My surgery is July 12. I had my consultation two days ago, my follow up consultation. I had to fly down to Leeds in the morning, have my appointment from noon to 1 pm, than fly back at night and got home a little after 8 pm. My flights were delayed by almost two hours on both ends. So I spent the day cooling my heels in the airport most of the time. I managed to get some homework done for part of it. I had my notebook with the info for several reports in it, but I found that I just couldn’t be bothered to do it even though I had all that time. The surgeon has changed his mind and wants to do a T cut on me after all. He also said that he would probably take about a stone, which is about 14 pds off my abdomen alone. I also have a hernia, which is huge. He said he could put his entire fist into my gut no problem. It is what that pain has been that I have had off and on since my RNY and it is why when I drink something or eat something my stomach bulges out like I have an alien baby growing inside. He does NOT want to do a face-lift on me. He said my brows are placed well, my skin isn’t loose below my chin (I disagree with that one) and I have a good strong jaw line as well as a beautiful shape to my face. What he does want to do though is all four of my eyes, both upper and lower lids. He said that is a genetic hereditary trait and that he can fix the bulgy bits below my eyes permanently, and that I may end up having to have my top eyelids done a few times in my life. He told me this surgery for my tummy will hurt AS MUCH as the RNY. He said that he will have to do a lot of muscle work and that my “guts are hanging out, and I have to put them back”. After this surgery than we will re-evaluate where we go from there. It maybe that it won’t be boobs next but rather a body lift on the backside. He can pick my butt up and lift it about 6 inches or more because it has melted. Haha He was ok with me flying to Michigan in September. So we still get to go to back home for our planned holiday. I was correct, all those veins that are on the back of my legs are varicose veins, and there are several that have popped up in the last few weeks on the front of my legs too. I may have as many as 10 or so, or else they are all connected, not sure. I will have to have that sorted. He said they were surface veins so they won’t matter to have them taken out, but he doesn’t do that. I think it will have to be done before I can have my legs done, possibly the backside body lift, not sure. It is not necessary to have them done for the tummy tuck, hernia, and eye combo surgery. Overall it was a good meeting with the surgeon. It was my follow up appointment since he had not seen me for a year and my body has really changed in that time. I am rather unhappy with my body at this point. In clothes, it is not all that noticeable, but I do know what I look like outside of clothes and I just hate my body right now. I look like candle wax. My body has so much loose skin on it that it looks like I am melting. I told my mom that my feet, my hands, my nose and my ears are the only parts of my body that I like right now. And I heard this disgusted angry exhaling of breath from her. Why am I not allowed to hate my body as it is right now? I have suffered discrimination and problems all my life because of being 27 stone, and now that I have lost 12.5 stone I want to look good. I am 38 years old and finally am getting to the point that I feel like I am not obsessed and struggling with losing weight ALL the time after so many years of that internal and external struggle that I don’t know any other life. I still worry about it and want to lose a wee bit more, but I am about to the weight that I want to be. I am well below the SIZE that I wanted to be. My goal was to be a UK size 16 or a US size 14. I am below that now and that is without my reconstructive surgery. I know that when he does this tummy tuck and takes another stone off my abdomen that I will than be at the lowest weight that I want to reach, and I will more than likely lose another 2-4 sizes in clothes. Right now, I can wear size 14 tops with the occasional size 12 top, and my bottom side is more like a 16. So I will most definitely be a skinny chick when this is all over and I have NEVER wanted to be that skinny. I wonder if I will ever be comfortable in my own skin? Yesterday I went down to get my hair trimmed a little bit before the belly dancing hafla on Friday night. The lady that trims my hair also belly dances with me. She told me that last week in class, her daughter had joined us for the lesson and had sat on the sidelines just watching. I came in late as I am want to do most times since she has changed the class night and time. I have clients booked every night and had always kept our original night open but than she went and changed it at the last minute and my case studies for aromatherapy were booked on every other night already for six weeks. Oh well….. Anyways, her daughter asked her later that that glamorous woman was that came in. She meant me! It is really strange how others see me so differently from what I see myself. I see melting fat and loose skin and everything wobbling and feel disgust and hatred of it, and others see a glamorous beautiful person. Or so I have been told. My husband says that he can’t wait until I have this tummy tuck operation because he thinks that it will change how I view myself since I can’t see how far I have come because of my feelings for the loose skin and the alien (hernia) in the front. With non-verbal communication, we all make snap decisions and judgements on what we think about someone when we meet from their outer appearance. What about the decisions and judgements that we make about ourselves based on our outer appearance? I know that has to translate into my confidence level, my attitude and manner, which in turn probably also influences how others see and judge me too. I don’t quite know how to get my thinking turned around and accept myself for how I look. It just really seriously bugs me in a major way. So many of the people in my class at Macduff have never seen me before my surgery. They have no idea what I looked like or what I have struggled with my whole life. I have shown them pictures but they say that it looks like someone else and that it can’t be me. Hmmm…wonder if that is what everyone thinks? I suppose that I am probably harder on myself than someone else would be. Any person that I have met since I have lost the weight, that did not know me prior to my surgery, can not really understand what I have been through or what I feel about myself. I believe that people don’t really GET what I think and feel unless they have been morbidly obese themselves. Skinny people do not get the problems that an obese person faces on a daily basis or even what an obese person might actually FEEL about their own body or themselves. My attitudes, feelings, and emotions are all skewed by what I have gone through all my life with this struggle for control of my weight and a “normal” person does NOT get that. They will NEVER get that! So I react differently to things because of my perspective and viewpoint. I think that I am rather defensive about many things and particularly about issues that I feel passionaltely about. That may even come from years of “hiding” my feelings about how I really felt about my body because I had to put on a confident happy face. If I didn’t put that face on, than I would have been discriminated against with my weight issues even more than I already was. I never analysed my feelings or felt discriminated against all that much until I moved here to the UK. They say that the first 1-1.5 years you spend losing the weight, and the next 1-1.5 years after that you spend trying to get your mind around your new body and accepting it. I am struggling with this. 🙁