This is the first in a series of I-have-no-idea-how-many parts about a gastric bypass operation that I underwent in 2006. I didn't write that much about it at the time and I'm not sure why because it is, I'd like to think, a pretty interesting story. I will now but I want to make one thing clear from the start: I am not recommending anyone rush out and have this operation…or any operation. At most, I might be recommending that if it seems like something that might be right for you, you seek out a qualified doctor and discuss this and other options. There are more options these days and the procedure, as performed now, is surely quite different from what I experienced in 2006. Just so we're clear on this.
Now then: I didn't have a weight problem until sometime in my late twenties, early thirties. It crept up on me so slowly that I didn't see it happening and I don't think those around me did either…not at first. Eventually, though my eating habits and physical activity did not change, I did. I got larger and larger.
I do not know just when I reached my peak weight but this photo, taken at a 2002 Christmas party, was probably around the heaviest I was. The other folks in the photo are Buddy Hackett, Leonard Maltin and Chuck McCann. I would have never thought I'd be the fattest person in a photo with Buddy Hackett…
Thanks to a number of factors, the gastric bypass being but one, I am now at my lowest weight this century. Here is a recent photo of me with my friend Gabriella. She took the picture and cropped off the top of my head where, if it were uncropped, you'd see that I have very little of the hair I had in the above photo. But there's a lot less of the rest of me, too…
But these stories are about the gastric bypass and the path that led me to mine began with a very fine doctor I had at the time — a man who was as much my friend as he was my physician. He prescribed a few weight-control drugs but they either had no effect on me or not-good ones. For reasons that wouldn't interest you, I'm going to change a few names in these tales and I'm calling this doctor of mine Dr. Preston.
Dr. Preston did not scold me or shame me or make me feel like I had done something horribly wrong to let my weight get so outta my control. He simply reminded me that it was a matter that had to be addressed — preferably sooner, not later — and that the later it got, the harder it would be to handle. At the time, I was experiencing no medical problems from being overweight. I was just Too Damned Big.
The problems I did have were the problems of living in a world that was not designed to accommodate someone of my girth. I felt large and clumsy and like I didn't fit onto the planet I was trying to inhabit. No matter where I was, if I was around other people, I felt like I was in the way. I had problems getting in and out of chairs and when seated in something that might break, I had a constant fear that it would break — because once or twice, it did. On airplanes, I had to ask for the Seat Belt Extender and even with it on and even when occasionally being flown First Class, I still felt uncomfy and wedged into my seat.
One day, Dr. Preston said something that really registered with me. He said, "Your problem, Mark, is that you're not paying a high enough price for being so overweight. You would do something about it now if you were experiencing the medical problems it will create for you in the future."
He let that sink in for a minute and then he added, "And in the future, it will be a lot harder to fix."
And as that was sinking in — deep — he began telling me about Gastric Bypass Surgery, which at the time was relatively new. A lot of folks didn't even know its name or what it was. They referred to it as "That thing Al Roker did to lose all that weight!" Mr. Roker, a fixture still of The Today Show, had indeed been transformed by it and appeared, before and after, on many a magazine cover. Those covers were excellent recruiting posters for the procedure.
But like I said, it was new. It was also scary. There were statistics that said that X out of Y people who underwent the procedure experienced serious problems from it, up to and including death. "X" and "Y" varied but none of the specific ratios I heard or read sounded like great odds. Doc Preston did not shove me towards this option…gently nudged, maybe, but I did not feel shoved. He said, speaking as much as my friend as my doctor, that if and when I was ready to seriously discuss it, he would clear the time for that discussion.
That time would come and it came as a result of a party I attended. At the party were two of the three other people (not counting the largest guy, me) in the top photo above — Leonard Maltin and Chuck McCann. I shall tell you about this party in the next installment of this, a series that will probably run longer than you want it to.
