Good Evening Fellow PLay Cats (Plicators) & WLS-ers:

I wanted to share my story with you here.

My decision to be a PLay Cat (be plicated) came out of a need to be healthy. My health. I'm 41 and I had this super candid conversation with my mom not long ago. She's had a mild stroke (10 or so years ago) and a major heart attack all fairly recently. But her health decline? That started when she was 47 (20 years ago). That's the age she became diabetic. The big bad D. As a result, her health took a slow and steady decline. Well I went to the Doctor 4 months ago, and he told me that I was just a few points away from being Diabetic and that if I didn't start to lose weight I would have big problems.Nearly diabetic? At 41? Six years ahead of my mom?? And what's worse? What triggered my visit to the Dr.'s was this hot numbing pain in my upper right thigh. The Dr. said that was because my weight was pushing down on that vein, and while the vein is regenerative (thankfully!) the fact that my weight was triggering pain in me delivered a pretty tough message very quickly. I looked at this unfolding total health picture: being over weight, potential diabetes, the talk with my mom, potential strokes, arriving in a world of heart disease ahead of schedule vs. possibly not at all. All this happened within 3 days. And I thought, do something now while the warning is mild. It became brutally clear that at the rate I was going, I would get diabetes younger than my mom. I have seen my mom suffer through those life shocking diseases, it's pretty bad. And wasn't I the one who said to my mom as I held her hand in the cardiac room before heart (bypass) surgery that I knew it would be hard to change her way of life, but that it was now a matter of life? And wasn't I also the one who used to think, "I would rather change my habbits of my own accord, however rough, versus being told I had to?" Yes. That was me.

I need to be healthy.

RIght now, I feel good about having reached my "lose 5%" goal, and know that for the next 10 days I will add to that weight loss, especially with the pre-op liquid diet and fast.. And that is me. That is my story. I honor you all and I want to take this moment in time to honor the courage you have for even coming here. Please feel free to email me here or reply if you'd like to share the ride. PLay Cats, Bandsters and all walks of WLS Life Welcome.

Inner Peace,

PLay Cat Ana