Lap Band V: The (Possibly) Final Frustration

I’m not in the greatest of moods right now. Not two hours ago, I got home from the Lap Band affiliated doctor who clears you for surgery. It was not good news. I’m sure to the doctor and to the nurses who were fucking around and not doing jack shit, this was nothing. To me, it is disheartening. I have to make three appointments: two to study my heart (echo cardiogram and something else that I forgot and am too lazy to go get the paper to look up), and one to see a gastroenterologist. The first two, while unexpected, are understandable. They have to make sure that my heart is able to take the strain. The latter, not so much. The reason I have to see a gastroenterologist is embarrassing, and pointless, I might add. I’ve had the problem for all the years I was fat, it went away when I lost weight, and it came back when I gained weight. I attributed it to the fact that I was fat, that fried food does not agree with me (pan fried food as well), and that I’d have it until I lost weight again. Nope. The doctor wants to make sure it isn’t something more fun, like polyps or tears or whatever.

I’m frustrated. I’m damned frustrated, and near giving up on this whole thing. It is not just the appointments. It is the lack of help that I’m getting from this so called support system at the clinic. Why am *I* expected to make the appointments for these tests and referrals when the doctor is the one who wanted them? And I distinctly remember him saying to the nurse, “Make these appointments.” Why was *I* expected to keep up with the pre-op class schedule, when I didn’t even know we were supposed to join the Yahoo group online to find out WHEN they were? I asked today, while I was there, when the next classes were. I figured maybe, just MAYBE the nurse could have told me something. Nope. She was vague, saying it could the first week or it could be the second week of December, and was I a member of the Yahoo group? I am, I said. I was informed to keep watching that group for updates. I desperately wanted to ask her if she was going to give us more than a day’s notice next time or just spring it on us like an hour before the class. I didn’t. I should have.

I haven’t called to make the appointments yet. I started to while waiting in the lobby of the hospital for my husband to come and pick me up, but after sitting on hold for ten minutes, I just hung up. Right now, I don’t know if I want to go through with making those appointments. I don’t know if I want to go through this anymore. My mind is telling me to just say, “Fuck it all” and be fat and die in ten years. I’m starting to listen to that refrain. It is hard as hell to try and get something done to fix yourself and having all these hoops to jump through just to achieve that goal.

Could I lose weight the old fashioned way? Possibly, but every time I’ve started to, my body goes into rebellious mode and taunts me to eat, eat, eat, and forget about exercise. Or, curse Murphy’s Law, I injure myself somehow, and fall off the bandwagon. Or I eat and exercise and lose nothing, which frustrates me to the point of giving up.

This is why I wanted the lap band. Knowing that I’d have it in me, knowing that I have what amounts to an actual physical conscience chiding me every time I fuck up, knowing that I’d never be able to eat huge portions again. That’s why I wanted it. All I would have to do is look at the scar from where they put it in or feel the port where they inject the saline solution. That would be enough to stop any eating folly, to check myself while exercising so I wouldn’t overdo it and hurt something, to override the morbid thoughts. I’d like to say my family is enough to do all those things, but they aren’t. No offense to them in any way, but they can’t be there for me 24/7, watching my every move. With this, I would be held accountable for all that I did and did not do.

Fuck it, I guess.