Dying for a dream

A friend of mine who is morbidly obese (as in over 400 pounds) is considering weight loss surgery. She has an excellent job with good health insurance that would cover the procedure and she's been getting the rah-rah-you-go-girl speech from just about everyone.

Everyone, that is, except me. I sent her this link to the Weight Loss Surgery Memorial Page run by obesityhelp.com. My e-mail:

Dude, seriously, it's not worth it. Google weight loss surgery and look at all the complications that can happen, not to mention it's no magic cure, people can gain all their weight back and then some. You're lucky that so far you don't have major health problems but there's just too many horror stories out there. Please reconsider--I don't want you cutting yourself up for no reason.

Her response:

Way to piss in my cheerios. A lot of those people didn't die from the surgery but from other things and the links are old. I have been researching and the surgery's a lot safer now and like you said I'm healthy except for being a fatass so it makes sense to do it now. I hope you're not going to give me a hard time if I do this and I know you said what you did because you're worried but if you're just going to give me shit about it then be quiet.

Me:
I'm not going to give you shit. Like everything else, your body, your choice. I just don't want to go to your funeral or see you suffer needlessly. Keep me informed.

I know two people who have had weight loss surgery. One wasn't all that fat but had it done anyway ... and what weight she lost came back and brought friends. The other one was more successful--she dropped over two hundred pounds--but she's actually too thin now. Her face is gaunt and drawn and her body looks like a skeleton draped in an ill-fitting fat suit (she's going to have skin removal surgery this summer). She is constantly cold, can't stomach any food other than baby rice cereal and protein shakes--once I saw her eat ONE piece of popcorn and then spend the next fifteen minutes puking in the sink--and has to take naps at her job because her energy is sapped. She was healthier and more active at 330 pounds than she is now at 110. But she's thin, and that's all she wanted. She proudly shows me her size two jeans, her collarbones, and says "you should talk to my doctor, he did a fantastic job." Of what, making you look like a corpse?

I may be fat, but I can say with confidence that I would NEVER do weight loss surgery. Even if it takes me ten years to lose all the weight, I would rather do it through diet and exercise--exercise is a factor in weight loss for me, always has been--than by getting myself cut open. I read the names on the memorial lists, read their stories if available, and sometimes I think of that old saying "digging your grave with a knife and fork." I have seen my 400-plus-pound friend go through two huge bags of chips and a two-liter bottle of soda during the course of a movie on TV, then eat a full meal afterwards, then retire to her room to munch on a bag of M&Ms while she's surfing the net. I try very hard not to say anything. She tried low-carb a couple of years back but got induction flu (which I did warn her about) and said fuck it after maybe three days. What's worse is I tend to fall off the wagon of good eating when I'm with her (like this weekend)--I don't eat in her quantities but I find myself mindlessly munching crap and then paying for it by feeling like shit. I'm home now, with pork ribs in the crock pot and tons of steak in the fridge and freezer. It's what works, it's what makes me feel better ... and it will keep my name off that page.