In the meanwhile, I’ll have last suppers and lunches and brunches as I eat and snack and nosh and wrap my mind around the fact that I will be a new me, reborn with a stomach not conditioned to eat anything not nailed down.

More later

Only when I got there, my name wasn’t on the list and just about everyone there had brought someone with them to lend another set of ears or add support.  But back to the first part.  I scanned the list for my name, but only saw my last name with the first name ‘Malkey’.  A quick mental scan made me realize that I had no relatives named Malkey and I heaved a sigh of anonymous relief.  The person at the door told me to sign in and I did, and then went into the lecture hall and took a seat way at the back where the bad kids sit.  Until of course sign in person walked into the room announcing my name at the top of her lungs so that she could be heard way in the front and/or the outer boroughs.

So much for anonymity.  I had to return to the sign in area and provide all of my personal information, information I’d dutifully provided via phone weeks before.  Oh, am I repeating myself?

Anyway, the surgeon who was to address the group was late.  The room got pretty crowded with all sorts of lumpish folks and their spouses or siblings.  I noticed a few very earnest couples with one clearly there to support the other.  I became mesmerized.  At the best of times I don’t like people around me at times of weakness or vulnerability.  At the best of times for me, I feel pretty close to the worst of times for others, so it’s not often that I want another person there fussing over me when all I want to do is close my eyes and pray quietly for death, or that I get to a bathroom in time.

So. the talk consisted of a bunch of slides.  I won’t say that it was vintage Power Point, but it definitely was a lowest common denominator thing, with a lot of earnest information and statistics thrown in for good measure.  It wasn’t the worst, but after a walk through a freak monsoon, I sat there shivering and bored out of my mind- most especially as the surgeon covered all three potential procedures and not just the one I wanted.  There were nice touches though, like the too thin employee who irked me with her seemingly natural grace and shape, who turns out to be a former patient who lost 160 lbs. in the past 5  years.

More depressing though, was the fact that insurance companies do not want to pay to cover the procedure and the onerous process described until one hopefully gains approval.

I’m going to do this.  It makes so much sense it’s finally, crystal clear and simple.  What was hilarious to me (probably not to you though) were some of the  seemingly terrifying post-op side effects described including something called ‘Dumping’ in which someone has fits of painful diarrhea after attempting to eat sugary snacks.  I’ve lived with that charming postscript to nearly all of my meals for all of my adult life and much of my childhood- one of the joys of IBS.  Seriously Lap Band, if that’s the worst that you can throw my way, I remain unimpressed.

There’s also this new-ish procedure for some candidates in which you receive only one incision instead of the standard five.  Less scarring, less time to heal.  Hey, I’m scarred inside and out, yet somehow felt giddy and a bit naughty wondering if I could be one of the few, the chosen, the cut in one place instead of five.

I do go on.

Assignment due in a few hours.

Much food to be consumed too.  I’m planning an ongoing farewell to bread, since apparently that’s something verboten once they do the stomach bondage.  Eh. The white doughy stuff has never been my irritable bowel’s friend anyway, but I sure will miss fresh baked challah.

Before I can meet the surgeons though, apparently I have to go through an orientation session. A very public orientation session.  I hated orientation in high school and I have no doubt I’ll hate tonight’s version as well.  You see, I’ve fought tooth and nail for my entire adult life not to be classified or judged only for my weight.  I am more than my rolls of fat, I am talented and brilliant and beloved and sexy as hell.  I am sharp and on target and respected and quoted and well, none of it matters much because tonight I’ll be corralled into a room with other people and the only thing we have in common is the fact that we’re fat.

I resent the hell out of this command performance.  I would much rather pay a fee and have someone explain to me one on one what comes next.  You see, I understand the reasoning behind these scheduled education seminars.  I get it about cutting through the chaff and finding the serious ones and letting insurance have a date to begin rejecting claims from, I just hate what it does to me.

It makes me feel fat(ter) and ugly(er) and out of control.  It judges me by one thing and one thing only.  And as my eyes fall on others in the room tonight I know I’ll be secretly relieved to see those twice my size and not so secretly devastated to see others who will be secretly relieved that I am twice their own size.  As I tossed and turned last night and railed in anger, I realized that it was definitely my hypersensitivity (though that doesn’t make me wrong).

For instance, if I was at a wine tasting and in a group of oenophiles, I wouldn’t look around the room and assume that wine was the only thing that defined and unified us as a group.  I’d know it was one factor and the driving force that brought us all to be in that room.  So I hate you NYU for requiring this session.  I hate the painfully public humiliation involved.  I hate the fact that it brings to mind my personal pain as the child of a concentration camp survivor and makes me feel like I’m being herded into a room of other fat people for our fates to be collectively determined by doctors.

But I’m going. Because I’m determined.

Wish you were here–