OK, Here Goes.

I'm not sure how to begin, it's been a very long time since my last blog post.

Since I last checked in...

    my adult daughter moved out, got an apartment and a second job and has an amazing new independent life,

    my son completed a year of Basic and Advanced training in the Army and moved to Korea for a year,

    and we became parents again to a 10 year old girl with special needs and a long history of trauma and neglect (adoption pending).

Each of those events could have sparked a series of blog posts, but I've been too busy actually processing all the change. I could have written about how pride and missing someone at the same time could make you lose sleep. Or, how surprising it is to be cornered by a child with a pair of scissors who doesn't yet have the coping skills to put away her anger. Or, what a relief it is to hear your adult child tell you that she's tired but oh so happy.

Instead, it's time to share what's going on with me. Some of you know that when I returned from my human rights monitoring time in Jerusalem in 2017 I brought back with me a case of osteoarthritis that has affected my knees and ankles and limited my mobility. Every day I wake up and deal with chronic pain. The truth is, many of us do.

My insurance is really crappy  (which is another common experience for many people) . So when my orthopedic doctor decided that I should get a double knee replacement it was denied. Knee replacements only last 15 years, and insurance will only cover two over a lifetime. At 47, I was deemed too young. This past spring, when I was telling my GP about this nonsense, she suggested a back door solution: bariatric surgery. 

She knows me long enough to know that diet and exercise no longer work. For 25 years I've been losing and gaining back the same 50 pounds. This part of the story makes me sad, so I'll toss you a laugh line - it's really just baby weight from my adult daughter! 

To many of you, surgery may sound like a cop-out. Now that I am in peri-menopause, my body has become weight loss resistant. Until you have tried a starvation diet for a couple of weeks and found yourself actually GAINING weight, please don't judge. Weight loss will relieve stress on my joints. I'm doing this to save my life. Or, to be less dramatic, to be able to stick around long enough to play with my daughter and be a cool grandmother. 

So, bariatric sleeve it is! In about a month, 80% of my stomach will be removed laparoscopically. I'll be on a liquid diet for a few months. In a year, my doctor expects that I will lose half my body weight. Of course, as of October 1 my crappy insurance dropped my doctor because of a contract dispute so now I'm paying out-of-network, which is infuriating. 

I'm hoping that my family can deal with the change. And that my church community will understand why I'm making this choice. As a pastor, I try really hard not to make everything all about me! They shouldn't worry, with so much else going on.