It's been one year!

February 26th was our one year Surgiversary! Tia is down 145 pounds, while Mark is down 110. Both of us had high blood pressure, which is gone. Tia's cholestoral is under 200 (191, down from 259 in August) for the first time in living memory, Mark's is 145 (good genes). Mark's diabetes (type 2) is GONE.

What a journey it's been. Even though we had our operations the same day, we each had very different experiences.

Tia couldn't handle solid food reliably for about 9 months - turns out she had a stricture (the opening to her stomach shrank). Once she had the easy day procedure to take care of that, she's now eating like a champ.

Mark on the other hand, can eat anything - and that's a bad thing. Definitely the reason I haven't lost as much weight as Tia. I'm having an upper GI to see if things have stretched out on Wednesday.

Here are Tia's thoughts on the surgery after one year:

Be patient. The weight loss has slowed considerably. Just remember that this is long term. Enjoy the little triumphs; the way you can walk up and down stairs without getting as winded. The fact that you can now sit in normal size seats without hanging over. That you no longer have to use a seat extender on the airplane.

Time to start thinking about plastic surgeons and how to get rid of the extra skin. Wish I could have this done this spring, so I'd be healed for bathing suit season, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen.

And here are Mark's thoughts:

I echo Tia's sentiments. I have absolutely no regrets at all, in fact I wish I had done it sooner. I feel SOOOOO much better. Remember, all the emotional issues that you had before surgery, you'll still have afterwards - you just can't eat as much. Some type of support person/group is essential to success.

Last week, Tia's workplace had an employee recognition dinner, so we decided to splurge on some new clothes and get all decked out. Tia looked fabulous. Here are the photos - it felt like Prom!

9 Month photos

Okay, here we are at the 9 month mark. Tia is doing much much better with her eating since her dialation procedure, so both of us are eating pretty much normally. We had our 9 month checkup with the surgeon yesterday and all is good. Just a slight vitamin D deficiency for both of us, easily corrected with a supplement. With the lack of sunlight in the Pacific Northwest, this is a pretty common condition.

So, on to the pictures. As you can see, Tia is looking fantastic. She's down 130.2 lbs while Mark is down 109. We're starting to investigate the whole plastic surgery thing for the excess skin.

7 months photos and update

Apologies for missing the 6 month mark. I think we were distracted by life and other things.

The good news is that Tia is doing a bit better with her eating. She had a mild stricture which caused her to not be able to eat any meats, so we had a procedure to fix that (went smoothly). She's still very cautious about things, but can handle tuna, etc. No chicken yet though.

Mark is doing okay. Things have slowed a bit but I'm approaching 100 lbs down (yay!).

Both of us are much more active, taking walks about 5 times a week, sometimes with the dogs pulling us along.

By the way, people really didn't start noticing until we were down about 80 lbs, so don't get discouraged if people aren't gushing about your loss. Most are scared to bring it up!

Okay, on to the photos:

Goodbye, Melissa

I first met Melissa Batten through e-mail. I was researching weight loss surgery and stumbled upon a message board called Thinner Times. While reading through the posts, I saw someone who said they were a software tester in the Seattle area. Hmmmm. While there are lots of software companies in the Seattle area, I wondered whether she actually worked at Microsoft – where I worked. In looking at her sign-on name on the board, it looked an awful lot like a Microsoft e-mail alias. For the heck of it I put it into our address search at work and voila – there she was!

Hesitantly, I e-mailed her to verify it really was the same person. Not only did she confirm it, she was very forthcoming with information about her experience with the surgery. She even recommended her doctor – Doctor Lauter at Overlake hospital in Bellevue.

We exchanged a couple more e-mails filled with questions about every aspect of weight loss surgery. Each time, she responded with wonderfully detailed, open and beautifully written answers. When I asked her where she learned to write so well, she said it was from writing tons of test specifications.

In one of the mails, she volunteered to meet up with Tia and I to answer any more questions in person. Wow, we were amazed by that offer, but eagerly took her up on it.

We met at the Starbucks in Redmond Town Center, near work, just before our initial consult with Dr Lauter. She was so open, so generous and so excited about her WLS experience. She talked about how she was now doing martial arts, and even running – which, in her words, was stunning, as before the surgery the best she could do was a few seconds on Dance Dance Revolution video game before becoming exhausted. She mentioned how she wanted to try to get pregnant now that she was slimmer, but there was some hesitancy about that from her husband. We both got the feeling that he wasn’t entirely supportive of her transformation.

She made the surgery seem normal to us. It would all be fine. Life afterwards was so good, there’s no reason not to.

So on February 26th 2008, we did. And with Dr Lauter, her recommendation. He was fantastic. We were off on our new lives!

We kept in touch via e-mails, with her checking up on us on our surgery date and every few weeks afterwards. Each time we had a concern or questions, she’d still openly and patiently answer.

Shortly after our 5 month mark, I posted some before and “so far” pics on our blog and wanted to share them with Melissa.

Something weird was going on though. She wasn’t in the Microsoft address book any more. I looked up her manager’s org chart and she wasn’t on there either. Maybe she’d gotten pregnant and was off taking care of that??

Being the researcher that I am, I decided to go back to the Thinner Times site to see if she was still posting there. I did a search for posts by her…

What I found was a bunch of condolence messages. My heart sank. Oh, no, no, no. What happened?


…


From the Seattle Times, Friday August 1, 2008:

“A woman who was fatally shot by her estranged husband at a Redmond apartment complex Tuesday just before he killed himself had obtained a protection order against the man a little more than a week earlier, court records show.

The protection order was obtained July 21 by Melissa Batten, 36, against Joseph Batten, also 36, in King County District Court in Redmond. In her request for the order, the woman had written that her estranged husband had recently purchased a handgun and had threatened to kill himself.

The King County Medical Examiner's Office said Thursday that Melissa Batten died of multiple gunshot wounds and classified the death as a homicide. Joseph Batten died of a single gunshot wound and his death was classified as a suicide, according to the medical examiner's office.”

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

This loving, generous person…a person who had changed our lives for the better was murdered.

Oh my god.

Even though we only met in person that one time at Starbucks, the support she gave to Tia and I through numerous messages was immeasurable. She showed us how good life could be after surgery. How happy we could be in our new bodies. And that the eating afterwards was do-able. We could feel normal again.

Melissa, we’ll miss you. You had a more positive impact on our lives than you imagined.


Epilogue: Tia and I are meeting with a couple on Friday to share our experiences with WLS. We can only hope to do as good a job as Melissa did.


Mark

Tia hit 100 today!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some great news - Tia hit the 100 lb lost mark today! We're all very excited. She's fitting into clothes that she hasn't been able to fit into in many years.

Congrats, Tia!

5 Month Photos

I'm planning on writing up a "Lessons Learned So Far" post, but haven't had the time yet. In the meantime, we took some 5 month comparison photos. Here they are!

Way to go, New Hampshire!

Just saw this on the newswire:

New Hampshire now requires insurers to cover gastric bypass surgery if it is found to be medically necessary. The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Robert Clegg, wrote the legislation after having to pay more than $20000 for his own gastric bypass.
Details here.