I have the label of living with a severe mental illness. An illness that isn’t widely understood and is way too often feared. I love talking about my schizoaffectiveness. Sure, my blog doesn’t reach many people but hopefully it spreads a little bit of knowledge to those who do read it.

What I also have is a ton of other labels. I’m a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister. I have a passionate love for the Winter Dance Party plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. I love John Denver. My favorite person in history is Lady Jane Grey, not just because she was highly educated but because after nine days on the English throne she allowed herself to be executed at the tender age of 16 due to her religion conventions. Conventions I will never have. I wear glasses. I’m short and hate having that pointed out to me. I’m never truly filled with the Christmas spirit because I’ve been scarred by 14 years of working in retail. My favorite actors are Danny Kaye and Ginger Rogers. Cyndi Lauper is my hero because she taught me to be myself no matter how odd that may be. I’m a reader and a film snob. I have a lot of other attributes that aren’t coming to my head right now because I just woke up.

Here’s my New Year’s resolution: I promise to make my blog more than just my illness. I shall talk about being mentally ill but I will have posts about other topics of interest to me. Maybe you might learn something new, maybe you won’t read it. I just want to share that I’m more than my illness. What’s your New Year’s resolution?

Weight gain is an unfortunate side effect of psych meds. It’s one that I know all too well. I went from 120 lbs to 220 lbs in eight years. I tried to tell myself that I was happy being overweight and being overweight and mentally healthy is better than being thin and in a mental hospital. While that is true, being overweight in this society comes with many disadvantages. It was tremendously hard to find cute clothing in my size. People would stare at me in general, as though I was a repulsive object and not a human being. (Which, didn’t help the paranoid schizophrenic aspect of my disorder) I had numerous strangers come up to me and offer me weight loss advice because if I didn’t lose weight I was going to get cancer, diabetes, or both and die young.

I tried not to care for a long time but in 2016 I had a stroke. The stroke had nothing to do with my weight. I had bilateral carotid dissection. Both my carotid arteries had torn and when I walked into the ER, the ER doctor estimated I had less than 36 hours to live. I almost became stories to my sons. The interesting part was my arteries were clear of plaque buildup. No one knows why what happened to me happened. It was crazy nonsense. However, my neurosurgeon told me I needed to lose between 70 to 100 lbs or else my stents wouldn’t be able to sustain my weight. This time, I took the weight loss talk seriously. I was still holding on to my baby weight from my second child and a 100 lbs loss would put me at 140 lbs. After 4 months of trying to lose weight and failing, my general practitioner recommended bariatric (weight loss) surgery.

I saw a baratric surgeon and he almost refused to perform weight loss surgery on me because of my mental illness. He outright said “no” to the gastric bypass because my body would stop metabolizing my psych meds. He finally agreed to the gastric sleeve (stomach stapling) surgery. I would be able to take my medication but I wouldn’t lose as much as I could with the gastric bypass. That was fine with me. Any weight loss would be better than no weight loss.

I asked him how many patients gain all their weight back and he said 20%. I thought 20% was a lot of people and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stay on track to keep the weight off. Then I switched it around and told myself 80% of people are successful and, heck, that was a B average and I was a B average student throughout high school and college. I had faith I could take the weight off and keep it that way.

It’s been over a year and a half since I had the surgery and it’s been hard, but I managed to lose 70 lbs and keep it that way. My general practitioner wanted me to weigh anywhere from 140-165 lbs. I reached 165 lbs and my body was like, okay, but that’s it. I have been 165 lbs for over a year now and no one stares at me and no one has approached me with doomsday advice. I feel fantastic, and most important, I will be around to watch my sons grow up.