Before & After Anniversary Announcement August 17, 2002

I can't believe that on August 28, 2002, I will be celebrating my one-year after anniversary. After what, you may be asking?

That's easy. After my laparoscope gastric bypass surgery performed at 9 AM at Zale Lipshy Hospital, televised by Channel 5 News and Deborah Ferguson. Who did the cut, staple and stitch procedures? Drs. David Provost and Daniel Jones of UT Southwestern Medical School.

Since the airing of the show, their support group has grown three fold and is now held the second and fourth Tuesdays at St. Paul Hospital's auditorium. Hundreds flock to the pre-op and post-op sessions. And for good reason. These are good doctors—good enough to teach other doctors who want to get in on the wave of "mainstream" surgery today.

Barbara Walters said it on a recent 20/20 broadcast. WLS (gastric bypass surgery) is so popular and in such demand today that it's almost considered "mainstream." Besides, it works.

It's easy to understand. Make the stomach smaller and less food will be consumed. But it's the feeling of fullness that I never could feel. I never felt satiated with any food I ate and if it was good or not, I still wanted more. In fact, if it was something I did like, I could eat until the cows came home (or I fell asleep, whichever came first.)

But today, I stop after a few bites. Period. Yes, you'll take one more bite than you should enough times until you learn your lesson, but it eventually works and you stop. Why? Because you get a pain in your stomach that will curl your toes and command you to bed. (Ask my assistant, Nell, how I take to my bed when I am "dumping"!)

Everyone who has "gone to the other side" has dumped. It's like your first kiss, your first sexual experience. If you're a WLS loser, you love to describe in graphic detail your first dump and any others thereafter.

Like your grandma and her friends used to share their bathroom irregularities, so do we. And I mean we ALL want to share our dumping scenarios.

It's the same bond that glued us together when we were 100 pounds or more overweight. The same ole, same ole lament of the newest diet that failed or the latest pill that did the trick. The difference, however, is that they never worked for long. And WLS does.

At least so far…and the same with everyone who has undergone the procedure. Though insurance companies still give it a serious going over and do not routinely approve everyone who is "morbidly obese—100 pounds or more to lose", they are becoming more sensitive to the needs of those of us who could not walk, sit in a movie theater seat, fly in tourist, fit into a restaurant booth, sleep in a reclining position…well, these are just a few of my favorite things that I can now, once again, enjoy.

I guess that's why I end every "ASK THE DIVA" email question I get with a money-saving suggestion and then the word, "Enjoy!"

Thank God, I can. So as I celebrate another birthday, which I shouldn't have if I had stayed at my last year's weight, I am so grateful for the year's accomplishments thanks to the surgery. But an entirely new entourage of friends that I didn't have a year ago also blesses me. From Talk Show host Scott Anderson to main frame maven Pat Miller, to all the others who have joined me at First Sunday, my support group that meets the first Sunday of the month, I can now enjoy more than just the physical pleasure of being able to do things but it has opened a world of unconditional love that I have not felt since I lost my parents.

Traveling to Seattle to see my beautiful son and his bride of one year for the first time since they married, it was easy to see Josh's pride in his mother's new and improved body. But it was his exclamation of joy when he remarked, "Mom, I can't believe you're jumping up to get things on your own, instead of asking me to get it for you", that made me reclaim my own independence. And for that, I realized that without this surgery, I would have become increasingly dependent on those around me to be burdened with things I should have been doing myself.

That makes me the happiest. I envision me, unlike OJ running through the airport one day, clicking my heels in the air, I did it! I really did it.

And just think, I have loved my husband now for six years and on the plane ride to Seattle, he has never seen me fly without an "extender belt" so I could get the seat belt around me. Little did he know I had it tucked in the corner of my Louie Vuitton purse just in case I gain weight on the flight! I didn't have to use it. In fact, I had to pull on the regular seatbelt to tighten it around my shrinking waist. Ah, what a difference a year makes.

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