A Story of Recovery:

Last Throw of the Dice

I lay strapped down on the operating table and looked up at the bright lamps and masked faces above me. In preparation for the major surgery I would undergo, I had been given no food for several days to clean out my gastro-intestinal system, and I was pumped full of antibiotics and sedatives. I was trembling uncontrollably and kept hearing my parents’ voices when they phoned me the night before. “Don’t do it!” they begged. “There must be some other way for you to lose weight.”

But nothing would stop me now! I was finally going to have the weight-loss surgery for which I had waited so long. My last thought as the anesthetic sent me spiraling down into a whirlpool of darkness was, “I don’t care if I die. I can’t go on living like this.”

I was 33 years old, with a husband and three small children, and I had been fighting my weight since I was a small child. I remember my first “diet” at age 11, which I had found in one of my mother’s magazines. It consisted solely of a flour product and some kind of spread. Needless to say, this “diet” actually caused me to gain weight, while leaving me feeling deprived and full of self-hatred and feelings of failure.

For the next 20 years I was like a hamster on a wheel, ceaselessly running, running, and getting nowhere. I tried diet after diet. I tried fasting. I tried hypnosis, intensive psychotherapy, and group therapy. I sought medical help and was given diuretics by one doctor, amphetamines by another, and antidepressants by a third. I sent away for a “magic” elastic band that was cinched around my belly that was supposed to curb one’s appetite. I tried acupuncture and wore a painful plastic device on one earlobe that was supposed to stimulate certain nerve endings and cut down one’s desire to eat. Nothing worked. At only 5’3” tall, I weighed 220 pounds. This surgery was my last throw of the dice.

I was in intensive care for three weeks after the surgery and then went home to live my new “softer, easier” life. I was given no medical guidance. I found that, after the bypass, I could eat anything I wanted, as much as I wanted, as often as I wanted, yet I was still able to lose 120 pounds in less than a year and fit into a size 8. This sounds like a food addict’s idea of heaven, but there was a dark side. I had to cope with uncontrollable diarrhea, hair loss, gallbladder problems, stomach pain, and severe muscle cramps. Finally after seven years, the doctors told me that I must have the bypass surgery reversed or I would die.

Somehow although older and weaker than before, I survived the surgery to reverse the bypass. I thought, in my ignorance, that I would still be able to eat as much as I wanted, but I still remember the horror of the next few months. The weight came roaring back like a tsunami. There was nothing I could do to control it. I soon gained back all of the weight I had lost, and more, ending up at 259 pounds. Furthermore, the two surgical incisions began to fail because of the huge weight gain, and hernias developed at the site. Again and again I was rushed into the hospital for surgery to try to repair the hernias and the previous incisions. Far from offering “a softer, easier way,” the weight loss surgery made my life into a living hell.

Finally at age 71, I saw a small ad in our local community newspaper and I went to my first FA meeting. I knew from the first moment that this was where I belonged. I have never wavered from that belief since then. I am a food addict. My program works. There is no magic out there—no softer, easier way.

I have now been in Program for three-and-a-half years, with two years of back-to-back abstinence. I am down to my goal weight. I have had no further recurrence of gastro-intestinal problems, no hernias, no heartburn, and no pain. I was a pre-diabetic, but my blood sugar is now in the low-normal range. My leukemia has been in Stage 1 remission for the past two years. I love my program, I love my fellows, and I love to do service.

Now at age 74, I have one simple message to share: There is hope, even for someone my age. There is hope, even for someone who spent 71 years chasing that “softer, easier way” and never finding it.

The hamster has finally found a way out of the cage. I don’t have to run, run, run on the wheel. All I have to do is work my program. I am free at last!