Going Under The Knife

These days it's more like getting probed by nice aliens.  They don't leave big scars and all that high tech equipment helps the alien er, surgeon do his work inside you.  I'm not the svelte furry little image my profile picture suggests.  I know you find that hard to believe on the internets!  It's OK, you'll get over it.  While I am quite furry, everywhere but on the very top (it migrated you see), I am anything but svelte.  After I got out of the service my desire to escape being told what to eat and how much to weight lead me on a very bad path for my health and weight.  After spending about 20 years deteriorating into an ever larger blob of fat with more and more associated medical problems rearing their ugly heads, I had a break through.  At the very beginning of 2007 I finally decided I was ready to start fixing this whole "fat" issue and embarked on a diet and exercise program.  I started at somewhere a bit north of 350 pounds.  Within a bit over a year I had made it down to 255 and looked and felt a whole lot better.  Then I got a new job.

About that time I also switched from a name brand medication to a generic.  It made me go absolutely bat sh!t bonkers.  The new job was horribly stressful and then, a company that had never had layoffs, announced, you guessed it, layoffs!  I was cut near the end of 3 rounds of them so I got to watch the whole thing unfold.  This also gave me time to look for something else so I was able to roll over into a new job.  Bullet dodged.  Not caring a whole heck of a lot about diet and exercise right about now.  Get into new job and switch the meds back.  OK, time to get back on track.  OUCH, it's much harder now for some reason.  Oh, The Atkins Diet only gives some people one golden chance?  I see.  Looks like I used mine.  Fine, we go harder.  What?  More layoffs you say?  Oh frickin' goodie.  Two jobs in a row and this time we get 4 months of unemployment out of it.  First time in my life without work.  Finally land new job as a civil servant.  Job security nirvana right?  Wrong!  Less than a year in they announce cuts.  So far it's all voluntary but this year we'll see the involuntary ones.

So life has been less than cooperative in giving me a calm, steady environment to work on proper diet and exercise.  In fact, I shot back up to 363 pounds.  I am NOT happy with myself at all.  So, in the spirit of all or nothing, going for the gusto, and taking a leap of blind faith, I've decided to have my guts chopped up and worked over.  Or in less descriptive terms, I'm going to have Bariatric surgery.  One should not be able to sit down at the all you can eat Chinese buffet and comfortably put away 4 to 5 plates of food.  I can, without blinking.  Unlike that skinny Asian dude who wins eating contests by consuming insane amounts of food, I get fat when I do that.

Of the 3 types of surgeries, I'm trying to decide between 2.  The full gastric bypass or the gastric sleeve operation.  I can't get it until June at the earliest due to my insurance so there's time to quake in fear mull over my options.  The full bypass gives you the best results with some unpleasant side effects.  The sleeve gives 15% less weight loss on average and virtually no side effects.  Both of them work much better when you combine them with a good diet and exercise.  Both of them can leave you still a blob if you do nothing to supplement the help they give you.  I believe it will work for me but I'm going to have to put more into it than just the surgery.  I'm willing to do that.  I don't have anything to lose by going this route and I'll die young if I don't.  I'll share this story as it unfolds, along with Mrs. G's gun training adventures.  Wow, throw a prayer in there and you got God, Guns and Guts!  Ha, somebody already took that blog...