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Happy New Year to all! And welcome to new subscribers, many of whom I believe must have followed the link from the Resource section of my new ebook Becoming One!

A year ago, I wrote a New Year’s post describing how I intended to act on my “2014 promise to myself: write.” Looking back, I experienced a lot of struggle and self-doubt about that promise — and I still do. I don’t think that will ever change, frankly.

But the success of that promise culminated in the publishing of the Becoming One updated ebook on Amazon on November 19th. That had been a goal for six straight years, and every New Year I’d awaken newly depressed that I had not achieved it, for various reasons, most of them part of that endless internal struggle.

What changed this year is that I accepted the reality of my limitations and doubts, and in doing so was able to move forward anyway. It wasn’t easy, but it was different. I was so thrilled to awaken this New Year’s Day knowing I’d achieved that goal!

My current struggle is in updating the index for the new print version of Becoming One. This index is aging me. But I’m determined, and it will be done. Soon.

My word for 2015, and my new promise to myself: D R E A M

I seldom publicly commit in advance to things that require me to overcome the internal struggles to fulfill them. But I’ve said in some very public online places recently that there will be a followup book titled Becoming One Every Day: Living Purposefully with Dissociative Identity Disorder by the end of this year. (Yikes!) Instead of focusing on the struggle, I’m trying to focus on the adventure of it all.

It’s a very big dream of mine, that I’ve longed to fulfill for 15 years. I hope you’ll stick around to see how it turns out. For me, it’s as much about the process as it is about the outcome.

Many thanks again for your support and caring! May we all dream big!
 
 
 

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[important] It’s here! Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder is now available for Kindle on Amazon!

It’s been an exceedingly long road to this milestone, and I thank all of you for your support and encouragement throughout the years, whether here, or by email, or on Twitter. I have so many writing projects bouncing around in my head, and I knew I could not do any of them justice without first issuing a new ebook edition of Becoming One! The print edition is coming in December, and finalizing it is next on the “to do” list.

What a wonderful feeling this is!
 

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2013 was a wild year for me. I had a form of weight loss surgery in late April called duodenal switch, and the results have been phenomenal. Not just for the weight loss, which is a blessing in itself, but there’s so much more going on. There’s a synergy happening in me now that I find astonishing.

(Photo Credit)

• I’ve regained mobility I’ve not experienced in 20 years, in no small part due to twice weekly physical therapy that both exhausts and exhilerates me. I’ve never exercised like this in my life, ever.

• A year ago, I functioned (barely) only because of daily prescription pain meds, muscle relaxers, and handfuls of Ibuprofen. Today I seldom take any of these.

• A year ago, I only left the house for doctor appointments, and even taking Vicodin, would nearly pass out from the pain going up my front eight steps. Today it is but a twinge, without pain meds. In addition to all my PT sessions, my hubby and I also went leaf-peeping in the New England autumn six weekends in a row, plus enjoyed several car trips at Christmas just to look at all the lights. We’re planning a vacation.

• I feel good, and I feel healthier than I’ve ever felt in my life. And it’s only getting better every single day. To say I’m grateful seems so … small.

2013 was the year of finally doing what needed to be done to set me free physically. 2014 will be about setting me free mentally and emotionally. It’s hard to write productively when you’re in chronic pain, and it seems endless. It’s hard to be creative when confined to those constraints.

It’s still hard to write, but I can’t blame it on the 2013 things any more! And I feel I’ve wasted far too much time the last 10 years, when just living was a terrible struggle.

I have ambitious plans for 2014, and they all hinge on writing:

• Format Becoming One for ebook distribution

• Finalize and publish the followup book, Becoming One Every Day

• Finish the first draft of a psychological novel with which I’m more than mildly obsessed. My first foray into fiction since college — and it’s time.

I have a few other projects percolating as well. I’m starting a new blog series about self-care for trauma survivors. I’ve always paid lip service to self-care. I know in my heart it’s the right thing to do, but it wasn’t till 2013 that I actually began doing it. Much of that was done purely on faith that it would have any impact at all — but not doing it would have been a huge missed opportunity. Again, saying I’m grateful seems so inadequate, so I intend to pay it forward here on my blog. Look for the first in the series soon!

My word for 2014 is: write.
 
 

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I must apologize for the delay in continuing this story. I wrote my last post the night before I was to undergo the most complex form of bariatric surgery (on April 30th), known as the duodenal switch (“DS”). I vastly underestimated how much this event was going to put me out of commission, both in terms of the surgery itself, and the impact of all the changes involved.

I fought for this surgery for five years because it offers benefits that the much more well known gastric bypass cannot meet. Such as:

• My stomach is made much smaller (about 4oz) but it is a fully functioning stomach retaining the pyloric valve, which allows me to take NSAIDS such as Ibuprofen safely. NSAIDS are banned for life with the gastric bypass.
• The intestines are reconfigured differently than the gastric bypass, resulting in far more malabsorption (and requires much more diligence with supplements). This is what helps DS patients maintain the weight loss down the road.
• The DS has a documented cure rate of 98% of Type 2 diabetes. I’ve had diabetes for more than 20 years, which lowers the odds of me being in the 98%, but I’m watching my blood sugars settle lower the last few weeks. This, only on a small dose of insulin, where before I took insulin and two oral meds. I am hopeful.
• With the DS, 80% of any kind of fat eaten is malabsorbed. I will never again eat “low fat” anything. In fact, I need to eat more fat to come up with what the minimum RDA for good health requires. After a lifetime of conditioning, this one is hard to get my mind around, but I like it.

In a state like Massachusetts, which is a hotbed for medical research and innovation, there is not a single surgeon who does the duodenal switch. This, despite the fact that Blue Cross of Massachusetts covers it. Go figure.

The closest verified DS surgeons are in New York City. After being pretty much housebound with a bone-on-bone knee and severe back spasms for five years, it took pure force of will — and a combination of muscle relaxers and pain meds — for me to get to New York. My husband Dan made it all possible. He took time off from work for numerous test appointments the year before surgery; he drove us to and from New York; and was with me every step of the way, both in the hospital, and at the hotel afterwards. We were in New York for 10 days.

Then the overwhelm truly ensued. It’s vital to drink enough water, which is a minimum of 64oz a day. Do the math! I have a 4oz stomach! I am fortunate in that I was able to drink water easily, which many people cannot, and wind up in the ER getting IV fluids a couple weeks out from surgery. Plus I have to eat frequent, very small meals. Like one scrambled egg. Or 3oz of pureed soup.

As I add new foods, the focus is always protein. The goal is 30 grams of protein a day by the 30th day (60 by the 60th, 90 by the 90th). The stomach is swollen and not fully healed for a month. It’s hard for me now to imagine eating 90 grams ever, but it will happen.

Plus, I must begin a schedule for adding large quantities of Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron, and other trace minerals that are now not absorbed well. The consequences of not doing so are very serious: osteoporosis, iron deficiency anemia, neurological problems. I’m not going there.

All of this is a huge undertaking, and requires a pretty sharp mind at a time when I’m told the anesthesia is still messing with it. So the days went by without any word from me, and I’m sorry it’s been so long.

But you know what my overriding feelings are about all of this now that it’s done? I feel hopeful for the first time in eight years. Hopeful that I will no longer be imprisoned by my body, and that I will be able to leave my house for things that are purely fun. Hopeful that I am on my way to good health, including resolution of diabetes. Hopeful that my life is beginning again, right here, right now.

What seemed impossible and pointless to even fantasize about for eight years now seems very possible. I’m excited about my future! It’s precious, and I am nurturing it with all I’ve got.

Stay tuned!

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I avoid a lot of things in life, for reasons that are nearly all fear-based. I fear pain the most — physical and mental — and yet, I now live with it daily. How the heck did that happen?

I can trace problems with being overweight back to age 11, when puberty struck. I did not remember then that I’d been molested repeatedly by a “family friend” from age three to six. But somehow I knew that getting my period was a bad thing connected to “grandpas”. (Not my own, who both died before I was born.) No, I considered any older man a “grandpa” — and dangerous for reasons I could not articulate.

I began sneaking food anyway I could. I sure didn’t know why, but in retrospect, I believed that getting fat would make me “invisible” to grandpas. The bigger I got, the more invisible I’d be. Yes, that thinking makes no sense if you haven’t spent your entire life trying to hide. Some women gain weight without under-standing why they don’t want to be attractive to men. It’s a cocoon. I figured that out at 11.

I knew all my life that I had a couple of other people inside of me, and mostly thought everyone did. But I didn’t know until my late 30s that I had alters whose only purpose in life was to eat when I wasn’t co-conscious. I repeatedly went on extreme diets, feeling massively deprived and hungry, and would gain weight. Doctors routinely proclaimed that I was lying about my food intake. Just one of a long list of things that made me feel crazy.

Fast forward to 2008. I began taking my Type 2 diabetes seriously 10 years after diagnosis, meaning keeping track of my blood sugars, and changing my diet to lower carb (which got progressively much lower as I realized that carbs are not diabetic friendly). This was a radical shift for me, and I refused to call it a “diet”, because it would fail. I called it “lowering my blood sugar”.

I also had surgery for a meniscus tear in my right knee that year, leaving it in a “bone on bone” condition that made the pain much worse. My ortho doc said I couldn’t qualify for knee replacement until I both lost a lot of weight, and reached age 60. I was 53.

The last five years I struggled to find relief for my knee, which is constantly painful, but excruciating whenever I leave my house because there are eight steps up to get back inside. Because of those steps, I pretty much only leave my house for doctor appointments. On the bright side, I got my diabetes into excellent control, with my A1C test going down to 5.7, a non-diabetic number.

But I wasn’t losing any weight, which had to change if I were ever to have any hope of getting my knee fixed. Otherwise, I will spend the rest of my life housebound, which for a long while I accepted as just being my reality. And even though I really hate change, last year I began to change my reality.

[to be continued in Part 2)

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… the more they stay the same! Photo Credit

In the next few months, I’m planning some key changes for Third of a Lifetime.

One dismaying fact about pulling together links for my “year end PTSD Resources” project was the huge number of broken links in the 50+ weekly Best Tweets series. The existence of a “broken link checker” plug-in — and zillions of very inventive, possibility-creating plug-ins for self-hosted WordPress — changed my world-view on the state of this blog.

So I’m happy to announce that Third of a Lifetime is moving to its own domain in the next couple of weeks — but I’m also pleased to add that nothing’s really changing! I’m keeping the same theme, with a few more bells and whistles. WordPress will automagically redirect links from this URL to the new one, so all the inbound links previously created won’t break. That WP began offering this mapping service clinched the deal. The new URL is not in service yet, but let’s say that it’s not changing much, either.

Also planned in the near future, my book Becoming One will be formatted for Kindle and other ebook formats. Both paper and ebook versions will be available for purchase directly from the new blog site, as well as from all of the usual suspects.

There’s more, but I need to pace myself. I’ve got my “dream big” thing going again, and I like the direction in which this is all moving. (Movement: my word for 2011!)  I will formally announce when the new blog site is ready for the world! Thank you for your support, both here and on Twitter, and (soon! shhhh) Facebook.