| About Me |
| Well, it all started when i was born... lol.. ok, we can skip that part. As you know I am a 32 year old single father. I have been divorced for about three years, and have finally realized a few things. First of all, I have learned that I can be very happy with just myself. I've learned to take care of myself and my son, and i've gotten pretty good at it. Yes this means i can cook, clean, wash laundry, do my own dishes and scrub my own bathtub! lol... For as long as i can remember i've been overweight. Although, when i look back at pictures of myself when I was in high school and younger, i realize i really wasn't overweight, but for some reason i've always felt like i am. After my divorce, i realized that part of my problem was that i was not happy with who i am and what i had become. I came home at night after work, sat and chatted on the computer, paid little or no attention to my son and my friends and really didn't know why. After a long time i realized that i am just so uncomfortable outside of my own home, because i felt like i didn't fit in. I think it was mostly because of the way i feel about my weight. At 31 years old, i was 390 pounds.. 390, i mean come on, i NEVER EVER thought i would be that big in my entire life, but there i was... fat, miserable, bloated, lazy, rundown and generally tired all the time. And at some point i realized i just cannot live like this anymore. I want to be a good father to my children, and a good friend to my friends. But, i can't do it like this!!! I tried dieting, with NO success. I tried exercising with even less success. I was in that "vicious circle". In the early 90's, i herniated a disk in my lower back while working. Ever since then, when i would try to exercise, i would have such lower back pain that i couldn't even lift my legs to walk, and so i just gave up!! So basically, i was overweight because i didn't exercise, and i couldn't exercise because i was overweight and it hurt my back. (do you see how this circular thinking works?) Finally, one day i just had enough. My son was asking me to do something, and i was just sitting in my chair, not wanting to do anything and i realized.. hey!! you're throwing away the best years of your life and the best years of your fatherhood, just because you won't DO something!!!! So, i started looking for alternative solutions to my problem. I called around town looking for a doctor that does gastric bypass surgery. I only found one. And after talking to several people and reading about it on the internet, i realized that bypass may not be the best solution for me. So, one night while i was watching a show on TV, i saw a commercial for "the Texas Laparoscopy Center"..and LapBand surgery.. and i thought.. hmmm maybe this could be something.. so i called and set up an appointment. I went in and talked to Dr. Felix Spiegel and met his staff. They were so nice. It was kind of strange, i walked in the exam room and i didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable about what was going on. The nurse asked me alot of questions about my health and why i wanted to have WLS. And then the doctor came in and did an exam and asked me more questions. Then we went to Dr. Spiegel's office and he sat and explained how the procedure works, in detail. Then his staff got to work on getting approval through my insurance company. About a month later i received a letter in the mail from my insurance company, saying that the procedure had been approved. The nurses scheduled the surgery. I met with them the day before and went over all the post-op procedures and the Do's and Don'ts of the whole thing. And on September 18th, 2003 i had the LapBand Surgery. |
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