Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 8, Final

Crunch Time

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My father developed Parkinsons in around 2002 and eventually his heart stopped beating in 2004, five years ago last week, at the age of 84.

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Picture № 34 of my father, taken in the early 1940’s.

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His career had been in the ceramics and glazes industry, and he loved pottery and china. At other people’s dinner parties he would put my mother on edge by lifting up a delicate porcelain dinner plate to the light to see if he could see his hand through it, then holding it to his ear, ping it on the rim between thumb and middle finger to see what the quality of the sound was like…while the hostess smiled nervously. He was a good and kind man who loved jokes, and was a supportive father always. Here he is performing the porcelain ritual with my best china, this time with Mum looking anxious behind him!

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Picture № 35, Dad, Christmas 2001

My Mum carried on, on her own in Spain at her request, till a fall in early 2006 made it clear that she could no longer live alone. My sister helped her sell up and she moved to England to live with me, while we built her an annexe where the garage had been. Sadly she wasn’t destined to enjoy it for very long as she died from previously unsuspected ovarian cancer in early 2007, a fortnight after we learned she had it.

Picture № 36 of my mother when she was nineteen. In preparing it for this blog I realised that she was the same age as myself when Picture № 6 was taken in 1973. I wonder what she would have said to her earlier self…

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She was a strong character, a headmistress for most of her working life. I attended her school from 13 onwards, and far from being treated with favouritism, she ensured that nobody would think so. I did reasonably well without being outstanding (how could I, when I did everything I could to get out of sport…) so we were both happy. Of a more thorny temperament than my father, she was our moral compass, and we understood each other very well. I grieve that I was not able to enjoy her opinionated views and wagging index finger for very long before she was taken from me.

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Picture № 37 taken in Barcelona, around 1992

Family disagreements followed, and at work there were changes taking place which I knew would in time affect me. In October 2007 I and several others were made redundant – in my case after 19 years with the company. It felt like being banished. I loved the agricultural trade and had grown very fond of several of my colleagues; anyone who has faced redundancy will know what I mean when I say that it’s not merely a question of ‘keeping in touch’. The working colleagues who also became friends were still part of the business, and in addition to their feeling slightly awkward about it, I no longer wanted to hear about their daily adventures anyway. It’s not just the job you lose, but most of the relationships you enjoyed there too.

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One good thing came of it though – I decided to use some of the money to travel back to Argentina for a visit after a 14 year absence. For the past couple of years I had been translating an English book into Spanish in my spare time, the memoirs of a young English girl who had a golden childhood on sheep farms in Patagonia at the end of World War I and up to 1923, and here was my opportunity to visit the places where she had lived, a part of the country I knew very little about.

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Picture № 38 Río Colorado, north eastern Patagonia

Picture No. 39, a guanaco keeping an eye on me

Picture No. 40, Estancia Huanuluán, north western Patagonia, near the foothills of the Andes

I had a busy and very enjoyable month, but returned to what I had before I left – unemployment.

It was a sort of mid-life crisis, a limbo. I didn’t know what I wanted or where to go. I was too old in some ways, yet too young to give up on myself. The return to Argentina had made me wonder what it would be like to live there again after 35 years in Europe, and yet I didn’t think I had the courage to leave the network of friends and support in Britain. The previous four years had taken their toll and my spirits were very low – even John could do nothing to pull me out of it. And here I was filling out job applications back to back, complete with aspirational statements in 200 words or less…

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I wonder what the job market is like in the countries where you live – if you’re female and 55? Here it means that it could take you a long time to find a job, however good your skills are. Prospective (male) employers may tell you earnestly that there’s no age discrimination in the workplace, but I saw it around me when I was on the other side of the fence, and watched my male manager colleagues interviewing for admin vacancies and choosing young, attractive girls every single time. It took me ten months to find a job, and it was made possible because a friend recommended me as a possible temp, and I stayed on.

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One particularly hideous day when I was at an all-time low I forced myself to think about my health: I now weighed 18 stone (252 lbs/114 kg) used very large quantities of insulin to keep my blood sugar under control, my ankles – their former slimness my secret pride and joy – were permanently puffy and swollen, I had constant backache if I stood or walked for longer than a couple of minutes, air temperatures higher than 24ºC (75ºF) made me feel so hot and uncomfortable that I just wanted to lie down in a cold bath.

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Picture №s 41/42 - Maldives, July 2007

On a very special visit to the Maldives in 2007, John’s treat, I could appreciate that I was in a living postcard, that I was surrounded by such beauty as I had never seen before, with not even any unpleasant wildlife to threaten our quality of life, wonderful food, and so on, and yet the 36-40 ºC temperatures and 85% humidity made me forget about photographing such a paradise, indulge in the only exercise I liked, which was swimming in turquoise lagoons, and all I wanted was to get back into our darkened, dry and air-conditioned room. The 11 hour flights with a budget airline were purgatory, as (for the first time) I found the seats terribly tight and needed a special extension to my seatbelt.

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The main health issue was that I was becoming increasingly immobile. I had started to plan my life so that I didn’t have to go out if it involved walking, I had to park very close to where I was going, I couldn’t possibly talk or listen to anyone unless I was sitting down – and so on, I’m sure you recognise all these signs. I felt very strongly that I wouldn’t live to old age. I was eating myself into a standstill.

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Picture № 43, March 2008 (9 months before banding)

So that brings you up to date. In October I read about a British TV personality who had been banded very successfully, and I looked up about it on the internet. With growing hope I absorbed every morsel of information I could find, particularly from the blogs (Melanie Matters was particularly helpful I remember). In the past the stumbling block would have been the cost, but I still had half my redundancy money. I talked to John about it and was astonished that he supported such expenditure, and then I talked to my doctor and was astonished that she supported it too… A few phone calls later it was all arranged for the week before Christmas last year, and I was on my way.

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For the first time ever I had real hope that one day I would feel normal again.

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-oOo-

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I got John to take the “before” pictures which make me squirm just to think about. I’ll show them in a future post only when there are updated ones which show a noticeable difference! Perhaps when I’ve lost 25 kg, probably the half way mark, though I’m not setting targets. That is 9 kg away.

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The lapbanding operation and the slow but steady progress since then have all been recorded in this blog, and are no different to the other blogs (thankfully). The modest success so far has amazed me, for there has been very little willpower involved. It gave me the courage to attempt to face the story of how I got to this point.

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If you want the weight loss badly enough and you’ve gone to the expense of a private gastric banding operation, you’ll be willing to stick to the few basic rules. In my own case the blogging has worked well for me: to record the bad times and the good, and as a form of group therapy to exchange information and goodwill with others in the same situation.

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So there you are – Around My World in Eight Posts. In the next post I’ll pick up on the very positive and kind comments I’ve received.

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-oOo-

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