Mom thoughts – Chronicles of a Homebody Adventurer

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot lately, with the impending celebration of Mother’s Day and my upcoming surgery.

Since she died 5 years ago, any time big personal changes loomed on the horizon I have felt that familiar swell of emotion that seems to be located somewhere between my stomach and my lungs, overwhelming me physically and mentally. This sensation can last for mere minutes or even long hours.

As I would imagine is normal, I imagine how she would react to these changes and achievements. Sometimes it’s easy to imagine her reactions.

When I defended my dissertation, she would have been proud and so pleased to see the culmination of years and years of work at last at its joyful end.

She’d have celebrated as I taught my first (and probably only) study abroad course (something I always wanted to do!) in Italy in May 2019.

She’d have hurrah’ed when I landed my first post-PhD job (with benefits!) at the Institute.

She would have been proud, excited, and disappointed when I got a job at Vanderbilt and moved to Nashville. Disappointed, because I wasn’t moving back to Virginia, choosing my Nashville family “over her” (that’s how she’d see it), but still she’d have been proud and excited for my accomplishments. She loved me.

But…as my surgery date approaches, I am having a hard time picturing how she’d react to this choice and new frontier.

Mom could—at times—let her own emotional hang-ups color her response to things going on in my and my siblings’ lives. Would her own struggles with her weight have influenced her reaction to my weight-loss goals? Would she have been less supportive than she’d have liked, whether intentionally or not? Would she, as she was sometimes wont to do with others who had gone through similar procedures, make snide comments about my potential to fail or relapse? Would her encouragement be a little too cloying, her smile a little too bright, suggesting that she didn’t actually believe what she was saying? Or worse, and definitely possible, would she barely attempt to contain her unique blend of judgment and jealousy?

On the other hand, she may have reacted excitedly, full of support and pride. She did often tell me to try to lose weight before I got too old, because the older you get the harder it is and the more physically painful it is to try to take it off. My mother lived with daily pain in her joints and back, moving, sitting, and existing was a struggle. I know that this physical pain manifested itself emotionally too. I know she’d want me to avoid that. So perhaps knowing that I will avoid some of that pain in my life would make her happy for me.

But at the same time…would she have even realized that her reality was the very future I am trying to avoid? Even worse, would the idea that I was trying to avoid becoming like her— to not share this daily pain and struggle—give her (more) emotional pain?

In some ways, her death has made this easier. The risk of not taking steps is clear. I need to go on this journey for my own mental and physical well-being. Because I will never know how she would actually react, I can choose to imagine her response as loving and supportive as I would like it to be at any given moment.

However, this too is a hard emotional line to walk, because in reacting this way, her death becomes akin to a gift. One that has allowed me both the freedom to act without causing her hurt and provided me the motivation to change….

But…

How could her death ever be a gift?

Right now, I like to think that my choice to pursue a WLS and strive for a healthy life honors both her life and her death. My mother wasn’t perfect. (I mean, whose mother is?) In many ways, I am on this obesity-related journey because she was. Since, in the long run, my mother would want the best for me, I’d like to think that she’s pleased by my choice to move forward with a gastric bypass, hopeful that it will work, but fearful that it will not.

But I’ll never know.

Lather.

Rinse.

Repeat.

2020. Unlike most years, I’m not really interested in doing much ruminating on 2020. It was a rollercoaster, one I don’t care to ride ever again. While I totally get that many of the problems we faced in 2020 aren’t magically gone, I am super ready to take reset that a new year offers (even if it’s only a placebo).

2021 will hold a pretty big adventure for me, one that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and now I’m at a place (read: not a grad student) to do it. If all goes to plan, I will be having gastric bypass surgery in 2021.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go public with this info. There are stigma associated with bariatric surgery. There’s a belief among some that it’s “cheating” or for people that don’t have the willpower to lose weight “correctly.” There are others that believe that weight-loss surgery is fatphobic and irreparably alters a healthy body for no reason, putting thinness ahead of health. Neither of these things are true.* To do my part in breaking down that stigma, I’ve decided to be open about what I’m doing to people in my orbit.

I am doing this surgery because I have always been obese, for as long as I can remember. I am not doing the surgery to lose weight, but rather to keep it off. I also am hoping to stave off type 2 diabetes and high-blood pressure, for which I am particularly high risk owing to family history.

I am doing the surgery because I wonder every day how my life would be different right now if my mom had had the surgical intervention. Would she have died at the age of 59 from a pulmonary embolism (a pretty direct consequence of being obese)? Would she have been happier? Would she have been able to do things with us in the last few years of her life? It is true that skinny does not equal healthy, while it is similarly true that morbid obesity (the worst term) is a deadly state.

I don’t want to wonder those questions about me. I am taking a proactive stance, and trying to prolong my current health for as long as possible. That’s the primary reason why I’m doing this.

It would be wrong for me to say that I am not looking forward to no longer sticking out like a sore thumb. To no longer see people’s eyes rolling when they see that their seat on the airplane is next to mine. To little kids, well-meaning dears who really don’t know better, asking if there’s a baby in my belly. To seeing people’s eyes look you up and down and know that they’re forming some assessment of your interior worth because of the exterior of your body.

Right now, I’m in the pre-op stage, which is dictated by my insurance. In order to qualify for them to cover the surgery, I have to have 6 consecutive months of weigh-ins where I either lose or maintain my weight, pass a series of medical pre-checks, and take several classes. My surgeon requested that I lose 20-25 pounds before surgery and I was put on a diet that’s called a “liver reduction diet” that reduces my carb intake in order to make my liver as small as possible for the surgery.

In the past 2 months, I’ve lost 25 pounds and I feel great. I’m proud of the steps I’ve taken for my health. I’m excited to see where 2021 takes me with this process. I’ve always felt like I was in a war with food, but in the past 2 months, I’ve felt so in control.

I do have concerns, questions, and anxieties about the risks this process entails, but that is for another post and another day. Today, I am excited about possibilities.

*I do think the approach to bariatric surgery can vary highly. If your surgeon and practice don’t put health first and privilege the goal weight over the rest, I’d find a new surgeon.