This is the final part of my flashback to 2006 when I underwent Gastric Bypass Surgery. Before you dive into what follows, make sure you've read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7. And if you've stuck with me this long, thanks for the sticking.
So I began losing weight at a brisk clip — brisker than I'd imagined possible. Carolyn would look at me in bed and ask, "Where's Mark? What have you done with Mark?"
For at least ten days after the surgery — maybe a little longer — I had absolutely no appetite. None. Couldn't have downed a Hershey's Kiss if you'd demanded at gunpoint that I do so. I didn't feel the least bit hungry, not even when folks around me were wolfing down chow that I once loved. It wasn't so much that I was repulsed by food as that I just felt utterly indifferent to the concept of eating. Eventually, I did some nibbling, then some snacking…then finally, some actual, smaller-than-before meals.
I did, of course, hop on a bathroom scale at least once a day and notate how much less of me there was. I can no longer find the little chart I kept but I recall it worked out to 65 pounds in the first 65 days and almost 75 in the first 75. The losses slowed but when I attended Comic-Con that year, I was a good fifty pounds under my weight on Gastric Bypass Day. A lot of people commented on how much slimmer and healthier I looked. A number of folks didn't seem to notice or care.
A few months after Comic-Con, Carolyn and I attended a play and we found ourselves seated next to an actress I knew well but hadn't seen in a year or two. By this point, I was almost hundred pounds below what I'd weighed the last time she saw me and we both waited for her to say something — anything! — that indicated she'd noticed but there was nothing. Not a word. Before the play started, we talked for a good twenty minutes and she didn't seem aware than I had lost almost as much as she probably weighed.
At Intermission, we all visited our respective rest rooms and when the actress returned to her seat next to me, she was over-the-top in telling me how great I looked, how wonderful it was that I'd dropped so much tummy, etc., all preceded by a "I was so happy to see you, I forgot to mention…" It sounded clumsy and later, Carolyn confessed to me, "I couldn't stand her not noticing it any longer so I pointed it out to her when we were in the Ladies Room."
Getting back to that Comic-Con — actually, getting back to a time before the surgery — my splendid Dr. Preston had told me something that he felt I should know. "Mark," he said, "you're going to lose at least a hundred pounds in the coming months. There will be a major change in your appearance and while many people you know will cheer and congratulate you, you need to be prepared for something. At least one person in your life — and it may be more than one or two — will hate you for it."
At some length — I can't re-create the whole speech here — he went on about how all people who have a wide circle of friends and acquaintances have within that circle, at least a few people who mask their own resentments and jealousy in order to "get along." But sometimes when someone scores a big success or improves themselves the way I was (hopefully) about to improve me, the resentments and jealousies come bursting out.
I had never known Doc Preston to be wrong but I was still surprised by how right he was. A couple of folks said pretty bitchy things, the worst coming from a writer I knew. He stopped me, made mention of how many pounds I lost but said I'd pay the ultimate price for it. Having read a few articles somewhere and thus becoming an expert, he said the surgery was a dangerous fad and I'd certainly die within a few years. He could not conceal a suggestion in his smirk that it would serve me right for whatever I'd done he didn't like. I think it was getting more work than he was getting just then.
The punchline to this story is, of course, that I am still here and this guy died in 2019.
One odd thing which happened to me — and doctors I've discussed this with have been at a loss to explain it — was that my sweet tooth went away. I'd already given up Coca-Cola and other soft drinks, and I never liked coffee or tea. I tried fruit juices but increasingly, I found them too sweet. For a while, I tried watering down orange juice but it got to the point where I decided to drop the O.J. and just drink only water. To this day, that's about all I drink.
Then around a year after the surgery, I was in Downtown Las Vegas and in need of lunch. This is 2007, remember. Buffets were no longer cost-effective for me — I couldn't eat enough to justify the price of the upscale ones but I liked making a selection of food before my eyes. When you have as many food allergies as I do, it's great to inspect something before you commit to its consumption. The Plaza Hotel was offering what they called their 7-7-7 Buffet for $7.77 and that seemed downscale enough for me. I went in, paid and started with a not-huge plate of baked chicken, rice and carrots. I also ended with that one plate.
The lady who took away the dirty dishes took mine and said, "Time for seconds!" I thought for a second, realized I was full and told her, "No, I don't think I'll be having seconds. Or thirds or fourths or even tenths." She looked at me strangely and said, "I've been bussing dishes in buffets for twenty years and I've never seen anyone not go back for at least a second plate. I've seen people do seven or eight but never one."
I said, "There's a first time for everything" and she said, "Well, then head over to the dessert table and help yourself there!"
I walked over to a spread that included several different kinds of cake slices, several different cuts of pie, dishes of chocolate pudding, tapioca pudding, bread pudding, butterscotch pudding, eclairs, custards, flan, cannoli, tiramisù, donuts, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, about six flavors of cupcakes and a whole area where you could make your own sundae with about twenty toppings and a machine that output soft-serv ice cream in vanilla, chocolate or both in a swirl. I stared at it for a moment and the dish-removal lady walked by saying, "Don't you want to eat just everything there?"
And I replied, amazing myself as much as it amazed her, "No."
Then and there, I realized I'd been eating such things lately not out of cravings but out of habit. Nothing within me cared about them. This was in 2007 and I haven't eaten anything like that since then with the following exception. Every week or so, I down one of these teensy cups…
But that's it and since I used to eat a lot of Orange Jell-O when I was kid, I think I'm eating them now for the nostalgia, not the sugar. As I said, no doctor has ever been able to explain how G.B.S. took away by taste for sweet treats but I don't miss them…or other things (like sodas) I thought I couldn't give up.
My weight has gone up and down since then but it's down now and I'm going to do my darnedest to keep it down…and that's the end of my Gastric Bypass Story. But it's not the end of this article because I still need to tell you about Anna.
Anna was the lady I met in the hospital just before out respective surgical procedures. After we were each prepped for surgery, we were lying on adjoining gurneys for maybe twenty minutes talking — mainly about how she hoped to drop enough bulk quickly and find a second husband. Afterwards, we had adjoining rooms in the post-surgical wing and she was part of the little expeditions I led of very large (still) patients hiking around the floor our rooms were on. Most of us exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses but Anna was the only one with whom I had any communication after we both left the hospital.
It turned out, she left but had to go back a few times due to little post-surgical complications. I didn't but she did, the difference probably having something to do with her being older than I was but not as tall. She was simply not in as good shape when she had her G.B.S. than I was when I had mine. Yes, she lost weight and yes, she found a guy interested in marrying her. She wrote me that she looked wonderful and he was wonderful and life was wonderful and they were talking about adopting a wonderful child or two after they were wed…
…and that's what was in the last e-mail I ever received from her. She never replied to my replies and I'd like to think that was because she was too busy being with her new hubby and maybe that kid or two. There are other possibilities but I hope you'll join me in wanting to think that's why I never heard from her again.