Another big event:
Getting the first lap-band fill

For days I worried about the chances of not making it through my bariatric weight-loss surgery because of my size. Tipping the scales at 509 pounds, I was already a heart attack waiting to happen.

I breezed through the surgery without a problem.

The weight was steadily declining, my face started thinning and my feet no longer hurt at the end of the day.

Now I was ready for the biggest event of my post-surgery life — getting a Lap-Band adjustment.

An adjustment tightens the Lap-Band grip on the top of the stomach, further limiting the amount of food I could eat before feeling satisfied. The wait for the first adjustment is at least six weeks. The delay is to allow internal swelling from the surgery to dissipate.

I talked about this event for days. Even my wife Marissa got tired of me talking about it.

Before that day arrived, I had to get past the scariest part of this whole journey.

Four weeks after receiving my Lap-Band, I was happy and losing weight at a pace that even surprised Dr. Curtis Mosier.

Late in my fourth week of post-op, however, I thought the world was coming to an end. After bragging about having the perfect surgery, I woke up one morning to the unimaginable.

As I was getting out of bed one morning, my shorts and shirt were soaked. I brought my hands up and they were covered in blood.

I was bleeding profusely from one of my five incisions.

As I held a towel to my stomach to slow the bleeding, I called my doctor. He was scheduled for surgeries all day and not immediately available. It seemed like an eternity.

Finally he returned my call. He told me to meet him at the emergency room as soon as I could get there.

Then, oddly, he told me not to panic.

“This could be a good thing,” he said.

What?

He saw me between surgeries. And he was right, the news was better than worse. The bleeding was simply a blood vessel that had a break just below the incision.

The doctor sent me home with two prescriptions to help with the healing process. If it did not heal in two weeks – or I lost more than eight pounds – I would not be able to get my first Lap-Band adjustment (also known as a “fill”).

The next two weeks were a smooth ride. The incision healed and I was on schedule for my first fill.

The best news of the day came when I jumped on the scale before I left the hospital. I was down to 454 pounds – that marked a loss of 55 pounds in eight weeks.

Reaching that milestone ahead of schedule made me the happiest fat guy around. Nothing bothered me the next 14 days. I had already lost the weight equivalent to the size of two car tires or a six-year-old boy.

The middle-aged couple in the hospital lobby that stared as I walked by didn’t faze me at all. Two boys at the football game later that week, well, made a gesture. I refused to let that get under my skin.

Besides, whenever I get those looks because of my size, I just remind myself that I can do something about my weight but those folks have to go on living a shallow life.

Before I returned for my first fill, the doctor said for me to start eating hamburger meat. You don’t have to tell a fat guy twice that he can eat meat.

For four weeks I had been eating three ounces of pureed meat and shredded chicken along with my jar of Gerber fruit and vegetables. Now I was about to get a treat — five tablespoons of ground meat. Yum.

I was ready to change my diet because I had very little restriction in my Lap-Band and I had lost more weight in the first two months than most banders. I still had to eat dime-sized bites and I could only handle 4-6 ounces of food.

Eating too much or not chewing well enough gave me severe chest pains. That happened twice and dialing 9-1-1 crossed my mind on both occasions.

My adjusted diet went off without a hitch. In fact, photographer Joe Duty took me to Chili’s for lunch to celebrate. I had a third of a grilled chicken breast and four pieces of broccoli. I was stuffed like a Thanksgiving Day bird.

Though my appetite was returning, I stuck to my 4 ounces at meal time. If I got hungry, I drank more water or had some sugar-free Jell-O. I had gone too far already to fail now.

Besides, with more than five dozen letters from people I don’t even know encouraging me on a weekly basis, I had more than enough support to win this battle.

My return visit to the hospital arrived and I was a bit nervous. There were two reasons that would prevent my first fill — my incision hadn’t healed to his liking or I had lost too much weight.

I got some good and bad news right from the start. I weighed in as soon as I got to the hospital and the scale read 454 — I had not lost any weight since I last saw him. I was glad to be halfway to getting that adjustment. I was discouraged because I had been starving myself while living with a Lap-Band and didn’t have anything to show for it.

Minutes later I saw the doctor and everything met his expectations. I was getting my fill.

The first adjustment for a guy my size is usually done at the hospital so they can use x-rays to find the port. With all the fat tissue around my stomach, the port is several inches deep. The x-ray allows Mosier to guide the long needle into the port. It also allows him to pinpoint the exact location so future fills can be done in his office.

The balloon inside the ring of the Lap-Band expands with saline. This allows the band to tighten around the top of the stomach, facilitating weight loss. If the band is too loose, I would not be satisfied with small amounts of food. If the band is too tight, I would be unable to eat solid foods – and be forced to live on liquids.

The size of the opening between the two portions of my stomach controls the rate of food passing from the upper to lower part of the stomach. This makes the body feel full on just four ounces of food.

Being able to adjust the band is the unique feature of the system and is a normal part of the follow-up.

Dr. Mosier said for a successful outcome with the Lap-Band, I had to commit to follow up every month for the first year.

While lying on my back for the fill, Mosier injected a six-inch needle just below the incision that had been bleeding. He pushed the needle into the port. With the needle inserted, I sat up and drank water as he injected the saline. I continued to guzzle water as the Lap-Band tightened.

My first fill was 2.75 milliliters. Mosier went as high as three before the water started to accumulate above the Lap-Band. (There are three size Lap-Band sizes — 9.75, 10.0 and 12.0. Based on the anatomy, nearly 80 percent of men have the largest device and it holds a maximum a 10 milliliters, while the other two hold up to four.)

The coolest part of the whole experience was watching all of this on the x-ray screen — the band, the port and the needle.

Some patients have to return to a liquid diet after a fill. I was lucky and was able to stick with my shredded meat and Gerber.

I successfully completed another milestone in my goal to lose 250 pounds in 24 months. I can call myself a loser and smile about it because I have lost 55 pounds in eight weeks. Not too shabby.

But the toughest part was still to come. I had to begin attending support group meetings with other “losers” so that I could keep the strength to maintain my new lifestyle.

I needed the support to stay strong. Those who have felt as if they didn’t belong in this world know exactly how that feels.

There are always reminders of how obese people are not socially accepted no matter how much we lose. When I order my four ounces of chicken and broccoli, it never fails that I am asked, “Is that all?”

Why is that? It’s just as ridiculous as the assumption that fat people always smell bad. I have sat in some lonesome corners before.

Reflecting on some of those difficult times has helped me get through the last few weeks. And it will also give me that extra push as I look ahead to the next four weeks — including surviving Thanksgiving.