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Hello Bariatric Family,
It’s been a while, a long while, but I thought I would post. Some of you won’t even know me at this point, but my name is Oscar Rios. I had the realize band put in back in August of 2008. I’ve lost a lot of weight and drastically improved my health. For a long, long time the support group was very important to me, then I stopped going to meetings or regularly posting. I joined a gym, went 3 times a week, watched my eating and generally enjoyed by day to day life.
Then things took a bad turn, 2010 arrived and everything went wrong.
Weeks of blizzards, followed by crippling thunderstorms, kept me from going to the gym regularly. I fell out of rhythm and have yet to regain my stride with working out. I want to, but restarting is hard.
I had a serious falling out with one of my best friends, which turned ugly for months. We are only now getting the friendship back on track.
I had my hobby of writing and publishing turn into a living nightmare of delays, failed deadlines (of other people connected to my projects), hostile criticism and general unhappiness. This translated into a total destruction of my desire to write, which is perhaps my major stress outlet.
My wife remains unemployed, and lost her unemployment benefits. Months passed without even an interview.
My father in law died. I tried hard to pull the family together, we had his funeral, I pressed the button on his cremation, did all the paperwork (I am in the industry) and placed him in a crypt.
My cat of seventeen years, whom I loved as much as I have loved anything in this world, likely got cancer. Her body and legs swelled with fluid, she became gaunt. My wife and I held her in our arms as the vet put her to sleep. I wrapped her in a blanket, tied it up with shoelaces (as if she was a mummified cat) and buried her in my back yard. She was still warm as I placed her in the ground. A piece of my heart lies beside her in that cold earth and I will never get it back.
The family grew cold in all directions; the house was too quiet, too empty, too hollow and broken. Depression griped us like a fog.
And as one thing happened, then another, then another, I started to snack. My portions got larger. I wanted something, anything, to comfort me. I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t publishing and my friends weren’t hanging out. I stopped going to the gym. I wondered why was I doing all this? Making this effort? Punishing and depriving myself? I wanted to do self destructive things. I considered taking the post op pain killers which are still on hand, Codeine and Oxycodone, just to help me end my day so I could face it all the next. I thought in on dark moment of using them to end more than just one bad day.
I knew why Post-op’s become drug addicts, alcoholics and sex addicts. Why relationships fail and the divorce rate increased 300% after Bariatric Surgery. I was hanging on by my fingernails. I was slipping. I was sure I was going to fall.
But I wasn’t giving up, I fought. For months I tried to restart my writing. I started hanging out with new people. I started trying to do new things. I expanded my social circle. I started playing Role Playing Games with people regularly again.
But, I knew, my weight had gone up. I could feel it when I sat or when I drove. I didn’t know how much, because I was too much of a coward to get on a scale. I couldn’t afford another hit, another disappointment. One more might just be all I could take, the thing that send me plunging into the depths of madness, despair and self destruction.
But things began to change…
I met new people, cool people, and made new friends. Old friends came back into my life, bridges were rebuilt. I started trying to curb my eating again. I started writing again! I started planning a re-write of a manuscript. And then, I took my wife to the ASPCA. We were a house that needed a cat; somewhere there was a cat that needed a home. We got two, Carmine and Burk, adult cats.
Carmine is a friendly joy, but Burk has issues. Burk’s timid, afraid but he likes people in his own way. He comes out at night and explores the whole house, but in the daytime so far sticks near my bed, where he can run under it. I bonded with Burk, he’s MY cat. He has issues, he needed a chance. Yeah, that’s my boy.
The one morning, the second morning the boys were with us, I was woken up to a cat kissing my lips. I opened my eyes and it was Carmine. I pet him, he purred. I went to the bathroom, shy Burk followed me in and hung out with me as I brushed my teeth.
Then, I had the strength to do something I hadn’t done in maybe all of 2010.
I got on the scale. I was 184 pounds. That’s 8 more than my lowest weight. Six more than where my weight was when it was stable. It’s also maybe 8-15 pounds lower than I expected it to be. 184? Only 184? Okay, that’s not so terrible.
I weighted my lunch out this morning. I had my 3/4ths of a cup of skim plus milk with 1 package of whole grain cream of wheat. I spoke to Sophia on the phone. Then I wrote this post.
I used to say “The battle never ends so long as you refuse to stop fighting.” I used to say that, but I stopped.
I hereby declare an end to this unjust and corrupt Pease and a resumption of open hostilities.
After a long cold winter at Valley Forge, it seems that the Continental Army is once again on the move. Sound the horn!
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