Standing on stage at St. Bart's Square in central London, looking more than 14,000 cheering fans, all I could think was, "How can a guy like me get to a place like this? "It was June 2001 and I was playing alongside world renowned artists as Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney, as part of the celebration Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. I was certainly more astonished than anyone in the audience at the event. He had only started singing last year, the culmination professional psychological and emotional journey that began in indescribable spring 1997, when they underwent gastric bypass surgery.
I had a size 40 regular canary yellow zoot suit for the concert of the Queen, strutting confidently back and forth across the stage while singing classic big band for an audience of thousands. Five years and one month before, the steps that have left me gasping for air. At the time, weighed exactly 400 pounds, and I had lost all hope. My life had become unmanageable. I looked at myself in the hospital and stated that "physical bankruptcy" as I turned my body to experts-a team of doctors and nurses who offer me a unique opportunity to begin again.
Like many patients of gastric bypass surgery, I had been overweight most of my life. As a child I was euphemistically called "husky" and I managed to use my weight to my advantage by playing football from the second grade. But in middle school, the coaches had to move me to a level of league, because it was heavier than other kids my age. In the league following my friends just called me fat, and was relegated to the position of BENCHWARMER. I could not have been more miserable.
After high school, I joined the Navy in hopes that he could see the world and all he had to offer. Not long after boot camp, which was parked at the north end Japan as a liaison between the Japanese military police and local law enforcement. For a little fun and exercise, I signed up for the football team base. Ironically, a month later, the mayor and the commander of the base were watching a game when they came up with the idea of hiring me nature in the sport of most. (You know, the kinds of fat in diapers?) I went to my first practice the next day and was in the circuit of amateur sumo wrestling a couple of weeks Later, serving as a sort of goodwill ambassador to Japan, while competing in cities across the country.
My salvation was one morning while I prepared for work. I was listening to Good Morning America "television, I followed my usual routine, and erect ears like Charlie Gibson read a report on a new radical surgery for morbid obesity. I immediately read everything I could get my hands on this new technique of gastric bypass, and finally I have classified for surgery after being diagnosed with sleep apnea. Three months after hearing the news report in the morning, I was admitted to the hospital to make weight loss surgery.
After weight loss surgery, weight truly just melted away. I've lost almost 200 pounds in a year and I could not believe the transformation I was seeing before my very eyes as they dropped a waist size of 56 inches to 34 inches only. The biggest challenge during this time not cut my food or increasing physical activity, but rather the lack of mental and emotional support available to patients with weight loss.
Because gastric bypass surgery is still a new procedure, there was no support groups or help centers for those of us who had undergone the treatment. The doctors were great about the mechanics of the surgery, but had no idea what it was like inside a brain that had just gone through a change radical. I strongly encouraged my surgeon to establish a regular meeting of their patients so they could share their experience and vision with each other. Today their weekly sessions of 20 to 100 regularly develop pre-and post-op patients. (Also made my own website for gastric bypass patients this year and I'm working in a self-help book for people who have had surgery.)
I realized the weight was never really the problem, but rather a symptom of other unsolved problems. Although I was grateful for the weight loss surgery and the subsequent transformation, I discovered that I could never be a complete solution because it was a physical action applied to a mental, emotional and spiritual problem. Like taking an aspirin for the pain of a brain tumor, gastric bypass surgery is only restricted to the shallowest part of a serious illness. I was realizing that accurately get to the root of the problem, I had to stop focusing on my waist, and begin to focus in the gray matter between my ears. So what I want? Now that was the fat suit, I stood with me, but I did not know that "I" was.
In the four years since the decision to pursue my dreams that I made on three continents, appeared in the local media and national and rubbed elbows with celebrities. I set up three set-up of my 17-piece big band, one in Dallas, one in London and one in Tokyo and recorded a critically acclaimed CD.
"How does a guy like me get to a place like this?"
About the Author:
Craig Thompson, better known as “Big T,” a former sumo wrestler who used to tip the scales at 400 pounds has since reinvented himself as a singer and bandleader. As one of the earliest to have
Gastric Bypass
Surgery, in 1997.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – From Sumo To Sinatra – A Gastric Bypass Surgery Success
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