In 2011, I weighed 534 pounds (242 kg) and was unable to walk due to sepsis from an E. coli infection. When I was admitted to the hospital, my feet and legs were black from the blood pooling, my organs had shut down, and I smelled disgusting because my skin was weeping from the infection. I also had diabetes, high blood pressure, off-the-charts triglycerides, and a rapid and irregular heartbeat. In fact, I was so close to death that the doctor sent me to die at a skilled nursing home in a nearby city.
But the nurse who took care of me looked at me one day and said, “This woman is not going to die.” She worked hard to help me clean my food and my body. It took six people to roll me over to change my sheets or my diaper. I was on oxygen and so many medications. I had pain medications available that would have let me die, and I would have gladly died because I couldn’t imagine my life without my legs. But the nurse saved my life and my legs, and I went home weighing 300 pounds (136 kg).
Once I was at home, though, I quickly gained back some of the weight. Five years later, at 400 pounds (181 kg), I fell and crushed my femur just above the knee. I was too fat for surgery, so they put a brace on my leg and sent me to the same skilled nursing home. Again, I was able to control my food in this medical setting. I went from 400 to 300 pounds in just seven months, even though I was not allowed to walk because my leg bone had to grow together without surgery.
It was December 2016 when I fell. A series of miracles started the following September:
A woman in the recovery room next to me and her brother and I started a God table so we could pray for others. They prayed about a small growth on my face. It fell off the next day. No scar, no healing— it just fell off. I knew God was trying to reach me. I knew it was a miracle.
After they left, I started having lunch with the man in the room on the other side of me. I started crying one day because I was so terrified of going home and gaining my weight back. He said he belonged to AA and asked if I had ever heard of Overeaters Anonymous.
God had absolutely made a path to my bed. I’d been flat on my back for seven months, yet here I’d found a woman who had brought me to God and a man who had brought me to OA. Then, when I called the local phone number for OA to find a meeting, the man who answered eventually became my sponsor, and he is to this day—another miracle from God.
The day I told my AA friend that I was willing to work the OA program, the nursing staff told me I was ready to put weight on my leg again, and I took my first steps.
The stronger my program gets, the more miracles I get—too many to even begin to name. I am currently at 250 pounds (113 kg), and I have lost 284 pounds (129 kg). I’ve had to stop weighing myself, however, because my doctor does not want me to be misled by water retention in my legs. My heartbeat has been improving, and everything else is working perfectly—no more diabetes (my A1C is lower than normal), no more oxygen, no more high blood pressure, and no more high triglycerides. I am taking a diuretic to help my heart, but I take no other medication.
Today, I live most of my life in program (I’m retired, so I have the whole day to fill). I moderate a meeting once a week. I sponsor five people. I make a lot of outreach calls and texts and receive just as many. I start my day with For Today and Voices of Recovery. I say the Serenity Prayer and Third Step Prayer before each meal to center myself before I start eating. Here’s how I know when my abstinence is spot-on: When I have my meal in front of me on one dish, I imagine someone I don’t like coming through the door. If I’m embarrassed, then I have too much food.
OA has saved my life, my sanity, and my legs. I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am for OA’s founder, Rozanne, and her wisdom in starting this unique program for those of us with the disease of compulsive overeating. I will cherish and love her through all of eternity.
—Carrie
