My Journey to Better Health

When I Was Thin

Growing up in a poor family, I was always told to eat everything on my plate, whether I liked it or not. I understood why I was told that, but it would dictate how I ate for decades.

As a teen, I didn’t focus on my weight that much. I was 5’5” and weighed around 118 pounds. It wasn’t until I got pregnant with my first child that I started paying attention to my weight.

I had see other women get pregnant, gain a bunch of weight, and never really lose it after having the baby. I didn’t want that to be.

It’s not like I actively tried not to gain weight. My body decided for me. As a big meat eater, I was surprised that I just wasn’t interested in eating meat. I craved vegetables and fruits (mostly oranges). It’s the only time in my life where I had a mostly vegetarian diet.

When I found out I was pregnant, I weighed 130 pounds and gained 14 pounds during my pregnancy. An hour after I gave birth, I hopped on a hospital scale and only weighed 128 pounds (my son weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces). I got to wear my jeans home from the hospital instead of maternity pants.

It wasn’t too difficult to keep my weight in the ideal range for the next two years. I was actively playing on softball and volleyball teams.

During my second pregnancy, I gained 19 pounds and had a 7 pounds ½ ounce baby. It took me about a month to lose the baby weight.

When I was 25, I was having problems with a lot of menstrual pain and excessive bleeding. Both my mother and grandmother had to have hysterectomies in their 20s due to tumors and I was scared. After trying hormone treatment for six months, I opted to have a hysterectomy myself. I’m glad I did, because when they opened me up, I was filled with fibroids as well as endometriosis. Luckily, my ovaries were saved and I didn’t have to go on hormone therapy. But the whole process changed my metabolism and I started to gain weight.

I continued to be active in sports and added hiking with my boys once they were old enough. Still, I developed a bad habit of purging and taking laxatives to try and keep my weight below the Air Force’s maximum for my height.

A couple of years later, I was playing in a racquetball tournament and twisted my right knee. The ER doctor said it was just a bad sprain and ordered physical therapy. I really didn’t think that was the extent of my injury, though. I would wake up at night and my kneecap would slide to the inside of my leg. I would have to maneuver it back into place. At other times, I would fall flat on my ass when I stood from a sitting position. After a year of nagging the doctor, I was finally scheduled for arthroscopic surgery. Not once did they do an MRI to check the extent of my injury!

I was awake during the surgery, having had a spinal block. The surgeon told me that my kneecap was sliding out of place due to a torn meniscus. He said it also looked like I had torn my ACL and it would require further surgery to repair it properly. It had healed, but not correctly. Not once did he give me that option to schedule that surgery. Instead, he said he was retiring and “good luck with that.”

Gaining Weight & Being Less Active

Between the hysterectomy and a bad knee that kept me from playing sports, my weight started getting higher. Besides purging and laxatives, I added sitting in a sauna every day to try and lose weight. Eating less didn’t help me lose, so this was my desperate attempt not to get in trouble with the Air Force.

By the time I was 38, my weight was around 180 lbs. When I quit smoking in 1997, my weight went even higher. Running to catch a bus caused me to tear things in my left knee, further limiting my activity level. When I went over 200 lbs. I was mortified!

Over the next decade or so, I yo-yoed between dieting, then gaining it back. At my heaviest in 2004, I weighed 280. That was the year I really tried to do things differently.

By logging all my food intake on a website called Calorie King, I was able to lose around 25 pounds and keep it off. But I still struggled to lose more weight as my knees became worse.

When I started going to the VA for my medical care, I asked them about knee replacements. Due to my weight, age, and diabetes, I would have to wait (they wouldn’t do it until age 55 at a minimum). Instead, I got cortisone injections ever few months. This would cause my blood sugar to rise, which would make me so sleepy that I started calling it my diabetic coma naps.

Living with Pain

After a few years of this, they couldn’t even do the injections without a sonogram to guide the needle. My knees were bone on bone and offset. I took to taking daily anti-inflammatories and hydrocodone for the pain. I worried about addiction and the effects it was having on my organs. I couldn’t walk more than a block and had to use a cane. I felt like I was in my 80s! The pain got so bad that I would cry and think to myself that I just wanted to die and leave this misery!

After a very painful vacation in Ireland in June 2016, William had enough and insisted that I confront the VA and get them to replace my knees. They finally agreed and sent a referral to Veterans Choice to see an outside orthopedic surgeon (they were back up over a month). Since I was lucky to get to pick the surgeon, I did some research and made sure I selected one of the top surgeons in the Seattle area.

Dr. Christopher Cannon’s practice was at The Polyclinic downtown and did his surgeries at Swedish. I was able to get an appointment for the beginning of August. When I saw him, I had been counting calories and dieting for the past two months and got my weigh down from 260 to around 240. By the time I was scheduled for my right knee to be replaced on September 9, 2016, I was down to 225 lbs.

Knee Replacements & Weight Loss

I was nervous the day of the surgery but knew what to expect since I had to attend a knee replacement seminar prior to surgery. I remember the anesthesiologist coming in and putting in my IV, then being wheeled into the operating room. After positioning myself onto the surgery table, I was out in a matter of seconds.

When I briefly opened my eyes, I was in post-op and another anesthesiologist was putting a nerve block catheter in my thigh (called an OnQ device). The next time I opened my eyes, I was in my private room. I had on compressions stockings and my knee was wrapped with an ice pack that circulated cold water around it.

About two hours after I was in my room, a physical therapist came in to get me out of bed and up walking. It was easier than I thought it would be, but my knee was still pretty numb from the surgery.

19 days after I had my knee replaced, it was healing well, and physical therapy was going good. Some of the medicines I was on were doing a number on me, though. My doctor had me on warfarin to prevent blood clots. I hated it…it made me so sick in my stomach and I couldn’t eat. On the plus side, being sick helped me lose more weight and I had dropped to 217 (a 39 lb. weight loss).

Ten weeks after my first knee replacement, I graduated from outpatient physical therapy. I was told that I would still get the occasional twing and some swelling for a while, and probably wouldn’t be to my new normal until September 2017. Considering that I planned to have my other knee replaced in a few months, I guessed it will be 2018 before I’m the new me.

Speaking of the other knee, my physical therapist signed me up for eight sessions of aquatic PT to help that knee in preparation for surgery (it also had been getting a workout with the recumbent elliptical). I didn’t particularly like the times available, but I toughed it out.

In January 2016, I was still wearing a size 22W pants and a 1XL top. I was now wearing a size 20 pants and they were just starting to feel a bit loose. I had gone down to an XL in a top or a dress. Bra size had gone from a 46C to a 38DD (yeah, I lose more in my boobs than any place else). I knew I lost in the butt, too, because I was starting to feel my bones if I sat for too long.

My downstairs neighbor, who is like the sister I never had (we have our tiffs like siblings) applauded me on my weight loss. When I told her my goal weight, I was surprised when she said that would be too skinny for me. Nope…I was at 140 before and wasn’t too skinny.

By January 2017, I was feeling so much better. Not only had I lost over 50 pounds, but I was getting around better with one replaced knee. I still didn’t sleep well, the left knee giving me pain anytime I moved in my sleep, but I was optimistic about the year.

My second knee replacement was on January 23, 2017. It went even better than the first surgery! This time, my doctor put me on high-dose aspirin instead of Warfarin, so I wasn’t so sick. This allowed me to really make progress with my physical therapy.

In March 2017, I rode a bike for four miles…the first time I was able to ride in about a decade! It was a little too much, too soon, and I paid for it for a few days, but it sure felt good, feeling the wind in my hair as I rode around the lake! After that, I went on over a dozen hikes and was really enjoying getting outside again.

By February 2020, I was down to 200 lbs. and able to maintain that weight without much fluctuation.

Covid-19 and Biking

Around that time, I flew to Tasmania to go on a hiking tour and to attend my son’s wedding in Melbourne. Shortly after arriving, I got really sick with Covid-19 and spent most of that vacation sleeping and fighting a fever.

When I got home, things in the US were shutting down. I sheltered for the next month but was going stir-crazy. I didn’t want to go hiking due to very crowded trails. I thought about riding a bike since I could keep my distance from others. I knew I wouldn’t stick with a regular bike, so I did some research and bought an e-bike from a local company. That decision really changed my life!

“I finally found my “tribe” with the Cascade Bicycle Club and the bike community. Their support and encouragement keeps me motivated and I keep pushing my goals high and higher!”

Over the past three years, I’ve been able to get my weight down to 165 lbs. and have been maintaining it for the past several months. I was also able to get off of insulin, thanks in part to getting on Ozempic and all the bike riding I’ve been doing (averaging over 1,500 miles per year)! I’m currently wearing a size 12 jeans and a medium shirt…sizes I haven’t worn since I was in my early 30s!

Since I’ve lost close to 100 lbs. since 2016, my body has a lot of really loose skin in my upper arms, thighs, and abdomen. Since it gets a bit sore under the loose skin in my abdomen, the VA has agreed to remove the excess skin sometime around February 2024 (they won’t do the thighs and arms since it would be cosmetic and not medically necessary). To stretch the skin and remove more, they will remove my belly button, but I don’t think I’ll miss it.

Uncomfortable Photos of Excess Skin

I still want to lose 25-30 more pounds but will wait until after my abdominal surgery. While I’d like to work on it now, I have to stick around the same weight for six months in order for the VA to do the surgery. If I can ever afford it, I may get my thighs and arms done, but at my age it isn’t as important as it would be if I were younger.

As I lose weight and get more active, I’ve done things I never thought possible! I recently rode my bike in the Seattle to Portland (STP) event, which was a total of 209 miles over two days. Plus, I participated in my very first (and probably last) sprint triathlon! I never dreamed I would be doing this at age 64!!

I’m sharing my weight-loss story in the hope of inspiring others. Having people support you and cheer you on really helps motivate you. Find your people…set goals…don’t give up! Talk to others in similar situations…it helps when you don’t feel all alone. You can do it, too!