19 march 2008 apple store regent street london uk
I had ballooned to over 200 pounds by late summer 2007. Things got bad for me.
I had been on blood pressure medication for ten years at that point. My snoring had become so bad that my wife asked me to sleep in the spare bedroom. Once I did, I would wake up in the middle of the night gagging, choking. That was frightening. What if I didn’t wake up from that?
In September 2007 our son Dave was going to study in London for a year. Herself was already over there on a business trip and was going to meet him there and help him get settled and all. So it was just us guys for a week. The evening before he was to go, we had beef short ribs. After dinner, we were sitting around watching TV and I felt like someone had cinched a rope around the bottom of my ribcage. It was not at all your classic heart attack symptom, but there it was. It concerned me though I was sure it was not a heart attack. I retired to another room and took my blood pressure: 160/90. Kind of high. But this was not the normal time for me to measure it. I would wait until morning to get an accurate read.
I got up at 6:00 and checked my blood pressure again after I took my medication. It was alarming! 205/110. OK. Calm down. That could just be an outlier. Take it three times and get an average. It was no outlier. It was the highest, but the average was 198/100. I called my doctor at 6:30. He called me right back. I told him that I simply could not be hospitalized until after Dave’s plane left at 4:00 PM. He had me take another Diovan and check again in an hour, then call him back.
That did it. I was down to 130/75. Not great, but manageable. After that we doubled my medication. I promised myself that I would get below 200 pounds by July 2008. I did nothing toward that end. I continued to eat too much and the wrong things. I still didn’t exercise.
By January 2008, I was sure I would be dead by 2009. Heart attack, sleep apnea, stroke, whatever. Still, I didn’t get serious about my health.
In February I got a bad cold. It spawned an ear infection for which I was given antibiotics. That was followed by a bout of chronic diarrhea. The last week of February, all of March and the first week of April were hell. I wondered if my excessive weight was a cause. In the middle of all that, the boys and I went to London for Easter to visit Dave. I stayed close to the bathroom on the plane, you can be sure.
When I got home I had another cold and an infected tooth! The doctor found a bacterium in my colon causing the diarrhea. Two new antibiotics. I was a mess and I was tired of it.
On Sunday 13 April 2008, I was the reader at Mass. Our pastor, Father Gerry, took time during the announcements to ask the parish for sponsors for himself for a 5K fun walk to help raise money for the school. From the altar, he challenged me to join him. “After all,” he pointed out, “we both have monsignor tummies.” He folded his hands on top of his stomach. So did I. It was a big joke.
The following Saturday, 19 April 2008, Herself had had enough.
Enough of my snoring.
Enough of me being sick.
Enough of me joking about being fat.
Enough of being embarrassed by the way I looked.
She took action.
