Fortune Cookie Therapy from "The Bowl"

From The Bowl: 

• Off with the old and On with the New
• Flip side: Roll with the punches

I think I've mentioned that I see a therapist - a psychologist who I began to see in the hopes that my disability issues would become clearer.  As time went on, she began to assist me with some of the emotional, and psychological issues around my weight and my pending surgery.  At the core of it all was me beginning both to take responsibility for where I am today, and the ability to forgive myself and move on.  I suppose that as time goes on and these issues begin to make more sense and to look clearer to me, we'll revisit them.  In any case, GW has been very, very helpful to me.


One day, several months ago in my therapy, I noticed something that really caught my eye.  A bowl.  In this bowl were perhaps 100 little card stock weight papers slips in a pale yellow with phrases on them.  As I picked on up I was delighted to discover on these little 3" x ½" slips that there were two phrases, one on each side!  The phrases were sometimes credited if the author was known, but other times were not.  All had a deep therapeutic concept in them, though not always for me, I frequently recognized a thread of something worthwhile in each slip.  They were there to act as a little therapeutic fortune cookie - cosmic, randomly chosen inspiration from Dr. W's bowl to those who might partake of this form of fun "therapy."


You may have noticed that the name of this blog is “Off with the Old: My Gastric Bypass & the Lessons I've Learned From the Process”.  It's no accident that I came up with the initial part of the phrase, and also found a slip in The Bowl that said, “Off with the old and On with the New”.  I shared this with Dr. W in my last session with her, and I could tell that she was pleased that her bowl of inspiration had come to use in my therapy.  Truth be told, every slip offers me something for the day, and for that reason alone I will share them with you, faithful readers.  Sometimes I'll even try to tie into the posting a piece of the randomly chosen inspiration from The Bowl.

Off With the Old

Welcome to my blog:  Off With the Old! My Gastric Bypass and the Lessons I've Learned From the Process

I started this blog at the urging of some of the members of my team, at the Legacy Health Weight Management Institute in Portland, Oregon.  I am a patient at the Weight Management Institute (WMI) Since November 2009.  Since then I have been virtually surrounded by a team of professionals assisting me in planning for success in finally achieving my weight loss goals.  I want to say that my support team doesn't just include the Physical Therapist (PT), psychologist, nurse practitioner, registered dietitian (RD), and Surgeon (MD).  I also consider my family, my Primary Care provider (PCP),  and my personal psychologist to be just as important in my quest for lifelong weight loss. 

My Story

I have been overweight for as long as I can remember.  As a child, I was "the fat one" and I struggled despite my parents desperate and sometimes dysfunctional efforts to "make me thin".  I say this with love, because despite the worry my weight caused my family, with the comments, the bribery, the begging and pleading - I know that this was because they love me.  Nevertheless, it was difficult and often painful dealing with the pressures around my weight, whether it was a few pounds or many in question.

Last Fall I decided that enough was enough. It seemed then as if it happening all at once, but in retrospect it clearly happened over a matter of months to a couple of years. I was suffering from a multitude of medical problems that made work virtually impossible, and nearly all of my complications were related to my weight.  I was suffering from:

• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Chronic pain from osteoarthritis in my knees, ankles and low back  
• Non-insulin dependent diabetes
• Chronic heartburn from GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease)  
• Severe sleep apnea requiring that I use a machine called a C-PAP at night when I slept.  This requires getting used to a face mask of sorts hat blows air into your airway to keep it open while you sleep
• Impaired mobility -  I was having difficulty getting around, and now had to use a straight or single point cane.  

I agree that this is a lot of medical trouble, but that was not the worst of it.  I also suffered from:   

• Periodic venous stasis wounds on my legs from leaking veins that were causing a need for sometimes painful daily wound treatment and aggressive compression treatment ranging from the "oh so fashionable" compression hose to mechanical pumping using a lymphedema pump.  This pump machine is recommended for use for several hours a day to control lower extremity edema (swelling).  
• And the compression hose?  They are as uncomfortable as they are ugly.  

Suddenly it seemed that I was a mess and was heading toward disability very quickly.  And that's why when I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, on top of all of the rest of it I knew I didn't stand a chance.  Triggered by my many medical problems, my fibromyalgia flared out of control.  I was missing a third of my scheduled work time, and I was facing issues at work due to my absenteeism.  My job was on the line for the first time in my life.  I knew then that I needed to go out on a medical leave.  Fortunately, my PCP, Dr. D agreed.


More soon...