Why I'm here
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I 'm sole supporter of my family. My wife is a doctor's dream. When I married her she had lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and Raynaud's disease. Since we have been married she has had skin cancer, cervical cancer and most recently this year a brain tumor. She has recovered from everything that has been thrown her way. She's freaking awesome!
My job is to be there for her. I have considered weight loss surgery in the past but have been scared due to family history. My sister had gastric bypass back in 2000. She was quite successful and has kept most of the weight off. My mom was inspired by her journey and had gastric bypass in early 2001. Mom lost a lot of weight and looked really good. Mom had always had quite a few health issues and those had gone away for the most part. December 13th 2001 she went into the hospital with a blue toe. They told her that she didn't have enough Iron and potassium in her blood. She told them that that was impossible because she was taking iron and potassium supplements. She was discharged just before Christmas stage 4 lung cancer. The hypothesis was that she had had it coming on since the eight years prior when she had quit smoking. She had all of the signs if you stepped back and looked at them of a cancer patient. Her symptoms were so spread out that nobody ever caught it. It was believed that most likely she was a stage 3A when she was operated on for the bypass. The cancer continued to spread and she passed away February 13th 2002. She had just turned 50 years old. Needless to say this scared the hell out of me.
At the time of mom's death I was 24 years old and 300 pounds. My weight has fluctuated as high as 340 pounds and is low is 267 pounds when my son was born in 2009. I have found that stress definitely plays a big factor in my weight. I have a stressful job. Quite a bit of the time I work 12 plus hour days. I am a commercial driver and a supervisor of the warehouse. I deal with a lot of FDA documentation and I am also in charge of quality control. I have worked at my company for 12 years and I tend to be a jack of all trades. I have been offered higher-level positions that will require me to travel and I have turned them down to be with my family. Those higher level positions would actually put me in a little less stress. Once again I choose my family.
I have been a mostly happy fat man most of my life. My screen name high functioning fat man. My weight generally doesn't slow me down or cause me too many problems. The future however is going to be an issue. My job requires that I have a commercial driver's license. The Department of Transportation has been kicking around ideas about requiring anybody that has a BMI of 35 or higher or has a next size larger than 17 inches to go through a sleep study annually to maintain their medical card which is required to be valid to have a commercial driver's license. Now my weight is threatening my livelihood. My insurance will not pay for an annual sleep study. All of that costs approximately 1500 to $2,000 here locally would have to come out of my pocket. The industry that I work in is in oxygen and home medical field. One of the many duties that I have is to do overnight oximetry on patients is a pre-screening to sleep studies. When somebody complains that the oximeter did not work correctly I take it home and use it myself verify an issue. I know that I don't have sleep apnea based upon all of these oximetries. I will now have to pay to prove that I don't have obstructive sleep apnea.
My wife cannot work like most people can. She has issues from her medical conditions. Most people that meet her would never have a clue that she has issues.
I personally know of six people that have had Vertical Sleeve. The first one went to what he refers to as a butcher shop in Mexico. The other five all went to the same surgeon in Mexico. Of those 5, 2 are nurses and one is a respiratory therapist. They all have said that this particular facility is cleaner than any medical facility they have worked in in the United States. That eases my mind quite a bit having personally known of 5 people going to the same clinic.
Do I like doing this? Hell no! It scares the crap out of me! I'm doing this and better my health. I'll be 38 years old at the time of my surgery and I'm scared that shortly thereafter I may never get to see my family again. I have a life insurance policy that will take care of my family if something happens to me but that doesn't ease my mind. I am looking forward to this only to have it done. I could continue on and be happy just as I am. Yes I know this will extend my life longer. Yes I know of all the health benefits but I personally have felt what happens if things go sideways.
As a general nature that I do have kind of a course sense of humor. I can laugh about damn near anything including myself. I'm just hoping that I come out of this the same person that I am today butt smaller. Pun intended...