high blood pressure, heart palpatations and irregular heartbeat. I am very lucky that I do not have diabetes a couple of my family members have diabetes and it is something that I am trying to keep from getting. So, the journey begins.

     Geez, it is so hard to post on here, I just never seem to be able to have the time. *LOL* Inside joke.

      Anyway, another thing you should know about me is that I am fat. Not just your typical "I-am-a-whopping-size-16-and-am-only-64-inches-tall-fat". I am "fat bastard" fat. If I had a willey I wouldn't be able to pick it out of a police line up.

      I am 505lbs. and am 5'11" tall. I am huge! And you know what, I am ok with being fat. From day one of my being I was larger than most people. I was born 9lbs. 6 1/2oz. and 23 inches long. In school I was always the heaviest and the tallest. Of course I was picked on, that is too be expected. It hurt my feelings but in a way it was ok. I knew I was different than these kids. You can read more of what made me think I was different at my other blog site After the Fall.

      But you know, all that negative reinforcement does get inside you no matter how hard you try to keep it out or tell yourself that it doesn't matter. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". Bullshit!! "You're rubber and I am glue. Whatever you say bounces of me and sticks to you." Jesus! Are we deluding our children or what? For one thing I didn't have the self-confidence needed in order for these words of wisdom to work. I actually started thinking that there was something defective with me because I was heavier than the other kids. They must be better than me because they don't have a weight problem.

      I didn't have the support at home either. My parents only cared about themselves, their friends and their drugs....for their personal use and selling. To talk to them about my feelings fell on deaf ears or their extremly misguided attempts of parenting by giving me pot. Yeah for them it helped to hide their pain, but for me it just gave me other problems that didn't start manifesting until adulthood.

      The lack of self-esteem also took me to some very bad places. I have been molested many times by people who lead me to believe I was a good person and gave me the attention and positive reinforcement I had been craving. Then by the time they had won my trust, they would do horrible things to me.

     So what do we have now? Low self-esteem caused by thinking I am bad because of my weight and then fearing people who wouldn't mind my weight because they would somehow hurt me. This of course led to more eating. It led to binge eating, depression, and a social disorder.

There have been people in my life that have loved me whatever weight I was.

I had friends before the social stuff got too bad.

I was never a person though to see a thin person and wish I was as thin as that person.

      I had a weight problem and I was ok with that, I accepted myself as a fat person. Most of my diets were given to me by my mom, who I knew was just mortified of me being fat. I was on the grapefuit diet. Radish diet. Steamed veggies diet. Diet pills. Starvation. Some mixture of cayanne powder and lemon juice that made me suseptable to bleeding. And lastly ephedra and ma haung pills that put me in the hospital with blood pressure in the stroke range. The doctor had to give me 2 doeses of nitroglycerin and I still went home with a blood pressure of 156/102. I did Jenny Craig. I did aerobics. I danced in school. I walked all over hell. In all of this, I NEVER lost weight. I did get to a point where either I wasn't gaining as fast, or I was not gaining at all, just at a plateau.

     Now, lets get to a more current era in my life. In 1988 I met Keith. We fell in love and moved in together. About a year later I found out I was pregnant. At this time I was 18 and 220lbs. My pregnancy went well and I gained 80 lbs. total. Giving birth yeilded me a 10 lbs. 3 oz. baby, plus a loss of 20lbs. of fluid and other pregnancy gunk . So in 1990 I weighed 300lbs.

      Now, I had always had irregular, horribly long and messy periods. I also had embarassing body and facial hair. Finally in 2000 I got a new doctor, Dr. Myint. He was an Asian-American doctor and very concerned about my weight. He tested me for all sorts of diseases and disorders and nothing came up. Finally he refered me to an Endocrynologist who discovered I have Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which is basically a hormone disorder. It confirms my ability to gain weight easily and various other issues, like my infertility.

      Well, I had gotten some answers but was disappointed to learn there wasn't really anything that the doctor could do for it. At this time I am 525 lbs. My doctor notices that the medication for high blood pressure I am on causes water retention and puts me on diruetics. From that I go down to 485lbs. ***THE ONLY TIME IN MY LIFE I HAVE EVER LOST WEIGHT***

     I got a new doctor, Dr. Behary who is a great doctor. At this time I have said screw diets, they don't work.

I am fat, I was born fat I will die fat.

I was into fat acceptance. I am fat and proud.

A NAAAFA supporter all the way.

      I noticed whenever the topic of weight loss surgery would come around on the fat list that they would bash the hell out of it. Ok, now there were people in there who had their wls back in the 70's where you only had a 50% chance of survival of the surgery and there were large possibilities of getting some pretty gnarly problems with the pouch. But these people were saying that now people who had the surgery had a 75% chance of dying on the table. Shit!! That is a big scare!

     I was jumping on the band wagon speaking the words of the weary and belittling those that were stupid enough to concider mutating their body with this 'sacrificial surgery'.

"Forced anorexia".

      All the while I am searching the internet. Going to sites where lots of people were going in for the surgery and surviving.Yes, some people do die. But at a 1% mortality rate this surgery has the same risks as any other major surgery.

      I would read people's journals of their weight loss journey.

I didn't see people dying left and right.

I saw people shrinking in size and increasing in health.

I saw lives saved.

I saw my hope return.

      I saw myself in these people, people who were different than me, but people who where the same. I saw that they were having the success and effects that I wanted. I realized that this was then the road I was going to take, I was going to have weight loss surgery.

Ok well, welcome! Here is a little about me. My name is Jamica. I am 31 years old and I live in Portland, OR. I am married (Keith), have been for 11 years. We have a 12 year old son (Forrest) who is just about the coolest kid you'll ever meet. We live in a crappy HAP building, yeah with the requesit gang signs on the building and budding white boy gangstas. Oh, and my brother (Rhone) is currently staying with us. He has been here since May, since he lost the place he was living in with my mom. My mom died in January, but that is a different story.