James Bridge
Well, let's see. I guess I'll start off with- I've been large all my life. I'm not blaming anyone for that, be it simple genetics, love of food, or lack of exercise, or a combination of them all. Anyway, I've always been very happy who I was. I never let my weight bother me to the point of where I wouldn't go out, or be ashamed of whom I was. Yes, I'll admit that it would have been easier for many things being much smaller then I was, but all in all, I liked who I was and who I am now. I have an absolutely wonderful, loving wife who is the best mother to my beautiful 3yr old daughter any man could even hope to come by and from time to time, I get that I'm the best husband, which makes be blush.
So, on with the story. Approximately 7yrs ago while working at an auto store at the time I began to have strange, inward pains on my right side of my lower stomach. Being a guy, I shrugged it off as somethng I ate and went on with the day. Well, two days passed and the pain seemed to be getting worse and worse. I would just rub it once and a while and shrug it off again, thinking that it will eventually go away; well, it didn't. After about the third day however, all of a sudden the pain was gone, it was like a relief. I was like, finally, that was way to irritating, I may have had to go into the hospital I thought. Anyway, as I thought it was gone, it slowly returned and this time it was getting worse in the sense of pain. Just as side note, I have a remarkable pain threshold so you know. When the pain got to the point where I was like, ok, this is effecting my day to day living here- I find it hard to concentrate on anything else. So, I went into emergency, had a doctor check me out who said it's probably just a stomach flu or something and to go home and get some rest until it passes. I'm like, sure, fine. I do that for another few days, guess what..... didn't go away. At this point the pain was getting to the point where I actually was going owe, when I was walking around. For me, that's pretty huge. So, off I went to the doctor's again to see what he could do. After looking me over again, he's like, well, your white blood cell count is fine, no fever and everything else seems fine. The only thing I can suggest is that if you can't stand the pain anymore, we'll do an exploritory, which involves cutting an 8" cutt in your stomach so we can take a look around. I was fine, do what you gotta do, this pain is ridiculous. After opening me up, the find that my appedix had ruptured and was in me for approximately 1 week now with not so much as a fever or elevated white blood cell count. The doctor thought that was kindof remarkable, but he said it probably had to do with my bowels covering the appendix and keeping the poison in one area instead of allowing it to course through my system.
Now, that was a bit lengthly, so to sum it all up and give you it in a nutshell, here it is. My 8" cutt they needed to do got herniated 4 different times and I have had to have 4 corrective surgeries to attempt to correct these hernias with no luck. A specialist said it is due to my weight and the excess fat and weght pulling at the area which isn't allowing it to heal properly. And, because of the hernias, exercise and whatnot are very limited for me as the discomfort isn't pleasant. So after talking to a few people that have had the surgery done, I decided this was my best option to help me lose the weight, keep it off, get my hernia fixed and not have to worry about it anymore.
