The End for now, Its only Skin Deep!

Hello all, my faithful readers, Friends, Family and loved ones. 
   
  After much to much procrastination and living this new life, I have decided it is time for a final Blog post.  Pending some major life change, who knows. For the longest time I have wondered what to say. Do I declare this a victory or not. Do i dare?  
  
  I think for a long time I have thought that if i ended this blog I am declaring the war over, and that it might lead me down the path of failing and regaining the weight that tore me apart for so many years. Lets take that chance, at least with the blog.

  At one point I had thought about ending this with a full on, nude picture of myself to show you what the new body looks like in all its glory, or maybe in all its Gory. But lets not get anyone in trouble. I do not want anyone to go blind with horror. However At the bottom of this blog will be a picture of me in just my  man undies, as I think it is really important to give you an unadulterated look at what being obese does to a body over time. If you don't want to view it, I totally understand and Ill post a little warning in text  below so you wont scroll down all the way accidentally.
  
  There is no way  this ends here though, at least for the battle of the bulge. I have to look at this as just one more step to living as a healthy and somewhat smaller person, in size of course, not in heart and soul. 

   So where do I stand? How am I doing? Well, this morning I weighed in at a svelte ( for me) 170.8 pounds. Yes we are coming up on 2 years post op and  1 year post goal weight (170 if you forgot) and I've been able to maintain effectively throughout. Thee have been some wobbles, i know at one point I had weighed in at 178 but was able to bring it back down pretty quickly through watching my diet closer and  getting back to the gym.

  There's a little subject, the gym.  A wonderful co-worker who has been one of my most vocal supporters, once said to me when i first started on this journey

" ...you will  become addicted to the gym, and come to love it."   

   Umm, Nope , didn't happen,  wont happen, not a fan. 

Ha Ha.  

   My gym regimen varies only in that i do tend to miss more days than id like. But  on a good week I'm there 5 to 6 days, doing my thing. 

  I go to planet fitness, yes it cheap , and I like it. Its close by and did I say its cheap? 20 bucks a month and I'm happy, and  there are literally no , " do you even lift bro?" guys there, which tends to make working out more acceptable.     
 There's a new gym in the area that has a lot more bells and whistles,  , including classes like aerobics etc, Spinning seems to be the thing I would like to try. I ride the bike, yep that's pretty much it, sometimes myself and my wife Hope, hit the treadmill,  sometimes i do both. 

  When I'm there by myself i usually do about 10 miles on the bike. at a very good clip. usually about 105 rpm, with hills turned on level 3. I don't like the recumbent bike, just not comfortable with it. I have used the elliptical as well, and its okay i can take it or leave it, 40+ years of being the fat kid/guy has not helped my knees though. 

   I was able to set a series of records for myself in distance on the bike, I first hot 50 miles in a 4 day period this year and then 60 miles, as well as my current high of 18.5 miles on the bike in one  workout. I'm aiming for the big 20 by the end of the year. My goal once i hit 20 miles, is to move on to running on the treadmill. 

  Running on a treadmill seems tough to me. I would like to start by jogging, but treadmills don't seem to do jogging mode very well, its either full out run, or a fast walk. Finding that middle ground will require some experimenting. I will have to go real early so no one sees me fall flat on my face in a Taylor Swift-esque moment.   

  I would like to start running so that I can run a 5k, I would like to try a 5k put on by Dave Will, Entrepreneur and former owner of the company I am employed by, called the Marshfield Run for the Hills , held annually, but it is on September 5th and I doubt Id be able to run it right now, or maybe I would who knows.  I will run one next spring for sure.  Progress is slow, but it is progress after all. 

  Okay, enough about exercise. How about we move on to a more touchy subject, health. 
I have been asked a few times what this whole change ( 408 pounds down to 170) has truly meant to my health and well being. Well , I haven't had pneumonia  since the surgery. That's really amazing. 

   To give you an idea, I had pneumonia around 13 times in the previous 5 or 6 years. I went  over a year recently without having to take a sick day , after averaging at least one week off to be hospitalized or bedridden almost every year for the past 5+.  While i still have a bad back, I do not have to have surgery, at least not for the foreseeable future.  We may need a little background here. A few years back I had shoulder surgery.I t went well but required some extended physical therapy. During my therapy sessions, they would have me warm up by spending 15 minutes on the exercise bike.

  At that time I would make it 1.5 miles and  literally feel like I was going to pass out and die. I'd then have to sit down off the bike, drink some water etc, to recover. (note the above distance now ) Well during some exercises I bent over and a sharp pain that felt like glass breaking , hit me.  Well to make a long story short, that sharp pain was probably one of the two discs in my spine in the lumbar region, either L4 or L5 both of which are herniated. So onward to a spine consult. The doctor looked me over , looked at my MRI and said yep, you need surgery, but I cant operate until you 1. Lose some weight, and 2. you lower legs have to be fixed.  

 Whats wrong with my lower legs you ask? Well due to being obese for so long, I had serious circulation problems and had to wear compression hose to help push the blood from my feet back up to my heart. As a result of this, the skin broke down very easily, the hair and all fallen out and skin was thin, weak and discolored and very very swollen, I was on fluid medication, and had to literally prop my feet up to help my circulatory system function.  I went to see the leg surgeon, and he explained the process of "vein stripping" I wont go into details, but yes its as horrible as it sounds and helped me make the decision to get my Vertical Gastric Sleeve surgery and finally get rid of this burden. 

  Well i can happily report I can wear normal socks without worrying about them cutting off my circulation. I wear regular size shoes, not super wide widths. ( went from a 12 EEE to a 10.5 regular) 

 Overall the results have been dramatic. You hear people say that its like being given your life back. But its not, its actually being given a whole new life. I never learned how to be a normal bodied person. Its like figuring out you have hands after  not using them for most of your life. The things you can do just boggle the mind. I can walk through a mall, and not have to stop at every bench to take a break and rest.  I went to a casino with some of my best friends and walked through the whole thing without sitting down, and my fitness tracker showed we walked well over 7 miles that day. I didn't walk a mile in a week before  this. 
It is simply, life changing.

Okay so what about the aftermath. Well those of you who read the blog from the beginning, know I wanted to do something to really show what this experience would be like,  so I will get to it. The part I don't like to talk about and don't like to think about, yet slaps me in the face ( well other places really) every day. I wont go into the sexual part of this, but suffice it to say, that removing fat reveals a lot of things you didn't know were there. 

So on to the the two words that really  affect me the most. 

Loose Skin.

It sucks. Yes its that blunt. It not a good thing,  is it bearable? Well it has to be. Is it better than being fat? Surely, I wont die of loose skin. Die of Embarrassment maybe, but  lets face it, its better to be alive and well with loose skin than it is to be fat, well filled out, and breathing like darth vader, when you walk to the bathroom. 

Okay loose skin is what happens when all that skin that was filled with fat, is no longer filled with fat. Think of it as emptying a overstretched trash bag, whats left is  the loose skin. 
It tends to sit in places that arent a lot of fun.

 ARMS

  You get wonderful full on  flopping, flesh slapping, wings hanging below you biceps. Your arm pits become caverns that would make indiana jones scared of exploring. People call them bat wings, so I have the built in cape, but no utility belt. 
 But living with it, is okay, you wear shirts after all. 

The Chest

  Well that's a problem area in itself. As a fat guy, yes I had man boobs, now i have man flesh bags. You tend to rely on compression undershirts to hold you in. Its quite disheartening and emotionally, it gets to you. People look at you, you cant help but see it, and they cant help it either, but you focus on the good things and you don't wear form fitting shirts without serious compression underneath. 

The Belly/Apron

Think of wearing an apron. Now imagine it made out of flesh. Its also commonly called the Panny area. Its what used to be your belly. Its gross, its floppy and it gets all wrinkly and you hide it any way you can. Heres a tip don't bend over forward without your shirt on and your belly area tucked in firmly. Gravity isnt pretty or kind. 

Below the waist. 

This is a touchy subject, there an area below the welt called the Belt area. its above your fun zone but not by much. You have a lovely mini apron there as well. Not at all what you'd like to see and I wont show it to you for obvious reasons

Now the Butt has a bit of sag but its not bad and I don't have to see it, so out of sight out of mind. Legs, well again its the back of the thighs so,  ill let someone else deal with it. 

What's the procedure for all this?. Well it isnt pretty. The  arms are rough, but not too bad they just make about a six inch cut along the bottom of the arms, then chop off all the skin  and tissue there and leave you a nice half foot long suture line and scar on each arm.
For the chest its likely just some liposuction and a possibility f some excision of skin ( removal) but its nt to bad, they can usually hide the scars pretty well toward the arm pit. Sometimes they have to remove the nipple and relocate it a bit. 

  For the Apron area, the procedure is called a panniculectomy. Or removal of the panny area. So they normally use a  incision called an anchor cut. Think of placing an anchor starting with a line from your breastbone straight down to your fun zone the cut sideways to both sides out as far as your hips. Yep, its that big, your talking cutting you so wide open your abdominal wall is in view. Then they remove that giant area of skin and sew you up, but not before they place some tubes in there with drains to let all that fluid that builds up out. They leave them in for a week or so so that fluid can flow out, before you go back in to have them removed. Yea that sounds like a lot of fun. Many times they will also stitch the abdominal wall back together inside as well. That's a Tummy tuck. 

All told If i had the chest and stomach done, your looking at an additional weight loss of close to 15 to 20 pounds. Wow. But damn all at the same time. Here's the kicker insurance  doesnt cover that unless you have health issue related to it, like abscesses or  the like. So out of pocket cost, between 18 and 30 thousand. Most plastic surgeons wont even see you with you paying out of pocket for the initial consult. So the possibility of me having those surgeries? Nah, not gonna happen.  Unless there's a lottery to win. But at least ill be alive to joke about it.

OKay so  now here is where we get that warning. I am going to show a part of myself only myself , my wife and my surgeon have seen. I wouLd bear you no ill will if you just close thE page now.

So before I show you the pictures, and end this blog, I would like to say thank you. 
Thank you to My Friends, My coworkers, My Family, my Loved ones, and My amazing Wife. Her name is Hope in case you don't know, and hope is also something this surgery and this journey, has  given to me.  

Without you all, I could  never have succeeded in this. I truly love you all. 

WARNING IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED OUT, OR JUST DONT WANT TO SEE PLEASE   LEAVE NOW!

        SCROLL DOWN IF YOU WISH TO SEE.

       

            


                         STRAIGHT UP 
                     

                      SHOWING ARMS

                                        

Your Body Is A One-derland!

Friends , Loved Ones and Readers, Lend me your  ears!  Well not really, we don't need any more Van Gogh incidents. Seriously though , today is one of those days that helps to define your life.
Let's get right to it. This morning, after working so hard and for a long time, it finally happened. 
I stepped on the scale and saw this:

That is correct, We have a Winner!
Finally breaking the 200 pound barrier. 
  The website and forum that I belong to, is called Bariatric Pal, located at www.Bariatricpal.com . There is a saying there that is simply, Wonderland, or One-derland, depending on who uses it. This term is for when you no longer have the 4 , 3, or 2 in front of your weight, and can sigh a little and know you are in the right place physically with a 1 starting your weight. It is a place many overweight people haven't been to in much of their lives, and as such is an amazing place to be.
  This total is the lowest I have been since junior high school and not far from what I weighed in elementary school. 
  After a rather tough month for weight loss I have finally managed to get to One-derland. This is no small feat for me, although I do have smaller feet. Ha Ha.  
Trying to reach this goal involved a real extra heavy commitment. I stayed on the straight and narrow as far as nutrition , well at least as much as possible. Protein, protein protein, can you say Protein? LOL I do not jest. Turkey replacements all around, turkey bacon,( which isn't bad by the way) protein shake for lunch and usually chicken of some sort for dinner with the occasional ground beef, and a little veg thrown in. (especially broccoli, why do I love broccoli so much?) 
  I made a variant on my mothers hamburgers n brown gravy recipe. Ground beef, and egg, seasoned bread crumbs, finely minced onion ( alot of it) garlic powder, mrs dash, brown patties, and then slowly bring the gravy in to the patties when almost totally cooked and let them finish in the gravy. YUM! 
  But I digress. I also upped my workouts to 6 days a week. I alternate days  using the treadmill and the exercise bike. I upped my exercise bike to a minimum or 7.5 miles and maxed out at just over 12 miles at a time. While it is certainly tiring, I have increased my stamina a lot. I'm still not up to a full out run yet, i really have to get on the ball with learning to run. Running after you've lost so much weight is difficult because you don't have real super control of your balance. So speeding up my treadmill to a very fast walk is the first step, and I am doing that. 
  So whats next you ask? Well the only goal left in weight loss for me is the magic number 170. This is the number that my surgeon gave me when we had out initial consult meeting. This is the number that blew my mind and made me laugh as i thought such a thing impossible. A dream worth having, but a dream nonetheless. 
  Now, i can see that dream coming true. 
There is a very important event coming up on the radar as well for me. For the first time in many many years, I will be on a plane. I will be going to Atlanta to meet the amazing people I work with , who happen to be in our Atlanta, GA office and also to meet some of the department heads from our new parent company. They are flying in to Atlanta from our Austin Texas headquarters.
 Myself, a co-worker, and my boss, will be flying down in mid September for a few days and then flying back.  
  Why is this so important you ask? Well I will finally fit in an airline seat. The last time I flew was on a trip to Las Vegas my wife and I took together with friends. That trip while i was not as fat, the seatbelt would not fit around me, so i hid it under my arm when the stewardess came around to check. Inside I was mortified that she would figure it out and would announce my shortcoming to the whole plane. At various times we had thought about going away but we knew I would have to purchase an extra seat under current airline policy rules. Also as a health issue, sitting on a plane for a long time would've been a very bad idea with the circulation problems i was having in my legs.
   This time however i have zero worries about sitting in the plane and fitting in the seat. Bring it on!
Funny part is that I literally had nothing to wear..enter thrift shopping! Goodwill here has a great store, takes some work to look through, but I luckily found a few pairs of dress/casual pants, a pair of levis denim shorts ( I always liked that look and missed my old jean shorts.) and even a casual shirt or two. We have saved up to pick up a couple of dress shirts as these are just necessary anyway, I want to make that good professional impression. Here's a fun tidbit. two years ago when I graduated with my Paralegal title, I wore a dress shirt with a 24 inch neck and a collar extender to boot. We will be shopping for a 17 inch neck now, no collar extender needed. Thats huge, no wonder my sleep apnea and breathing problems have lessened greatly. All that fat sitting on your throat is like walking around with someones hands on your throat choking you at all times.
  Well so I got a surprise , when my wife, who had been secretly saving up for this moment, presented me with this gift.

This is a Gretsch Jim Dandy Parlor acoustic. With my new found smaller body, I find this just fits me well. It's one of those things. It is Gretsch's least expensive guitar by far, but it plays and sounds like a much more expensive version, it's easy to move around and I LOVE IT!
Well on to the next goal. See you all soon with more to say. 
Until then here is this posts cartoon!

I cant drive 155

Hello all, so sorry for being away so long. I cannot wait to tell you all about it.
But first How about some before and after pics? Just as a refresher.

Before 

More recent

Pretty nice if I do say so myself.

So I know you're all wondering where I am at now , weight wise?

Well ( in case you missed it) i am now more than 155 pounds down!

I weighed in this morning at 205 pounds which is 157 pounds exactly but hey  no bigee right.

  So where do i begin. well lets start with this.

 The company whose protein powders for my protein shakes i use, is called syntrax ( technically the parent is Si03, but the product is syntrax. So they asked me to be the inaugural person to head off their new social media campaign called transformation tuesdays. They used the pictures you see above on the website, facebook page and instagram/twitter as well. I was floored that they would ask. It was amazing. Look for Syntrax on facebook and you can find this if you like. But i wont force you.

  So thats the first thing. Second is that the hospital I had my surgery done at is holding a recognition night, and I will be on stage during this with my story and pics of me to show others what this is like. It is coming up in a few months in october. That brings me to this next part. I have this event coming up as I just mentioned. My boss recently announced i would be going down to Atlanta GA for business, in September. Before this surgery, I wouldn't have gone due to being so fat, I literally couldn't fly. I couldn't sit in the seats, and lets not get into walking around, which was just not possible. Walking through an airport would've been hell.

  But now, no problem, well okay maybe a small one. I literally have zero pants. Thats right ZERO. i have some workout sweat type workout pants and I have shorts, but well pants? umm nope. lol No dress shirts either. Enter, the thrift store! lol 

  I was able to pick up a polo shirt and a pair of dress pants for quite cheap. Whew! i am working on saving up for more clothes so i can buy a few things before i go away and before the event. Now the fun part is I now wear a size medium shorts and a large shirt in many cases. My neck went from a 24 inch , to a 17.5  that is almost 7 inches off my neck alone. 

  It will be fun trying on a dress shirt when the time comes. For pants i had no idea what size my waist was. Sure i knew medium shorts, but in pants? Well suffice it to say would you believe a 36? I know I didn't believe it. I honestly have not fit into a 36 since junior high school, folks that is 30+ years ago. 

  Scary, Trust me I know. 

 So whats life like now? Well i start off with turkey bacon, or sometimes a little less bacon and a scrambled egg, or no bacon and two, yes two scrambled eggs , well medium eggs extra large , just one please! And i can eat almost two scrambled eggs. Lunch is almost always a protein shake, a scoop of protein shake mix, 6 ounces of 1% milk or skim, and 4 ice cubes. blend and  yippie its like a dunkin donuts coolata. I go to the gym quite a bit. Have not hit the weights much yet, so far just a lot of varied forms of cardio. Bike , treadmill, elliptical etc. 

  Dinner is almost always chicken of some type, usually in a sauce or marinade. Thanks to eating like this, my wife has lost over 30 pounds as well. Sometimes we alternate with ground beef, in some form, or ground turkey, like tonight its taco wednesday. Well little soft shells, ill have one with ground turkey some lettuce a little cheese and yummy. Sugar free pudding or the jello sugar free chocolate mousse still fits the bill for a snack.  

 So what about my health. Well the chest pain thing still comes and goes, I have become used to it to a degree. We think it is related to my herniated discs in my spine.  But we shall see. 

  Now some friends asked me to talk about the reasons people fail with this surgery. The biggest reason is that they do not get the support they need to use this tool as the focal point to change their life. This is not a fix on its own. It doesn't magically win  the big game for you. It is a tool in your life change toolbox designed to help you succeed if you are willing to put in the work. I don't mean just working out either. Mentally many people are not given the mental approach to succeed. Before i had my surgery i had to visit with a psychologist a few times and we were able to whittle down things to figure out why I was having this love of food. I know I have discussed this in the past and we wont go over that again now, but suffice it to say I worked through it. Is my love of food gone? Hell no. But I am able to push it back to where it does not dominate me. My slogan is Food is to live on, not live for.  Many people either  deal with surgeons or practices that don't care what the patient does after the surgery as long as the insurance pays or the bill is paid in full. 

It hurts to see this happen, but it most certainly does happen.

  So whats next for me? Well let me tell you. In the bariatric community when you drop below 200 pounds and your weight start with that magic number of a 1, instead of a 2 3  or 4 , we call that entering wonderland. As in One-derland, ha ha. Well i  now sit 5 magical pounds from passing that huge barrier. I have no idea how to celebrate this yet, who knows maybe a new pair of pants!, ha ha. Crossing this barrier will bring a tear to my eye, that is for sure.

  Well thank you all for coming today I promise not to take a month to write the next post. See you all soon and thank you all for taking the time out of your day to take this journey with me. 

 Here is this posts cartoon.

140 Isnt just the number of characters on twitter anymore.

Hello all,
   Welcome back to my blog. It has been an interesting time to say the least. Those of you who have read my previous post will remember the chest pain issue. Well , it is still rearing its ugly head. It is still there it comes and goes and after a endoscopy, we still have no idea  what is causing it, or how to alleviate the symptoms.
   Living with constant chest pain is....hard.  It is almost impossible for me to enjoy this new me, while this is going on. But I try. I still go through my work, but I can say I get irritated more easily, and have to make a concerted effort to not take it out on my job or my wife. Thankfully I have been successful in this regard. The newest part is that the pain now stabs right through me into the area  just under my left shoulder blade.
  From what I can find it even has a name, Notalgia Paresthetica, which basically is described as an burning pain with an itch that is deep beneath the surface. It is associated with spinel issues, Which since I know I have a herniated disc in at least one spot, is very possible. Also spinal issues run in my family. My older sister has MS, and my mother had major spinal stenosis and spine issues.
  So what's the treatment, well its not diagnosed yet, but  there really may not be. But we shall find out more soon. One drug that is used is Gabapentin, which I used to take prior to surgery for nerve pain in my legs. I still have some, but there is a huge risk. You see Gabapentin is known to cause weight gain in patients. Let's face it, I am not going back to that way of life.
  So we do what we can, and I live with pain, sometimes it is pretty bad. But hey, everyone has something right? So what else is new.
  Well what is new is I surpassed the 140 pound lost mark. Yes I weighed in today at 221 pounds, which is 141 pounds down in 5 months 3 weeks.  This really makes me happy. You may also note that the weight loss has slowed down. Well that's expected. Its easier to stall now, and they are more like mini stalls. So I  will go a few days like 3 to 4 with no weight loss, then go two or three days where I will lose like half a pound a day.
  I know you are thinking well Steve what else is happening? Well I had my 6 month ( although a few weeks early) meeting with my surgeon and Nutritionist. My surgeon was very happy, in his words " ...You are way ahead of the curve, and you look great." Well I will take that for sure. I have a new nutritionist. He was very helpful. We discussed eating breakfast and I mentioned how I tend to have the same thing every day, but get tired of it.
  I won't eat  even good things like oatmeal or whole grains because I am really doing well without carbs and I am not ready to take in many more carbs, even if they are so called "good" carbs. The answer I recovered was interesting.  The Nutritionist, said ," why not have a steak for breakfast?"
  Basically he was advocating dinner for breakfast. Hamburger patties with an egg on top, or a piece of steak, ( I am not exactly ready for steak yet but soon perhaps). So we shall see. Although I don't have time on a workday to cook like that, but who knows. 
  So off of food, and on to a funny thing happened on the way to..  Well on the way to getting dressed. I had purchased some shorts in my new size a mens large. This morning however I pulled out one of these new pairs and holding them up realized they looked a bit on the small side. I remarked about this to my wife who agreed. I checked the inside tag and it said, xl. Uh oh! I must've bought the wrong size. So my wife grabbed the tags I had cut off and she said to me, " well these are a boys xl." A boys? Oh well I must've just bought based on the hanger.
   Now for a joke I tried them on.. and they fit! Ha! That really blew my mind. Not only did they fit, I wore them to work, and like them. This may not be too weird to some, but to me, it was a mind blowing event.  So what else. Well I went to see my primary care physician who hadn't seen me since the surgery. Well the staff who I had been seeing on a regular basis for over 10 years, didn't know who I was.
  My doctor didn't even know who I was. That was funny. When he checked me over and we discussed the chest pain issue, he mentioned that I would definitely need to have surgery to remove the "panny" area. Also known as the apron, its what used to be my belly. Now I have promised to be blunt in this blog, so I will not hold back.  He mentioned I would need a tummy tuck, and yes surgery on my chest to remove the remains of my man boobs.
  Sorry If I made you throw up a little there. It is not the picture I am sure you wanted to see in your mind. This is an issue for a lot of weight loss surgery patients. As you get older your skin loses collagen and elastin. These are the proteins that tighten up skin. Once you  start losing them and lose weight, you get loose skin. While it is a small price to pay  physically, it is a large price to pay financially. That is going to be an issue that is a tough one to face. Many patients go to Mexico and have their surgery done there. I can say that is not for me. So when the time comes, well we  will have to worry about that then. Until then I'll live with the sagginess and unflattering chest ha ha.
 So on that note, I will leave you until the next post. Hopefully soon when I pass the next huge goal, of 150 pounds lost. See you then. As always below is the cartoon for this post.
  Love you all.

It's a Buck and a Quarter Quarterstaff but I'm Not Telling Him That.

  Hello friends, family, loved ones, and readers!  Welcome back to my life. So you may have guessed it. As of this blog post, I am down 125 pounds!! I never thought I would get here, and I never thought it would change my life so much.  Well before we get too deep into that, I wanted to give you a little glimpse into my appearance now.  So without further ado, here  I am at a much thinner, 237 pounds. 

A lot better right?   
  Alas these things do not come without a price.  Two weeks back I awoke at 4:10 AM with ( gasp) chest pains, in the area that you would think, is associated with your heart.  I was scared to say the least. I sat up and was hoping it was some muscle twinge and would go away, but it did not. 
 So with my wife in tow we made our way to the emergency room. The protocol for chest pain is in multiple parts. The first thing they do is of course check your blood pressure and slap on an EKG. You also get the glory of having blood drawn for your cardiac enzymes and an IV put in. Now, people who know me well, know I HATE IV's. I just dont do well with them. Now the first person who tried wound up sticking me a couple of times and failing , which of course HURT!  So she ut in a call for the IV nurse. The IV nurse was not going to be available for over an hour, so they called upon a head nurse who was simply excellent at her task. She was also a friend of my sister Pamela, and that helped me be a little more comfortable as well. 
  So after this they draw blood every three hours as well as a new elg every three hours. After several round like this I was transferred into an observation room within the ER where i would stay through the day and until the next. The next day brought a new test. In order to rule out cardiac issues, I was scheduled for a Nuclear stress test.
  Well like a normal stress test I would walk then run on a treadmill to get my heart rate up to a target rate and then cool it down,  but I would first be given some radioactive material intravenously, and a set of scans made of my heart and the vessels within to check the flow. Then i was brought in to the stress test room.  Now in december , prior to my surgery, I had a regular stress test, which i made it to about 5 minutes running before they had to stop me because my heart rate was over 180 BPM. 
 Well in a good sign i made it past the 9 minute mark and rather than me stopping the test because i was so out of breath and my heart rate over 180 bpm my heart rate maxed out at 144 bpm and i made it all the way through the test. With my target heart rate achieved, they inject more radioactive material into your veins and then rush you back to the scanner where they take more scnas of your hearts vessels to compare with the first set. 
  The good news is they were able to rule out heart problems. The funny part is of course the first nurse I had in the ER had gastric bypass surgery 4 months before i had my sleeve done. The nurse practitioner who discharged me had her gastric sleeve done a year before mine, and in the same hospital by the same team as I did. It seemed like everywhere i went i was surrounded by people who had weight loss surgery. Now  I was released to follow up with my own physician. 
  Here is the bad news. Over  a week went by with no chest pain symptoms and we made the whole thing out to being a chest muscle infection or tear. Then a few days ago, on tuesday to be exact, the chest pain came back, and it has pretty much stuck with me on and off since then. I am scheduled to met with my primary care doctor on tuesday. There was a little breakthrough. I realized the pain comes only after i eat. Usually within 10 minutes of eating. When I wake up in the morning I am pain free, but after breakfast, on my way to work, it comes back. While its not ultra high levels of pain, it is enough to really make you pay attention.  So tomorrow morning I will be calling my surgeon to ask about this to see what they want to do, I may be seeing him on tuesday instead of my primary care doctor. The sort of good news is at least by knowing it has to do with my eating, I can rule out major lung issues, ( I wont say the C word didn't pop into my head a few times) which is nice. 
  So I will update my status after that happens, and we will kick the caboose and see what shakes loose. Oh and by the way the title of today's post is from.......Yes, it is from the Looney Tunes Robin Hood Daffy.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9vaNS3b0s

So without further ado here is this posts cartoon.

A Buck Fifteen is a Small Price to Pay!

Welcome back everyone. Nice to see you here in Blogland.
So i know you guessed it but our current total now put me at 115 pounds down. So exciting to live life this way. Why the heck did I not do it sooner?  Well heck if we want to use hindsight why did i get so big in the first place? Well we know that answer. 
   So a funny thing happened. Funny weird , and yet also funny ha ha. Early Monday morning about 4:40 am i was awakened by a pain in my chest. Yes left sided , directly over my heart. I waited thinking maybe it was some small temporary thing, but no matter what i couldn't make it go away. Nor could I go back to sleep. Then i got a bit anxious and scared. As many of you know my family history, and for those who don't my mother had her first heart attack at a very young age a few years before my current age. That being so well known, I made the decision to go to the emergency room. I awoke my wife, and we sauntered off to the ER. 
   Now the immediately checked my EKG and started an IV, well first they missed and really hurt me, then called for a nurse who was the most skilled i have had in starting an IV. She also happens to be a friend of my sister Pamela, who worked at South SHore hospital's Emergency room for years.( it is good to know someone!) SO after putting that in my elbow area ( the antecubital space FYI), and drawing blood we awaited test results, well turns out the protocol for this is you get an EKG and blood drawn every three hours , for a total of three times each and they check your heart enzymes, and EKG for changes. Well after three sets were done ( and 8 attempted times for the 3 blood draws) it was decided that i would stay in the observation unit and today would have a Nuclear stress test. Simply put, you run a treadmill while they watch your EKG and take your vital signs, and first they take nuclear imaging pics, similar to a CT scan, but you have radioactive tracer material injected into you so they can trace the blood flow through the vessels in the heart. 
   After this you walk then run on a treadmill until you hit your target heart rate then they inject you again with more radioactive material, and you run one more minute then they ship you back off to the Nuclear imaging machine that retakes all the pics to show the enhanced blood flow through the heart. Well we did that and the results of all the tests show my heart is completely normal. (YAY!)
   Now here is the weird part. While I was in the emergency room, my nurse of course asks my medical history. Well so I mention the Gastric Sleeve surgery and she says " oh i just had gastric bypass surgery in september, and my husband had it 1.5 years ago."  So what are the chances I would hit it off like that with the nurse. We talked for a long time each time she came in to check vital signs etc. So that in itself isn't totally weird , I mean hey it happens right?   Okay so I am in the exercise stress test area and there is a nursing student watching me get prepared. The nurse there looks at my chart and says oh my sister had the gastric sleeve last year, and the nursing student says her mother had it last year as well. What are the chances that i get nurses with direct family members having had weight loss surgery? 
  The really weird part is today while in the observation area, the nurse practitioner comes in to start my discharge  process and she asks me what hospital I had my surgery done at, and I tell her Saint Elizabeth's and she says "oh yeah i had my gastric bypass there too last year." I literally looked at my wife in amazement. Did they specifically know to give me these caregivers? I was astounded. What a turn of events. Coincidence isn't just a word it seems. Well to make a long story short, I am ok. My heart is normal and they attributed my chest pain to either an inflamed or torn muscle in the rib cage in the heart area, or a cracked rib. Which since me and the wife spent the weekend doing major spring cleaning, getting rid of bags of old clothes and big plastic tubs of books, coupled with a really good gym workout, I evidently overdid it. So thankfully I am ok, and back home. 
   Now not to change subjects, but there is a company called Maya Kaimal. They make indian foods. They also make a tortilla like chip that is made from rice flour and chickpeas. So it is low in carbs and contains fiber and protein. I love them with some nice pico de gallo salsa. SInce i can only eat a few anyway, they really hit the spot. So i wrote to them and they sent me 9 bags of these chips and a case of various cooking sauces as well as a bottle of their spicy Ketchup, which is awesome. 
  We tried the butter Masala first , added it to chicken and it was just fantastic. The chicken stayed moist and was very flavorful. We next tried the Jalfrezi Curry which was also great for the same reasons. So if you like Indian foods, these sauces are worth getting. 
  So thats it for now friends more to come i promise. Thank you all for your support, kind words and constant inspiration. I love you all.

I will leave you with this posts cartoon.

   

Clothes do not make the man.....Look thinner?

      Hi all welcome back to my blog. Now I have said in the past that this would be a multiple posts per week kind of thing but I dont want to bore the heck out of you with, ate the same things today had my egg in the morning went to work, then had a shake for lunch and some chicken with a small amount of vegetable for dinner, went to the gym then went to bed. Kind of thing.  Unless you need help with insomnia, that would not solve a thing.
   So as a result I thought I would drag it out a bit more so we can cover highlights and lowlights all at once. Now thankfully this is an occasion of wonderment and is definitely a highlight.  So what is it you wonder ( I will bet many of you have guessed it already). Well , I will do a little backstory for you, before the big reveal. Back in mid October of last year , my surgeon Dr Anthony McCluney at Steward medical center in Brockton Mass, and I came to an agreement. We decided that it was time to push the button to launch me into my future and get the surgery done.
    There were tests to do and paperwork to undertake, but those would get done shortly thereafter. At that time we did my first official weigh in. Now prior to that, if you have followed the blog, you know not even a year earlier i had weighed in at 408 pounds, that was the big wake up moment for me. I had managed to get my weight down to 374 when i started my new job at the very end of February 2014. On this day in October, I was actually happy i had been able to lower my weight further to 362 pounds.
   So whats the big deal? Well today I walked out to my scale, stepped on it with both feet like do every morning, ( I have to do it weekly instead starting soon I know..) on this day however the display on my scale lit up and read 262 pounds. That is officially down 100 pounds since I have made a concerted effort to lose this weight.
  For me this is one small step for a man, one giant leap for Me! ( my apologies to Neil Armstrong)
Now those of you that are friends with me on facebook have seen these two pictures but those that have not will hopefully like them. The first is from a jaunt through Walmart a few days ago. Now for a lark I grabbed a suit jacket off the rack and jokingly said to my wife," heh I know this won't fit, but I'm just curious." So i tried on the suit jacket and, I was stunned. Not only did it fit, but it fit well. Now this may not seem like much  to you but it is the first time since i was maybe 8 or 9 years old that I have been able to fit into something like that off the rack.  No big and tall section, or big and tall store. No special "husky" or "portly"  this time.  This was a big event for me and a bit mind blowing.  You see, as these changes occur in me, I don't see the changes that others do, because I see myself every day and inside I am still me.
 

  Now the second picture is shortly thereafter. I went home and recently we have been sorting through old clothes to get rid of, I donated some and others went to someone who needed them. My suits and dress shirts I will post on ebay it is too nice to  just get rid of , and it helps recoup the cost from having to buy new clothes. Anyway I picked up a pair of shorts that I wore as recently as October of last year and as you can see I can basically ( checked today on a pair and Yes i can actually) fit into one leg of my old shorts. Again a bit of a blown mind. 

Now i had my 3 month visit with my nutritionist yesterday and she was very very happy with how far I have come and my eating habits etc. It is funny as she constantly reminds me that when I have days where I slip with my nutrition, to not worry about them and just get back on track and keep going.  I don't allow myself those days however, at least not yet, My worst was a small bite of a mini cupcake once, not even close to a mouthful, just enough to savor the taste and I gave the rest of that mini cupcake to my wife. I worry that if i slip once  I will continue to slip, but she wants to make sure I really don't keep that attitude so I can adjust more toward eating like a normal healthy person would, later of course, but bad habits die hard and trading a bad habit for another is not good either. So we shall see, I don't relish cheating especially since i can only eat so little that cheating is a big waste of time. 

   Now after this meeting I had to go over to the lab for some bloodwork. Now I am a baby when it comes to drawing blood, I just hate it. Just writing about it raises my anxiety levels. So I am siting in the blood drawing chair, and I am waiting and waiting for this tech  to get all this information into the computer. My tests are all entered one at a time by abbreviation and code and evidently since I am having every vitamin test under the sun done, and several vials had to be blocked from being exposed to light, several had to be placed immediately on  ice, etc this took forever. So after twenty five minutes of waiting in this chair, I am starting to sweat, my heart is racing and I am dreading this whole experience. 

  I tell this very nice lady that I do not want a warning, just do it and get it over with. Well she has to draw 10 vials of blood from me. 10? Well she comments how fast i am filling these suckers and I don't have the heart to tell her it is because my heart is pounding. Now we hit vials number seven and I am starting to really want to get up out of this chair, the anxiety is getting the best of me. I should have prefaced this by saying since this was a weigh in day at the hospital, I had had nothing to eat or drink up to that point and it was around 12:30 in the afternoon. Between the nutritionists office and the lab i was able to gulp down half a powerade zero, but that was it.  

   So finally the blood draw is finished and another tech come in and I am now dizzy as all get out, and my vision is very very blurry and all three of us are thinking I am going to pass out. I manage to get out of that blood drawing chair ( against the techs wishes) and make it to a reclining chair away from the blood drawing equipment. Thankfully after one of the techs went and grabbed me an ice cold orange juice, i started to feel human again, but it was a close call. lol it has got to be something right? So all in all a good few days, 100 pounds down officially and about 90 to go to hit my goal. This is one of my major goals now that I have hit and I could not be happier about it. I want to thank everyone, all my friends, coworkers, and yes my blog readers. Everyone has played a part in helping me stay on track. Whether it is friends saying how good I look, or coworkers asking how I am doing, those comments really help. Thank you all. 

   Here is this posts comic.