Today's Forecast Calls for Blue Skies

Hi, me again. It's been almost two months since my weight loss surgery, so I thought I'd
update you all on how I've been getting on.

It hasn't been all plain sailing as I alluded to in my previous post.  Physically it's been tough with delightful things such as constipation and crippling pain from that, but mentally...it's been, and is continuing to be, absolute hell.

I mentioned in my last blog that I didn't think I was losing as much weight as I should be; that has continued along with some new issues.  I've developed a food phobia (which is as lovely as you'd expect) coupled with a newly found fear of vomiting (if you eat too quickly or don't chew the food enough, this makes you sick.) 

So I'm scared to eat 'new' things (things I was eating before the surgery).  I have established things that I eat but I'm literally just sticking to Weetabix, beans, cheese, tuna and potatoes.  And not a great deal of any of those things.  I'm scared I'm not eating enough, but then I know if I eat too much, I'll get a pain in my chest or stretch my sleeve, which I really don't want to happen).

I'd been passing the surgery off as no biggie, because it wasn't open surgery, it was being done via a laparoscopy.  I genuinely, somewhat naïvely, didn't think it was going to be as big a deal as it was.  I mean, I was only having 75% of my stomach removed... how hard could it be?? What an idiot I am.  I'm sort of coming to terms with the fact it WAS actually major surgery. 

I've been dealing with feeling like I've made a massive mistake, due to the pain my body and brain have been and are still going through.  Can't go back though, they can't rebuild me...maybe they could shove a load of sausage casings back in and see how that goes...

So I'm trying to cope with that, on top of feelings of utter misery and inflicting misery on David and my family and friends.  I'm no fun to be around, I'm generally usually down, crying at the drop of a hat, and my old arch nemesis of Low Self Esteem is popping her head in, telling me that I'm failing at weight loss, how I'm pretty much a failure in life anyway because I can't have children and that how that even if I get to the desired weight for IVF, it won't work because I don't deserve it.  I don't deserve to be happy, I don't deserve to have a child.  She tells me that David will probably leave me when the IVF fails because I can't do anything right in life.  Happy cheery stuff like that.

I've told one of the bariatric nurses my concerns, and she's referred me to psychology...but I don't know when I'll get an appointment (cut backs to mental health services, thanks you Tory cunts).  I know I need help, I've identified my problems, I've told my GP and she was going to try to expedite my psychology appointment.  Speaking to my GP helped a bit, she signed me off for another four weeks, so we'll see how that all goes.  I've had to up my antidepressants again (as a sort of a sticking plaster until my psych appointment).

I'm so lucky to have David and my family and all my friends...and even the cats - Aslan is an excellent nurse (well okay maybe not but he's always good for cuddles).  And writing helps me out a lot.  I know a lot of this might seem extreme but I have to be honest about how I've been feeling since surgery.

I'll get there, I know I will.  I'm loved and adored and well cared for.  And I'll be a mother one day, I know this too.  I just need to see more blue skies than grey.

Hello blogger, my old friend

Hi.  Me again.  I know I only ever write when I’m upset or something catastrophic has happened to me and for that I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get this out.

I hit 36 in May of this year.  I’m getting on (in dog years, I’d be dead).  As every media outlet seems to delight in telling me, I’m not getting any younger, so I should probably start a family or something.  Well dear readers, I’ve tried (not like the Immaculate Conception, obvs) actually, I should probably say WE’VE tried, and nothing is happening.  And it’s probably all my fault.

I’m morbidly obese, according to the BMI scale.  And I’m shocking trying to do anything about it.  Sure, we both try to eat healthier, but as with everything, that falls off during the month until we’re just eating junk and crap and getting takeaways instead of cooking.  And each time, I beat myself up, each time, I fall back there.  And I’m not an emotional eater; if anything I’m an emotional starver.

To add to things, I can’t exercise at the moment due to a stupid trip down the stairs that’s fucked my hip up (I can’t tell you how excited I am to have a man jam a steroid injection into my hip joint – but I don’t know when that’s going to happen – could be a fortnight, could be November).  So my movements are very restricted, walking can be agony at times, so treadmill running (which I actually enjoy) is way out of the question.

So being a fatty isn’t conducive to conception, it certainly also means that IVF isn’t an option either.  I’m so desperate to lose weight AND have a child that it’s all I can think about.  If I wasn’t such a great big fucking fat mess, then we’d be swimming in kids now, probably.  I’ve even enquired about a gastric bypass so that I can’t eat the world.  My circle of close friends, bar one, have at least one child.  I’ve jokingly said to my friend who has four that should she pop out another, could she just let me have it instead?  It’s easy to try to laugh it off; it isn’t so easy to hide the pain and the tears regarding a situation that is ultimately probably my own making.

I know I probably shouldn’t be whinging on about how I’m fat, I’m well aware it’s my own fault, it’s just losing weight isn’t easy, especially when you suffer with depression, low self-esteem and that nagging feeling that you’re an embarrassment to your friends and loved ones due to your size.  I grew up with the mind-set that fat cannot be attractive, although there are hundreds of THOUSANDS of exceptions to this rule.  I found myself perusing ‘pro ana’ sites as I browsed for which VLCD was best.  And that frightens me, but then again,  I’ve felt like a failure for not being able to develop an eating disorder for fucks sake – how screwed in the head am I?  Like that is how any normal person thinks.  I’ve downloaded a ‘virtual gastric band’ hypnosis app, knowing that it’ll just be mumbo jumbo bollocks and won’t help me a jot (still going to try though, I have to). 

I suppose this is heading, ultimately, to the fact that I am just terrified that I am never going to have a child of my own, I’m never going to give birth, hold nine months’ worth of work, blood, cells, love; nine months’ worth of David and me mixed together into a teeny tiny mewling pink ball of new human.  I know there’s adoption which is something that we’ve discussed in the past, but to me, right at this moment in time, I want to feel how being pregnant feels, the tiredness, the puke, the ankle swelling, the constant need for weeing, the contractions, all of it.

If I start dieting now, I don’t know how long it will take for me to get to a weight where I can actually realistically conceive, assisted or not.  I’m scared I’ll be too old; I’ll be 40 or over.  But Christ knows, I have to do it, I have to try.

 

Try harder, you stupid critter.

New Year - New ME

Well, not quite as we’re almost a third of the way into the year now and there has been no sign of my motivation.  It crept back quite quietly a few weeks back and has been quietly prodding and poking my determination awake.  I am now determined to do something positive about my appearance (long time readers of the blog know I have a lot of hang ups about how I look and in particular my weight).  I’ve always been fat, in my head this started when at about age 5 or 6 at primary school, one girl decided she’d call me fat at lunchtime.  I stopped eating my lunch for a bit and my ma wasn’t too happy with me.  It was not an eating disorder I hasten to add.  It was a response to having been called fat by a peer.  But the damage was done and that word has stayed with me for life.

I was a chubby kid, the kind of kid with ‘puppy fat’ that would go when I got older.  It didn’t.  I grew from a chubby kid to a tubbier teenager: PE was hell and the showers… well forget about it.  I was never really very feminine as a kid, or a teen.  I hated dresses and preferred jeans, cords, check shirts (thanks grunge) and the like.  Shopping was always hell, and I only ever went out of necessity.  I was a tubby girl but still had quite large boobs so still kind of looked in proportion.

Yet since that childhood lunch time, I always identified with being fat because I had to be, right?  My fellow classmate wouldn’t have said that to me unless it was true, right?  She wouldn’t have said it solely to hurt me?  I know full well she will have forgotten that lunchtime in the canteen of Holy Family infant school when she first identified me as fat, but I haven’t.  It was the first time I can remember that fat was used as an insult, and it’s a pretty powerful one too.  And one I still connect with, even when in 2005 I got to a size 12, a relatively ‘normal’ dress size and body shape… not for me it wasn’t.  being shorter of stature, I was still classed as obese – I had a bony arse for Jesus sake, but no… still obese… one person I remember saying to me ‘Yeah that’s great and everything but you could stand to lose a bit more, couldn’t you?’  and the phrase that goes through my head, said by more than one person on occasion ‘You’re too pretty to be that fat’.  To me, that says that says you can either be pretty OR you can be fat… you can’t be both, that’s not how it works.  You see it everywhere today, fat shaming of people, maybe women who have just had a child being hounded by the paparazzi as to why they haven’t got back to their pre baby shape, or a good looking guy relaxing on the beach with maybe a little paunch ‘[Insert Celeb Name Here] looks as though he has enjoyed his holiday a little TOO much’.

And when you try to do something positive and motivating, you can get shouted down about that too.  I started doing the Couch to 5K programme a couple of years ago (it was during that summer of Ireland’s woeful performance at the European championships).  David cajoled me into doing it and I really quite enjoyed it.  We’d run across Hearsall Common for as long as the programme ran for, and I felt wonderful.  I’d never been a runner ever, came last in my first ever school sports day running race, but here I was, being able to build up my running and my stamina and it felt incredible.  I was fearful of others for a while until one night a bloke called out of me ‘Fair play to you love, I should be doing that myself’.  I was on nodding terms with some of the joggers who regularly went for a run on the common.  It was going really well until one day some pricks in a car shouted fat abuse at me.  I tried ignoring it but it was too much to take; I was 6 years old again being called fat for no reason, being abused for no reason whatsoever.  I burst into tears and that ended my few months of Couch to 5K.  I was too scared to go back and do it again.  My wheels fell off my exercising wagon and that was it.

I realise this is just a big old load of rambles, but I’m trying to explain why I am how I am (I’m well aware I don’t actually have to explain myself to anyone).

So, after a trip to the GP this morning, I discovered that the NHS does a referral scheme to Slimming World – I was weighed and promptly referred.  Basically, you get 12 weeks of meetings for free…this is mega because I was actually going to join a slimming class next week when I get paid.  And my mojo is returning to put me through going back to the gym where, around the body beautifuls and the skinny girls on exercise bikes, I can try to fit in, get back on my treadmill and run like fuck…I’m going to try to run away from that memory from when I was 6, away from the car full of wankers shouting names at me but most importantly, I’m going to try to run into a newer, healthier, slimmer me.  I have NOT been pressured to do this, I feel its time to change and I feel healthier in my mind and motivated to do it.

Watch this space.

Darn tootin', pie. We can DO this.

Nb: This will NOT become a diet/exercise blog site.  I promise.