Surgery???!!! Why????

What I notice more than the fact that she's 100 and smoking......

is the fact that she's skinny.

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Today my new family practice physician finished up her pre-op physical checklist, got me all tucked back into the neato little hospital gown, stepped back, looked at me and asked..........why? Obviously you know the band is just a tool. For it to work you're going to have to live a completely different lifestyle. It's going to be hard work and it's going to last your whole life. Before I sign off on your surgery, just tell me.....why???

The same questions pop up for all of us.
Here is my answer. Sorry, it's not pretty.....but it's the truth.

One year ago my mom ended up in the hospital with a bacterial infection and breathing problems. She was immobile, incontinent and depressed. At the time mom weighed around 450 pounds. She lives alone with my step-dad who pretty much dotes on her. After she retired 15 years ago or so she slipped into a sedentary lifestyle. She's always been overweight. She's always had bad knees. The knees got worse so she slowed down. The more she slowed down, the more weight she gained. The more weight she gained, the worse the pain in her knees. Gradually her life slipped into a routine of my step-dad running to the grocery store and delivering packs of cookies and McDonalds take-out meals to her in the recliner to which she had become confined. She couldn't even get out of the chair to go to bed, her breathing was so bad. She clips on her C-Pap mask and sleeps sitting up. The paramedics were kind and professional when they came to get her from the house and take her to the hospital. I wasn't there but my sister says it was exponentially worse than any tabloid story you've ever seen. How do you remove a 450-pound woman who can't walk on her own from a tiny house? It was the beginning of the nightmare.


One year later, I once again visit mom at home. She spent months in a rehabilitation center where the goal was for her to be able to sit up in bed on her own and hang her feet over the side. Once accomplished, she went back home. Did she lose weight in the hospital and rehab center? I think so. But not much. How that works, I don't know but she's still a very large woman. So now I visit her in her living room. She is lying there, flat on her back in a hospital bed that has replaced the brocade sofa where she used to love to sit and read. Last week when I walked in she had her oxygen tubing pushed aside from her nose and face so she could get the chocolate-covered cinnamon bun to her mouth. Balancing on her stomach was a huge bag of popcorn, three times the size of anything they'd even sell at a theatre. 


She can't roll over on her own. Three times a week a home-healthcare nurse comes over, hooks her up with belts and bands to this massive machine and hydraulically lifts her out of bed. There are special bars she grips with her hands as the machine pulls her up and out of bed. I walked in during the process last week and got sick to my stomach. There was my mom, once a proud woman, helplessly hanging in the grips of this machine while the nurse changed her bed. I noticed an entire box of half-eaten full-size Hershey candy bars sitting on the bedside table.


Mom is one of six children. All of her living siblings are extremely obsese. Most of them are nearly as immobile as she, on oxygen. My sisters have both struggled with their weight as well. My baby sister changed her life's path by becoming a runner and now she's healthy and slim. My middle sister is obese. She is having both her knees replaced on December 1st, hoping she can become more active and break her cycle, so similar to our mother's.

I've got three wonderful, grown-up kids who live an active lifestyle and thank God, they don't struggle with weight problems.I have a beautiful granddaughter. I adore them all, they're my greatest joy and I want to be around a long, long time to hang out and have fun with them.

That's why.