Cut to it
May 20th, 2008 at 7:37 am (Uncategorical)
The first person to ever mention weight-loss surgery to me was an endocrinologist. She was a lovely Jewish woman from New York and there we sat, staring at each other over my naked body, discussing my diagnosis of PCOS. 25 minutes earlier, instead of perusing the sticky gossip magazines, I had mentally calculated her age from the certificates and awards hanging in the waiting room. It was 1999 and she was easily in her 70’s. I remember thinking, “As a woman, in her time, she probably really had to fight for her education, training, and successes.” I admired it. Here was a woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to work toward it.
Maybe that’s why I found her words so jarring.
I was 24 years old and weighed 350-something pounds. I was a mountain of a person and, probably, an ideal candidate for the procedure. Yet, I knew nothing of the surgery, except that it felt like the Ugly But Easy Way Out. The shock of her words drove me to my first significant attempt at weight loss and I vowed that I would never — never — take such a dramatic step for what felt like sheer vanity.
I can’t explain, really, why so few people mentioned the surgery to me in the ensuing years. It wasn’t that I weighed any less — but I had become so hypersensitive about any mention of my weight that doctors and loved-ones alike simply tiptoed around the subject. From time to time, a general practitioner would say something about “drastic measures” or about needing a “major change” but that was it, until about 3 months ago.
