The Importance of Healthcare

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I have been overweight nearly my entire adult life. I stopped growing upward when I was 17, topping out at 6'4", and in those days, I weighed a bit over 200 pounds.

Then came college, institutional food, lots of parties and beer. By the time I graduated in 1989, I weighed 240. I thought I was huge because I had added 6 inches to my waste while away in college.

By my late 20s, the weight was evident. I was walking 4 miles a day, and my weight seemed to plateau about 300 pounds. I was active, but I could not tell my taste buds to take a hike, so I seemed to feel like this was about where I should be, and I accepted it.

Then I got married, had kids, got separated, and generally got older. By my mid-30s, my primary care physician uttered those terrible words - you have diabetes. But then he told me that if I could lose a little weight, I probably wouldn't need Metformin and Glipizide to manage my blood sugar.

By age 49, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I hardly had energy to keep up with my kids, and I noticed that both of them who were living with me started gaining weight, much earlier in life than I ever did. The highest my weight ever got was 425 pounds, more than double the weight I carried at age 17. The diabetes was affecting my health in ways you really do not want to know. Seriously. You don't.

I knew the time had come to do something about my weight.

2017 would be the year. A friend of mine had undergone gastric bypass surgery and had lost 160 pounds in a little more than a year's time. He inspired me, and I found Dr. Juan C. Gutierrez, who was affiliated with the best hospital I have ever used for care, Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Florida.

My insurance company had lots of hoops for me to jump through. I thought I could do them all in 6 months. Instead, from start to finish, 11 months passed from my first visit with Dr. Gutierrez until October 6, 2017, when I finally went to Munroe Regional for the big surgery.

Dr. Gutierrez later told me the surgery lasted 4 hours. I had heard 2-3 hours was normal. He explained that because I am big (both tall and wide), it took longer because things were more spread out in there. 

I was just relieved the surgery was done, and in a matter of days it became evident that the timing was perfect. Less than a week after my surgery, the president of the United States signed an executive order giving insurance companies the right to discriminate against customers for having pre-existing conditions. As I write this, my greatest fear is that insurance companies will contend that morbid obesity is a pre-existing condition, and use that as a reason not to cover life-saving surgeries like mine for patients who have run out of other options. 

This is why I support Medicare for all. Healthcare is not just political - it is life!