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Not Exactly the Vacation I Had in Mind…

By , SparkPeople Blogger
Next week, it will be five years since my weight first dropped below 230 pounds, which is where it hovers most of the time now, give or take 5 pounds. That’s more than 140 pounds below my highest weight ever (I’m not actually sure what that highest weight was, since the scale only went up to 370).

Today’s blog was originally going to be a nice little travelblog about the hiking and camping vacation I had planned for early April, in honor of my official eligibility for membership in that somewhat exclusive club of people who have lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for 5 years.

Unfortunately, though, I’m not going to be taking my camping vacation next week. Instead, I’ll be spending this week in the hospital, getting a bad heart valve replaced. I’d love to report that all my training in psychology and philosophy, and my experience as a life coach are enabling me to cope with this turn of events without much trouble, but that just wouldn’t be the whole story.


First of all, you have to understand that I’m a guy who can’t even stand to watch other people get shots on television. I can barely handle routine blood tests—and only if I keep my eyes closed the whole time. So, the prospect of spending several days getting poked with needles, having tubes installed, and actually getting sliced open is a little…well, I’d rather eat dirt. On a scale of 1 to 10, my general anxiety level is about 14 most of the time. And I can't do much exercise right now, which is my main form of stress management. Not a good combination.

I’ve known about this valve problem for quite a while—ever since I lost enough weight for the doctor to actually hear my heart murmur through his stethoscope—and I suppose I knew this would have to happen eventually. I just figured I had another five or ten years. I’ve been getting annual exams to see how it’s progressing for the past 3 years, and last year, it finally went from “mild” to “moderate” in severity. But when my cardiologist told me a couple weeks ago that it had now reached the borderline between “severe” and “critical”, and that it was time to get it replaced, I was pretty shocked. I didn’t really have any serious symptoms—a little bit of unusual fatigue, and it was getting harder to ride my bike uphill instead of easier, but I could still crank out a pretty speedy 40 mile flat ride and live to tell about it. My first reaction was that there must have been some kind of mistake.

But there wasn't. The doc ordered an angiogram to check out the rest of my heart (which turned out well—no blocked arteries), and then sent me to the surgeon, who put me on the operating room schedule for this week. The good news is that I’ll probably be able to have “minimally invasive” surgery instead of the usual “cut you in half, reach inside, and replace everything” version.

I’ve been trying to feel grateful for that, at least—I hate to think how much worse things would be if I still weighed 400 pounds, or hadn’t made the changes in my diet and exercise that I have. But compared to a camping trip, getting a 5” cut in my chest instead of a 10” one, and a faster recovery, doesn’t really feel like much of a reward, you know what I mean?

And when I’m not feeling angry or frustrated, I’m bouncing back and forth between worries about all the things that could go wrong, how I’m going to cope during the first couple weeks after surgery without putting a big burden on my kid, and panic over what will happen to my weight and my fitness if I can’t do much physical activity for a few months.

I do have my calmer moments, though, when I’m able to remind myself that I’ve got every reason to believe these worst-case scenarios aren’t actually likely to happen, and that I can manage the stuff that’s in my control even if things don’t go ideally. And I know I can also stop trying to manage the things I can’t control, which is really what gets my anxiety cranked up. When I do calm myself down, I’m able to see the progress I’ve made over the past few years in my own sense of self-efficacy, as well as my weight. Not too long ago, just about anything could throw me into that unpleasant state of alternating panic-worry-anger-helplessness--even something as simple as the bagel store downstairs closing an hour early, before I got my daily dessert (I kid you not). Now it takes the prospect of open heart surgery. That’s definitely progress, right?

So, I’m working hard to follow the advice I always give other people about looking for the positive opportunities in difficult situations, and planning ahead to avoid problems. I’m trying to see how far I’ve come in changing the attitudes and habits that make stress hard for me to handle, as well as what I still need to work on. I haven’t had many problems at all with emotional eating this past couple of weeks, which is good. Not being able to do much exercise can make it pretty hard to stay in a good frame of mind sometimes, though. It's pretty clear that I need to come up with some additional ways of managing stress, and also start thinking about how to change my diet and routine so I don't need as much exercise to manage my weight.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know I won’t be around for the next 2-3 weeks here on the blog site, or at SparkPeople. But don’t feel too sorry for me—I figure I can spend at least one week of my convalescence sitting out at the pool here in my apartment complex. This time of year, it’s sunny almost every day, and the average temperature is about 85. I’ll probably be the only guy in town with a tan on his heart surgery scar. It may not be as much fun as sleeping in the dirt, dragging myself up and down steep hills all day, and eating freeze-dried food, but I guess I can live with it.

Now I just need to figure out why it takes heart surgery for me to feel good about sitting around the pool on a nice day. Anyone else have this problem?