The doctor goes on about small intestines and absorption. This is the second time I’ve heard this explanation, but I still can’t really take it all in. I narrow my eyes and try to focus on the steady onslaught of medical terminology. Biology was never my favorite class. I can’t tell the difference between a stomach and a kidney, but I do understand that my insides will never look the same again. Forever.
Rat’s hand shoots up. I roll my eyes and slouch down in my chair. Really?
“So exactly what are the advantages of gastric bypass surgery?” he asks when the doctor points to him.
“Well, as you can see” — Dr. Wilkerson points to the picture behind him and Rat nods — “the procedure reduces the amount of food absorbed by the body, resulting in rapid weight loss in the first six months following the surgery.”
Several people in the audience nod. Rapid weight loss. That’s what we all want to hear, and it’s worth all the rest that is to come. But hope is such a fragile flower in the rocky ground of my soul. I don’t know how to nurture it and I’m shocked at its appearance.
“You will be the one person that doesn’t lose weight. You’ll do every thing like they say, but you’ll still be the same. You can’t change,” she whispers. I should have known Skinny wouldn’t miss this.
“Of course, this limits the amount of food that can be eaten at any one time and it controls the intake of high-calorie sweets and fats due to dumping syndrome,” Dr. Abe Lincoln goes on.
Huh? What was that? No sweets?
The doctor continues, “Eating high-fat or high-sugar foods can cause nausea and weakness when sweets enter the bloodstream too quickly due to intestinal changes.”
“Hummmm . . .” Rat says. He writes “no sweets” on his paper and underlines it three times.
No more M&M’s? No more ice cream? Hey, wait a minute.
“So what are the disadvantages?” Rat asks. I’m still grieving the loss of M&M’s and am thinking that’s a pretty big disadvantage. Of course, Rat has glossed right over that little detail and is now on to the grim medical facts.
Rat writes each one of the risks on his paper with a star in the margin to bullet each point. Each one basically means I could die or be in pain for the rest of my life. And I have the most life left to live out of everyone in this room. I’m choosing to do this to myself? I glance around and wonder for a moment if all of us will be happy with our decision. Will someone in this room not survive the surgery? I can almost hear a roulette wheel spinning around above our heads, waiting to drop the death marble into a slot. Will it click into the slot for purple-pants woman? The Weeble-shaped man in the stretched-to-the-limit blue jeans in the front row? Or maybe . . . me?
“You’ll also be left with a lifetime need for nutritional supplements to avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which can lead to serious health conditions, including metabolic bone disease or anemia.”
Yeah, yeah. So I take Flintstones vitamins. No big deal. It’s the dying and pain part that I keep thinking about . . . and the loss of M&M’s. The woman in front of me’s breathing machine sucks the air in and out with a rhythmic, never-ending push-pull. Purple-pants woman or death? What are my choices?
At the end of the presentation, the doctor introduces a young man in the front row. He looks about twenty-five with black curly hair and smiling brown eyes. He’s wearing blue jeans and a gray T-shirt. A picture of a fat boy comes up on the screen. Only the black curly hair looks the same. The eyes are brown, but they certainly aren’t smiling.
“This is me one year ago,” he says, gesturing to the screen over his shoulder, “when I weighed almost four hundred pounds.” Now, he looks totally normal.
A year is not that long, I think, looking down at my hands clenched tight in my lap. One year. Three hundred sixty-five days. A tiny spark glows in my head. Things could be different. My life could change. In a year, I could try out for the lead in next year’s spring musical. I could be center stage singing for a crowd of people. In the spotlight. No one laughing at me. Jackson would be in the audience looking at me like he looks at Gigi now. The world would be different. A year from now.
The audience of fat people claps like the young man at the podium has just won the Academy Award. He smiles broadly.
“This surgery changed my life. It isn’t easy, but it is worth it.”
The raw desperation from the people around me leaks out into the room. This is their salvation. A year seems like nothing to those of us trapped inside our bodies. They want to believe it and, I’m so scared to admit it even to myself, I want to believe it, too. If I don’t do the surgery, where will I be a year from now? Four hundred pounds? Five hundred? I can’t stop it by myself. I know that.