Another broken promise.Sorry I have excuses

Ok look. I know I have been promising some new content and updates and yes an end to the political propaganda but I am honesty held up by two major events that are on the cusp of occurring right now and so until they have come to pass then I'm going to wait before putting anything outspoken up here.

A few things I do want to address and some questions I have been holding up on answering.

1- This website and onemansjourney or fatjewguy.com as you now know it is moving away from being just a gastric bypass political obesity issues whatever blog and is going to morph into being a more standard personal blog. I'll be speaking about many of the same issues but only from a personal basis. I've been posting content on a few different blogs that have been outdated, trying to consolidate where I was going to devote my energy (what spare I have) and each of my previous pages have each had their own targets. Humor, professional or other issues. So I have chosen this blog to morph into my personal one. It will still contain personal issues as it relates to gastric bypass and whatnot but only as it related to me personally. More on that and a new blog/site yet to come that seeks to have a dialog with people from all ends of the spectrum that speaks directly about issues of obesity, weight loss surgery and sociological weight issues.

If you are interesting in being a contributor for this new blog to come please contact me.

2- I have been hit by a number of questions about my admittedly heavy hand when it comes to comment moderation or to put it directly. I more often then not choose not to publish comments but rather answer them directly and actually prefer people to email me rather then allow discussions to take place in the comments area. I still leave it open for the people who haven't been able to find ways to email me or just are not interested in doing so but 99.9% of the time that comment will go unpublished and will be answered by me directly. The reason for this is rather simple. On a great many blogs, I feel that the dialogs or debates that occasionally occur around posts that are particularity sensitive take away from the actual post that leads the discussion. Hence, the inevitable flame wars in my mind detract from the whole thing. Normally if I get a particularly good comment or email I'll make that its own post. So there is the answer to that question.


3- The thing with Junk food Science- That one generated a lot of people asking the same thing. Yes, it was I.. How many Mark Blei's that write about this stuff can there possibly be? I did not link or comment on that article that Sandy posted until I drafted a reply to someone in the post today. That article the one that had the email with my name on it was not discussed here prior to today because I had nothing to add to what she said past the correspondence we exchanged and she publish with my permission . I still don’t have anything to add to it other then in the post below which was actually drafted more then a month ago . I did not nor do I think I have to validate what she wrote on her site by commenting any further then I have on what was in her article on her website even if it did have my name on it. I was not going out of my way to not mention her post before today. I just thought it stood by itself without any additional commentary required by me

Let me be clear it was I and was published with my permission. The materials stands by itself I have nothing else to add or say about it. . It was what it was; she didn’t change a word of mine when she published our correspondence so that being the case what else were any of you waiting for? It seems like some people think I needed to re address what was already addressed on her site. What am I missing?

4- A number of people and this may relate to something in the news I have missed have asked me if I count calories. So the answer is yes and no. I struggle in between being both ok with the way I am and not living in constant fear of having a weight gain. But I also do live in constant fear of a weight gain and would be lying to you if I said I did not. Mostly the last three years or so I spend my time worrying about the fact that I am not eating enough am underweight or malnourished and for the most part that is where my energy goes on foodstuff. . But there have been times or weeks when I have had my weight jump past my personal comfort level. What my personal comfort level is has nothing at all to do with what would theoretically be a healthy weight for me it's a personal thing that may in fact have some issues rooted in a small case of body dimorphia. The honest to god truth is I haven’t gone through all this bullshit to be overweight again…not even technically. The BMI index says that at 6 feet (I’m 5, 11 and three quarters. So close enough.) my normal BMI should be between 18.5 and 24.9 to remain in the normal range. This means at a weigh of 184 lbs I fall into being technically overweight.

I hang out at between 171 and 179 lbs. When I have been either very good about nutrition or very bad about junk food I have had times where I have had a jump up into the 180’s in fact I’m there at the moment (due to some great soup that was made specifically to help me put on a few pounds as well as a bad run with Reese’s pieces candy .. I know it sounds like a joke but it is not) Anyway that run put me into the 180’s. Before anyone starts I know that’s still regarded as small for a six foot guy. My fiancée would prefer me at 200 Lbs to be truthful and I also know that a great deal of that weight could be extra skin and I know that most people, I included think that BMI chart was developed somewhere in Auschwitz .

I don’t fucking care. I’m not gong to be in any way technically overweight for any reason after this fucking hell I’ve put myself through and so if get near the 180 lbs mark I start counting calories because there’s a good way to take off pounds which is a slow decline that keeps me eating and just consuming less then I burn. Being an office guy I don’t get out much and living in a cold weather country well, let just say that winters are long .so the good way takes a long time and is hard and requires me to count calories to make sure I have enough but not to much . The easy way is just to stop eating. This happens of it’s own accord enough that I don’t encourage that in my body, when I lose weight that way I’m actually losing muscle mass so it’s a balance and when I need to go back from 180 to the 170’s I’ll count calories and try and slowly decline so I don’t lose mass. That is the only reason I will ever count calories though and I suggest that you don’t either count calories or use the BMI chart but rather be healthy. What I say and what I do obviously are two differing things. I allow myself to be human.

5- Last thing. Many people who write me ask me for exact things from my surgical record. How much distal or how much proximal or how large exactly is my pouch, how much intestine and cut from the beginning of the tract or the end of it what about this or that nerve or method. I have no clue at all nor am I interested in knowing what the measurements are and what is where is not going to change anything at this point and would only be important if I was seeking a revision which scares me just less then signing on for experimental combined brain, heart and testicular surgery. I’m sure someone has it somewhere that it can be gotten from, but it is of no real use for me to look at what has been done because it’s not going to change. I use my weight and blood work combined with nutrition in order to determine what changes I need to make and then try and change them and I then either succeed or don’t.

I know many people put stock into how much of what was cut off and where but frankly it gives me the creeping willies to know exactly how much of me is laying in a dump in New Jersey somewhere so I don’t ask those questions nor do I have a copy of my surgical records on hand that I can quote you from. Frankly, I do not even know where one of my surgeons is . He decided I’m told that he no longer wanted to be a Doctor according to a secretary at my nurse practitioners old office though he still appears on the practice website. (Maybe they guy just never wants to see me again. The feeling is mutual), the other one who was a nice guy, and who I wished were my primary moved his practice way far away from where I was in NY when I had my surgery done to Long Island.

I’ll come back and say more as soon as I can. I have a move coming end of this month and as I said at the start am waiting on some official things to occur before I start talking more definitely about future plans.

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Someone on a web group linked the article that featured me on Junkfood Science

And when linking it . She described me as an unhappy customer. I kinda took umbrage at that and said that I was not so much an unhappy customer as I was an aggravated customer she called me on it, she's another blogger who's views on WLS I respect and she said that I certainly sounded unhappy. And if I wasn't what do would I use as the point of difference between being whatever I am and an unhappy customer.

This was my answer ( edited)

So to address your post down there. You are right. I'm not happy. What you asked is if I'm an unhappy customer. That's a different thing.

I'm unhappy that I had to do it at all, miserable in fact. I'm at times unhappy with the life I have with my bypass BUT, to me this was a necessary operation. I really think that if I had not done it , I would not be alive today or I would be worse then I am today certainly.

The main point of separation I use between an unhappy customer and I is that I waited past 4 times when they wanted to start the process of getting me my first date on the table. A relative took my first date, I said no the next two times they offered me a date. On the year of my blog I decided to restart the process because I had fought all I could and had reached the conclusion that I would not have a good quality of life or almost any without it.

I was in the Chemo stage, the stage where your at last resort and with the understanding that the cure might well be worse then the illness but have to try something because whatever I was doing wasn't working and things were getting worse. Take some risks because the alternative is looking very badly. To me thats the essence of the whole thing. I was well aware that their could be significant drawbacks before I went on the table. I even had started to read some of the gone wrong groups.

At the same time ,my surgical experience sucked, my post gastric bypass life until well after the first year was very scary, really horrifying. So I think me portraying myself on the blog as an unhappy customer is not as true as it is that I'm more unsure now three years later as to what my ,medical outlook is going to be then I was before.

That and I still have the fear of being fat which most people don't have if they have a hard post bypass experience. If that's being an unhappy customer in your book then in your book I'll take that designation

What scares me or more correctly pisses me off is that the industry is trying to make this into something that it is not.I have said this and said this and it bears repeating again, because each time I say it in a new way someone writes me a letter saying this time they got it.

I have problems with this being looked at as an elective surgery. Long-term I would like to see laws stating when you can and when you cannot suggest or advocate WLS surgery to a patient. The way it was portrayed and in fact the way that 60 minutes portrayed it is that, it's going to solve all your problems, you'll be thin, your sex life will be better , your life will be everything that you wanted it to be, but it's not. See the industry says that they try and make people understand that having this surgery is not going to solve all their problems and I would say if they aren't saying it they are more then certainly suggesting it or intimating that.

Lets hypothesize that in my medical records there was an indication that I had a history of depression and anxiety and was being treated for such, and might have even been hospitalized for it at some point in the past. Could be that, addiction could be in there as well, we are making up something -but I know enough people who's records had them in there that my point is still valid.I other words without giving out names I know post Gastric Bypass patients who have been at some recent point within the last 12 - 24 months been hospitalized for mental illness , depression, addiction etc. They seem to have more trouble then almost any other group we have discussed.

In my mind there should be a red light list that says if your gastric bypass candidate has been treated for depression, anxiety, addiction ..Whatever within the last 3 years then you as a surgeon must explicitly say "Hey, I see you have a history of having some depression or whatever. I want to explicitly tell you that even if your thin we have found that long-term if you aren't happy with your life fat, your most likely not going to become magically happy thin. It might take awhile for the honeymoon phase to go past but if you and your wife don't get along now, Your going to have the same issues thin,. Maybe more."

And just like when someone wants to convert to Judaism traditionally, you have to turn the person away three times before you even start the process. The doctor should say that these indications, depression, whatever, make you ineligible for this surgery unless you go through this intensive outpatient program that requires you to be there three or four times a week for at least six months and if you do that and if the feedback I get from those counselors then says that your in the right place to do this, and If I and you both still think this is the best option for you, then I will reconsider you for this surgery. But if you can't show me that you want this bad enough to take these steps to keep yourself mentally in check after the surgery by doing some upfront work, then I consider you too high a risk to do this surgery on you.

When I went in and for my one of my surgical consults( I went to a few before choosing). I was in a room with about 25 other women no older then 30 or so. As we waited for the thing to begin all the entire screen showed was a rotating picture screensaver with before and after pictures, rolling one after the other. Sad unhappy, unsmiling before pictures and happy, happy after pictures.

.How can you not say people are being screwed in their head. I counted 15 of those women who looked sad in their before pictures on that screen who were standing at the alter with a handsome man in their after pictures. Your not saying that that particular Doctor wasn't trying to intimate that losing weight via this surgery will find you a husband? I mean one , ok but fif-fucking-teen??

The discussion in the presentation was mainly for some reason about the after op diet, meaning the first six weeks, And then they said " after that you just eat whatever it is you like ,except for very fatty or sugary foods and in smaller plates ( but that won't matter you won't have any hunger) Oh and about one out of every 500 people die from this. (But Hey! one out of 500 die having heart surgery.) And some talk about dumping and whammo...Who wants to have their consultation with Dr. Perfect now?. Now that is not the Doc I picked but I assure you the consultation I went to was not that far off and in fact when I tried to go past the allotted, what? 15-20 minutes it got a bit hostile. Like how dare I have questions about stuff not covered.

So I'm not so much unhappy with my experience because independently of my surgeon and my process, I read everything and looked at everything and as they put me under I myself without any real help from medical personnel went out thinking, "You may just wake up worse and that may never go away" and as I thought." I'm ok with that".

I wonder how many people woke up thinking. "Ok, where's my handsome new husband? and were a bit put off by the fact that if they were like me they couldn't eat at all for….well months after the surgery.

And I had a bunch of people who had the surgery the same month as me in a different support forums call me and were all like" Dude, I can't eat" I'm at nine weeks and I'm not eating at al. Much less "on a normal diet just smaller portions", I can't keep mashed potatoes down. I feel like I'm going to pass out when I stand up.

Those people they , they were unhappy customers IMHO because their Doctors failed to give them a realistic expectation of what post surgery life was like and they failed to do their own research and what being thin really means in the face of having yourself cut open and modified extensively.

I say I'm not an Unhappy customer because I went to sleep on that table knowing what could happen, what pisses me off is it took me four years to get past all the bullshit until I felt that good with it and then still, until you experience something, you really don't know how it's going to effect you and someone should be pushing that in the pre meetings as well. .

So even though allot of it sucks I went in there at the time with as much information that wasn't bullshit as I could find. Now three years later, I find that most of what I was relying on then was pretty much bullshit but at the time I had done as much homework as I thought could be done and I had spoken to doctors who thought it was a smart idea and doctors who thought it was butchery and I listened to them all and made my decision.

And now that it's turned out to be harder then I would have liked and I'm more unsure of myself then I would have preferred to be, am I an unhappy customer compared with the multitude of women I know who found out that the husband who appeared out of thin air when they got thin vanished just as quickly when they went fucking crazy?

Or that they guy they were in love with before the surgery . The guy they were doing this for so they could be together longer and have a better life and better love. Many of those guys just couldn't handle the process or whatever. Compared to them, I'm doing really well, I knew that over 80% of people end up divorced if they are married when they have this operation. I could not predict if or how I would go nuts . But I was well, aware of the fact that I might.

I still think now that some part of the aftereffects of WLS will kill me, But as of now I'm still pretty sure that I would have been on this earth less time then I would have been had I not done this. As of now psychologically and in most cases physically I'm doing much better then before and there were big huge bumps in the road. HUGE!! And the fact that I am doing good psychologically and physically?

That could change tomorrow, it might, and I reserve the right to change my mind. That doesn't make the 60 minutes thing any less of a lie and it doesn't get in the way of what I wrote Sandy or what she puts in her blog. They might be different sides of the same thing or different shades of the same color but I'm pretty sure I'm saying now what I said there.

Mostly what I say totally sticks regardless of if your saying that I'm sounding like an unhappy customer, or if you accept my version of not being one. To me that's a qualification that I don't think I've really attained because I just haven't said those words yet. Those words are "I wish I had not done this and if I could go back in time and undo this I would in a heartbeat."

And until the time, I say that I have issues with the process and how it's explained but am not an unhappy customer, I think the process is wrong and needs fixing, I think that 60 minutes thing was a violation of journalistic integrity but I wouldn't exactly say I'm an unhappy customer. I prefer to think instead I'm an informed one who wishes at times that things were easier.

Best Wishes,
Mark