The Best Laid Plans...

 

 

In 2010 I decided to address the massive amount of weight that I had put on. In my last post, I mentioned that I had started the Nutrisystem program.  It was fairly successful for me, as I had managed to drop 50 pounds in just a few short months. I enjoyed being on the program, but it was costing me more than I wanted to pay. 

So I took the things that I learned about nutrition and diet and continued to implement those into my new lifestyle.  In July, a coworker invited me to go to the gym with her and we got ourselves personal trainers. We figured that this way we could use peer pressure to continue our journey of getting fit. 

Each month, we would also go visit a guy in a neighboring town who had developed a new method of measuring body fat. It was a computerized system and it showed the amount of body fat, lean muscle, and of course our weight.  It appeared that I had plateaued in the weight loss department, but according to his measurements, I was losing fat and gaining muscle. This is a good thing.  

A year later, during one of these body fat measuring visits, the guy brought to my attention that the fat loss had stopped as well as the lean muscle gain. In fact, I was gaining weight at a very unhealthy rate. He said I appeared to be retaining quite a bit of fluid and strongly suggested I see my primary care provider as soon as possible.

Off to the primary care provider I went. She put me on Lasix and Potassium to see if that made a difference. It didnt.  Within the next 3 months, both of my legs had swollen from my thighs to my toes, and walking was becoming increasingly difficult. The weight kept piling on, and soon I had put all the weight back on that I had worked so hard to lose.  And to complicate matters, instead of edema ulcers, my legs had developed a growth on the shins, followed by fluid leaking from the pores on my legs. 

My primary care provider referred me to a Neurovascular Surgeon to treat the edema and leaky legs.  The guy was a real piece of work. He kept telling me that my problem is that I’m fat and I need to lose weight.  His idea of ‘treatment’ was to measure the growths on my legs weekly with instructions to put my legs up for minimum of 15 minutes every 30 minutes. 

In the meantime… I started having issues with my cycle again.  My primary care provider sent me off for an ultrasound where it was determined that I had two very large fibroids growing in my uterus. 

My primary care provider then referred me to a gynecologist with the idea that I should have a hysterectomy.  As soon as the gynecologist walked in the room, she said she didn’t want to treat me. She came across as very fat phobic and condescending. She referred me to a gyn/onc saying he had the ability to perform the needed surgery with a robot.  ‘And oh… I suppose I should do an exam to justify sending the charge to your insurance’.  Lovely lady. Not.

So, off to the gyn/oncologist I went. 

Until Next time…