Welcome to my Bari-Tale!

 Hi everyone!!

Welcome to my Bari-Tale!  This blog is another way to see my updates of my bariatric surgery.  I had my surgery back on August 15th and it has been such an amazing adventure!

Let me start from the beginning, I have been overweight for most of my life.  Obviously, when I was younger I was more the average weight for kids my own age but I eventually was considered obese.  I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes back in the summer of 2006.  Just before my freshmen year of high school.  I have struggled with my weight and health for most of my adult life and I was in a huge amount of denial when it came to my diabetes.  I didn't take it seriously and I didn't take my medicine and I still continued to just eat whatever I wanted and didn't care about the consequences.

Flash forward to about 6 years ago, I was seeing my endocrinologist and they had suggested to me that I should look into weight loss surgery.  Now this was after I was hospitalized for cellulitis in my left foot.  Which got to the point it did because I was not in control of my health and diabetes.  I started some researching of the different types of surgery and had eventually decided that I could just do this on my own, I didn't need surgery.  Or want to put myself through that to be completely honest.  I knew at that point I wouldn't be able to make the immense commitment that came with the surgeries because I wasn't even making the commitment to just take care of myself the way I was supposed to.  

I started dating my fiancé Joshua, who is a personal trainer shortly there after.  I thought this was perfect, he could help me with my weight loss because who better than a personal trainer?  Well, I will tell you all, he gave me a swift kick in the ass.  He was more than willing to help me learn the exercises that I could do to lose the weight, but I still had to be the one to make the commitment to do them.  I would start and keep up with it for a little bit, be really good about it.  But then, it would get hard and almost like I would lose interest in it.  The dieting and exercising would become boring and I would quit.  

October 2022, I noticed one day that my foot was really swollen.  Having not remembered any injuries or insects bites I was confused as to why it was swelling so much.  After a couple of days of keeping an eye on it I decided to go to urgent care.  They took a few xrays and came back saying they didn't see any fractures or breaks so just R.I.C.E. it. (Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate.)  They also put me on a steroid and as a diabetic I now know why diabetics shouldn't ever be give steroids.   After about 3 weeks I noticed the swelling never changed no matter what I did.  I went and had an ultrasound to make sure there were no blood clots.  When the results came back as negative I decided to make an appointment with a podiatrist. I went to see him on Halloween and he told me that the swelling and the pain I was feeling was probably due to tendonitis and that was caused by my arch flattening out.  He put me on a stronger dose of steroids and sent me on my way with the advice of getting shoe inserts for arch support.  

   Beginning of December 2022, I had no change in my foot injury.  I had tried to contact my podiatrist for 3 weeks and he never answered my calls or called me back.  So my mom decided I should see her orthopedic specialist.  I went and the minute he saw my foot he told me to see an orthopedic surgeon.  He put me in a boot, I asked him like I also asked the people at urgent care and the podiatrist if I should still be working on my feet.  Being a diabetic I know how important it is to take care of my feet.  All of them told me it was fine to work on my feet still.  So I would wear the boot to work (grocery store cashier) and hardly be able to get through a whole shift.  So I made the appointment with the surgeon the specialist referred me to.  I went and saw the surgeon and they did new xrays.  They told me the ones from urgent care were crappy lol.  I went back to the room and waited for the doctor.  When he walked into the room, before even introducing himself to me, he said I hate giving people bad news.  

    I had developed Charcot in my left foot.  What is Charcot?  In not doctor terms, it means I had many fractures in the center of my foot that caused the arch to collapse and cause more fractures and dislocations of my toes.  I had developed a bump on the bottom of my foot and one on the inside of it.  The one on the inside was from a bone rolling due to the arch flattening and the one on the bottom was all the fractured bones now sitting there.  Putting weight on it would have been incredibly dangerous, so I had to get crutches and a knee scooter to get around.  My mom also had to drive me to where I worked so I could tell them I had to be non-weight bearing for AT LEAST 3 months.  

Now I know you are probably wondering what this has to do with my weight loss surgery?  Well simple the less weight on the foot the better off.  But I had to knuckle down.  As a diabetic one of the most important numbers you hear about is your A1C this is an overall number of whether your diabetes is under control or not.  Back in October 2022 my A1C was at an astounding level of 12.  That is very very not good, again I wasn't taking care of myself or taking things seriously.  I started taking things more serious and started wearing a CGM (continuous glucose monitor).  

I had a minor foot surgery in March and that went very well.  Flash forward to April and my endocrinologist tested my A1C again.  It was now at a 6.8!  I was classified as under control.  That was for the first time in my entire life.  So I filled out the paperwork and got approved for the bariatric surgery.  I went through all the appointments (that I will discuss in the next blog post).  And got the call on July 5th to schedule the surgery.  August 15th was the fateful day.  It has now been almost 3 months and it has been a journey to say the least.  

So, Welcome to my Bari-Tale journey!