I’ve been making the decision slowly, over the past five-ish years, to make a drastic change in my life. I’ve known since high school that my lifestyle isn’t healthy, and that I’ve been eating-and-not-exercising myself to an early demise.

Circumstances have aligned this year and the timing was right to make the biggest decision of my life thus far – getting lap band surgery. Something that is intended to alter my body forever, and something I don’t take lightly. I started the process over a month ago, when I made an appointment to meet with a surgeon. At that point I had made the decision that I was going to go through with it, that after years of casual research and consideration I was ready.

I didn’t realize how right the timing was until yesterday though. I got a call from my general practitioner’s office to come in and “discuss the lab results” from some routine blood work administered a few days prior, in preparation for the surgery. Uh-oh. That’s never happened to me before, but I know from the movies that it’s generally not good. Normal results don’t need to be discussed on the phone. So, after a full day’s worth of planned appointments at the hospital I’ll be having the surgery at and with the bariatric nutritionist, I fit in one more last minute appointment with the doctor. I’m actually impressed with the fairly normal level of worry I had for those few hours, which for me is not normal. I think that’s mostly because I had already figured out what the news was before hearing it from the doctor.

Diabetes. Type 2, of course.

I really wasn’t, nor should I have been, surprised. I’ve been well aware that my family history and my lifestyle were basically guaranteeing this eventual diagnosis. But it was still a blow. I was hoping the lap band surgery would come before ever getting what the doctors call “comorbid” diseases – secondary diseases as a result of a primary disease, which in my case is obesity. I wanted to prevent that.

But realistically, I’m as good as preventing it. It’s an early case, probably only started in the last six months, and my doctor says I will likely be diabetes free after losing some weight from the surgery. What this really does is underscore that I’m making the right decision for me, at the right time. So it doesn’t change my plan at all, aside from an extra pill I have to take every day, and I’m still really pumped about the next steps. Two weeks from today I’ll be going under the knife, and my hope is that my new life will really be a new life. I’m looking forward to doing all the things I haven’t been able to do since I was a kid, or ever. More on those later.

For now, here is my “before” picture.

First Post – New Start