My mom had gastric bypass surgery

My mom is having surgery: gastric bypass surgery. Seeing her waste away happened slowly at first and then all at once. One day she was whole and round, the same body you’ve known your entire life. Then day by day, she has whittled away, like a woodworker chipping away at a block of wood to sculpt the body underneath.

I would be lying if I told you the gastric bypass surgery was inexpensive or not a big deal. It consumed everyone around it: my mother, my father, my newborn sister, my pre-teen brother, and me. Choosing to have gastric bypass surgery is not an easy one. It’s often seen as giving up. A sign of weakness that you aren’t strong-willed enough to put the pint of ice cream down and jump on a treadmill.

I went with my mother to the first pre-surgery gastric bypass support group meeting. We drove 45 minutes in rush hour to a dimly lit hospital conference room where 30 almost middle-aged women and one man sat uncomfortably in folding chairs. The weight of their lives straining the thin metal legs. They may have all taken different paths to get to that room. But they were all there attending the gastric bypass support group (bariatric surgery support group) for the same reasons. 

They wanted to lose weight. They needed to lose weight. If they lost weight, they would be happier, healthier, and have a better sex life. They would be able to buy only one airplane seat, not be stared out when they ordered anything other than a salad at a restaurant, and most importantly – be accepted.

Gastric bypass surgery involves severing the stomach into about a fourth of its size by using staples. The idea behind this is to decrease the amount of food your stomach can hold, thereby allowing you to eat less and be unable to consume as many calories. Then the small intestine is permanently rerouted and connected to this new “stomach.” Once food enters your mouth, it goes into this tiny holding chamber. From there, it is sent directly into the small intestine in a matter of minutes, a process in a normal person’s body that would take hours.

As I saw the world growing up, there were two kinds of people—skinny people and fat people. I was never a skinny person growing up, but I was also never a fat person. I lived in the middle ground, this no man’s land that I now know to be called normal. My mother had tried her entire adult life fighting the notion that the skinny people were somehow superior, were somehow better. She was confident, she was proud, she was resilient.

She never shrank herself down or forced her body to squeeze into one seat. She expected the world to accommodate her, not the other way around. I’m not sure if this portrayal of confidence was my way of viewing her or a defense mechanism she used to move through the world. All I know is one day, as she was creeping up on the age of 40, something snapped. She announced to our family that she was tired of being a fat person and was going to have a doctor remove her stomach.

Read more: “Maybe you should lose weight?” How doctors gaslight women like me

We supported my mom wanting to have surgery because that’s what’s expected of a family living in a pro-skinny society. 

A decision to make yourself contort into the skinny mold, whether that decision is eating more salads, buying a gym membership, or going under the knife, is seen as a positive step towards self-improvement. And so, I went with my mom to the numerous bariatric support groups and collected brochure after brochure that began to pile up on our kitchen counter. Smiling women, skinny and wearing workout attire, stared back at me as I ate my cereal.

Getting gastric bypass surgery requires a lengthy and intensely personal process. It’s similar to applying for a job, but instead of your skills and experience being questioned, it’s your body and inner thoughts. 

My mom was a candidate for gastric bypass surgery among the 30 or so other nearly 40 women in the room that first night of support group. As each week passed, more and more empty chairs created a void in the room. An echo whispered into everyone’s ears, “you could be next.” Among the failures were those who weren’t mentally fit enough for the surgery, those who were high risk and were doomed to a life of being fat and eating low-fat ice cream sandwiches and sugar-free pudding.

For the months leading up to the surgery, all our family could talk about was my mom’s body. What it was doing, what was going to happen to it, and the gory, bloody details of the gastric bypass surgery. Where would her stomach end up once it was removed: a trash can, in the garbage disposal, a freezer? Could we keep it?

Read more: Do I have body dysmorphia or am I just fat?

The week before the gastric bypass surgery came, I once again drove the 45 minutes with my mom to the weekly gastric bypass support group meeting. By this time, there were only 10 or so people left standing, like a reality show; these were the ones that had not been voted off the island. My mom was still in the running for the prize, but instead of a million dollars, it was the chance to be thin.

At this meeting, the skinny doctor in slacks and clogs told us the hard facts for the thousandth time. There was a 65 percent chance that you would lose some weight with this surgery, a 10-15 percent long-term failure rate, meaning you may lose some weight, but you will eventually gain all of your weight back and possibly more. And then, of course, there was the matter of the 5 percent complication rate and 0.1 percent mortality rate.

Eating became a painful ordeal in our family. We felt bad for so much as the crunch of a cracker echoing through our silent house. My mom was on a strict liquid diet as if she had reverted to being a newborn. For weeks our fridge was filled to the brim with orange and red jello packs and bottle after bottle of Pedialyte. 

My mom was confined to her bedroom, unable to walk down the flight of stairs to the house's first floor for at least two weeks. Gurgling, almost gagging noises could be heard through the living room's ceiling, which was directly under her bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. She lay in bed surrounded by books from the Twilight and the Hunger Games trilogies, old People’s magazines, and empty jello containers.

Slowly things started to get better. She began reintroducing solid foods into her diet and had to buy new pants every few weeks. Pictures from that time show her body morphing and changing, the roundness becoming flat, her jawbone jutting out from beneath a sag of skin. Mom seemed happier and lighter. For what it was worth, it appeared she had the luck of the 65 percent, and her doctors were carefully calling her weight loss surgery a success.

My family's focus for a long time was my mom’s body, its internal functions, and outward changes. It made me more aware of my body in a way I had never thought of before. It made me realize the sheer strength of societal pressures and of expectations placed on our bodies. 

I was 16 when she had the gastric bypass surgery, and now, nearly a decade later, she still can’t enjoy a carbonated beverage or an ice cream sandwich without almost puking. But she’s happy. I’m glad mom had gastric bypass because it made her feel good about herself again, but I’m saddened we live in a world where she felt like she had to.