A Life Changing Decision

After talking to an old friend today I decided to start this blog. She helped me to realize that sharing my story could help someone after thinking about that I agreed. She was right even if my story helps one person it is worth getting out there. Thanks Sarah.  I should have started this from the beginning but I'll spend the next couple of weeks getting caught up on how far I have came up to now. Here we go.......

I have struggled with my weight my whole life even as a kid.  When i was a teenager and young adult I wasn't obese because of being active and playing sports helping keep it in check. Starting about the age of 21 I began to gain a substantial amount of weight. I went from being 280 pounds my senior year of high school to well over 300 just a couple of years after. I should also mention that at only 5 foot 9 that means I was doing serious damage to my long term health.

Probably around the age of 25 when I probably weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 pounds I started to ponder possibly pursuing a weight loss surgery. For some reason the stigma of that being the "easy way out" or a "quick fix" combined with my own laziness caused me to not pursue it. I think my own pride and possibly arrogance also led me to think "I'm a man I don't need that!". So instead of pursuing a surgery or trying to change my life the traditional weight I just continued down the same destructive path.

Now at the age of 29  I had reached the biggest I had ever been. In May while going to the doctor while dealing with a bout of Pneumonia I weighed 389 pounds. At that point it started to set in that my weight had gotten seriously out of control.  I know I know it should have set in long before that but it didn't. After a 6 week bout of pneumonia I wound up weighing about 375 and continued with my destructive life style. Up until this point I had no serious health issues but I was starting to experience some I struggled with lots of joint pain.  My feet hurt a lot and I was beginning to have serious issues with my back. There were a lot of times where I couldn't be on my feet more than 30 minutes or so before my back would start to seize up and I had to sit down. So it finally started to click that I was headed to a very bad place if I didn't change my life soon.

I lost my father six years ago and up until the point that he died he was very worried about my increasing weight. We had more conversations than I can count , sometimes where he tried to inspire me to change my life.  I can look back at it now with appreciation but at that point it just felt like a nagging parent. I think there are just times in life where talking to someone just wont help them realize you just have to have patience that they will one day make the decision for themselves. I was very blessed in the fact that my father was able to achieve some success and leave behind money for his family. Obviously I would give that blessing back in a heartbeat to have the bigger blessing of my father back.

I began to truly think about it whether weight loss surgery is the right path for me. There were so many reasons that pushed me in this direction. Like I mentioned earlier I felt like my health was beginning to deteriorate. On a trip in May with my brother he recorded me sleeping and I saw for the first time how bad I suffered from sleep apnea which was very scary to see.  I also felt a new level of personal and spiritual maturity that would allow me with the help of God to maintain the discipline it would take to complete this process. I also am not ignorant or arrogant enough to not realize that being completely obese had hindered my ability to get jobs and at least had some affect as to why I am still single at the age of 29. Even though I know 30 is not old I also think that birthday looming helped aid my decision. I began to also realize that with my health beginning to deteriorate and the massive health problems that were no doubt coming , I may not have more than 5 or 10 more years on this earth which was very upsetting and startling to realize.

After some thought and prayer I made an appointment with Dr Kim a weight loss surgeon in late September of this past year. I made the decision that having surgery to help me change my life was the most realistic way I had to truly change my life and not just lose a little bit of weight. I felt that making both that physical commitment and financial commitment would help me to get to where i needed to go. Armed with the knowledge of  a couple of friends who had gone through this process and had success and knowing a couple of local celebrities that did the same I set out to see Dr.Kim. I arrived in his office and stepped on the scale to weigh 408 lbs! Even though I realize I weighed just 20 pounds lighter a few months earlier something about that number just made me feel horrible and made my self esteem plummet even further.