To Do: Figure my shit out!

It’s been on my TeuxDeux list for months now, just rolling over to the next day and the next. Every time I open my laptop or check the app to make sure I’m on top of schoolwork and life admin, it’s staring at me: make appt with bariatric dr.

When I can’t take it anymore I move it ahead a few days, manually, telling myself I’ll do it when things are calmer or the apartment is quieter or it stops raining… These excuses are bunk, of course – for one thing, a Pacific-Northwesterner* should never wait to do anything until the rain stops.

But I’ve been putting it off, because I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’ll be weighed and measured and found…what’s the opposite of wanting? Overabundant? I’m afraid I’ll succumb to pressure and tacitly agree that the weight is the problem, not my attitude about it (or my hoped-for response, the whole reason I’m going to a bariatric doctor at all: that my post-GB body processes food and exercise differently and there’s some key element I’m missing in my attempt at a healthy lifestyle). I’m also just, on a normal/normal-for-fat-people level, afraid of doctors. My hope is that a doctor whose specialty is bariatrics will necessarily know more about obesity, and therefore be more empathic toward fat people, but…yeah, I don’t have a lot of faith in doctors’ humanity.

It started back in May, when I told my fiancé** that I felt trapped between my desire to control my body and my desire to accept it, and the lack of control over even this small thing (my attitude about going up a size) was making me crazy. He listened patiently, as is his wont, and eventually he suggested, ever so gently, that maybe I should see a bariatric specialist. “A doctor who knows about what the surgery does to your metabolism, who can assess you with that knowledge in mind instead of comparing you to everyone else who hasn’t had their insides rearranged.”

I made some joke about how “then I’ll have a doctor in my contacts when I decide it’s time to tighten up my GB,” because I’m the worst, but then I paused to think about it. Maybe he was right: maybe a doctor with experience in bariatric surgery and post-GB patients could actually help me. Even if s/he just said that this is where my body wants to be when I behave in a healthy (non-obsessive) way about food and exercise regularly, and ran a bunch of tests to make sure my hormones/blood sugar/etc are all at the right levels, I could walk away knowing that accepting this change truly is the best path.

And then I could (maybe, with the help of a lot of wine and encouragement) finally get rid of all the clothes that don’t fit me anymore. My heart broke a little just typing that.

Anyway, I haven’t called to make an appointment yet – I called my surgeon first, to see if she could refer me to anyone up here, but she doesn’t know anyone in Washington – but I will. And I will drive all the way down there and have a panic attack in the waiting room and pay the (likely exorbitant) copay on my insurance, and then I will report back. Fingers and toes crossed that I don’t regret making myself vulnerable to the medical profession…too often that’s exactly what happens.

* We moved to Washington in September – it's sooooo much more affordable and it's also gorgeous! We love it.

** Oh, yeah, that’s also a thing – we got engaged in August! Very exciting and also triggering/terrifying, but mostly just happy news that I feel kind of weird about sharing every single time because of my history.