Tactical Errors

It was one year ago today.  The rest of mid-Missouri was bracing for the mother of all snowstorms, and Molly and I, having gotten ourselves to a nearby hotel the night before for a fitful night's sleep, found our way to the hospital before the blizzard began.  Mine was supposedly the only elective surgery that took place at University Hospital that day, a fact I was proud to claim for it aptly describes my determination to move forward into healing and recovery mode.  My goals then were to have surgery, begin recovery, lose weight and improve my overall health, and get on with all the joys of life I felt I had been missing.

And I am proud -- enormously proud -- that I've accomplished more physically than I ever dreamed.  Here's what I weighed this morning when I stepped on the scale:

Depending upon when you start the meter, I've lost about 115 pounds, all but the last twenty or so in the first six months.  My BMI is below 25 -- in other words, for the first time in my life I am not clinically overweight -- and I causes me a pride and celebration beyond description.  I've gone from a size 46 waist in jeans to a size 34.  The last suit I carted off to Goodwill was a 54 inch chest, and the overcoat I had to buy at Christmas is a size 42.  Every trip to the men's department store section causes me utter disorientation -- there are suites of dressing rooms larger than the space Penney's and Dillard's sets aside for their 2x and 3x racks of shirts.  Once relegated to the margins where the big-and-tall shop, the freedom to shop any size large off-the-rack in any men's section is something I haven't begun to adjust to. I never thought I would admit it, but the old way was easier.

That's right.  I said it.  The old way was easier.  And I don't just mean shopping for shirts.

That admission comes with an apology to any and all of my loved ones who once regularly read my blog.  Early on, I promised you that I would write about the good and the bad, aspiring to share my truth with anyone who was pondering bariatric surgery.  But I haven't written much in these past several months.  I'm not sure why.  I've just been going through the motions in lots of ways.  Only now I realize I've been more than a little lost, stressed quite a lot more than I'd like to admit by forces both within and beyond my control, and unwittingly withdrawing into my own shell.  Bariatric surgery will change your body and hopefully your overall health profile and can undeniably improve quality of life in innumerable ways -- and it has done so for me and I am beyond grateful.  But I realize I made a HUGE tactical error in thinking that the first year of bariatric surgery recovery is ALL about physical recovery. 

That's where I am today.  I realize that to this point, this has been a journey of the body.  I long for it to become a journey of my soul.  There must be a million books about the physical recovery from bariatric surgery, and they have their place.  Yet sadly, I have yet to find any bariatric recovery books that deal with the emotional and spiritual discovery for the patient, let alone for the patient's loved ones.  Despite feeling so very lost sometimes, I know how blessed I am.  Those of you who know my circumstances intimately know I am bathed in more loving support at home than I deserve.  Molly and both our girls (who blessedly see their Dad as they always have -- as Daddy) embody God's grace more to me every single day.  I am crazy-in-love with all three of them, and I want nothing more than to be for them the whole soul God created me to be.