Page 106 - South Mississippi Living - February, 2017

HEALTHY LIVING gastric bypass surgery
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120 pound loss gets Victoria Carlson’s life back
story by Kelsey Sunderman-Foster Fphotos courtesy of Victoria Carlson
or Victoria Carlson, weight hadn’t always been an issue. Growing up as an athlete who played soccer and basketball competitively
for school and club teams, she was constantly on the go. “At a young age, I was
instilled with the idea that your weight was the core of everything,” said Carlson. “When I was
in middle school I was very small. I was always active and I never took a break, but at age 12 I was struck with bacterial meningitis and almost died.”
Three weeks after being diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, Carlson caught mononucleosis as a result of her struggling immune system and was confined to a bed for several weeks. “After that,
it seemed like I would get sick constantly and my way of coping was through eating,” she said. “I also had several psychological traumas throughout my childhood; abuse, divorcing parents, and losing a friend to suicide. There were so many things in my life that caused me to turn to food for comfort.”
The turning point for Carlson’s weight loss struggle came at the age of 17 when she incurred a soccer injury that affected her back and hip. “This was the point that everything went downhill,” Carlson said. “I was on strong pain killers, getting back injections, and going to several doctors’
106 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • February 2017
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appointments. The pain I was struck with haunted me for years.”
By the time Carlson turned 22, she had reached almost 300 pounds. “I was bedridden because I was in too much pain to walk. I couldn’t take care of my home, husband, or little boy. I was finished with just surviving my life; I wanted to start living it,” she said. “These are the things in my life that led me to this amazing journey I have been on and I wouldn’t go back to that place of darkness for anything.”
Carlson tried a variety of methods in an attempt to shed the weight and managed to lose a good bit on her own, but struggled to keep the weight off. “I was never consistent,” she said. “I had known several people in my life who had opted for weight loss surgery and had seen tremendous life change. I began researching several different places that performed weight loss surgery and I knew it was