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Surgeon: Dr. Aniceto Baltasar, Alcoy, Spain
by Paula:
My first year at school, Kindergarten I was already “chubby”.. I can remember always being bigger than the other children. My mom fortunately was able to sew and did make my clothes. My mom was always supportive, she had a very difficult job since my older brother was just the opposite of me, he was underweight. She was told by the doctors that my brother needed to put on weight and that she should feed him anything that he wanted. Of course those things were, cakes, cookies, chip, etc. He had his own cabinet in the kitchen, which was off limits to me. Of course she was told with me, I needed to lose weight and not to give me the things that would put weight on me. Hence this started a behavior that took until I moved out on my own to stop and that was I would wake up in the middle of the night and eat everything that I was told not to eat during the day. Also known as a closet eater. Or when no one was around I would get into my brothers kitchen cabinet and eat some of the things that were off limits. I had learned how to cut and measure to make sure that the marks of chocolate strips were exactly the same as where my brother had left it. I didn’t find out until many years later that he never noticed, it was only me and my mind that was hiding. I can even remember being on diet pills when I was in grammar school. Wither it was truly a diet pill I don’t know but I remember my mom telling me every day to take my “diet pill”. Then my mom took me to Weight Watchers I think I was about 12 and at that time they would laugh at you and call you a “PIG” if you gained any weight. She wouldn’t stay with me I suppose because she was not over weight so she wasn’t allowed. It was very humiliating I believe I was the youngest person there. I couldn’t stand that pressure so I would run out crying. I can’t remember at what weight I was probably blocked it from my mind. My father had a difficult time dealing with my weight and me. He thought if he humiliated me enough then I would lose weight, but unfortunately the only thing it did for me was to continue to find solace in food and I continued to gain weight and my father and I were distant. By the time I was graduating from Jr. High School I had just about reached 200 pounds. In high school I did have other friends who were overweight too so after trying several fad diets such as “Ayds” which was like eating chocolate caramels, they were good so instead of following the recommend amount we ate them in place of food or in addition to food, needless to say we both gained weight. After my first year in High School I wanted to play tennis. When I attempted to sigh up for the class, (needed pre approval) the instructor said she would not let me sign up because I was too heavy. So that summer I tried really hard and lost 15 pounds. When I returned to school she still wouldn’t let me sigh up so that put me into a special P.E. class that consisted of doing stretching type exercises but nothing that would burn any calories. I got stuck there till I graduated. So up my weight went again. The next we tried a weight group called “TOPS” at this point I weighed about 250 pounds. You went on your own diet, and I did lose about 30 pounds. Then it became more for socialization rather to really work on weight loss so after several years I stopped going. And of course regained the weight not quit all of it up to about 225. During the last year of high school I was doing a lot of baby sitting and the lady I sat for also had me on a diet. In her house were things I could and couldn’t have. Everybody wanted o help me. She even wanted me to go and have pregnant women’s urine injected, since that was the latest craze, which I did not do. Yech. After graduation I worked as a Nurses aid and my weight kept going up and up, I was about 255 again. My grandparents were becoming very concerned and made an appointment for me with a DR. who specialized in weight loss. They wanted me to do this because they had a niece who had a stroke at 21 yrs of age. And I was 19 at this time. So I went for them. The Dr. immediately started giving me packets of pills to take, and not really letting me know what I was taking. Also a diet to follow and some recipes to follow and eat. The diet included eating a lot of eggs and cheese. Food that after I had gone to school for Nursing discovered that in fact he had me on a high protein/high fat diet. So needless to say I wasn’t losing weight very well. And each week that I would go in I was gaining instead of losing. I began to purge my food, and was becoming extremely nervous and agitated. I was becoming an emotional wreck. Then one day he took my blood pressure and he told me “at the rate I was going I would not make it to my Nursing graduation which was just a couple of months away. My blood pressure was supposedly very elevated. I thought I was going to die. I finally went to my primary Dr. and he told me to stop all of the medications he was giving me. Turns out I was taking, Laxatives, diuretics, stool softeners, some type of diet pills, digoxin, and vitamins. I was a wreck. Then in the “70’s” the big weight loss thing was aversion therapy done by a company named Schick Weight Loss Centers. They had you count calories, and keep a food diary, that was all fine and good but they wanted you on an 800 calorie diet. Like hello am I starving here? Anyways the aversion part was you needed to bring in some type of food that you have a difficult time avoiding. They would sit you in front of a mirror with a table setting to eat a meal. They would put an electrode on you wrist and have in my case a very attractive male model type person stand behind you so that you could see him in the mirror. He would have you take a giant bite of what ever you brought and make you chew it while he was giving you jolts of electricity at your wrist and spraying some smelly stuff under you nose and calling you nasty names such as “you ugly fat pig whose is stuffy you face with guts”. Etc Majorly demoralizing. Needless to say when I didn’t lose weight they told me that I needed a psychiatrist. I tried everything, except the Optifast diet I knew that I would not be able to go on a diet that only allows you to drink. So my last major diet was with Jenny Craig. I did real well I actually lost about 80 pounds I even made it to 168 lbs. For a minute, I remember pleading with myself to never ever gain this weight back, I felt good I looked good, but alas it started going back on. Within 5 years I was back up to where I had always been. Then I decided it was time to quit smoking, since I had always said “I will quit when I have lost weight and have it under control. I realized that, that was never to happen so I bite the bullet and quite. And then gained another 50 some pounds. I had been researching WLS for several years. I had an appointment with a Dr. to get a referral to someone who did WLS but because I didn’t complete reading his book and try his diet (another diet) and because I was not typical as he put it, because he believed that ALL obese people produce too much insulin and when I wasn’t he refused to give me a referral. So the Internet became my friend and I found the list for DS. And I knew that was what I needed. So off to Spain I went with my family’s blessings and financial support and as of October 16, 2000 I have reached the other side and looking forward to a whole new healthy life.
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My Story starts when I was young. I can remember my relatives, grandparents tell my parents not to worry that it was just “baby fat” and that would go away as I grow up. Well unfortunately that didn’t happen, I did not grow out of the baby fat and as the years passed by the pounds kept adding up and up.