How Did I Get Here?: Part 6

Let's see...where were we?  Aaaah, yes.  It was late 2000.  My Dad had just passed and I had returned to living at my own place.  Just me and my roommate, Mr. Fatty Food.  We were inseparable.  I was regularly eating fast food, pizza or Chinese every meal of every day.  Despite the fact that I was an excellent cook, the only thing I would wind up making for myself would be nuking a couple of hot dogs around 11PM, because I thought the KFC meal or the Meat Lover's Pizza Hut pie I had wolfed down wasn't holding me over. The truth was that I was plain bored, lonely and depressed.  I was off the rails, out of control.

I was functioning okay in my job and well thought of in the workplace.  My sleep apnea was behind me and I had my wits about me, for the most part.  I started to want something better for myself now that I had a decent supply of oxygen feeding my brain cells.  When you stop breathing so many times each night while in the throes of sleep apnea, you are so oxygen deprived that you get kind of crazy.  The delusional behavior that I spoke of in part 5 was a result of that.  But now that I was of sound mind, I wanted the sound body to go with it.


I worked with a guy named Paul.  Paul was a fellow 'big man' and had confided in me that he had gastric bypass surgery prior to our meeting.  I was surprised to hear this, because he was rather rotund.  He showed me pictures of a much larger Paul, so I went with the theory that I caught him on the way down, a work in progress  Paul explained to me about the surgery he had undergone.  His was done in a time where they splayed you open like a gutted bass and re-arranged your insides to make you eat less.  Oddly enough, it wasn't the altering of my digestive system that scared me, it was the fact that they made an incision about a foot long down the middle of you and spread you open like an unzippered duffle bag.  My own doctor assured me that I was a qualified candidate for the procedure, but I wanted no part of it.  Thanks for the thumbs up Doc.  I didn't need you to tell me I'm big enough for insurance to cover it.  My first clue was that I was as visible from space as the Great Wall of China.  I'll pass, all the same.

On a trip to the grocery store one day, I saw a People Magazine with Carnie Wilson on the cover.  It was saying that she had gastric bypass surgery and she had lost around 175 lbs.  What intrigued me was that she had it done laparoscopically.  Tiny incisions and instruments with cameras, made this all a much less invasive procedure.  Now my interest was piqued.  I bought her book, Gut Feelings: From Fear and Despair to Health and Hope.  It was a combination of her biographical ramblings about being a child of celebrities, struggling with addictions of all sorts and her story of salvation from her food demons.  This somehow spoke to me and I needed to find out more.


It was now January, 2001 and I discovered that one of the top places to go for such procedures was at Morristown Memorial Hospital, close to my home.  I learned that, once a month, they held an informational meeting at the hospital, where they would explain the procedure, have testimonials from patients, and you could meet the doctors.  I was amazed that the turnout was so huge (No pun intended.)  There were hundreds of people there looking for some help, some peace of mind.  People just like me hoping, beyond hope, that these doctors held the secret to our happiness.  I waited in line for a very long time at the end of the program to meet the head nurse/coordinator of the program and make my appointment.  The earliest spot they had was in late April, three months away.  Three months away!?!  You don't understand!  I can't wait three months months.  I want to be thin, like yesterday!  Of course, these were all things I said in my head.  Besides, what was three months compared to 37 years of expansion and I'm not that pushy outwardly.  I just said thank you and was on my way back home, dreaming about the life that was ahead of me.

Certainly, one would think that I prepared myself for that April appointment by starting curbing my eating habits.  Heeellllll no!  I went on as before.  Getting in my last licks. (Pun intended, this time.)  The day finally came.  I was escorted into the Doctor's office and they asked me if I wanted a seat without arms.  Oh my God!  No one ever asked me that before.  They understood!  They knew we super-sized people abhorred armchairs and the way they dug into our legs.  Hallelujah!  I felt at ease immediately.


They invited me to step up to their fancy scale that looked like it was more suited for a stock yard, than a doctor's office.  Nurse Mary asked me how much I thought I weighed.  I told her I was probably about 430.  I stepped up on the platform and looked in horror at the digital readout.  483.5 lbs.  I wanted to cry and crawl into a hole.  Don't ask me what makes 483.5 so much worse than the 430 I thought I weighed, but I was devastated.  They explained to me that there is such a thing as 'last supper syndrome', where patients attempt to do exactly what I was doing since January, eat anything and everything they wanted, without abandon before surgery altered their ability to live as they were used to. They warned me that if I got any worse, they could not have the bypass.  The tables had a 500 lb. limit and I should, in fact, lose weight prior to my July surgical appointment.  I was so shocked by that scale and scared shitless, that I did just that.  From April 2001 until July 17th of that year, the day of my surgery, I lost about 40 lbs.  I was going to be the model patient.  I wanted a better life for myself and for once, I was going to work for it.

I'll pick up from here next week, when we relive my surgery and post-operative  life.  As a side note, if you use Twitter, please follow the blog's feed @thedriveto195.  Thanks

Cya tomorrow,
M

What I ate today and how I exercised:

Breakfast ~ Pumpkin Flax Raisin Bran w/Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

Lunch ~ Admittedly this was not enough for lunch.  I was in a hurry and just had a grapefruit.

Dinner ~ 1 Salmon cake and sauteed kale, shiitake mushrooms and white beans.  Deeeeeelicious!  I'll post the kale side dish recipe next Thursday.

Exercise ~ 2 miles walking with the wife.  Lovely night for a walk.