We are two middle-age professionals, happily married to each other, parents to five children, and grandparents to four beautiful babies. We both hold master's degrees in our areas of employ. We reside in Anchorage, Alaska, enjoy spending time with family, reading books, and gardening -- and, who have struggled with weight issues most of our adult lives. Between the two of us, we have tried most of the weight loss options available to the average U.S. citizen including Weight Watchers, Calorie King, prescriptions, Slim Fast, nutritional classes, personal trainers -- in other words, "been there, done that."
Needless to say, at least in our opinions, we are not people slogging through life without knowledge of how to properly care for our minds and our bodies. Yet, still, we find ourselves at the ages of 47 & 48 respectively, struggling with high cholesterol, diabetes, and, in Paul's case, high blood pressure. We both exceed our suggested weight for our age and height by at least 100 pounds which makes us, per the national BMI index, morbidly obese. Our quality of life is rather limited due to our increased size and the ensuing lack of energy that accompanies it. Everything from our love of traveling to our sex life has taken a severe nose dive as our weight has climbed.
Today, we have chosen to take a step which brings with it an incredible variety of opinions for those around us -- we have decided to have gastric bypass surgery. Our surgeon is Dr. Alan Wittgrove of Wittgrove Bariatric Center & Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. Paul, age 48, had surgery earlier today and I, Beth, will have the same procedure done tomorrow. This decision has been a long time coming and is not one we take lightly. Our hope in doing writing this blog is to provide an intimate level of insight and comment from a couple who are making a life-changing decision and undergoing serious abdominal surgery in order to, hopefully, regain the quality of life we had in our early 20s and to prolong our lives absent of the current medical conditions we currently struggle with.
