God Busters

People have lots of expectations about how their lives will change when they lose weight after gastric bypass surgery. I recently read a popular magazine article about young women who had been fat all their lives, had rarely or never had boyfriends, and expected their love lives to blossom magically, only to find that relationships were just as difficult as they were before.

During the intake period when I met with the psychologists, one of them asked me how I expected my life to change after the surgery, and I said I hoped my heart failure would be cured, diabetes controlled, and that I would be able to walk around, take the L train, etc., and she nodded appreciatively. All those things have happened, but one small thing I didn’t think about turned out to be one of the biggest blessings of all.

I have a shower brush for scrubbing my back and other difficult-to-reach parts of my body, which I’ve always called my God Buster, on the theory that the cruelest trick the gods played on fat people was to make the parts of the body most in need of cleaning the hardest ones for them to reach. Now at 115 pounds lighter and counting, personal hygiene is no longer a chore, or worse. At the risk of revealing too much personal stuff -- (Oh what the hell am I saying? On this blog?) -- let’s just say that difficulties reaching those places could make using a public restroom an onerous and humiliating experience at times. The sense of relief on entering a restroom knowing it won’t be the ordeal it used to be is very pleasant indeed.

If you’re fat enough to know from experience what I’m talking about, and you’re thinking about the surgery, definitely add this to your list of plusses. You will appreciate it as much as the higher profile, life-and-death benefits, believe me.