The Decision

As stated in the "About Us" section my wife and I have struggled with weight our entire lives. We both have shared embarassing weight stories with one another from our childhood and years past. Such as me being "pantsed" in elementary school because my top button on my pants kept snapping open or her embarassing "fat banana" incident in 4th grade. As I am sure you know the embarassming moments continued far past the age of 13 and far beyond the playground. From having to always choose tables in restaurants for fear of trying to slide into a booth and in the process bruising my liver from slamming it against the "too tight" table. (Aren't clothes supposed to be tight...not tables!) Or gathering Lane Bryant frequent shopper points like airline miles of a world traveler. As I am sure you realize, the stories can go on and on and will be shared in later blogs. But all stories lead us to the inevitable...decision. The decision for a better life for both of us and in turn our family.

After thinking of going the Lap-Band route for some time and then seeing the incredible transformation of a friend who is in the midst of the process the decision became easier...but not easy. When truly thinking of what changes we would have to make we realized that food had become our LIFE. The topics of conversation always revolved around our meals and food! While I was walking out the door I would ask what was for dinner or while she was eating dinner she was thinking of the "goodies' in the refridgerator. Or the excitement I felt when the co-workers would pop into my office and say, "You got lunch plans?" and I would know it would be shear moments before that delicious, 3.5 lb, 1000 calorie Chipotle burrito would be touching my lips. Wow...what were we doing to our selves?

Other deciding factors were the health of our parents. My wife's mother passed away a few years ago due to cancer. Definitely not weight related but her mom dealt with weight issues her life as well. My father passed away last year and while again, not a weight related illness; due to his obesity, he dealt with many complications. One such being sleep apnea that kept him in the hospital longer then expected and inevitably lead to his passing. We did not want to end up like this.

The final deciding factor was our son, Jaxon. He is currently 18 month's old and probably terrorizing the dogs or climbing on the dining room table right now. He could also be chattering any of the 100 "words" he knows such as "bia" (zebra), "bink! bink!" (pacifier), "peas" (please) or "bocki" (broccoli, his favorite food...yuck!). But Jaxon has been one of the biggest reasons why now is the time for my wife and I to take control. We are tired of only being able to chase after him in short sprints due to our hyperventilating, or bending over to pick him up and realizze there is a 50/50 chance we might not make it back to the upright position, or the worst coming home from a long day of work and being too "tired" to play so the time spent is in front of the TV. We want to be here while he grows up, when he graduates high school and when he walks down the aisle one day. We have wanted kids for so long...we don't want to waste the time now that we have this beautiful child on the fact we are so overweight and out of shape.

So, there it is...the decision to move forward with this life changing event. My wife goes to meet the surgeon on Wednesday in one of her final "pre-op" meetings and I start all my appointments tomorrow and finish up next week. We cannot "weight" to get this journey on the way and hope that someone finds this blog helpful or at least humerous while following our journey.

Jason & Jaimie