u/Narrow_Baseball5119

I am on the gastric surgery pathway and I'm wanting to get advice on how I might be able to get the NHS trust I have been referred to to pause my referral without me being discharged back to my GP. I know this sounds odd - many are wanting to try and get theirs done asap - but even with me having a crazy high BMI and struggling constantly daily in my body due to obesity, I still want to really consider and take time to decide if the lifelong commitment of sugery is the right choice for me.

I have struggled with my weight all my life but only in the last few years has my weight become a serious health issue. A VERY rocky few years + COVID saw my body go from overweight to obese to severely obese. I now weigh double what I used to and struggle every day now with things like walking, getting up etc. because of it. It is REALLY hard existing like this.

It is because of this that I am even opening myself up to the idea of surgery as before, I guess because I was only overweight, I could "manage" myself which usually saw me lose then regain lost weight plus more. That's why I am interested in surgery because I hope maybe surgery could put an end to that cycle. And perhaps assist me by limiting my ability to binge-eat which tends to occur when life gets tough. But what puts me off is the long-term commitment required as I am someone who struggles with consistency. I have struggled to take medication that needed to be taken daily. I also know of two people who had surgery but never tackled their underlying eating habits so they continued to binge but in a more limited way - like taking hours to eat one pack of biscuits etc. This also put me off it as I know that can lead them to also regain back the weight lost. I therefore worry I would struggle to do what is necessary post-surgery to get full benefits and that I could again be trapped by my body but in a different way.

I decided earlier this year that I needed a break from the UK because of how brutal things have been over the last 7 years. My initial appointment, which was a Q&A, was via video so I joined but now they will all be in-person assessments and tbh I do not have the ability - mentally or physically - to travel back to the UK for it. I associate the UK now with a lot of bad and dark times so taking time away has been fundamental for my health. I also feel that perhaps, in time, it might give me the breathing room I need to get the capacity to try to lose weight myself. I no longer binge eat like how I used to as food just doesn't hit for me in the way it used to. Life in the UK has been so awful that even comfort eating couldn't provide any reprieve from it. Times I would actually forget to eat - which is never something I would do prior. Plus living abroad means I can't get access to the stuff I would binge on so that helps too. Losing weight myself, though it would be very hard, is what my preference would be tbh. Even though I have no idea how as the amount I have to lose is the same as a whole adult human. I have been thinking to try the jabs and the idea seems even more appealing as one person on the video assessment said he'd lost 60kg on them! That's about how much I need to lose.

Does anyone know if there is a way in which I can ask the bariatric surgery team to pause my referral/assessment until next year? Without discharging me back to my GP?

I've got an assessment with Ingeus tomorrow for PIP and I am absolutely dreading it. The stories I have seen of people with way worse and more documented disabilities is why I fear I'll go through this awful process and still be turned down. I have already been awarded LWRCA on UC. I had hoped that having this would mean that my application for PIP would be easier but I have still been asked to attend an assessment. My conditions that I have put on the form are:

Chronic Pain Syndrome due to injuries sustained to my ankle, back and knee, CPTSD, depression and anxiety, insomnia and ADHD. My physical disability has only recently become documented but I have lived with it for a long time - 6 years. Depression and anxiety and insomnia documented for years on my medical record. ADHD diagnosis last year and titration has been tricky so unmedicated right now.

I worry, despite literally not being able to function, which is why I am on UC (used to work and was very successful until things fell apart and got signed off sick from work for a year before being fired) that I will still be denied as I am not "disabled enough", especially when I hear stories of people who have things like missing parts of their skull, being blind etc. still having their claim denied. I paid to get my form filled in as I was so overwhelmed and didn't have a clue on what to do. I really regret not also getting an advocate for the assessment. I was just hoping I would not need an assessment, then only got told recently about this appointment and decided to press ahead and hope for the best but as it nears I am bricking it!

I am writing this post in hope that anyone might have tips or suggestions or learnings from their experience they can share.

I was “friends“ with someone for about a year before they discarded me, smeared me to mutual friends and our wider community - leading me to be ostracised during the worst time of my life. I came to this thread via Google as I’m trying to make sense of this as I pick up the pieces of my life. I would love to hear from others who have also had their life ruined and what they did to rebuild from it. Full story below.

We became very close in a short space of time, which I now know was a major mistake. I also now know from doing research that I became their favourite person. They told me early on that they had BPD but that they were in therapy and treatment. I, foolishly, thought that that plus their initial behaviour made them safe. I spotted some flags that I foolishly ignored. Like how they would share personal information with me about their other friends that they had known for way longer than me. They would share screenshots of conversations with these friends and other people in our wider community whilst talking about them. I naively thought this meant that they really trusted me as I’m not really one to bitch about people just for the sake of it. I thus assumed they’d spotted that and saw me as a safe person to share deep stuff with as they knew it wouldn’t go further. There was also weirder things like the time they asked me to wake them up in the morning by calling them. I remember thinking at the time but the same phone you want me to call you on has an alarm on it?! I have thankfully done enough work on myself to say no to that. They would also ask me to do other things that they wouldn’t ask our mutual friend to do and get mad at me if I declined.

Early last year, I foolishly agreed to cat-sit for them as I was having issues with my accommodation. When I arrived at their home it was a mess! Like cat litter everywhere - including in their bed and shower. They also didn’t have any working heating in their home and it was below freezing. This was my third time visiting their home and the prior two times I had not seen anything to indicate these issues otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to stay and housesit. I have a number of health conditions so I found all of this REALLY hard. Especially at the time when I was already struggling due to the stress of my bad housing situation. I had gone there seeking respite and solace but it was far from that. I endured that for four days - way longer than I would have of not for the friendship I thought we had - before finally breaking and going to stay with another friend as it was starting to affect my health. They had other friends who could also do this for them and they even said it was ok for me to do this. I repeatedly and profusely apologised for not being able to do the full week as agreed and they said it was ok.

I thought that we had talked through this issue but when they got back from holiday they asked to have another conversation about me staying for 4 out of the 7 days that they needed a cat-sitter. At that time the housing situation I was dealing with became even worse and I was struggling to function as a result. I explained that I didn’t have the capacity to talk, not because I didn’t want to but because I was fighting for my life in a very difficult and destabilising situation. Their response to that was to discard me via voice note saying that they didn’t have the capacity to support me anymore. Before I’d even had the chance to digest that, just minutes later, a mutual friend (us three had been a tight knit group who spoke and saw each other regularly) also got in touch and also out of the blue told me that they too didn’t have the capacity to support me. It was clear to me considering the timing that this “friend” had spoken to our mutual friend about me and had somehow managed to get them to co-sign their decision to discard me during the worst time of my life.

I hadn’t even caught my breath from that before this “friend” then went about smearing me to our wider community. I now realise that they perhaps felt some shame about their home - even though I NEVER shamed them for it. I never mentioned that I found it difficult seeing kitty litter in places like their bed and shower. I just said that no offence to them but that I had struggled to be there with no hearing because of my disability and left it at that. However, they mentioned that I had made them feel sensitive about their home. And they punished me severely for it. First they went and made a point to share our conflict with people who they knew I had had conflict with. They justified it by saying they needed to “emotionally process” it but seriously?! It could only be amongst people who you knew had an issue with me that you could talk to? Then, they made a point of sharing things I had foolishly shared in confidence about one of these people I had conflict with, who wielded a lot of social power in that group. They made a point to go out of their way to befriend not only this person but their partner and all their friends. Then manipulatively shared with a select few of them about what I had said. This then got back to that person and then the wider group. I’ll be honest and say that what I had said whilst venting about someone who had repeatedly been unkind to me wasn’t great. I had stupidly thought that just as I kept safe what they had said to me that they would do the same but they did not. And before long people who I had never had an issue with. Who were warm and kind to me suddenly became artic cold. Within the space of a few months after this person discarded me, everyone who knew us both had distanced themselves from me. I went from having a support network and a wider community to having barely anything or anyone to hold onto. This would have been tough to deal with at any point but it was more so devastating as it was a very difficult time in my life which this “friend” knew intimately about and still went and did what they did. This is just a summary but the manipulative passive aggression of their actions was insidious and scary to behold and be a victim of. It’s been just over a year since this happened and I have had to remove myself from pretty much everyone and everything I knew as a result of this. I have been doing research into BPD and see that this tracks as how they treat people in their life. Its crazy to discover as I never knew till now. I guess this post is a shout into the void to see if others here have had experience of this? And if so how did you recover from it? As I’ll be honest, right now I just can't look at humans the same way. Having someone you once trusted destroy your life this way when they know you’re at your lowest does that to you.