MSNBC calling?

I woke up this morning to an email from what I thought had to be a prankster or a troll. Someone purporting to be health reporter Rita Rubin was asking to talk to me about a story she was writing for msnbc.com about families of gastric bypass patients.

Suuurrreeee, I thought. Tell me another one! I almost didn't write back to her. Well, I'm glad I did because it was no joke and I ended up having a very nice conversation with Ms. Rubin. The premise of her story was that families of gastric bypass patients are found to sometimes lose weight as well. She asked me if that had been my experience.

Erich hasn't lost massive amounts of weight, but his lifestyle changed right along with mine.

Erich has never been extremely overweight. When I married him, he wasn't overweight at all. As I mention in the article, I sort of dragged him down with me into my illness of inactivity and bad eating habits. I feel badly about this a lot. He was active before we met and had hobbies such as camping, swimming, etc. I wrote about our ninth-anniversary camping trip last year and what a wonderful feeling it was to give that back to him, something he loved doing so much but we were unable to share when I was so obese.

Since I've lost weight, we've not only been camping but also canoeing, ziplining, 4-wheeling and horseback riding in the Dominican Republic, and even simple things other people take for granted, like riding roller coasters take on special meaning for us.

The rest of our lives together is just beginning. I can't think of a better partner to take on the journey.

Here's a LINK to Rita's article on msnbc.com.

By the way, the trouble with my IUD that I talked about in my last blog has subsided for now. I spoke to my gynecologist and for now, we're taking a wait-and-see approach. Cross your fingers for me!

Zipping through life

I should be speech-writing, packing, doing a number of other things but blogging. But whatever. I'll sleep when I'm dead (as the song says).

On Saturday, I put another check mark on the list of things to do in the Summer of Cindy. Ziplining.

I should start by saying I have a terrible fear of heights. The other phobia that would prevent a sane person from doing this is my fear of breaking things. I've always been very careful not to test things that might not bear my weight. I still have that going on in my head to a great extent, needing to remind myself of my 225-pound weight loss.

Erich, my brother-in-law Robert and I headed to the local ski hill, Chicopee, to get this thing done. I went online to find out information about the zipline and discovered there was a 275-pound weight limit. Definitely something I wouldn't have been able to do pre-op.

When we got there, they strapped us in our harnesses right away and off we went to the top of the hill. There are people movers, like you find in airports, for a lot of the trip but it's still a fair hike, especially at the very top when you have to climb several flights of stairs. I was breathing a bit hard but not overwhelmed or anything. I recovered in a few seconds. I consider myself to be in pretty good shape at this point.

They position you in front of two gates. Two people can go down the hill at once. Erich videotaped while Rob and I went first. I have to tell you I was ok till I got up there and looked down over the valley. Whoa. Then the guy opened the gate for me. There are four steps that lead to nowhere. Literally.

I had to laugh. I mean...there was nothing else to do! What the hell was I doing?? It was just funny to me that I was even considering doing this. The guy told us it was sometimes better if you sit down on the next to last step and scoot off rather than just jump into nothingness. So Rob and I elected to sit. Rob has height issues, too, so he was conquering a phobia himself. We sat down and Rob started counting "Ok, Cindy! Here we go! One...two..."

I yelled "WAIT! NO NO WAIT!" LMAO! Not quite ready. We sat there a few more seconds and Rob just pushed off. So I followed him. I hurt my throat screaming on the way down. I'm just saying. That feeling of 'Ok, I'm jumping off a cliff and trusting this wire to keep me from hurling towards the earth to certain severe injury if not death.' Again, I have major issues with worrying about things bearing my weight.

At the bottom of the hill is a huge spring that stops you. OMG, that is a shock! If you're little it's probably not so bad but man, I crashed into that thing full boar and it took my breath away.

Erich has no height issues or weight-bearing fears so he just jumped full speed ahead. On our second jump, I videotaped him and you can hear him screaming "YEEE-HAAA!!!" He had a blast.

Here we are. Watch it and have a laugh. When I'm videotaping Erich, there were three teenage girls in line behind me and they were starting to freak out a bit. It's them you hear chattering when he's getting ready to jump.



My second jump was much less traumatic and I was able to enjoy it more. Talk about a feeling of weightlessness! It was pretty cool. I would definitely do it again!

Tomorrow Erich and I travel to Detroit for my induction into the Centurion Club, where I'll have to give a short speech. We're supposed to say a few words about how the surgery has changed our lives and talk about how we plan to keep the weight off. I dreamed about my speech the other night so I woke up and wrote it out in about 10 minutes. I'll tweak it tonight and we'll see how it goes! Wish me luck! Public speaking is right up there in my top five nightmare-inducing things to do. So if I pull this off without making a total idiot of myself, that'll be another thing to check off the list that I didn't think I could do pre-op. Then on Wednesday I have my one-year check-up with Dr. Genaw.

The past year has just been incredible. I'm not finished yet. :)