My name’s Crystal. And here’s my intro-yo Smiley
The basics:
Age: 29
Highest Weight: 380 (circa 2006)
Starting Weight: 316 (July 2009)
Weight Day of Surgery: 290
Medical Conditions (before surgery):
* obviously morbid obesiety
* diabetes type 2 – 85 units of Levemir (insulin) and 4 pills daily)
* high cholesterol
* insomnia
* 2 herniated discs in my lower back – daily regime of percocets, nsaids and muscle relaxers plus periodic steroid shots into my back
* vitamin d deficiency
* and depression…well, would you be depressed if you had to take all of those pills and be in pain everyday?
My back story:
I’m a Georgia girl at heart and I’ve been overweight since I was 5 years old. Somehow before then, I was actually skinny. Then I discovered food glorious food. By the time I was 10 years old, I was wearing women’s size 16 dresses and poppin’ out of them. By the time I was in high school I was a size 24.
My heaviest was a few years ago. I was in a bad relationship and felt that I could somehow eat my way into a better one. The results? I ballooned up to 380 pounds and my size 32 pants were starting to get snug.
Well, I managed to get out of the relationship and found weight watchers and exercise. Walking was my preferred method and things were going great. In about a year, I went down to 301. And then all hell broke loose. Lots of life changes, many of them good in the long run, but I somehow reverted back to stress eating and less and less exercise. I ended up moving from Georgia to Florida, starting a new job, a new relationship and all sorts of fun stuff. After about a year and a half of going up and down by 15 pounds, but never getting below 301 I decided enough was enough and got back on my diet and exercise full force.
Things were goin’ great! I was down to 288 at one point even! I was feelin’ fab cause I was able to go and do so much more. I moved in with my new girlfriend and we got season passes to Seaworld and Universal Studios and could be seen out and about almost every weekend.
Then in August 2008 after going to Disney with some friend one weekend, my back started to hurt like crazy. At first I thought I had just over done it… went with the standard heat/ice, etc. But the pain continued to get worse. Tried physical therapy…nada…got worse. Turns out I have 2 herniated discs in my lower back.. one’s really bad, one’s not so bad. Insert a full year of going to countless doctors, pain management, etc. I was so depressed. I went from living a full and vibrant life to being stuck in the house on the couch or in the bed and with a steady supply of oxycodone running through my system. I had to go on insulin because of the spinal steroid injections they were causing my blood sugars to go through the roof. Basically life sucked. And my weight had bloomed up to 320 AND I couldn’t even stand to go walking around the grocery store without being in huge amounts of pain.
In June 09, I finally said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I talked to my docs about gastric bypass. ALL of them agreed that droppin’ 100 pounds would be amazingly wonderful for my health and my back. The neurosurgeon said that I may still need surgery on my back, but that it should be able to heal itself to the point that I either won’t need surgery or it will be a much less invasive procedure. Once they told me that my diabetes would most likely be reversed… I was sold.
So, I started jumpin’ through hoops… weight management program for 16 weeks, nutrition classes, docs docs and more docs… tests, tests, and more tests.. new meds and lots of poking and prodding.
I also started reading everything I could get my hands on about WLS. I got books, read blogs, websites and yes, watched every freakin’ episode of Bariatric Tv definitely one of my favorite sites!
I had my RNY Gastric Bypass on 11/16/2009. Today’s weight: 275…that’s what I weight my Junior year of high school! I’m a little over 2 weeks post-op and learnin’ how to eat and live all over again.
This blog is where I’ll post mundane stuff like how my day went as well as recipes, links, reviews, etc. 
