Plot Twist: The Beginning of the Spiral

Part 1 of My Medical Memoir, Southern-Style

Category: Throwback + Thankful Thursday (even though it’s posting Sunday, this is still your story lane)

When I met my husband Kevin back in 2005, I was a whopping 110 pounds—tiny, happy, and dangerously unsupervised in a kitchen. I learned to cook, learned to love, and started climbing the nursing school mountain while working full-time as a CNA. Somewhere in there, my metabolism clocked out early like it had a better offer.

By the time we got married in August 2010, I was 215 pounds. Still hustling, still full of biscuits and ambition. Then life kicked into high gear: two pregnancies, full-time parenting, grief, long shifts, and one medical mystery after another.

Patrick (our second boy, aka Small Fry) came along in 2015. By 2019, we were grieving Kevin’s mama, Patti. Somewhere in that storm, I hit myself with my own car—yes, you read that right—and by September 2021, I hit my highest weight ever: 286 pounds.

I had tried it all—pills, shakes, accountability groups. I could’ve opened a small business out of failed weight loss programs.

Eventually, after maxing out our insurance (a running theme in this series), I was approved for VSG surgery. On November 21, 2021, I went under—full coverage, full courage, and fully convinced that this would change my life.

And it did. But not in the way you think.

September 11, 2022 – From my heaviest to 76 pounds down. Same dress, same mama, just showing up stronger.

September 11, 2022 – From my heaviest to 76 pounds down. Same shirt, same mama, just showing up stronger.

I lost 76 pounds.
I gained energy.
I gained movement.

And one day—September 14, 2022—Small Fry, sweet and sincere as ever, wrapped his arms around me and said:

“Mama… my fingers touched.”

Small Fry’s hands finally touched. A non-scale victory I’ll never forget.

That was what he’d been hoping for all along. Not my arms around him—his arms around me.
That moment? That was everything.

That’s when I knew I’d made it.
Not to skinny. Not to someone else’s idea of wellness.
But to the kind of healthy where your kid can finally wrap his arms all the way around you—
and grin like he just won the world.

But if you think that’s where the story ends?

Bless your heart.

Because in 2023 and 2024, my body staged a full-blown rebellion. One part silent reflux. One part gallbladder gone rogue. One $4,000 allergy shot turned bathroom explosion. And more ambulance rides than I can count.