LOVEIGEE... God bless you for being such a good friend to my friend.
God bless you too, TW.....friends such as yourself are precious and few and I have some of the best of those right here on this thread. How blessed am I?
Here's a little pic that gives me the warm fuzzies. This is Aliza Grace, my first grandchild, communing with her Uncle Eli....she loves to sleep on her dad's and uncle's chests.
Me too Bee. I don't know what I would do without you guys.
You're welcome and no doubt you are one kind woman. Heard a lot of good things about you. 
Heel low:
So got the Front Porch Swing reinforced so support some heavy conversationalists?
My Hero had a gastric bypass done some 40 years ago...he was kinda in recovering mode (lost too much and was finding a balance spot of good health so his weight was going back up to find a good place to stabilize) when I met him...far too skinny he was...not enough of him to love! We've been together for over 30 years now.
I believe they do not do this surgery any more. Since I was not with him before and during and only after his recovery...I cannot give much details past what he has told me about the first part of the ordeal.
He comes from a morbidly obese family...I mean I showed up at the first family gathering and I am not NO widdle girlie but I was the least heaviest person there. All the lawn furniture was this reinforced size...makes me smile...I felt right at home sweet--pass the mashed potatoes and butter--home!
I myself could probably stand to lose about 75 pounds but don't sweat it too much. I am tall and I am big and I run a Conservation Farm doing the all the masses of chores by myself...tote that load, lift that bucket...physically taxing on a mild day. It takes about three hours when we use to give tours here, so yeh, no "ten minute" walk in the park. Now, my sister on the other hand is what we call 2 percent...she's been a model and an actress...sings in operas. My 2% sister compared to me...means I am about a 20 percent measure. Don't invite this couple for dinner unless you got some real good country home spread out smorg on the go! LMBO
When Rick went in for his surgery...being morbidly obese...it did not matter what he did, what he ate...every year he'd gain fifty pounds...he was so big when they prepped him for surgery...he had to go down to the cargo dock at the hospital and be weight on their freight scale. I think he was in the 450 to 500 pound range...a big boy indeed. He has some photos some place of him sitting as he was pre surgery in a chair and then post surgery and after all the weight peeled off him...same chair--it is an amazing difference. Some place packed away, he kept a pair of his old jeans...he can stand in the leg of one side. He use to have to buy clothes only at Mr. Big and Fat (sorry...we have tons of humour here with never a sliver of meanness meant in any of it...we joke about fatness, flagulence--say why later, and being old and near death with one foot on the banana peel...just the way we roll...laughing our ample butts off). When you are big, you can't hide that in plain full view of others...some of the best fat jokes come from fat persons...we've heard them all and can save the best for sharing!
Side affects to his surgery. Whomever the big person is currently with, will leave them. Funny that really but statistically speaking--pretty guaranteed...it is the partner of the fat person that can't handle the change in their partner. Since Rick did it fully for health reasons (he figured if he did not get a handle on this weight that kept creeping up, he'd be dead at 35 and I expect he would have...his youngest brother we buried 15 years ago...massive body implode...he was just as huge as my Hero was). My man never did it because he figured he would be more attractive. Can I say I would have hooked up with him at 500 pounds...I truly probably would not have thought of him in that way...prejudice towards someone that big...sure I would be...I was not 500 pounds myself so why would I be attracted to someone that was that big? A fat person to me when I was that young was quite wrongly "someone that was lazy." Rick has never EVER been lazy but I would have had to be with him to observe that. He had to do the same work as a skinny man and because of his weight, his bigness, he had to work probably three times as hard on his body to be that mobile and produce. He always ate less than his other men friends and produced just as much and often MORE physically than the non-big men he knew. It was a fat line drawn in the sand...being big, I expect you had pride and pushed yourself not to be labelled lazy or ate less not to be called a pig...too bad being morbidly obese means eating and working physically ain't gonna change the cards you are dealt and the ultimate outcome you have in store unless surgical and extreme solutions are chosen. I mean not all morbidly obese people die young, but I am betting, you will die before your time if you keep that weight on your body. It just literally kills you sooner than if it was not there...sinful I figure...very!
I figure you are or you are not born morbidly obese and with those GENETIC tendencies...you are going to be big...simple fact of life. I also blame our food. Supposedly they test new products and if the lab rats get fat...then the product is stamped with a seal of approval...good to go. Well HELLO? Fat rats are a good thing--since when? Forget the stats but over in Sweden...use to be very rare to have a fat person...all those health conscious & physically active people in that country. Well guess again...now even that country has an obesity rate that is climbing...I expect we can link it to the foods and the additives we consume...salty, sweet and fat...three triggers on us walking apes...throw in the added luxury that science is making triggers in the foods so we are never feeling full and never having the hunger satisfied to trigger you to stop eating...yeh, you think we are gonna get big. Was not too long ago but didn't North America announce that obesity was now the number one illness or killer. Some idiot thing like that!
All I know is that Rick went in for a intestinal bypass, they took his stomach, intestines and made them like 18 inches long...aren't our innards like 23 to 25 feet long...something like that...I ain't no doctor or even a good nurse stand in. LMBO
Basically, the procedure reduces the area you have to absorb nutrients with...you STARVE...hopefully not to death before that tiny section they leave plumbed in grows and expands so you can reach an equilibrium. They at one time would take those long lengths out of your body but when he had it done, they leave yer guts in there...off to the side, still alive and hooked up but not able to be used for food digestion/storage. A safety procedure in case they have to reverse the procedure to SAVE YOUR LIFE!
Side effects of this procedure might explain why it is no longer done as far as I know. It takes time for this whole procedure to take place and the weight loss and recovery is BRUTAL--you will never again be the same person you once were...this can be good, this can be bad. You can die, you can die via complications if you do not behave (right away or later on), you can lose your current partner, you can lose your job, you can hallucinate (while you are literally starving to death almost), you get the most horrific gas that gets slightly better but never goes completely away (doctors told him not to hold it in...so the running joke is never accept the invitation from him to PULL HIS FINGER--oh the gaseous stories we roar with laughter about...he is rotten indeed!--rotten to the very core and I love every stinking part of him for it--start learning some fart jokes now), you have to behave and not drink alcohol or eat any food other that perfectly fresh foods (eating something slightly off in the early period of recover CAN KILL you...) and certain foods you will never want to eat if they don't agree with your NEW body system, you can get a hernia (Rick got one), you will need to be off work for probably a year and a half to two years (do you have any kind of income coming in while you recover?), you can go in after all the weight loss is long over and have cosmetic surgery done to take out all the excess skin you don't need to be in any more, people will treat you differently...can you handle that...YOU--the inner you--has not really changed as quickly or as much as your physical self but your outward appearance changing will cause fall out (often the friends you had are not going to continue to be your friends--you have changed outwards and I guess your inwards changing has to catch up too--boils down to how you manage to deal with changes), you can be suicidal during the recovery...depression and mental issues (losing your partner, your job, your friends, your former routines in life...etc.)...you need to be very mentally stable to begin with and be able to withstand an entire assault to your physical and mental state...being strong willed is a good thing thru this endeavour--it will test every ounce of you and you may come up short--bwa ha ha...and at the beginning, there is sure a lot of you to LOVE! Whole lotta you...shade in summer, heat in winter...yadda yadda...
After the surgery, Rick quit buying clothes, he got by with stretchy pants he could cinch up...in a week's time, the clothes were just hanging off him. He kinda hid out for a year and a half or so...at the beginning, you have NO energy and tire out doing absolutely nothing. At first he said he could take a tiny cup of water...take a sip, feel it go down his throat, gurgle, down into what was his digestive system, gurgle, and by all rights, you needed to be on the toilet at that very next moment as that next GURGLE was going to soil your pants...LMBO It was a long long haul...and you push yourself every step of the way. I would expect it is like dying as in starving to death and then being reborn as you recovered and got back on your feet.
You are for all intents and purposes a disaster after surgery and during recovery...your body battling to not lose weight but doing so anyway. Horrific pain, horrific taxing of your mental strengths, your body being starved and being reborn to function differently...just not something you wanna casually do because you might look nicer with a few pounds shed. Not that just anyone could get this surgery done. The real hard core gist is that not many women had it done...more your men. The basic truth is medical dollars and procedure budgets are used to get the best bang for the bucks and the "productive males" were approved for this surgery because the outlay of hospital budgets meant this man made thinner extended his life of productive taxations back into the social kitty of money. Invest in making the productive male live longer and he would pay back into the support system...men make more money than women usually and this is not about gender bashing but real economics of who gets saved to work another day. Maybe the statistics are now different but back then, men got the surgery more often than women did. As said, I don't believe they offer this procedure any more...I know Rick says the surgeon was old when he got his done...maybe everyone that condoned and did this are dead now?
I see the point from back then...he's lived another 30 productive years, working that body that would have crated on him if he had kept gaining fifty more pounds a year...ha ha ha...30 years x 50 #'s...blue whale impossible--see warned you we have a lot of laughs about fatness. Grin and bear it--oh my eyes! LMBO
Seriously...without help, without surgery...I would not have my Hero here...funny side effects of the operation aside, he would have died long ago.
Now, he nearly DID die on me...about 20 years back, working physically hard on the end of a shovel...he managed to loop what was his stomach on itself, sealed it shut and perforations started to pollute his insides--filled up with no exit. Felt off and we went to the local hospital...he began to go down and to swell up (nobody could tell what was up...poking prodding, exrays...). Found ourselves leer jetted out and near lost him. Two days in transition...finally a surgeon decided to operate and he blew up on the table...mopped up a washtub of fluids--stuff going in...nothing getting past the twist to the proper exit. They stitched him back together and put a few more inches back into his digestive tract which resulted in a bit more of him now to love and love him dearly I do.
I laughed and laughed the last physical he had...the doctor was there and started up to tell him he should lose some weight and I jumped on the doctor immediately and told him what weight? He use to be HUGE and now he is just a bit chubby chunkins!
My husband is a shadow, half the man he once was for sure and let me tell you if you wanna talk about being big...you have no idea unless you are that person...what being big and being LESS big means and the costs a human endures to achieve that...for their health mind you. Never ever consider it for cosmetic reasons...too hefty of a price to be paid to "look better." HA! Besides, lots of skinny ANGRY persons out here...I would rather be fat and jolly, joyous and active in life. Bring on the rolly polly, happy jolly ol' gents and lasses. VBG
So you are never completely whole and carefree...have to watch what I let him eat...he gets gas and you better grin and bear it, he could have his stomach twist up again...so no time on the end of a shovel for him...kinda old for that grunt work anyhoo. He is a big man...and he's been to heck and back and still has most his marbles to play with. I love him and I get to continue to love the evil man for more years to come. He's paid the ultimate price I figure to acquire a much more healthy body. Years of life he would never have enjoyed.
One thing the both of us did coupla months back is kicked the soda pop habit. Yeh...cola fired engines use to rein supreme here...ha ha ha! Need to be hydrated but wanted to find something that did not do us more harm than good and was economical to boot. We went to cans of frozen fruit juice you add 3 cans of water to (our well water here is fabulous so now we drink lots of our own water which I think is awesome!). Fruit juices just not OJ because it makes us feel a bit ill, but hilarious things like peach, berry, mango...oh how fruity! I find now we don't consume as much product BUT feel hydrated and much better all round. All that pop...with warm weather on the way...it was really scaring me and as we get older, I believe our tolerances are lessened to the abuse we dish out to our bods...so even people not big would do well to reconsider how much pop is in our diets. It was not as difficult to drop as I expected...don't want to come off as righteous preachy 'cause I can be determined to stay real bad & love it too...jest saying!
For any big person, do what you need to do and I send you good hopes and thoughts of strength to get through it. Basically, anyone considering weight loss surgery is going to be challenged both physically and mentally and it is ROUGH. It is only YOU against the odds and it is YOU who are going to do the battle of bearing your very soul and substance to win the war against being big. Win it to live a good long life. Win it to reward yourself for getting this far...I know all the big persons deserve to be more healthful. The cards you are dealt that make you morbidly obese are not fair and as they like to say, what don't outright kill you, makes you stronger. So you hafta embrace change...lots of them to discover and manage.
I am proud of my man...proud of the war he won against being not just big but HUGE. Proud of him for the choices he made and the trial by fire he came thru so he could live more years on this Earth. It is tough but if you can manage it, so worth it to be more healthful and enjoying living onwards.
Peace and blessings for whatever you decide.
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
Yay!!!! We finally caught something in one of the raccoon traps!!!!!!
Unfortunately, it was Violet, our Queen Easter Egger. She made herself at home while she awaited rescue ... ate a little road kill and laid a nice green egg.
