Please Keep Trying!

When I put the sidebar up, I included a category titled “Surgeries“. Surgeries implies more than one surgery, and when I started losing weight and then injured my knee, I figured I’d be needing plenty in the foreseeable future.

Well, Leftie doesn’t need surgery, so that leaves one I know I need for sure, body contouring, and one which is still up in the air, hernia.

After I started losing more than 140 pounds, I started having pangs in my groin/ lower abdominal area. They were really bad when I laughed, went to the bathroom, lifted heavy objects, or otherwise strained myself. The really bad pains however, occurred during intimacy. That had me stumped. I didn’t have health insurance when the pain started a year and a half ago, but I still went and paid cash for my yearly well women’s exam. I told my gyno about it and she said I may have a hernia.

A hernia. I’m a woman, what are the chances I’d get a hernia? She informed me since I lost so much weight, the sagging skin, or whatever, caused the hernia, and when I continued to lose weight, the hernia collapsed inwards. Imagine the horror of hearing something like that and knowing you can’t afford to get it fixed. I waited another pain-filled year and at my next well woman’s, one which I had insurance to pay for, I told her about my problem.

The doctor had me get an ultrasound, which came up clean, with no indicators of anything gynecologically related. Next came an exam of the outside area of the pain. Nadda. Then came something fairly obvious: I have no abdominal muscles. Duh. You don’t get stretched out like a rubber balloon for ten years and expect to have any muscle tone left.

So off I go to a surgeon who’s a pelvic wall specialist. That’s tomorrow. I’m kinda scared. Two things could happen:

1. She has no idea what’s wrong and it’s another month’s wait till I see another specialist who’ll refer me to someone else, again.
2. I have a hernia and will need surgery.

Either of those scare the hell out of me. Not knowing is the scariest, though. Knowledge is power and right now I feel pretty damn feeble.

I read that bariatric patients are prone to internal hernias due to their surgeries. Is it because of the actual surgery or the rapid weight loss? I didn’t lose my weight very fast and I never went under the knife to do it. It’s collateral damage from being obese, one of many. I have spider veins on the backs of my knees, skin sagging everywhere, a hernia and god knows what else.

Yeah, I lost the weight and am still getting fit, but what price did I pay? Monetarily, physically, and emotionally, the cost is exorbitant.