The Holiday Party...

Yesterday was a tough day but a great day. It was our Annual Christmas party where my mom's side of the family all get together for the holidays. Almost every year my mom hosts the party at her place, but this year we had it in New Jersey at my cousin's house. The family had pretty much outgrown my mom's place and we needed to move onto somewhere bigger and better. Luckily my cousins, Gene and Natalie, were nice enough to offer up their home.

 I love the holiday season and getting together to see family and friends that you haven't seen in a while. Being that I live on the west coast and my whole family lives on the east coast, it is nice to have this time every year to spend with everyone. This year I was very much looking forward to the party, but somewhere subconsciously I was fearing it on a certain level. First would be because of the spread. We are Italian, and Italians cook big and eat big. I knew there would be food out at all times of the day. Food that is not anywhere close to being on my diet anymore. I knew this would be incredibly mentally tough to take. The second reason, and one that was mostly in my head, was just thinking about how much I would have to answer questions about my surgery and stuff surrounding it. Also, the reactions I would get.

 I think part of the reason I started this blog was so that my friends could maybe read it and get all the answers to the questions they had. That way when they saw me down the road, and noticed I was smaller, they would know why. I decided I had nothing to hide, and here it all is for you to read. I realize now though that they ask because they care and no matter what I write here, I am not going to have all their answers for them. My relatives were great, and many had their own questions(the most common of which was, how am I feeling?), and it was actually nice to talk a little about it with them. I was silly for having this anxiety about it, and should have realized they are family, and family is there for you. They all really gave me their support and a few of them even mentioned the blog and how they liked it. Wow!

Soooo, shortly after arriving at my cousins house and speaking with a few relatives, I quickly realized that the ONLY tough part of my day would be the huge spread of food that was going to be under my nose all day. When we got there already there were appetizers out. Pepperoni, sausage, fresh mozzarella, bread sticks, cheeses, olives and a few other other finger foods. Appetizers that in years past I would've devoured. I couldn't help but hover around the table getting a good look at everything. Soaking it all in. I even took pictures, as you can see! It was almost like I wanted to talk to the food and explain that we were still friends, but that I couldn't hang out as much these days. Fresh Mozzarella was and still is one of my favorite foods and to have it there, staring at me, was messing with my head. I wanted some... I wanted to taste that cheese... and I wanted it bad. Everyone one else, big and small was eating it, but I knew that was not my reality anymore. I kept pacing back and fourth. The struggle was on.

 Then, I really got in my head, and started to think that people were watching me, and were going to keep track of what I was going to eat. Like the food police were going to come out if and when I made a move for something. I am 38 years old and this was what was going through my head... could you believe that? Food addiction really sucks! So, when I thought no one was looking I cut a quarter of a piece of the mozzarella that was already sliced up and put it in my mouth. I lost the struggle but got to taste the cheese. What the fuck was I doing?

In another example of mind over matter, I lost. A few hours later when I was looking back, I had wished I just did not have any. Did I really need it? Did that little piece of cheese really do anything for me(other than potentially make me sick)? I thought about it and got a little worried, because this was one of my first real tests versus food, and the food won. I could not make it through one day without being weak. It is depressing thinking that I went through this surgery, and still am not in the mind frame to just say no to these kinds of foods. Later on there was Ziti, Chicken, Meatballs, Sausage, Eggplant Parmigian, Italian Bread... you name it. For dinner I had a very small portion of ziti, with a quarter of a meatball, a slice of a piece of sausage and a slice of a small piece of chicken. I almost finished everything and was full. Amazingly, nothing came up either. I have had trouble keeping foods down recently, so I was expecting maybe to throw up, but I didn't.

The much harder part came later on when it was time for dessert. There had to be 10-15 things to choose from, from cookies and pastries, to cakes and cream puffs. It has been over 5 weeks since I had had anything sweet at all and looking at all this food was VERY tough. Actually, the looking was easy, but not having something I wasn't supposed to was the tough part. Again, in my warped head, I felt like eyes were on me and someone may be taking note of what the new surgery guy was going to eat. So I made clear to say out loud, "THIS IS THE SUGAR FREE CAKE RIGHT"? And I had a small piece of what we call Ice Box Cake. This year it was made with sugar free pudding, cool whip and graham crackers. The graham crackers were the only thing in the cake with sugar or fat in it, I believe(oh yeah, the cherries on top too, but I did not eat those either). I had a very small piece and didn't eat the cracker part. I also then found out the lemon meringue was sugar free too, so I had to try that. Again I ate the lemon and meringue but not the crust. And that was all I had. Believe me when I say, if I could have eaten more I would have!

All was going pretty well food wise, at the party, until it was time for us to leave. Of course, then, I suddenly started getting a lot of pain in my stomach. Was it the sliver of cheese I had earlier, or the dessert? I still do not know, but, unfortunately I got sick and the people I came with had to wait for me to feel better. This is the part about this that I just don't like. I am sure if I didn't have those things that I would have been fine. 

Having this surgery is not the easy way out of anything, and you still have to fight with yourself and struggle to make the right choices and decisions in order to get results. Otherwise, you will just be sick every day. I made a couple of poor one's yesterday and paid for it with a run to the restroom at an inopportune time. It was great seeing all my relative's, many that I had not seen in at least a year, but I now know that these great holiday get togethers will always be a little tougher for me.

 I just weighted myself in, as Monday is my usual day for weigh in, and I have lost 66lbs in 39 days since the surgery. Actually, the 66lbs, when I think about it, is from a weigh in around a week before the surgery. So it has been around 6 weeks now. So far I have been honest about everything I have written, but as you have probably noticed, have yet to post my starting and current weight on here. It would probably be a good idea to do so in order to track my progress. I guess it is still the guilt and embarrassment that i have about the reality of how big I was(and had gotten). I am hesitant to write it here, even still right now, even with all the other things I have already spoken about. Maybe I will post it soon, or maybe I will wait until I get down to a reasonable weight and then I will post it(What is a reasonable weight?). Eventually I will put it up here though, as I know I HAVE to. I guess I am still not happy at the weight I am at right now, as I would still be the biggest guy in any room, so that still weighs on me(no pun intended). I also know that you cannot lose this much weight overnight, and that over time I can get to a number that will satisfy me.

 I learned this weekend that I need to be stronger and smarter in order for this process to take it's course as positively as it can. There are no cutting corners or easy ways out. Having your stomach left with 6 scars on it, is not an easy way out. I had heard many times, before I had this surgery, the suggestion that this was, "taking the easy way out". It is not. You still deal with your addiction, just with a smaller stomach. As shown yesterday, you still want to eat, and if you want to you can. And if you do, you will suffer and only be punishing yourself like you had for years earlier.

 You have to make yourself not want somehow. It is very hard. It is the mental side of this, the part that you cannot have surgery for. The foods you loved before did not suddenly all start tasting like liver and anchovies(my apologies to those that like liver and anchovies). Pizza and Oreo cookies still taste like pizza and oreo's, and you just can't do it. I still want to eat a lot and I will always love food, but I have to take it one meal at a time. I just have to win the internal struggle each time. To eat some thing, or not to eat something, that will always be my question. There is not much room for failure. I know I will have this battle my whole life, and I just have to win it. I can't afford to lose.

Food Addiction and Me...

It's true that my Gastric Bypass surgery came about because of an initial injury to my knee over 2 years ago, but more importantly, I had the surgery because it was really needed to save me from what I was doing to myself. I was, and still am, a food addict. Like gambling earlier in my life, I could not control what I ate. A slice of pizza was never enough. One burger was never enough. It was always a large drink or french fries with the meal. And it was almost always from a drive thru. I never ate in moderation and I knew that if I continued on the path I was on, it eventually was going to kill me. There was no doubt in my mind anymore and I had to do something.

All my life I had been a big guy. Always the biggest one in my class. The biggest one at work. The biggest one on the train, bus or plane. The biggest everything. I did all the diets, worked at a fat camp as a counselor after my freshman year of college, even got a gym membership once and pumped the iron for a few months. I lost significant amounts of weight a few times in my life, and it felt great at the time. But, each time, within a year, I gained all the weight back and then some. It just didn't work for me. I was powerless most of the time, and just loved to eat. I just loved food more. Food was always more important to me than anything else. Somehow it always won. My eating could not be stopped.

Most of the time I ate for no reason other than boredom. And I didn't stop a lot of times until I got that, open the top button to your pants, kind of full. I disgusted myself on a daily basis, but after a while it just got to be the norm for me. Eating a whole pizza over the course of a night became habit. I lived alone, was out of work with an injury, and had no one there to judge me. Fuck it. If I couldn't feel bad for myself over a nice meatball pizza in my own living room, then where could I?

I'd imagine there are many reasons why I took to eating at such a young age. Moving 7 times before the 6th grade may be one. I spent Kindergarten and 1st grade in one school, 2nd through 4th grade in another school, 5th grade at another school, and 6th grade in two different schools. It was at my second 6th grade school that I got called a name pertaining to my weight for the first time. It was jelly belly, and I still remember the kids name that called me it. It is amazing what you can remember almost 30 years later. Ming boggling the things that stay with you in your head.

I moved around so much by the 6th grade, that the one thing(the only thing) that was always there, was food. It is so cliche to say, but it was true. Friends came and went, but inside the refrigerator were these things that made me happy. I feel silly writing that now, but that is how it was for me. I imagine that is how I handled all the moving and divorce and going from living with one parent to another. In the 80's there was no internet or email to keep in touch with friends you left behind either. Once you moved away, they were gone forever.

I think about how I handled stuff that bothered me growing up and wonder why I had that something inside me that led me to eat each time. I remember being told I had eaten enough once at Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's house. It was embarrassing for that to happen in front of the whole family. I could not help but keep running it through my head why I had gotten called out in front of everyone like that just because I wanted some more to eat? Other people at the table had more to eat, so why couldn't I? Things like this just made me want to eat more, because damn it, I'll show you! When you're not looking, I'll eat whatever I want to, and what are you going to do about it then?

Now surely I did not have the best, nor anywhere near the worst story growing up. Somehow though, others with worse upbringings were growing up THIN! They didn't gravitate to food like I did and got through their shit without always eating. I wonder if my upbringing even had any kind of influence at all on how I ate? Was it all in my head? If I had grown up in a perfect situation, would I still have been overweight and eventually obese? I do not know. But I wonder about this.

I have heard that food is an addiction for some people, like drugs or alcohol, and until some time ago I didn't think this to be true. But living my life in recent years, I can tell you that it is. I have had very intense conversations with a very close friend of mine, who denies food addiction as a disease, and doesn't understand it. They think I should just be able to stop and that I just never tried hard enough to. That I didn't care enough about myself or my future. But I guess that's what I think an alcoholic should do too. How hard is it to just put a beer down? Or a drug addict with their drug of choice. Why doesn't their will power get called into question like a food addicts is? It annoyed me that they thought this way, as it made me feel like less of a person coming from them. But inside I knew that they did not understand. If I could stop I would. But I couldn't. I stopped smoking almost 2 years ago and I could not understand how I could do that, BUT, not stop eating!

Since I have been out of work with the injury, I stopped smoking, but could not stop eating as much as I tried. I knew I needed knee surgery, and knew I needed to get my weight down, but continued to overeat almost every day. I went from an overweight guy to a severely obese man over the course of 6 years. When November 2011 came around and I was going in for my surgery, it was the highest weight that I had ever been at. I started working for my company in 2005, and by 2011 I was almost double my original hiring weight. It was serious.

I realized how serious my weight problem was the day I looked in the mirror and couldn't believe how large I had gotten. I guess I never looked at myself, or had a warped sense of my perception of myself. For me it was like as long as I was dating and going out with people, my size was fine. It didn't matter. But then it became not fine. I noticed that I was getting out of breath faster, that I could not walk as far anymore, my feet and back would hurt from standing, and that I couldn't and didn't want to walk up stairs anymore. There were so many more things, but these are the one's that come to mind right now. Everything started becoming a hindrance to me because of my weight. On airplanes I now needed an extension for the seat belt. I flew a lot and dreaded the look I would get when walking on a plane. I knew that every single person on that plane was thinking the same exact thing when they saw me walking down the aisle... "Please don't have the seat next to me." The looks you got spoke volumes. It is not a good feeling and things like this definitely take their toll on you over time.

When you spend most of your time in a house, not working, not getting out much, you have so much time to think about negative stuff. Some days I definitely was not a positive person because of these things that had happened. Some people are just evil-hearted and have no problem driving by you and yelling a name at you for no reason. This happened many times. Even more so in California than in New York. Your self esteem takes a toll, as does your self worth. Again, I knew I needed to change and do something.

It was very tough getting or being positive for me once I gained all my weight. Over the past year and a half though I was lucky to find some strength to really want to get healthier, and to want to be positive, in the eyes of my two nieces Juliana and Isabella. Juliana was born in May of 2010 and Isabella was born in December of 2010. They are the most wonderful, happy, beautiful girls you could ever imagine. And I can tell you from the most honest place, that they really changed my life. I am never happier these days than when I am playing with them and watching them smile. They are two little bundles of pure joy.

When I would go back to California after visiting NY, I would find myself missing them terribly. I started thinking a lot about how my weight would one day take me from them, and deny me the opportunity to watch them grow up. It really got to me. I want to be there for them when they get older. I want to take them to games, give them advice, and be a great uncle for them. If I didn't get help for my food addiction, I would have no chance of making that happen. All these girls would know of their Uncle Keith would come from a picture from their parents wedding and a story of how I keeled over at some grocery store one day in the frozen food section. And if I didn't have this surgery on November 10th, that would have been the story.

November 10th changed my life for the better. I took a risk and I have not looked back since. I still smell the food cooking at local restaurants when I drive by, and I still see commercials on tv for pasta and steak and think how delicious it looks. Only now, above all those thoughts for me, are my two nieces and the thought that those foods would kill me if they had the chance again. I did something to make a change and I am committed to not letting that happen now. It has only been a month and a few days, but I am feeling a lot better mentally and physically already. And best of all, I am now in New York for the holidays, and able to spend time with my great family and two beautiful nieces.

Life is good! :-)

My Surgery Explained... The Blow by Blow...

Now that I have had a month to think about it, I can start to write a little about the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. On November 10th, 2011, at around 1:30 in the afternoon at Cedar's Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, I had Gastric Bypass Surgery. It lasted around 2 1/2 hours and since the surgery I have lost around 60lbs.

I am still not sure exactly what Gastric Bypass does other than basically make your stomach smaller. I am not sure what gets reattached to what, and where the rest of the stomach goes that they cut up... I do not know any of it. But I do know that I now have the stomach of an infant child and cannot eat much more than a few bites of anything right now, 35 days later.

So how did I get from a place a few years ago where I swore I would never have any surgery, to last month where I was rolled into the operating room with nothing on but a smock and some silly red socks? Well, I will tell you how it happened...

In July of 2009 I had an accident at work and hurt my right knee. I went directly to the hospital where they took X-Rays and determined that it was not broken, so I was referred to another doctor. That doctor then told me it was probably sprained and that all I needed was some physical therapy. So I did around a month and a half of PT and told the doctor that it really was not helping and that the knee still felt like crap. So then he ordered up an MRI for me, which was at around the 2 month mark after the injury had originally occurred. So I went for the MRI and took the results with me to the local orthopedic surgeon that worker's comp told me to go to.

My doctor's name was, and still is, Scott Powell. When I got there for my first appointment I found it weird to see so much Rock Memorabilia all over the walls of his office. There were photos of Jimi Hendrix, The Eagles, The Doors and many others. I thought it was pretty cool, but then I thought that maybe my doctor may still hitting the hash pipe, and it worried me. I was going to have to really check this guy out online and see what others had to say about him. So I sat down and waited til they called my name and then went in to meet with the good doctor. At the meeting he looked at my MRI results and put them on the wall and pointed to stuff in my knee and told me the bad news, that I had a torn ACL and that it was going to require surgery. I was really devastated to hear this. I had never had surgery before, and was deathly afraid of it. The doctor made another appointment to see me again to discuss my future plans, after I could digest his diagnosis of surgery.

When I got home I could not forget all those rock portraits in his office, so I googled his name to see if there were any malpractice suits. There weren't any that I could find. But my search brought back some other news. Dr. Scott Powell, orthopedic surgeon and team physician of the US Women's National Soccer Team, was also Scott Powell, AKA Santini, founding member of the band Sha Na Na. Surely someone was playing a joke on me, but this was no joke. Apparently Santini quit Sha Na Na in 1981 and went to medical school at Columbia to become an orthopedic surgeon. Now here he was reading my MRI's. Just great.

So I took the time to think about more of what he told me, about how if I didn't have the surgery I would not be able to go back to work, and I realized this was something that was going to have to be done. So I went back to my next appointment to tell him let's do it. Only at this appointment, we discussed how he would feel more comfortable if I weighed less for the surgery, so that afterwards I wasn't putting all that weight back on the knee. I also asked him if I was at a higher risk for the surgery due to my weight and he said yes. After hearing that, I was willing to go along with anything that would have delayed me having to go under the knife. So Dr. Powell told me that he was going to request weight loss surgery through worker's comp. And this is where my life became miserable....

Workers Comp denied his request for my weight loss surgery. For the next two years I had to go to meeting after meeting, doctor after doctor, for second opinions and the such. I had appointments with doctors that had to be made 3-4 months in advance. It was absolutely ridiculous. BUT... FINALLY... 2 years later, workers comp agreed to pay or the bariatric surgery and now there was no turning back for me.

I got word that workers comp would approve the weight loss surgery and my claim adjuster called me and told me that I could find a surgeon on my own if they accepted workers comp as payment. Lucky for me, I had a friend that had put me in touch with her friend, who happened to work for the best bariatric surgeons in Los Angeles, at the Khalili Center. It was almost some kind of divine intervention. So I called and asked her if they accepted workers comp and she said yes, so I went in for a consultation.

Now even though I was going in for the consultation and everything was approved, somewhere in the back of my head none of this was real. It wasn't real because never in a million years would I have thought that I could or would actually go through with the surgery. It just wasn't something that I could ever get my head around, or even envision happening. Somewhere I thought either my knee would magically heal on it's own, maybe I'd win the lottery, or somehow this would all just go away. But it didn't, of course, and the consultation turned into me going for blood work, then heart tests, then stress tests, then all kinds of other tests on my organs and chest. All of a sudden it started to get real. It got so real, that we even had a date for my surgery set now.

It was to be Monday, November 7th at 7am. I told my family in NY at the time and a few very close friends, but that was it. My mom made plans to come out to LA for a week and so did my best friend, who also lives in NY, Marina. I got the directions from my surgeon that I could not eat anything solid for 2 days before the surgery, and that it was only to be clear liquids. With this in mind I decided that I would throw a party at my house called The Last Supper. If I was not going to be able to eat normally again, I figured I may as well go out on top with some of my favorite foods and friends. So it was planned for the Friday night before my surgery. According to plan I would have to stop eating at midnight that night. No problem. So I invited some friends in LA and whoever wanted to come by, I would make sure I had enough food for.

I think it was Thursday before the scheduled surgery, when I received a call from my doctor's office. They were calling with bad news. My surgery on Monday had to be rescheduled for later in the week due to an emergency. I was really mad. Not only had I been psyching myself up for this for a couple of months now, but 3 people were coming to visit and planned their trips around this specific date. What the F were they doing rescheduling me and why! So the earliest they would be able to reschedule would be 3 days later on Thursday at Noon. I had to call my mom and Marina and let them know that the surgery got switched and they had to change their flights and hotel room reservations etc.

The Last Supper on Friday night went off great. I had Italian Bread, marinated mushroooms, fresh Mozzarella flown in from Brooklyn, and i cooked a great sauce with sausage and around 100 meatballs. The pot was overflowing. I had a bigger turnout than I thought I would and I was really happy to see everyone. Many people I had not seen in some time. We should all do that again sometime, as we all said that night! So The Last Supper was done, only now it was no longer the Last Supper. I had 4 more days to eat. Great!

Fast forward to Tuesday I had my last official solid food meal at the Outback Steakhouse. Hey, it was closeby and where else could you get a steak at 11 in the morning? I ordered a Caesar salad with it and a nice soup. An hour later I was done and that was it. The countdown began.

My mom arrived Tuesday night and then Marina arrived on Wednesday night. I thought the last night before the surgery I wouldn't be able to sleep, but at some point in the morning I finally got some shuteye. When I woke up it seemed like everything was going in fast motion. I showered, grabbed the bag that I packed, and my mom was there to drive us all to Cedar Sinai. I tried not to think about what was going on and about to happen, because I knew if i did I may turn around and disappear. I just kind of zoned out. Especially when we got to the hospital. I knew this was it, and knew I was shaking on the inside, scared to death. I could only remember how much I had read about the mortality rates from this kind of surgery and remember seeing somewhere that 1 in 100 patients died during or after this surgery. When we were finally checked in and got to the floor where I had to wait to be admitted, it all started getting too real. I could not sit in the chair in the waiting room and wait to be called. I had to walk around the floor and take my mind off of things. Finally after around 20-30 minutes they called my name and it was time to go.

I walked into the admitting room and they gave me a gown and some silly red socks that had traction on the bottom so you didn't slip on the floors in the hospital. They told me to take everything off and to just have on the gown and the socks. When I was ready the nurse came back and took my vitals. She then inserted an IV into my left forearm. This was getting more real. After that she attached some stuff to my chest. When everything was done she brought my mom, her boyfriend bob, and Marina back in to see me. They were there when my anesthesiologist came in to talk to me. I forget her name, but she was an off the boat Italian woman. I thought what a coincidence, and my mother of course thought this was some kind of sign from God. She explained to me that when I wake up I may have a tube still in my mouth and to work with her and not freak out. I thought she was crazy and told her that if and when I wake up, if there is something on my mouth and down my throat, even if I remembered this conversation then, that there was probably no chance I wouldn't freak out. That said, she went on her way and now the countdown was on til surgery.

I guess 15-20 minutes went by and then another nurse came over and said it was time and she was there to wheel me in. We all said our goodbyes and then the nurse started talking to me and wheeling me down the hall. But not before my mom could get one last picture of me going through the doors, of course. I remember as she pushed me that the further we got down the halls, the colder it got. Finally she pushed me into the operating room. I was on my back and tried looking around to see what I could see. My doctor was there and started talking to me. Then I heard the anesthesiologists voice and saw her above my head. I saw at least 3 other people in the room. They were all talk and seemed busy. Everything started happening really fast now. My doctor asked me how I was feeling and I told him I was cold. He grabbed blankets or something and put them on me from what I could remember. At some point I transferred myself off of the bed I came in on, and onto the operating table also. I remember them kind of strapping me down too. My doctor starting talking to me again when the anesthesiologist put the mask over my nose. I could smell something in the mist that I was breathing and didn't like it. Looking up I could only see my doctor and the last words I said to him were, "I Trust You", before I tried to fight the gas and lost.

Next thing I know I hear my doctors voice waking me up. I didn't feel any tube in my mouth or throat and I was just super excited, even in pain, to be alive. I had made it and it was all over. The weird thing was having to help slide myself off the table and into the bed though right after the surgery, being half out of it. But after that I got wheeled to the recovery room and just couldn't help but think I was alive and my worst fear didn't come true. I was in recovery for around 5 minutes, really feeling out of it, when the nurse came and said I had 2 visitors. I thought she meant my mom and Marina. But 2 great friends of mine, Modes and Rhonda actually were there to see me. I was so out of it and felt bad that they came all the way there and I had just got out of surgery. They only stayed a few minutes, but that meant a lot.

From recovery they took me to my room on another floor and then my mom, Bob and Marina arrived. It meant so much that my mom took off work for a week to come and take care of me. I was in the hospital until Sunday, and was still out of it a few days after that. I also couldn't thank Marina enough for taking a few days off from work and flying across the country to be with me during this time. I have known her for well over 20 years now. She is the sister I never had, but always wanted. There are no words that could express my gratitude.

So there it is folks, the Cliff Notes guide to my surgery and mysterious Facebook posts. There are more stories from the hospital and afterwards and maybe I will post more on another night when I can't fall asleep again.

Please take into consideration that I didn't proof read this, so I really don't know if it makes any kind of sense. I just started writing it on a whim tonight and just kept going. I am sure it is rambling and quite boring, so my apologies.

Over the past month or so I has been asked many times about the facebook posts and about my surgery and about what was going on with me and work, and it just got to where I didn't want to talk about much of it very often. I figured I would write something about it one day, and tonight I guess that happened.

If you know someone that is considering having this surgery, and doesn't know if they should or not, or has some questions about it...feel free to send them my way. This is probably the best thing I have ever done for myself besides quitting smoking.

Now guess who has a knee surgery to look forward to next? UGH!