Daddy Warbucks

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Technically speaking, I’m high right now. I want to get dental implants but there was no bone in the location for the implants. So, I had to have a bone graft done in my gum line. This was two weeks ago and I am still swollen and in a considerable amount of pain. It was so bad that I took two days off work last week. I was doubling up on my hydrocodone to try and get some reprieve from the pain but relief was to elude me.

Today I went back to the dentist to assure her that I did not know any national secrets and she should stop torturing me. This time, I was prescribed oxycodone. Again, I took twice the recommended dosage and I am still in pain. Other than keeping me generally relaxed for the last week, these powerful pain medicines have not done much for me. I have not had impaired judgement or felt euphoric or felt any of the other effects reported in the popular literature.

I have been so consumed with my pain that I have not been motivated to write much. I predict that the pain and swelling will last another week.

I had a stress test scheduled with my cardiologist today and I was concerned that the pain throbbing in my mouth with every beat of my heart would complicate things. I worried that as my heart rate rose so would the level of pain. Fortunately, this was not the case. My stress test was uneventful with nothing out of the ordinary.

I am lucky to be working in a supportive environment. Everyone has been concerned about my pain and my boss told me to do whatever I needed – meaning that I could work from home or even call in sick if I wanted to. While I am glad for the compassion, I have too many things to get done do stay home.

All week I have been thinking about my exercise regime. Originally my goal was to use the treadmill for 45 minutes Monday – Friday and do strength training Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have decided to alter that a bit. I am now doing cardio for three days and taking a day off instead of doing it for five days with two days off.

I am looking into doing yoga and strength training. I am interviewing personal trainers last week and next week. So far, I like the two people I worked out with but I have one more person to see next Friday. The guy next week will be cheaper but I am wondering if he will be better. I was sore the better part of the week after my two workouts. I need to focus on the 5K race in October that I committed to at work. I am still a little worried about my resolve with the cardio but I think getting a personal trainer to help me with strength will motivate me for the cardio.

I am trying not to do anything stupid. My history has been that I begin to exercise and then injure myself. After the injury, my program gets derailed and I lose all motivation. I am trying to keep the motivation by reminding myself that I want to be a sheepdog and not a sheep.

It’s been a crazy week with me being on narcotics for the dental surgery. I’ve been to see a cardiologist, endocrinologist, sleep doctor, and dentist this week. I also had my first work out with my personal trainer. I don’t enjoy working out, but I’ll just say that I liked the pace at which he went. I told him that I needed to work on flexibility and he seems to be listening to what I tell him about my goals and needs. The sleep doctor agreed with me that I needed a sleep study. My stress test was fine. 

The upsetting news is that I gain 12 pounds in the last three months. I’m not sure how I did that, but the endocrinologist who has been trying to encourage me to lose weight was very disappointed. 

It has been hard for me to focus on my weight with the mouth pain. I have also developed some sort of sore on the back of my tongue which hurts more than the surgery. The sore is on the same side of the mouth as the surgery and the two pains together are a symphony of throbbing discomfort. 

I’ve felt like a bit of a failure not being able to focus on my health since the surgery. I find it hard to find the motivation to lose weight with the stress being produced by my mouth. I keep thinking that this might just be an excuse but I truly wish the pain would go away so that I could focus on other things and not be reliant on narcotics.

The same thing happened the last time I had dental surgery. I was in pain for a few weeks and a bad depression creeped in. The difference this time is that the pain and swelling has not gone away after a month and fighting the depression has been difficult. I don’t know why the two are related but it gives me some solace to know that once my mouth heals that perhaps my mind will heal too. 

I’m really upset that I’ve gone back to my old self destructive, food addictive habits and gained 30 pounds. My sleep apnea and diabetes are back and I’m now taking insulin again. In a couple of months, I’ll be 48 years old and Andrew will turn two. It depresses me to think that my actions may cause me to not be around to see him grow up; not to mention the second baby we have applied for. I am reminded of my mortality daily because I find it difficult and awkward to get down on the floor to play with Andrew and also to get myself back up again. My muscles are very tight and I have never had much mobility or range of motion. 

It is amazing how excited Andrew gets when he sees me come home from work. On the weekends, we are inseparable (except for naptime). He constantly wants my attention and wants to be in the same room as me. He treats me as if I am a super hero or a god, yet I feel totally undeserved of that title. It is one thing for your psyche to crawl up from battling low self-esteem all your life but it is something entirely different to go from having an inferiority complex to having someone think you are their world. 

So I need to figure out a way to not only lose this weight, but also get off my insulin and gain greater mobility and flexibility. And by “figure out” I really mean I need to get over my self-destructive psychological barriers and motivate myself. My next endocrinology appointment is in December. I’ll plan to lose 15 pounds by then.

Over the last several months, I have gained six pounds. You would not think that would be a big deal but my body can feel it. I wake up exhausted and I struggle through the day. This past week I have been thinking about why I can’t seem to continue my weight loss. I am happy that I have lost over 100 pounds, but I have another 50 to lose. 

By the early part of this year I stopped losing weight. That was a little frustrating but I kept it in perspective. I told myself that I have been very successful thus far and I should be proud of what I have accomplished. Reluctantly, I stopped trying to lose weight and have done a decent job of maintaining it. 

It’s been about nine months and I’ve been thinking that I need to get back to losing the last bit of weight. If I don’t, my fear is that I will let myself go and end up right back where I started. I know that losing the weight will be a dramatic change for me and will make me healthier and give me more energy.

But there is a fear inside of me that is stopping me from moving forward. This is the same fear that took me up to 330 pounds and would not allow me to lose that weight for over 10 years. I lost the weight but I did not conquer the fear. The only way I was able to lose the weight was by getting surgery to have 85% of my stomach removed so that I would be physically unable to eat. When you think about it, it sounds rather barbaric.

I’ve been trying to figure out what the fear is so that I can face it. It is a fear of success or is it a fear of losing pleasure or is it just an addiction?

Before my surgery, I used to think I had a fear of success because I was emotionally comfortable being overweight and didn’t know how I would act or react to being “thin”. I think this is partly why I have been content at my new weight. I’ve lost a significant amount of weight; enough to make the surgery a “success”. I went from a Body Mass Index of 56% to 36.8%. While it is an impressive drop, a BMI of 36.8% is not thin. I have gone from super morbidly obese to just obese. I remain emotionally comfortable in my weight because I still consider myself fat.

While a small part of me feels flattered, mostly it makes me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable when I am complimented on my weight loss or the way I look. A person giving me a compliment is a foreign concept and I often do not know how to process what they are saying. Outwardly, I smile and say “Thank you” but inside it feels as if I am holding a dead bird in my hand that I don’t know what to do with. Am I afraid of holding on to too many dead birds?

The other part of the problem of course is more complicated; it is the food addiction. Food is pleasurable. The act of eating is pleasurable. I like pleasure and use it as an escape from myself and my stress. Lately, work has been very stressful and I have not been able to control myself when it comes to eating. The sad thing is, I know what I am doing and I continue to do it. The sad thing is, the food does not reduce the stress but I keep eating.

Just a little over a year ago, I wrote about what I thought 2012 would be like for me.  I was experiencing a lot of stress at the time thinking how drastically my life would transform by having weight loss surgery, adopting a baby and potentially changing my job; three major life changes.

The weight loss journey has been a unique ride into a bizarre world where I am valued and found to be attractive by people around me.  While it was difficult physically, it was not any harder than what I had expected.  Mentally and emotionally, the journey has been surreal. I’m still not sure what to make of everything and I’m still trying to get used to this new life.

I was very anxious about my surgery.  I was worried about having medical complications and I was concerned about the impact the surgery would have on my life.  Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about.  The surgery and recovery went smoothly.  I was worried about standing out in a crowd or drawing attention to myself because of my dietary needs.  My anxiety was unfounded as I have discovered that I am no different than anyone else except that I eat less food.  I don’t mind telling waiters and fellow diners that I’ve had surgery and therefore am not able to eat large quantities of food. I am not ashamed of my surgery in the least.  I know I could not have lost this weight without the surgery.

Last year, I had a lot of new experiences with food and people.  My goal this year will be to take what I learned last year and apply it.  I still have 60 pounds I want to lose.  I need to focus on my recovery and weight loss once again like I did a year ago.  It is necessary for me to use what I learned about protein shakes, eating slowly, and making better food choices to take my journey to the next level.

I bought bicycles last year but did not use them very much.  After losing weight I was more active than I had ever been before.  I went on several walks and then there was that infamous kayaking trip.  It is very easy for me to revert back to my old sedentary habits; therefore, I need to make a conscious effort to continue to stay active in 2013.

Finally, this year I need to learn to become more comfortable in my own skin.  I need to learn the social skills required to make new friends and confidently talk to strangers. I think this has more to do with my self-esteem and confidence than anything else.

I don’t believe in making concrete New Year’s resolutions, but I think some lifestyle and behavioral changes are always a positive thing.  In a push to grow as an individual, I will make an effort to be more active; more social; and practice healthy eating behaviors.

As it is getting late, I will discuss the adoption and career at another time.

All of my life I felt very different from everyone around me and constantly yearned to be “normal” like everyone else.  In school, I was bullied and beaten up on a regular basis because I was “different”.  In order to cope with the abuse at school and at home, I turned to food.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that instead of running towards normalcy, my actions were driving me further away.  As I gorged myself with calories, I gained weight and became less active.

As an adult, I became so fat that I had trouble doing simple tasks like getting dressed or walking a block to a place for lunch.  I thought about getting weight loss surgery, but then, I would permanently be “not normal”.  One of my greatest fears about getting the surgery was that I would never be able to eat like a “normal” person again.  I thought that I would not be able to participate in social activities where food was served and my post-surgery eating habits would attract attention to me as being different from everyone else.  It never occurred to me that at 325 lbs, I was not eating like a normal person to begin with and my eating habits were probably already attracting attention.

Today, after having lost 100 lbs from surgery, I am quite shocked to discover that I feel more normal than I have ever felt in my life.  I am as active as any normal person and can physically do everything a normal person can do.  My eating habits have not impacted my social life in the least.  It feels wonderful to be able to walk into any clothing store and buy whatever I want just like a normal person.

Even though I am not happy about still being 60 lbs overweight, given the average size of people these days, even that seems normal.  I was telling my therapist that I feel like I have normal weight loss issues now.  Weight loss seemed like an impossible dream before surgery, but I am at a point now where I need to watch what I eat and exercise like a normal person to lose any more weight.  With surgery, I have achieved normalcy, the one thing I feared I would not gain by having the surgery.  I’m hopeful that I will lose the rest of this weight in the new year.

A big part of why I have not written lately is because I have been dealing with some personal issues. I have not been feeling very social lately because my issues are consuming me. Monday is my 42nd birthday. As I mentioned before, I have been going through some issues regarding getting older. I have an unnatural fear of dying. My father was 42 when he had his first heart attack. After his heart attack, he suffered from severe depression and was unemployed for the better part of his life. My dad died of complications due to Hepatitis.    

I weigh about as much as he did when he was my age and I have risk factors such as diabetes, sleep apnea, and depression. I was also thinking about my last 14 years with the fire department. I could have caught some dreaded disease while working on a patient; or even in my younger days during sex. We are exposed to a lot of blood and guts (and vomit) at the fire department. You try to be as careful as you can be by wearing gloves and the like, but sometimes shit just happens - gloves tear, people throw up on you, a suicide patent spits at you, or someone in the ER crashes while you are standing around writing your report. Also, I was never very good about using condoms during sex so there's that.       

I went to my doctor and explained all of my concerns. I also reminded her that I had stopped talking Paxil and that had increased my anxiety. After talking to me for a while, she agreed that my hypochondria was related to my coming off my meds. She also knew that I would not feel any better unless she did something about it. She ordered tests for sexually transmitted diseases and referred me to a cardiologist for a nuclear stress test. Do you know what it is like to wait to find out the results of a STD test? Very stressful.     

She reminded me that my diabetes, sleep apnea, and depression are being treated whereas my dad's medical issues were left untreated. Also, I had a stress test last year and these things are good for a few years. She also told me that I don't have any deadly diseases to worry about. So, all in all, I feel better now. I am not dying of a disease and I will go in to get my heart checked out. Plus I have had better medical care than my dad did so I suppose I am in a better place.   

I don’t know what is wrong with me. For the past month or more, I have been hell bent of self destruction. I keep eating fast food and not sleeping on time. I have actually lost my sex drive…yes, I know, you are shocked. Frankly, I am too a little bit. I think my body just feels so abused with the high blood sugar from fast food and tiredness from not sleeping that it just doesn’t want sex. Clearly there is something going on with my subconscious that I need to get a hold of.

For the last several days, my wife has been talking to be about getting weight loss surgery. She says that she is worried about me and my health. This is the biggest she has ever seen me. She says she feels like I don’t care about “us”. I told her I cared about her, I just don’t care about me.

On an interesting note, I got a call today from my old boss. You remember him, he quit the same day I did from our former employer. Well it seems that they have a position opening up as the chief credit office of the company and he told them he knows a guy (me) who might be interested. So I was dusting off my resume all night and I will send it to him for review tomorrow. We talked for a good long while, but I’ll have to fill you in on it later since it is midnight and I am trying to go to bed “early”.