Well, let's just lay out the basics. I'm 28 in a size 28. I've been overweight my whole life and thought I was just "pleasantly plump" like my grandma said, and since my diagnosis with PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) when I was 18, I've been told to lose weight and exercise and when I was ready to have kids, we'd talk about it then. Well, I'm ready to have children and all the doctors I met with in the last 10 years are off my radar and I've finally found one that wants to actually help me. That's my first advise to you... find a doctor that wants to help you. All of them want their copay, many of them want to see you succeed, but very few of them want to HELP you, meaning they want to participate actively in your treatment and success. For me, many of them wanted me to get a grip, lose the extra 150 pounds I'd been carrying around, as if it were a burden I just selflessly decided to carry instead of a disease (or syndrome or disorder) and come back when I was healthy and let them deliver my babies in 5 years.
I weigh the most I've ever weighed. At about 330 pounds, the emotional effects of my weight are harder for me than the physical. It is of course embarrassing for me to ask for an extender for my seat belt on an airplane, but nothing causes a rush of blood to the face like having to apologize to the woman sitting next to me that I'm spilling over on. It is humbling for me to wear a swimsuit with my family to a local lakeside bar with jiggling arms, stretch-marks everywhere but from my elbows to fingers, and vericose veins that make my legs appear about 60 years older, but worse and more humiliating is to ask them to sit indoors instead of outdoors because I twisted the plastic deck chair and now cannot get out of it. It is frustrating to try on 5 different styles and sizes of jeans at Lane Bryant, one of the only stores that can really fit me, but almost debilitating to have the attendant ask if everything is OK as she hears my stifled sobs as I realize that even this store doesn't fit me any more. And, besides weight issues, there are a sundry of other fun issues, like dandruff, eczema on my breasts and eyelids, excessive facial hair, thinning hair and acne. Yippee!
I don't make good eating decisions on a regular basis, but I do know what I need to do. I'm a pretty open person and there have been many times my weight comes up with people in casual conversation and I would say 95% of the time, I receive unsolicited weight-loss advice. This will be the one rant I allow myself... people, those of us that are heavy, overweight, obese, whatever... we know what we need to do. We know we need to be more active and eat a healthy, balanced diet with snacks in between to keep our metabolism moving along. Assuming that we don't is like telling someone who is trying to stop drinking to not go out to bars or to stop buying liquor. The advice, though heartfelt I'm sure, is so simplistic and elementary, that to think we've not found this in our own research or that we've just ignored every health class we've had is almost rude. It's the basis of our life long goal. We know how to get there, but what you may not know, what I didn't know until recently, is try as we may, sometimes that's just not enough.
When I was diagnosed with PCOS in 1999, I thought that would be the answer to my problems in having irregular periods. I started the pill and for the next 5 years, just kept showing up for my annual exams, heavier every year, and finally started asking questions once my boyfriend (to be husband) talked about having a family someday. One doctor said if we weren't planning to have a family just yet, to work on the weigh-loss and we'd discuss it next year. I didn't go back. The next year, I found a doctor that I liked that said I probably had PCOS too, but her office didn't tell me that she was going to Florida the next week to live. I didn't go back. The next year, I found a doctor that said I probably had PCOS, ran some tests to confirm it and when I asked her about having a family, she told me to work on the weight-loss and we'd discuss it next year. She amended this by adding, "I mean, you don't want to get pregnant at this weight, trust me. I mean, how will you wipe your butt?" I didn't go back.
So, I just came back from my third visit to my current doctor who tested me for PCOS, confirmed it a
nd will be seeing me every three months to discuss my progress and perform a fasting insulin test to see if my body is starting to behave itself. However, a kink has been thrown into the works. In my doctor's thoroughness to confirm my diagnosis, which I can't express how much I appreciate, she performed an ultrasound and found that in addition to the cysts on my ovaries, there is a most-likely benign tumor in my right ovary that is about 5cm. The normal ovary is about 3cm. (She said it might be one of those creepy ones with hair and teeth...I'm already having nightmares of it eating me from the inside out!)I'm to schedule a CAT scan with a local doctor, but the machine may not be able to support my weight, so we might skip that step, move onto an EKG and stress test to be sure my body and heart can endure surgery and then the ultimate goal is to remove the tumor and/or right ovary and then proceed with the weight-loss portion by taking Metformin, a typically Diabetic medication that will make my body process and store food energy correctly for the first time.
I know this is a terribly long first blog, but I wanted to set the stage properly and give you enough background for this to make sense. I'll be writing often. Perhaps about my struggles, about success, and about life in general, but this has proven to touch every area of my life, so there will be no lack of content, I'm sure.
Peace, Heather
