The Beginning

This is the beginning of my journey. I like the sound of that.. I need a fresh start. Some wonderful direction to head into. The title of my blog is "Becoming the Pin-Up Girl" because I consider the pin-up girls of the 40s and 50s to be the ideal of feminine beauty. Yes - I do want (and need) to lose weight and become healthy, but I hope that I won't lose my curvaceousness in the process. I want to feel (and hopefully look) like a Varga girl.. sexy and sweet.. sugar and spice..

I decided at the end of last year that I would pursue WLS. At the time, I was temping after moving back to No. California from Santa Monica .. at the time I had no insurance. Thankfully, in February of '06, I was hired full time (I'm a corporate travel consultant) and on March 1, I got health insurance. That's when I decided to go for it. I chose a PCP.. nice enough guy.. told him that I was pursuing WLS. I didn't give him much room to disagree with me or try to pursuade me otherwise ;-) He didn't give me too hard of a time, thankfully. I quickly got approval from my HMO to see a surgeon.

My first appointment with my surgeon, Dr. Ajay Upadhyay, was this Tuesday, May 30. I had to wait 3 long weeks for the appointment. I was so nervous and totally excited.. I woke up at 5am that morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I got showered and paced around the house a bit. Then I started getting ready.. I was determined to be the most gorgeous fat girl to walk into that office. LOL My wonderful bf Christopher went to the appt. with me. He has been such an amazing support to me .. I feel so very lucky to have his love and support as I go through this experience. So, when they called my name, I had to laugh as I noticed the Polaroid camera in the hand of the nurse. I was ready for my "before" close-up, Mr. DeMille! Since I plan to eventually post that pic here, I'm glad that I looked cute..fat but cute :-) The scary part came when I had jump up on that scale.. with my beloved looking on. 280. F*ck. That number hit me like a ton of bricks. Not that I was horribly shocked by it, but knowing that Chris knew my "secret number" made me feel pretty vulnerable. Not that I regret him being there, but still. So then we met with Dr. U - what a lovely man. I had met him when I went to the surgery orientation back in April and I had instantly known then that he would take good care of me. He answered all of our questions and told me that I would need to see a nutritionist, psychiatrist, have an endoscopy .. and he wants me to have a sleep study, since I'm fairly certain that I have sleep apnea. I really hope that the sleep study won't take too long to schedule, which will delay my surgery. My PCP has to submit the authorization for the sleep study.. I'll just have to keep on top of him (so to speak..LOL) until I know that it's done. Maybe threatening to sit on him would make things go faster. So now I wait.. authorizations have been sent off for the nutritionist, psych, and endoscopy by the surgeon's office. I really hope this happens before the end of the Summer. When I walk around, I feel like I'm wearing a big puffy jacket, but it's actually my body. I keep thinking of Chris Farley singing "Fat guy in a little coat..." It's the beginning of Summer in San Francisco.. too gorgeous outside for a "coat".