The day finally arrived!  Yesterday the hubby and I were of to the hospital for my the second step in my quest for weight loss surgery (the first step having been the actual referral to the Bariatric Registry).  I had heard that the hospital was working on sending out orientation letters for January referrals but there was a postal strike so I thought I`d likely have to wait a while before I actually attended an orientation – but nope they called and off I went to get the process started…finally.  YES!

I was happy that my husband was able to get the time off work to come with me and when the day finally arrived I thought I’d be nervous but I was actually more excited than anything else!  We got there about 10 minutes early and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had chairs (with arm rests I might add) that were meant for overweight people and for the first time in god knows how long I didn’t have to squeeze my giant arse into a way too small chair – thank you to the respectful thoughtful people who made sure those were present at the orientation session!  I super puffy heart love you.  We were one of the first people to arrive and it was interesting to watch as the people all arrived and took their seats – much to my surprise I was definitely and obviously one of the youngest people in the room – if I had to guess I’d say about 3 or 4 of the attendees were in my age group and the rest were all much older but it’s hard to tell – being obese can sometimes make you look older than you truly are.  It wasn’t long before the session started and we were all handed out these great big packages full of questionnaires to fill out before our next appointments and copies of the things that would be shown in the power point presentation….when we had all finished filling out our contact information sheet the orientation began.

I’ve got to say that there was not a lot of information that I learned at the orientation session that I had not already learned on my own through research but it was still so exciting just to be here.  I felt sad for some of the question a few of the people were asking because it was so obvious they needed this surgery as badly as me but some of their thoughts about having to give up some of their favourite foods was just disheartening – as for me…I’m ready to give up whatever I have to in order to be able to get outside of this trap of a body I’m in…this process couldn’t possibly move any faster for me!  The one thing I did learn that was quite a relief is that the hospital which I am going through has not had a single death in their program related to the surgery!  Great news in my opinion!

When the orientation was over I received my next two appointments – one to see the nurse practitioner and the second to see the social worker!  I have to call and try to rebook the first appointment because it’s scheduled for a time when we are hopefully going to be out of country but I am willing to stay home from vacation if I am unable to change it for a sooner date!  I am so tired of waiting for this process but thankful that it is providing me with the opportunity to really know what I’m getting myself into here!  I have pages and pages of questionnaires to fill out for my psychosocial assessment and some of the questions make me crack up but I do realize that if the question exists then there must be some people out there that have those struggles and it makes me feel kind of sad that some people have to live with those thoughts in their head!

So I’ve got to get that homework done, set some goals for myself, and rebook my nurses appointment!

And………………………  GO!!