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!