12/12/08 Glamour Shots...(and "Telling Others")

Nope, no “Afters” or even “Befores”. Remember?...I know I told you!? I went back to the Urologist yesterday (See my “12/5/08 Urodynamics” blog…if you want to sing a wacky Christmas Jingle with me) for my “Glamour Shots” (Yee Old Tiny Camera up the gazoo photos). I wonder if I can get a copy for my fridge? After all that (again) my Urologist comes in and says they didn’t find any problems from the original surgery so he’s going to send me to a Specialist (Specialist? I thought you WERE a specialist!). Oh, and he gave me a reassuring “Don’t worry…you won’t be leaking the rest of your life.”…what am I, a faucet? Sigh. I seem to always be the “exception” or have the weirdest medical things happen to me that the Doctors can’t/take forever to figure out. Just ONE example of many; 2 years ago during 3 months of a TERRIBLE no-sleep literally-can’t-leave-the-house-because-I cough-so-hard-I-vomit constant cough, it took 5 Doctors and 2 Specialist and about 5 different diagnosis of everything from hand-foot-mouth disease to small pulmonary embolisms for me to finally get a “we think you have adult onset asthma…that was aggravated by…”…who knows? The good new is, none of my problems have been terrible things that I know so many have to deal with…Hey, if the worst thing that happens to me is peeing every time I laugh, which my youngest just told me I do way to often (the laughing, not the peeing, although that's true too), then I’ve got a lot to be thankful for! Asthma for me is like being obese and the many comorbidities it causes…you just get tired of it, tired of not feeling healthy.

I think one of my first questions for the new “Specialist” will be “Is there a chance this could improve with weight loss?” I asked my Urologist that (after also telling him I was getting the LB) and he said “Not for you! That only happens with people that are huge-morbidly obese…You’re not that overweight!” Yeah…us low BMIers hear that from anyone we tell (I’ve only told 3 Doctors and 3 Nurses and ALL of them have used those same 4 words…You’re not that overweight! To which my immediate reply is always “I’m 100 pounds overweight!” I was surprised how that just came out the first time and how defensive I felt about wanting to get the Lap Band. Some of them came around and eventually said positive things once they saw I was serious about it, but it was a weird conversation even with these medical “strangers”. I felt like I had to give a list of what a failure I’ve been at weight loss and all the terrible things I’ve let happen to my body because of that in defense of wanting the LB. What negativity…not me. It reinforced my decision not to tell anyone but DH (and of course the WHOLE WORLD here). So come on World…get behind me on this (just don’t make me laugh).

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In response to a comment on having to justify WLS:

Yeah...no one ever asks you to justify it when you tell them you're going on a diet (would those same medical professionals I told have said the same thing if I told them I was starting Weight Watchers? I think not)...why do we have to justify WLS?