Sometimes we stress about things for no reason other than we are conditioned by our upbringing to be constant worriers. I know this condition well, but it is not why I am stressed right now. I am stressed because I fear that, thought I am attempting to make a positive, massive change in my life I will be stopped by some sort of bureaucratic snafu.
I have found the people in my department have been extraordinarily helpful, giving me the opportunity to maintain my enrollment and health insurance. Though there was a snafu early on.
I hate my insurance more than anything, but I need it. I need it to pay for an operation with an 80% chance to make me a healthy individual. But before they will pay, I need to go through a 3 month supervised diet, where I will not loose any weight. Its not enough that I am willing to subject myself to one humiliating test after another, and go through health scares when doctors try to cover there ass. It is not enough that I am willing to fill out the same form at one doctor or another, endlessly.
This is all so I can undergo a procedure which will cause me to absorb food differently. Gastric bypass surgery is not for the feint of heart, you will be required to chew vitamin supplements for the rest of your life. I must forgo tobacco and NSAID pain relievers for ever. There are times when I worry about what I am giving up, and have to remind myself that I am only giving up things that are bad for me. I am willing to risk life and limb for the chance to reshape my future.
But to demonstrate that willingness to risk life and limb, I must continually return to student health services and prostrate myself for yet another referral. I must complete a 3 month supervised diet, while at the same time undergoing the pricks, and the prods. I must do battle with the university trying desperately to make room for my surgery which may or may not happen. I must call, prod, and be frustrated with people who are "just doing there jobs." It would seem that Franz Kafka was right, I am enduring this suffering for a goal in the not too distant future, which is still very nebulous, all I want is a surgery date, all I want is to suffer through a 2 week liquid diet and painful surgery and 3 more weeks of all liquid diet. All so that I may have hope that I will not drop dead at 45, weighing 500lbs.
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