Friday, July 23, 2010

Save, Repair, Your Favorite Pair of Jeans

Hey everyone,,,, just a quick post about something I just saw featured on a local news show called LX New York http://www.nbcnewyork.com/shows/lxnewyork/

They featured a company that repairs denim jeans. I know over the years I have thrown away perfectly good jeans because only the area between the thighs had worn away. This company has you go online and mark up a diagram of your jeans where you want them repaired. You then mail them your jeans and they send you an quote to repair them. They also have a service where they can convert regular jeans into maternity jeans and then turn them back after the baby comes.

They are here in NY but they also do this service thru the mail.

The company is called Denim Therapy http://denimtherapy.com/repairnow-var1/?gclid=CIOS6p7NgqMCFdFN5QodHCBzaQ and I figured that there may be some in our community that will be happy to know about them.

Cheers,

Ivan

Saturday, July 10, 2010

NO NEW KNEES FOR YOU!! unless I can amputate your stomach first

Hello Friends,

My mom and I are hanging out with an old family friend tomorrow who lives in Florida, She and my mom are both in their mid 60's.

This friend, who for the purpose of this post I shall call judy, weighs between 300 and 400 pounds. She also has arthritic knees and while I am not 100 % up on the details of her situation, I will describe them as I understand them. I will get very clear on the details tomorrow as we have plans to hang out all afternoon.

Here is the deal. The doctors wanted her to loose weight before they replace her knees, So they advised her to have the lap band procedure. She did this about two years ago. If she lost any weight, she gained in back. So the knees are still not replaced and she lives with horrible pain.

I assume they went to adjust the lap band to force it to work and get her to loose weight and guess what? They cannot find the device. I never heard of that before. It is not around her stomach and they cannot locate it. So guess what the docs are gonna do now. After the lap band failed. They are still not going to do the operation to replace her knees because surgery is too risky at her weight. What they are going to do is amputate her stomach with a full gastric bypass and while they are in there, they hope to find the dislodged lap band device. Apparently the risks of this surgery is acceptable. It just seems so very wrong that the Doctors are willing to risk her life this way.

I feel horrible for her. Worse is that in the few times that I have spoke about fat acceptance with her, she has been completely unreachable.

I am going to try to reach her again tomorrow. Surely folks in our community can understand the injustice of doctors refusing to provide the pain relieving knee replacements but encouraging the life threatening stomach amputation. Further, we have the insight to understand how someone like my mother's friend Judy could agree with the doctors about the bypass surgery before the knee surgery.

I anticipate my discussions with Judy falling on deaf ears tomorrow. I am sick with sadness about this.

Please friends, send me your good vibes to my brain so what I say tomorrow to her has value.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Gratitude for the Sphere

I am very grateful that there are so many smart activist voices out there discussing Size Acceptance. I myself have been not only been under the radar, but almost completely "off grid" when it comes to following the sphere and watching the different developments and issues here.

Long story short on my absence has been a crisis of confidence about my health choices and a really difficult battle with my own "Bad Fattie Guilt". I probably will blog about it more but right now I just want to say thank you to all the voices on the sphere waiting for me in my special inbox dedicated to the sphere.

Cheers,


Ivan