Anthony Bourdain thinks the country was better when fat kids could still get beaten up at school & that fat people are unamerican & more hate speech.

I like a good fat joke as much as anybody. Making fun of the lame, the dim-witted--surely there's a place for it in comedy"
Anthony Bourdain- Ruhlman.com 2007

Before you judge this post or before you decide it's just hard feelings or a vitirol make sure that you absolutly read the last paragraph before you click off.

I have to tell you honestly I've been disillusioned before but this one hit me a bit harder then most. It's probably been particularly upsetting because I have really both liked Bourdain, and been like him. I have also line cooked, we like many of the same people, the same music, we go to the same places and we both come from the same place.

I have bought every book he's written, I own every season of his show purchased through Itunes

I have to say for a guy who is a self-described recovering heroin addict and alcoholic and a smoker who also made a comment about seeing an emphysema doctor. I think you're a little fast to lay blame there eh big guy?

What gets me even more is that when he and Nugent filmed the segment together and this part ended up on the cutting room floor. In order for this thing to end up as a vodcast (video podcast), Bourdain had to have said to someone

“That part of the interview… when I dehumanized fat people...when I encouraged a day when we go back to making it OK to physically abuse overweight children, the part where I say people who are overweight are not good Americans. The part where I rather stupidly say that while I don’t support government oversight into the way people chose to eat and then yet in almost the same breath say that I admire the people who want to put the fat tax into law. I really want to go out of my way to make sure that message gets out there”. It's so important to me to dehumanize overweight people that I want to set aside time just to make sure that part got heard. "

I mean something like that had to have happened because I really do not think that his producers wanted that out or thought it would lead anywhere good. I think a lot of fat people watch food porn and his producers surely knew that. He says that he on this show he does have a great deal of creative control and apparently this is how he wanted to use that control...To say that.

I also know that it’s probably useless to point out that the fat tax actually is government oversight of peoples food. It’s called the Twinkie tax for a reason.

I find it particularly ironic that a guy who makes his living doing food porn and whose show is essentially high end and exotic gluttony is also the same guy who thinks he should have something to say to people who overeat.

Not to mention that he is also admittedly a recovering heroin addict, alcoholic and thief. Though he drinks enough still, that the recovering part is definitely in question A guy who talked about being afraid of losing his meds on a rafting show and who talked about how pissed off his emphysema doctor will be when he sees the episode where he’s smoking a hookah is for sure someone who should be lecturing the world on proper health and social conduct.

I know that you have a basis for superiority what with you giving up smoking for your new kid, Or not . I guess he quit until the day someone found pictures of him both drinking and smoking .

If fat people are un-American then why aren’t smokers unpatriotic as well? Don’t people with emphysema and people who are reliant on meds also drain the system?

I tell you what scares me, what scares me is not the fat people on the airplane it’s the drunks with emphysema who are passed out in the isle blocking egress because their lungs can’t handle getting up and running for the door and their also too fucked up to find it.

By the way, man what is with this fucking fear of egress thing you have? From the amount of time you talk about this, it's like you’re having recurrent nightmares about being trapped by fat people.

Look in this 2006 article in Salon "

If you're blocking egress from a burning building or taking up half my seat on a plane that is not a lifestyle choice. That is a menace to society."

Man that’s bordering on a neurosis. Also calling overweight people a Menace to Society always only makes me thing of this scene except with everyone over 400 lbs driving scooters and topless. How many fat people are you sitting next to on a day-to-day basis man? Enough to warrant that I guess.

So fat people are selfish and they are worthy of ridicule, abuse and financial penalties.

So says the guy who wrote books talking about how he shamelessly spent his time shooting dope into his veins at the cost of all the investments that the owners of the restaurants that he worked for had made in him.

And the cost of their failure? They paid twice by losing their businesses and by trusting him and the friends he hired with nepotism to put on their payroll and not to fuck them over.

What qualifies as Un-American and what does not here?

Yea talk, you're a fucking patriot.

They paid by feeding the habit in his arms ...and this guy is spouting and giving out lectures about what is good and bad habits and what is and is not an example of being a good American huh?

In "The nasty bits" he wrote that he knew that he people who were paying him we're going to fail and he rode them like a Viking death ship until it perished where he ran like a ship rat to his next victims. What's ethical about running people who trust you dry?

Bourdain says of his own drug use

“I only mention my junkie past in my books because I make a lot of bold, hyperbolic statements and so it's important to remind people who's talking. They need to know that I don't have an impeccable, or even respectable, background. “

Hey thanks for that Tony, I would have never guessed

And, hey speaking of misplaced trust include in that the woman he was married to for 30 years who had to put up with all his bullshit, who he just blew right off to marry a woman almost not old enough to even be his daughter. I really hope he is happy and that he won't find himself sitting next to someone who he doesn't know ten years from now.

30 years, his ex wife who lived with him and loved him when he was a junkie and when he couldn’t hold down a steady job, couldn’t afford to pay the rent and after all that time he finally makes a little money and she's out of there like a case of bad veal eh?

Lets look at some other pearls. Says no to stopping the production of Foie Gras but also says he is opposed to animal cruelty.

Says Vegans are" Rude , motivated by fear and antisocial" and “That it's an insult to impoverished people everywhere to refuse to eat meat when you travel and ignore their food choices when you're in visiting countries “ More that Veganism has no benefits and in fact can’t be good at all for the planet"

When it's pointed out to him that actually it would be better for the planet and the impoverished countries of people did not eat meat he then replies with

"What's so great about that? I'm a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us, when the blight of humanity is removed. That would be my academic argument to that."

And an academic you are at that sir.

My last point before summation. Here is Tony three years ago lean and trim

And here's a picture of Tony today

What is different? No, it couldn’t be that his face just looks like he put about 50 pounds of cream cheese up his ass, or perhaps that’s not it I'm being insensitive and it's actually the steroids he has to take for emphysema. Should we understand it butterface? If you get fat will you have the same opinion?

NowI made some comparisons that hit close to home. Let’s review.

I took a dump on him for smoking- I smoke, have been a smoker for 25 years. I certainly have no right to lay a judgment on someone for failing to quit. I've quit smoking hundreds of times, sometimes several times a day. What I have never done is publicly or privately told someone I had stopped and then restarted without copping to it If you telkl the press you quit for one reasons you should tell the press you failed. I mean the realisty of someone actually ever doing something like that is by my own admission not part of what would actually happen but it's my blog eh? What's more if I had been caught and I was a public figure I have certainly never had my production team request that bloggers who have pictures of such remove them from their pages

I laid into him about substance abuse- I think I've been pretty open about the fact that I there was a time in my life when I struggled with this and so really who am I to judge?

Taking meds- Hell everyone takes meds.

Having and irrational fear or a neurosis - I have those too. But I don't create more fear and every overweight person who saw what you said there is now just a little more fearful.

Taking jobs with companies that you knew would not make it. - Hey, when you have to put food on the table you do what you have to in order to eat. I have worked for startups that I knew were not going to pull through. I did my best, but I knew and I needed the money. I never lied I told my bosses how hard it would be to make a business work, but as long as they were game so was I even when I knew better then them the odds. What I did not do was suck them dry when it would hurt them or ruin them.

I said he has burned a woman- I'm ashamed to say it but I’ve hurt people, I haven’t always been as loyal as I should be. I have broken up with women for poor reasons and I’ve hurt the people who love me the most the worst. I have never traded anyone in for a newer model though and loyalty means allot to me.

And lastly, I accused him of gaining weight. If I did not have a predilection to gain weight then this blog would not be here. But on the other side I would regardless of my private prejudices never talk publicly about what I know is a failure to understand another group.

So what’s the difference? Why am I so pissed off that in a world of people who at the least misunderstand fat people and at worst and sadly more commonly actively hate them, that this guy who I really liked turned out to be one of those people.

I would like to think that the difference is that I know and admit to my weaknesses, failings and ignorance. And knowing how weak, how ignorant I can be …and how badly I can fail I do not ever go and make any sort of ignorant public statement condoning violence or mistreatment or second class status of any group and I especially make sure not to judge groups that I do not or can not for whatever reason understand. What it probably really is more then anything though is that I lied and admired this man and I'm really fucking disappointed.

People are overweight for as many different reasons as people have other weaknesses. The fact that they have a visible problem an opposed to someone who has an illness that is invisible like a mental disorder, should not make them anymore of less value or any more a target then anyone else. In an age where we accept people for having sexual addictions and even gorify them and when we are supposed to understand why wwsomeone being a substance abuser or a kleptomaniac is not a lifestyle choice but an illness. We as a society don't give obese people that same dignity or basic courtesy.

But they, we even though I'm think you can't erase 38 yewars of being treated like a second class citizen so I can say we deserve it. We deserve the same protection and the same open mind that you would give any man or woman who suffered any more understandable illness, mental or physical.

That’s where I think Mr. Bourdain was way the hell out of line, that’s why I think he owes his audience an apology and that’s why until he does apologize which sadly will be never . I'll never spend another dollar on his products or watch any Bourdain shows or read any books.

The real same he should be feeling if he cared at all is that after three best selling books and two wildly popular TV series hasn't he figured out yet that people listen to what he says?

And at the very least shouldn't he just come back with.. I should not advocate violence against anyone, I might hate fat people but I should may be not say that fat kids deserve to be picked on. For shame man ..really for shame

I expected Ted Nugent to be Ted Nugent…what I did not expect was for Anthony Bourdain to be Ted Nugent.

For those of you with no access to Youtube at work you can download a PDF of the transcript of this video here or you can watch a quicktime version or download the actual podcast from his site HERE * keep in mind that the podcasts get archived after a few months so hopefully the YouTube video will stay up . If it doesn't and you really need to see this to believe it then send me an email I have the orginal file .

Ron Howard is awesome.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

To the person leaving anonymous angry threatening messages

Whoever you are, it is obvious that you think you know me. While I have to say the things that you touch on are rather interesting it's not anything that any person interested in finding me couldn't locate by spending a few hours doing web searches.

You're tying to make me feel violated, you are failing, and it's more obvious that you want me to think that your judgment of me as some sort of malicious person matters.

First, you are a coward. I have an email address and I have a website that allows anyone to contact me directly. You have the balls to call me out on shit and yet at the same time you do not have the balls to actually use a real email address or actually out yourself. You say you’re going to write to this person or that person and you'll find me and post this or that and cost me my job etc. Take your best shot...go ahead and do it. You're a yellow pussy and I am not ashamed of anything I've done. And If I get really tired of you I'll grab your IP and find you and shut you down.

Not everything I've done in my life are things that I've been proud of. I have made mistakes that I wish I could fix and I have unintentionally hurt people. I have let people down and been let down.

I have done things I never thought I would do...when you're in the eye of a hurricane you're not thinking of anything beyond the fact the eye is only half the storm yet to come, and I went and was very lucky to have found a port in the storm in my wife and family .


So you found a few web pages, read it and decide to give me your opinion ,good, go off and hack my PC, go on and do whatever you feel you can ..But, show yourself and talk to me or you’ll never get a response from me . I’ll be deleting any messages or anonymous email I'm bored with you

Sorry

You can help though.

LHC Collider Explained Via Rap

Don't believe the hype

I can has election please?

A meme I can get behind .

Instructions: (from The Very Good Taste Blog)

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.



First Meme I've ever done. You finally got me.


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea-Nope
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare I love it so much. Can't find it in Canada
5. Crocodile Very center of the tail is kinda like lobster, the rest is like rubbery chicken. I've had good sausages made out of gator..in Disney World of all Places( that cool seafood place EPCOT has in the living seas
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho( if it's weird and from southeast Asia I've eaten it. I can see this is going to be a very bold post.On that however, Pho is not at all weird it's like a hot spicy breakfast soup noodle.I ate it for breakfast anyway. Pho rocks )
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi-It's curried potatoes and cauliflower-How can you not have tried it?
15. Hot dog from a street cart Hello NYC in the house!
16. Epoisses-No, but I love European Cheese. I just haven't gotten to it yet.
17. Black truffle- More expensive then gold.
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes-Oy, I lived in Woodstock NY when i was young. A big yes and a slightly nauseous lurch
19. Steamed pork buns- Oh, god I love them so.
20. Pistachio ice cream-Of course
21. Heirloom tomatoes- Funky Tomatoes? Of course what snooty New York organic chef hasn't
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras - Killing me here . So hungry. Tortured Goose Liver?... Yes please.
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese On a dare yes, My wife used to eat that shit. I only hate two things. People who are insensitive to other cultures and the Dutch. Damn Dutch wife.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper- Yes and I paid. I was cooking Jerk Chicken and I almost freakin died. By the way I also suggest you stay away from ornamental peppers. Those sumbitches are ornamental for a reason.
27. Dulce de leche
28 Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda-Italian hot sauce it's like you people aren't even trying.
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl funny or sadly enough the first time I tried this was also in Disney world
33. Salted lassi - I fucking love Lassi- Salted with Rosewater, melon whatever cold yogurt on a hot day is like manna from heaven
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar- a Cohiba Churchill no less. Not that Honduran shit either.
37. Clotted cream tea Oh God yes. <- I agree
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat .
42. Whole insects -On purpose and accidentally as well. Everyone can technically answer yes to this one. When do we get to the fetal duck eggs?
43. Phaal-Hot curry isn't my favorite ..Good with Lamb on a hot day though. For some reason hot curry cools you on a hot day. Could just be me.
44. Goat’s milk -Goat Milk cheese is like crack too
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more- usually one in my Kitchen
46. Fugu- I was honor bound to by someone treating me as a guest in Osaka . You can safely pass on the FUGU . I would NEVER do it again. Eating fugu is just stupid, the taste is not stupendous and it can kill you.
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - Can someone remind my wife that when she talks about ex boyfriends they are not ex SO's they are just ex boyfriends. Or they should just be referred to as " people she dated before me"
50. Sea urchin-The best Sushi
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer-LOVE ALL INDIAN CHESE& BREAD
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal -Thousands before I had my friggen stomach removed. Which I probably had to have done just becuase of the fucking Big Mac Meals. Not for years though.
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV I live in Canada.
59. Poutine I live in Canada
60. Carob chips Ick when I was dieting
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads- Oh man the best I ever had was in Venezuela. Worth getting off the boat in Caracas for that alone.
63. Kaolin "I always thought that Kaolin was rocks, so no".- I thought it was a silca based pesticide so no for me too.
64. Currywurst - "I don't even want to know"- I'm with you baby .
65. Durian Like smelly nasty fruity awesome cheesy crack Nasty fruit.
66. Frogs’ legs- taste like Chicken
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake" If God were real, these would be staples." - Again I agree with Jen
68. Haggis- Would you believe I have a can of Haggis in the cupboards actually two vans one is vegetarian Haggis. Canned haggis . I don't think that will be anything but decorative. Yes, I've had the stuff.
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe Not all it's cracked up to be- I'm going to go with my wuife on this one. Booring . even the stuff in Holland isn't all that serious.
74. Gjetost, or brunost-No, I love Norway and love cheese I just never got to it.
75. Roadkill -Yes, and Mom I will never forgive you from making me eat that shit that Ed found. My tong tasted funny for a week., Bad venison is fucking nasty bad.
76. Baijiu- Rice wine!
77. Hostess Fruit Pie-Apple and I prefer Drakes to Hostess. Table talk is good as well
78. Snail-I fucking love Escargot
79. Lapsang souchong-Chinese tea
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum -Thai Shrimp and Chicken soup! This is like a walk through my favorite vacations
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky - Japanese Cookies.
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Thomas Keller no less
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers Dandelion salad etc..
89. Horse-Twice and there's nothing wrong with it.
90. Criollo chocolate- The stuff they make good chocolate liquor out of isn't it?
91. Spam I have some in the kitchen. Mostly to disgust my wife. .
92. Soft shell crab .-Yea,but I hate cooking the damn things. It's pretty cruel, toss em into a hot frying pan with some clarified butter and kick of wine. Plus the damn pan spits at you allot
93. Rose harissa-In Africa
94.Catfish- Ugly Fish of the gods- I had the best in a town in Missouri that has less people then read this blog
95. Mole poblano-I'm a New Yorker
96. Bagel and lox - I'm a NY Jew.
97. Lobster Thermidor-Oh god yes.
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee In Jamaica no less.
100. Snake-Rattlesnake even

Special Election Briefing: 5 Things You Should Know

Another broken promise.Sorry I have excuses

Ok look. I know I have been promising some new content and updates and yes an end to the political propaganda but I am honesty held up by two major events that are on the cusp of occurring right now and so until they have come to pass then I'm going to wait before putting anything outspoken up here.

A few things I do want to address and some questions I have been holding up on answering.

1- This website and onemansjourney or fatjewguy.com as you now know it is moving away from being just a gastric bypass political obesity issues whatever blog and is going to morph into being a more standard personal blog. I'll be speaking about many of the same issues but only from a personal basis. I've been posting content on a few different blogs that have been outdated, trying to consolidate where I was going to devote my energy (what spare I have) and each of my previous pages have each had their own targets. Humor, professional or other issues. So I have chosen this blog to morph into my personal one. It will still contain personal issues as it relates to gastric bypass and whatnot but only as it related to me personally. More on that and a new blog/site yet to come that seeks to have a dialog with people from all ends of the spectrum that speaks directly about issues of obesity, weight loss surgery and sociological weight issues.

If you are interesting in being a contributor for this new blog to come please contact me.

2- I have been hit by a number of questions about my admittedly heavy hand when it comes to comment moderation or to put it directly. I more often then not choose not to publish comments but rather answer them directly and actually prefer people to email me rather then allow discussions to take place in the comments area. I still leave it open for the people who haven't been able to find ways to email me or just are not interested in doing so but 99.9% of the time that comment will go unpublished and will be answered by me directly. The reason for this is rather simple. On a great many blogs, I feel that the dialogs or debates that occasionally occur around posts that are particularity sensitive take away from the actual post that leads the discussion. Hence, the inevitable flame wars in my mind detract from the whole thing. Normally if I get a particularly good comment or email I'll make that its own post. So there is the answer to that question.


3- The thing with Junk food Science- That one generated a lot of people asking the same thing. Yes, it was I.. How many Mark Blei's that write about this stuff can there possibly be? I did not link or comment on that article that Sandy posted until I drafted a reply to someone in the post today. That article the one that had the email with my name on it was not discussed here prior to today because I had nothing to add to what she said past the correspondence we exchanged and she publish with my permission . I still don’t have anything to add to it other then in the post below which was actually drafted more then a month ago . I did not nor do I think I have to validate what she wrote on her site by commenting any further then I have on what was in her article on her website even if it did have my name on it. I was not going out of my way to not mention her post before today. I just thought it stood by itself without any additional commentary required by me

Let me be clear it was I and was published with my permission. The materials stands by itself I have nothing else to add or say about it. . It was what it was; she didn’t change a word of mine when she published our correspondence so that being the case what else were any of you waiting for? It seems like some people think I needed to re address what was already addressed on her site. What am I missing?

4- A number of people and this may relate to something in the news I have missed have asked me if I count calories. So the answer is yes and no. I struggle in between being both ok with the way I am and not living in constant fear of having a weight gain. But I also do live in constant fear of a weight gain and would be lying to you if I said I did not. Mostly the last three years or so I spend my time worrying about the fact that I am not eating enough am underweight or malnourished and for the most part that is where my energy goes on foodstuff. . But there have been times or weeks when I have had my weight jump past my personal comfort level. What my personal comfort level is has nothing at all to do with what would theoretically be a healthy weight for me it's a personal thing that may in fact have some issues rooted in a small case of body dimorphia. The honest to god truth is I haven’t gone through all this bullshit to be overweight again…not even technically. The BMI index says that at 6 feet (I’m 5, 11 and three quarters. So close enough.) my normal BMI should be between 18.5 and 24.9 to remain in the normal range. This means at a weigh of 184 lbs I fall into being technically overweight.

I hang out at between 171 and 179 lbs. When I have been either very good about nutrition or very bad about junk food I have had times where I have had a jump up into the 180’s in fact I’m there at the moment (due to some great soup that was made specifically to help me put on a few pounds as well as a bad run with Reese’s pieces candy .. I know it sounds like a joke but it is not) Anyway that run put me into the 180’s. Before anyone starts I know that’s still regarded as small for a six foot guy. My fiancée would prefer me at 200 Lbs to be truthful and I also know that a great deal of that weight could be extra skin and I know that most people, I included think that BMI chart was developed somewhere in Auschwitz .

I don’t fucking care. I’m not gong to be in any way technically overweight for any reason after this fucking hell I’ve put myself through and so if get near the 180 lbs mark I start counting calories because there’s a good way to take off pounds which is a slow decline that keeps me eating and just consuming less then I burn. Being an office guy I don’t get out much and living in a cold weather country well, let just say that winters are long .so the good way takes a long time and is hard and requires me to count calories to make sure I have enough but not to much . The easy way is just to stop eating. This happens of it’s own accord enough that I don’t encourage that in my body, when I lose weight that way I’m actually losing muscle mass so it’s a balance and when I need to go back from 180 to the 170’s I’ll count calories and try and slowly decline so I don’t lose mass. That is the only reason I will ever count calories though and I suggest that you don’t either count calories or use the BMI chart but rather be healthy. What I say and what I do obviously are two differing things. I allow myself to be human.

5- Last thing. Many people who write me ask me for exact things from my surgical record. How much distal or how much proximal or how large exactly is my pouch, how much intestine and cut from the beginning of the tract or the end of it what about this or that nerve or method. I have no clue at all nor am I interested in knowing what the measurements are and what is where is not going to change anything at this point and would only be important if I was seeking a revision which scares me just less then signing on for experimental combined brain, heart and testicular surgery. I’m sure someone has it somewhere that it can be gotten from, but it is of no real use for me to look at what has been done because it’s not going to change. I use my weight and blood work combined with nutrition in order to determine what changes I need to make and then try and change them and I then either succeed or don’t.

I know many people put stock into how much of what was cut off and where but frankly it gives me the creeping willies to know exactly how much of me is laying in a dump in New Jersey somewhere so I don’t ask those questions nor do I have a copy of my surgical records on hand that I can quote you from. Frankly, I do not even know where one of my surgeons is . He decided I’m told that he no longer wanted to be a Doctor according to a secretary at my nurse practitioners old office though he still appears on the practice website. (Maybe they guy just never wants to see me again. The feeling is mutual), the other one who was a nice guy, and who I wished were my primary moved his practice way far away from where I was in NY when I had my surgery done to Long Island.

I’ll come back and say more as soon as I can. I have a move coming end of this month and as I said at the start am waiting on some official things to occur before I start talking more definitely about future plans.

.

Someone on a web group linked the article that featured me on Junkfood Science

And when linking it . She described me as an unhappy customer. I kinda took umbrage at that and said that I was not so much an unhappy customer as I was an aggravated customer she called me on it, she's another blogger who's views on WLS I respect and she said that I certainly sounded unhappy. And if I wasn't what do would I use as the point of difference between being whatever I am and an unhappy customer.

This was my answer ( edited)

So to address your post down there. You are right. I'm not happy. What you asked is if I'm an unhappy customer. That's a different thing.

I'm unhappy that I had to do it at all, miserable in fact. I'm at times unhappy with the life I have with my bypass BUT, to me this was a necessary operation. I really think that if I had not done it , I would not be alive today or I would be worse then I am today certainly.

The main point of separation I use between an unhappy customer and I is that I waited past 4 times when they wanted to start the process of getting me my first date on the table. My dad took my first date, I said no the next two times they offered me a date. On the year of my blog I decided to restart the process because I had fought all I could and had reached the conclusion that I would not have a good quality of life or almost any without it.

I was in the Chemo stage, the stage where your at last resort and with the understanding that the cure might well be worse then the illness but have to try something because whatever I was doing wasn't working and things were getting worse. Take some risks because the alternative is looking very badly. To me thats the essence of the whole thing. I was well aware that their could be significant drawbacks before I went on the table. I even had started to read some of the gone wrong groups.

At the same time ,my surgical experience sucked, my post gastric bypass life until well after the first year was very scary, really horrifying. So I think me portraying myself on the blog as an unhappy customer is not as true as it is that I'm more unsure now three years later as to what my ,medical outlook is going to be then I was before.

That and I still have the fear of being fat which most people don't have if they have a hard post bypass experience. If that's being an unhappy customer in your book then in your book I'll take that designation

What scares me or more correctly pisses me off is that the industry is trying to make this into something that it is not.I have said this and said this and it bears repeating again, because each time I say it in a new way someone writes me a letter saying this time they got it.

I have problems with this being looked at as an elective surgery. Long-term I would like to see laws stating when you can and when you cannot suggest or advocate WLS surgery to a patient. The way it was portrayed and in fact the way that 60 minutes portrayed it is that, it's going to solve all your problems, you'll be thin, your sex life will be better , your life will be everything that you wanted it to be, but it's not. See the industry says that they try and make people understand that having this surgery is not going to solve all their problems and I would say if they aren't saying it they are more then certainly suggesting it or intimating that.

Lets hypothesize that in my medical records there was an indication that I had a history of depression and anxiety and was being treated for such, and might have even been hospitalized for it at some point in the past. Could be that, addiction could be in there as well, we are making up something -but I know enough people who's records had them in there that my point is still valid.I other words without giving out names I know post Gastric Bypass patients who have been at some recent point within the last 12 - 24 months been hospitalized for mental illness , depression, addiction etc. They seem to have more trouble then almost any other group we have discussed.

In my mind there should be a red light list that says if your gastric bypass candidate has been treated for depression, anxiety, addiction ..Whatever within the last 3 years then you as a surgeon must explicitly say "Hey, I see you have a history of having some depression or whatever. I want to explicitly tell you that even if your thin we have found that long-term if you aren't happy with your life fat, your most likely not going to become magically happy thin. It might take awhile for the honeymoon phase to go past but if you and your wife don't get along now, Your going to have the same issues thin,. Maybe more."

And just like when someone wants to convert to Judaism traditionally, you have to turn the person away three times before you even start the process. The doctor should say that these indications, depression, whatever, make you ineligible for this surgery unless you go through this intensive outpatient program that requires you to be there three or four times a week for at least six months and if you do that and if the feedback I get from those counselors then says that your in the right place to do this, and If I and you both still think this is the best option for you, then I will reconsider you for this surgery. But if you can't show me that you want this bad enough to take these steps to keep yourself mentally in check after the surgery by doing some upfront work, then I consider you too high a risk to do this surgery on you.

When I went in and for my one of my surgical consults( I went to a few before choosing). I was in a room with about 25 other women no older then 30 or so. As we waited for the thing to begin all the entire screen showed was a rotating picture screensaver with before and after pictures, rolling one after the other. Sad unhappy, unsmiling before pictures and happy, happy after pictures.

.How can you not say people are being screwed in their head. I counted 15 of those women who looked sad in their before pictures on that screen who were standing at the alter with a handsome man in their after pictures. Your not saying that that particular Doctor wasn't trying to intimate that losing weight via this surgery will find you a husband? I mean one , ok but fif-fucking-teen??

The discussion in the presentation was mainly for some reason about the after op diet, meaning the first six weeks, And then they said " after that you just eat whatever it is you like ,except for very fatty or sugary foods and in smaller plates ( but that won't matter you won't have any hunger) Oh and about one out of every 500 people die from this. (But Hey! one out of 500 die having heart surgery.) And some talk about dumping and whammo...Who wants to have their consultation with Dr. Perfect now?. Now that is not the Doc I picked but I assure you the consultation I went to was not that far off and in fact when I tried to go past the allotted, what? 15-20 minutes it got a bit hostile. Like how dare I have questions about stuff not covered.

So I'm not so much unhappy with my experience because independently of my surgeon and my process, I read everything and looked at everything and as they put me under I myself without any real help from medical personnel went out thinking, "You may just wake up worse and that may never go away" and as I thought." I'm ok with that".

I wonder how many people woke up thinking. "Ok, where's my handsome new husband? and were a bit put off by the fact that if they were like me they couldn't eat at all for….well months after the surgery.

And I had a bunch of people who had the surgery the same month as me in a different support forums call me and were all like" Dude, I can't eat" I'm at nine weeks and I'm not eating at al. Much less "on a normal diet just smaller portions", I can't keep mashed potatoes down. I feel like I'm going to pass out when I stand up.

Those people they , they were unhappy customers IMHO because their Doctors failed to give them a realistic expectation of what post surgery life was like and they failed to do their own research and what being thin really means in the face of having yourself cut open and modified extensively.

I say I'm not an Unhappy customer because I went to sleep on that table knowing what could happen, what pisses me off is it took me four years to get past all the bullshit until I felt that good with it and then still, until you experience something, you really don't know how it's going to effect you and someone should be pushing that in the pre meetings as well. .

So even though allot of it sucks I went in there at the time with as much information that wasn't bullshit as I could find. Now three years later, I find that most of what I was relying on then was pretty much bullshit but at the time I had done as much homework as I thought could be done and I had spoken to doctors who thought it was a smart idea and doctors who thought it was butchery and I listened to them all and made my decision.

And now that it's turned out to be harder then I would have liked and I'm more unsure of myself then I would have preferred to be, am I an unhappy customer compared with the multitude of women I know who found out that the husband who appeared out of thin air when they got thin vanished just as quickly when they went fucking crazy?

Or that they guy they were in love with before the surgery . The guy they were doing this for so they could be together longer and have a better life and better love. Many of those guys just couldn't handle the process or whatever. Compared to them, I'm doing really well, I knew that over 80% of people end up divorced if they are married when they have this operation. I could not predict if or how I would go nuts . But I was well, aware of the fact that I might.

I still think now that some part of the aftereffects of WLS will kill me, But as of now I'm still pretty sure that I would have been on this earth less time then I would have been had I not done this. As of now psychologically and in most cases physically I'm doing much better then before and there were big huge bumps in the road. HUGE!! And the fact that I am doing good psychologically and physically?

That could change tomorrow, it might, and I reserve the right to change my mind. That doesn't make the 60 minutes thing any less of a lie and it doesn't get in the way of what I wrote Sandy or what she puts in her blog. They might be different sides of the same thing or different shades of the same color but I'm pretty sure I'm saying now what I said there.

Mostly what I say totally sticks regardless of if your saying that I'm sounding like an unhappy customer, or if you accept my version of not being one. To me that's a qualification that I don't think I've really attained because I just haven't said those words yet. Those words are "I wish I had not done this and if I could go back in time and undo this I would in a heartbeat."

And until the time, I say that I have issues with the process and how it's explained but am not an unhappy customer, I think the process is wrong and needs fixing, I think that 60 minutes thing was a violation of journalistic integrity but I wouldn't exactly say I'm an unhappy customer. I prefer to think instead I'm an informed one who wishes at times that things were easier.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Actual real content coming next week.

New blog, new content , updated stuffs and no naked pictures of me ever.


( but thanks for asking)