Each time I've convinced myself I'll go through it, I eventually talk myself out. So I'm reading, and trying not to think of the surgery itself, because that's something I have no control over. Hey, I could eventually work myself up to actually accepting it as my lot/fate, and the surgeon or the insurance or God knows who else would or could potentially nix everything for a bunch of reasons, some I could hypothetize right now, but I'm trying not to be overly negative at the moment. Easy to say, tough to employ.
I’m not doing it to make myself happy. In fact, I’m quite content “as is,” however, one of my fears is physically turning into my mother, and if fucking my relationship with food over is the only way to ensure it… then so be it.I told my mother that mum’s the word when I do go for it. And for her not to be offended but not to expect any visits from me until I am on solid food (which could be about 3 months, depending on foodstuffs).
Now, I have to worry about making up a will and an advanced directive, as these things are usually fraught with all types of risks, and I have to plan for every possibility.
I want to plan this for the new year, and for me not to be in recovery during the holiday season, and make sure it’s in between vacations as well.
My crippled up mother asked me if I wanted to come down and stay with her for my recovery. And to be honest, she’s really crippled up, I can’t see her really being all that much help, but it would give her more time with me, which is one thing she’s always wistful about.
Apparently while I was on topamax a few months back (and was on it far longer than anyone else my doctor suggested for other than prescribed reasons), she and I “turned a corner” in our relationship. On one level I’m pleased, but I’ve been conditioned to expect the worst. I’m back on my lexapro, so I’m able to not dwell so much and be anxious etc. But life is short, and I’d like to have some type of relationship with my mother, and reverse the fuckeduppedness of my childhood and early adulthood.
We’re all flawed, yanno?
[...]He (the husband) knows. I just stood over the stove sobbing just now, as I was toasting up his naans for his dinner (I haven’t had dinner myself). I’ve been doing a lot of reading ahead, to see what the recovery is like, for me to be at peace with it before this process even commences. Just stood and sobbed at how alone I am.
I have zero support system up here, and knowing in the past when I’ve been under the weather or otherwise not 100%, he always responded as if it were all an inconvenience… how it all inconveniences HIM. I can only imagine what it will be like for a protracted amount of time, knowing the things we love so much, dining out and vacations, will be radically different for a long time. I want to plan it so it doesn’t interfere with holidays, as well as vacations… so I suppose he and I have to think ahead to taking a vacation right before the surgery, and plan one six months after, by that point in time, I’ll be on solid foods again, and hopefully having no difficulties with spicy foods or red meat.
As I stood there sobbing, he came in and reassured me he would be working from home, so he’d be able to take care of me. Which, of course, made me sob more, because I envision us being at each other’s throats. Not that we are at the moment, but it seems, when one of us is miserable, which I am sure I will be, we both will be miserable. Things here have improved a bit, but not sure if that’s any doing on his part, or if it’s just me being compliant on the lexapro.
For a while there, I was envisioning checking myself in at Mt. Sinai, alone. My husband is a good man, a foolish man when it comes to things he says (think of that movie, “As Good As It Gets” with Jack Nicholson–granted my husband doesn’t have a psychological thing wrong with him; however, he’s just thoughtless with his words, and I’m too thin skinned for that). I hope some of this makes sense.
I envision the surgery to be the metaphorical half step before one sews their mouth shut (not that I am an over eater, I am just too inactive for what I eat, which isn’t more or less than a regular person. I’ve just got so much wrong with me, Syndrome X and PCOS double-teaming me as it were, I simply cannot lose weight and keep it off anymore. Weight Watchers, Atkins, you name it… I just am not so diligent to stay on anything for too long. Like I said, it makes me obsess even more over the food-weight relationship, and eventually I just give up and want to eat like a normal person, yanno? Have a normal life.
I haven’t decided if I’m just getting one type or the other, the other being a billiary bypass (not sure the difference there), whether I’ll have my gall bladder removed at the same time, and if so, if they can repair a suspected hiatal hernia at the same time too, as “they’ll be in the neighborhood”… might as well maximize having me under anesthesia, killing three birds with one stone.
I’m even depressed over the notion of being constipated after the surgery.
I’m a wreck.
