Losing Weight

Let the CUTTING begin..!!!!!

Sorry about the lag in between stories here but hunting was a first time thing for me and I had a blast with my brother. And as you can tell by this fire we were toasting marshmallows big time, even a few smores. But the reason I bring that up here is because of the surgery I was able to go out and have some fun like I had never been able to do without was I was about to go thru. So here starts the chain of events that changes my life. It all goes back to my mom, ya good ol mom the one who brought me into this world and was pround that I was just her son. She was a great mom as mothers go, a single mom for most of my adult life simply becasue we grew up in the Army brat lifestyle so she did most of the raising of us 3 boys and a sister all on her own..MOM we all love you very much. Well my mom was watching TV one day when The Roseanne Barr show was on and she had this DR on Named Dr Fobi who had done the bypass surgery on her and she was looking good. Well my mom heard that his office accepted my cheapo Insurance and took down his info. Well after several phonecalls and such I made the right contacts and was on my way.

At the time I first contacted him he was not accepting any new medi cal cases which left me discouraged to say the least but I persisted and eventually got my spot but not the way you might think. I was told to drive up to Los Angeles and meet with his PR people that he had an idea. Well that Idea was to have me be like a poster child for the surgery since back then a lot of insurance companies were not paying for this surgery and we neede to get the word out about all the GOOD stuff this surgery does. Since as you lose weight if you are border line diabetic that will go away, high blood pressure, GONE Etc. Etc but they were not seeing it this way. So I was made out to be the spokesperson for the project and in turn I would do several radio shows, TV appearances Etc. and I would get my surgery done FREE OF CHARGE. WOW was this a god send or what..? I could not believe it at all but indeed in was true. I have several of the interviews I saved and will post them up here asap but I think they are in Real Audio format so you might have to get the Real audio player but they are real interesting to listen to.

So there I was taking tests getting ready to go under the knife doing radio showes every morning east coast time 4am my time but it was well worth it. Here is a picture of me just before I went into the surgery room with my mom. The weight says 580 but that is a typo really it is 780 I had to lose 100 lbs for the to do the surgery safely. So I go into the room, have the surgery and  5 hrs later come out hurting like hell with no one to yell at but myself. So I was on my way to a new life, a new destiny and a whole new set of problems. Becasue with this surgery comes several different set of their own problems like vitamins, eating different foods, dumping after you eat. (chemicial reaction to eating after the surgery since your plumbing is re routed) and many other little thing but all very well worth it all the way. Now I begin to lose the weight at the rate of about a lb a day for the first 2 months and after that good exercise and that gives me a leg up on everything. Meeting new people, going to work, getting good jobs the whole 9 yards but more on that in the next installment.

Cabbie

After the Cutting....

When I first woke up from the surgery all I can remember saying is "IT FUCKING HURTS" I was in that after surgery stooper between waking up and being out of it and all I could feel the nurse do was tell me that she was hooking me up and that I felt like my guts had been filled full of buckshot. Man ow man that memory is the only thing that has ever really bothered me about the surgery but would I do it all again.....your dam right I would. So the nurse hooks me up to the morphine drip AHHHHHH and things slowly got better. In recovery I could tell that something had changed inside of me. You see this surgery is like having your plumbing in your  house This picture to the left depicts approxomatly what happens to  your insides, your stomach is literally disconnected from the digestion of food, thus it goes straight down into the loswer intestines and raises hell with your body chemestry and can make you feel very very strange because your body is dealing with a much raw-er from of bio mass and it does not know (chemicially) how to deal with it so it just throws every thing it has at it and this feeling is what the medicial profession calls "dumping"  and for the next 20 mins you just lay your head down on a pillow and let it go the way it will go and drink some water.

So as the days go by I feel better by about 2 times better every day that goes by so the pain is going away fast, I'm adjusting to eating in 3 min. instead of 30 mins so I have much more time to spend doing the better things in life. I was losing weight at about the rate of about 1.5 - 2.0 lbs. per day so I went from around 740 (officially weigh in at surgery time) to almost 700 by the time I got back to San Diego. And as the days went on I got smaller and smaller much to my surprise and faster then I had ever thought possible. The dream was coming true. First less then 675, the 650, then 600, the 550, 500, 400, 450, 425, gone, gone, gone was the weight that had corralled my body for 20 years and had made me the prisoner I was to a bed and a chair with no arms. There I was staring in a mirror 1 day and I just broke out in sheer unadulterated tears of happiness. My life was and is changing right before my eyes and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Ladies and gentelmen I had arrived, I was sub 350 lbs and man the world was my oyster but that is today let me digress a bit and tell you some of the bumps I went over to get here after the surgery. Many of you have sent email asking me "why I did the surgery..?" Well besides the obvious answer of I just wanted to live, I really wanted to see what life was all about since my 20's had been stolen from me I had no sense of what it was like to live a happy adult life of having a job, a wife/girlfriend with a healthy relationship. That had all been taken from me and I had to catch up and see what I could do about that.

Many more pictures and audio interviews comming up ladies and gents next week. I have several radio show interviews I did prior to surgery and it may just give you a little insite as to what I was going through and where I had been...

I love you guys.....


The Cabbie

So now I head home....

Well as you can see here I had tubes hanging off me, tape stuck to me etc. etc. Now you may be saying to yourself that he sure don't look to be 800 lbs. Well indeed I was not at this point, nor was I right before the surgery. I had lost about 300 Lbs. after leaving my 1st wife on my own just eating regularly. I got down to about 600 or so before I did the surgery just to clear that up in case you had any questions. I did go through a lot of therapy in regards to my ex wife because she was an abuser to say the least and I had to get over that anger issue of women in general just so I could have a relationship period. Well after going back to the house I lived in in San Diego where I lived with roommates in what was up to that point a very good relationship with all of them I had a problem with the the 2 people that were boyfriend and girlfriend in the house. In my recovery I was told not to do too much moving around so the stitches would heal up. Well as I was doing that I had forgotten to purchase some laundery detergent for the house (and it was my turn) between that and recieving phone calls on the house phone for doing radio interviews @ 4 am in the morning east coast time for NY shows I was booted out of the house right in the middle of rehabbing from the surgery. Ya people I had lived with for 6 yrs or so just booted me for those few things. NOT the usual lack of rent or paying bills but for not buying laundry detergent. So be it I called mom and she gladly came and moved into her Boulder City Nv. home back in 2000 god rest her soul.

Well the rehabbing went well, the losing of the weight was a very fast process at first I was dropping about a pound a day EASY. And so it went for a few weeks, taking wals and eating very little. Let me tell you about this surgery. It is like no other, it is literally like re doing the plumbing in your whole house except doing it a different way..imagine that. There was pain, a lot of it and I did get addicted to the pain pills but of course. So on I went into my new like getting slimmer, walking which I was not used to. But the most amazing thing out of this was a comment that 1 of my fellow fatties had said to me during a meeting and he was amazed at how you become visible to people. Thats right VISIBLE meaning that people tend to take notice of you again like entering the human race. Well funny I had never thought I'd left it but apparantly I had somewhere along the line.

Well after a few months of doing this and doing that I get an offer to do a TV show in Seattle called Northwest Afternoon along with my mother. Here are some pictures of that trip, The limo, my mom in the Limo with a drink (but of course) and the show I will post on youtube but it was basicially a interview of how and why I had gotten to be so big and what I was doing about it now.











Click on any one of the above to see the full view of it but it was a fun time and I look back now at how valuable it was to me since my mom passed away 2 yrs ago I am always happy to see her face with a smile on it. Lord knows I made that face cry a few times and I was just proud whenever I could make her smile and man she knew how to laugh...LOVE YA MOM.

Anyway check out my youtube/vegascabbie page for the video sometime in the next day or so Ill edit it together. thanks again for reading and Ill get to more update as I go along here...

Rick
The Vegascabbie