Web Site last updated  4/01/04

Since my last update, I've gotten married and gave birth to a perfect little baby boy ! With this surgery I lost 157 pounds and gained a little 5 pound 13 ounce baby boy ;)

Safhire’s

WLS Journey

My Journey to the "Other Side"

(Throughout this website, for those who don't know, "WLS" stands for Weight Loss Surgery)

Surgery Date was March 13, 2001

Weight loss so far:  -157 pounds !

 

 

 

 

 

Some wonderful resources for anyone wanting to begin research on weight loss surgery

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Visits to this site since I started creating it on Feb 15, 2001

 

My name is Helen and I live in North East Ohio

I'm 40 years old, married for 2 years now, and we have a little baby boy who just turned a year old and I can thank this surgery for being able to conceive him, I believe !

I've been heavy my entire adult life and childhood as far back as I can remember.

I've had to deal with all the usual stuff that a large child growing up deals with. In high school other classmates terrorized me shouting "Moose!" at the top of their lungs from the opposite end of the hall sending most of the students in between into fits of laughter. I wound up skipping class quite often, spending it in the restroom crying. So, academically, I could have done much much better had I been able to concentrate in class without worrying about being teased and also discriminated against by some teachers. Yes…it happens!

My brother and sister are 7 ½ and 9 years older than myself, respectively. So psychologically speaking, growing up I was considered an only child. My siblings both battle their weight to some degree, but nowhere near the struggle I've had. They are mildly overweight, probably not even considered "obese", just overweight as they take after my mother in the same respect. I, however, was handed down my father's genes and thus labeled "morbidly obese."

My father, with good intentions, I now believe (although I sure didn't growing up), would try the shame tactics to get me to try to lose weight. He was scared to death that I would grow up dealing with the same things he was facing as a morbidly overweight adult. I don't think he knew that the shame tactics were only making it worse, and then when I would diet I would try hard to keep it from him because I didn't want to deal with his input about it. When he did know he tried to be my personal coach in the form of negative feedback when I'd fit in a higher calorie snack by backing off calories in other areas knowing that I was balancing it all out ok. He would tease me and tell me what I shouldn't be doing. I feel that in dealing with his OWN disease he didn't realize that he was going about it the wrong way. But he was handling it in the only way he knew to. Don't get me wrong…my father was a very loving father at times. He just didn't know how to handle his youngest child facing the genes she was handed down from him and didn't want her to have the health and social worries that he was dealing him himself. My mother was the peacemaker, or she sure tried hard to be. She would express concern about my weight and the health issues involved, but she never pushed me to diet as my father had.

Growing up, I believe that my weight, although it created many social heartaches for me as a child and young adult, I believe I learned to be a sweeter, kinder person. A person more understanding and accepting of other's disabilities and society's labeling them as some sort of misfit. If there was a silver lining to all of this, I believe that is it. My size and how I had to cope and adapt to society's treatment of the overweight person formed my personality to a great degree.

However, it also formed a very low self image and self esteem problem for me.

The one positive thing I had to boost my self image, at times, was the "such a pretty face" thing. At times I loved it…hey..at least my face and hair were acceptable and at times admired. At other times I hated it because it set a very harsh disclaimer for me. I was "almost acceptable", almost "pretty" period. However the "if only" tag always seemed to follow the "such a pretty face" line. And the "if you would lose weight you'd have your pick of boys, you'd be a knockout" yada yada.

To make a long story shorter, I had my first date at age 20. After that came a long line of bad relationships as I settled for what I thought I had to settle for to have a boyfriend. Then around my early 30's I wised up and decided it was better to have no one in my life romantically than to have the wrong one. After that the men I dated were more educated, more confident, but usually bigger players than the others too. So…the search went on and only when I felt I wasn't settling…or it didn't' feel that I was at the time.

Somewhere during that era, in late March of 1997 after a heart-wrenching breakup with my boyfriend who I'd caught cheating on me, I fell into a deep depression and spent my time online trying to get my head together. I discovered the world of BBWs and BBW admirers. More on that in a minute.

The year earlier, in January of 1996, I suffered a mild stroke and was rushed to the local hospital, which quickly rushed me to a bigger, better hospital, Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I was transported an hour from home, but it took 3 hours to get there because we were in a level 3 blizzard. It was the longest 3 hours of my life! After many tests, including the grueling TEE (trans esophageal echo) it was determined that the stroke was caused by a hole in my heart called a patent foramen ovale and from a blood clot that had formed at the opening to the hole and a piece of the clot (kinda like dried blood…I don't recall the medical term for it) flaked off and got into my blood stream and blocked the oxygen to my brain.  It's a hole that every one of us are born with, but it closes up during development. Mine didn't. But I went all my life not knowing about that until it caused me to have a stroke at the age of 33.

I had woken up from a heavy sleep on my right side to the phone ringing and I couldn't move my right arm…it was paralyzed. My speech was slurred and completely off. Eventually the speech and almost all the feeling came back, but I'm left with very few residual effects as far as sensation of feeling is concerned. The tip of my right thumb is not quite, but almost numb, as is the inside right of my gums and lips. And when I get emotionally upset…it has to be a very upsetting situation, I get very dizzy and if I do too much physically it happens too. I'm very lucky it wasn't worse. I was placed on an anticoagulant, coumadin, and told I would probably be on it for the rest of my life or until I get the hole repaired. Scan to 1999…Cleveland Clinic confirmed the diagnosis and the Neurologists came to the conclusion that they want to put a device in the hole to close it up...a type of double-sided umbrella thing, but I would need to lose a LOT of weight first. That was the deciding factor for me to have this surgery.

Back to the BBW community part from a few paragraphs back.

As I said, I was in a deep depression after catching my boyfriend cheating on me. I was off work …actually had to drop out of college as I was majoring in Social Work at the Ohio State University Mansfield branch and was just transferring to Ashland University to finish my degree when the stroke happened…and on disability at the time, so I had plenty of time to just sit online trying to get my head together.

I discovered the world of BBWs and their admirers. Again, to shorten a lengthy story, I began going into the BBW chat rooms, making BBW friends, and I started getting a LOT of attention from the kind of men who preferred big women. For the first time in my life that disqualifier was GONE. Finally it was "such a beautiful woman" period. No "if only" attached. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven lol. I started attending BBW-related bashes and other events and made so many friends in women who are just like me. Also..on the down side…for the first time in my life, I had to learn to deal with men who wanted me for just one thing. Imagine that…that was far from the norm up to this point : )

I dated a lot...got played a lot…had my heart broken a lot. BUT it's amazing how all of this patched my self esteem and sent my self worth soaring.

For the first time ever, I felt like it was ok for me to be a big woman. I came to the point of accepting the fact that I would always be a big woman to some degree, even though I knew I needed to be a "smaller big woman"for my health concerns. I had come to realize that it was just my biology to be big and it was finally ok…I stopped apologing to myself and society as a whole especially the popular media for being a "fat chick". I was beautiful as I was. It was wonderful. All that trying to change myself to be loved and accepted was over.

However there was still the fact about the heart needing fixed. And the only way to do that was to lose weight. So I was right about it being ok to be a big person…as long as you are a HEALTHY big person…and yes there are MANY very healthy people who also happen to be big people. I just happened to not be one of them.

So…it's VERY VERY important to me to stress here, that I having had this surgery is something I did out of medical necessity…so I can have a long and happy life. I would NEVER NEVER do this for purely cosmetic reasons, and I will always always be a BBW inside because that's where my programming is. I will also always be a part of the BBW community..again because that's where my programming is, that's the kind of people I relate to the best and have the most fun with! My only hope in that concern is that the BBW community will be kind to me as I lose the weight. I have been approached by a few who condemn me for having the surgery saying that they think I can't handle being a BBW and that I am butchering my "beautiful BBW body". This breaks my heart, because as a BBW or BBW Admirer we've come to learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves regardless of size. Note that…REGARDLESS OF SIZE.

This I did for my HEALTH. So I could live a long and healthy life, and get off the Coumadin which doctors felt is not safe for me to be on my full lifetime ,as I am such a young person to be on a medication that potent for the rest of my life.

So…I close this section hoping that I've reinforced my reasoning for the surgery, hoping that the BBW community will accept me "regardless of size", and hoping that my story may help others to make the right decision for themselves should they choose that this is something they feel they "need" as well.

God bless

Helen