Life in the Rough» Health

Taking a Giant Leap

Mike Gray — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:06:31 +0000

Those of you that have been around these last few years, or that have dug through the archives and poked around are aware that since the beginning, my weight has been something I’ve felt the need to address to make the most of my golf game. To be truthful, it’s something that affects my health and life beyond golf.

It’s also something I’ve struggled mightily with since a very young age.

After a lot of research and preparation, about a week from today, I will be undergoing a surgical procedure to help me with weight loss, and hopefully to get the weight off, and keep it off for good. The procedure is known as a Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy.

I’ll leave the gory details for you to Google, but I want to talk about the situation some more detail.

I can’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t overweight to a fairly large degree. At birth, I was 11 lbs., which I’m told is bordering on ridiculous, but it didn’t bother me any (sorry, Mom!). I think I was relatively normal in early childhood, but it wasn’t long before I was putting on weight.

Who knows what the factors are for something like that. Genetics? Psychology? Societal factors? Upbringing? I don’t know, but the situation is what it is.

I have believed since I started Life in the Rough that losing weight would be critical to my success. And I’ve tried 100 different ways to make that happen. I tried many times before Life in the Rough, and many times during. I tried named diets, I tried just changing habits, I tried tools like food journaling. Nothing has been successful.

I know a lot of you are thinking that it’s a simple mathematical formula of calories in and calories out and that all that needs to happen is for me (or any overweight person) to eat better and exercise more.

I implore you to believe me, it’s not that simple. No one wants to be in a situation like this. Maybe I’m weak or undisciplined. Or maybe there are genetic or biological factors that cause me difficultly. I don’t know, but I do know that I need a tool to help me succeed.

And that’s exactly what this is: a tool to help me succeed. It’s not a magic pill. It’s also not something decided on the spur of the moment. I’ve been researching and preparing for this since October. Nearly 11 months ago, I started this journey within a journey.

Last April, I read something about how one of my favorite players, John Daly, had tackled his own weight problems. Of course, I was highly interested, and learned that he had a surgical procedure called a Lap Band. I read up on it and was interested, but I kind of dismissed the idea because it felt like I would be “taking the easy way out” or “giving up”.

Around that time, I had a visit with a respiratory physician to address my newly diagnosed sleep apnea. He told me that weight is a factor and if I lost a bunch, it would probably go away. He’s the first person that recommended surgery to me. Again, I felt I could do it on my own and I felt the negative connotations of surgery.

Yet another failure. By summer, I had basically given up. Again. In late summer, though, I had given it some more thought and by chance, heard that there is a bariatric weight loss surgery program at my local hospital. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I went in for a personal consultation and then for a group information session.

I was quite surprised to learn that with lap band and sleeve gastrectomy procedures, the risk of complication is very low, and the long term success rate is very high. I had heard of gastric-bypass procedures before and about the serious complications and about how the success isn’t great for some people, so it wasn’t really ever an option for me. These other procedures, though, warranted more exploration.

From there, participation in the program (and health insurance coverage) demanded a lot of medical testing, psychological testing, nutritional education, supervised dieting, and support groups. This long process gave me a lot of time to take in all the facts, as well as to seek out information externally, to make a certain and informed decision.

With the vertical sleeve gastrectomy, part of the stomach is removed. I know, it sounds awful and dangerous and like something too drastic to even consider. It might seem that way, but complications are very low, and unlike the gastric-bypass, it doesn’t change the way the digestive system works. I just restricts the amount that can be consumed. Also, the part of the stomach removed is part that has to do with the amount of chemical that the body uses to trigger hunger, which as those of us who have dieted know, is one of the biggest sources of difficulty.

What seems awful and dangerous and too drastic to consider, to me, is diabetes, borderline high blood pressure, sleep apnea, lack of energy, arthritis, as well as risk of heart attack, cancer, and who knows what else. It’s something that greatly diminishes quality of life. Not only that, but let’s forget life and death for a moment and consider why I’m here in the first place. I absolutely believe without any doubt that my weight has a detrimental affect on my golf game, in a number of ways.

So, that’s the situation in a nutshell. I definitely realize that there are many of you who don’t understand the need for something like this and maybe you never will. But there are also many of you reading this that should probably be giving it some thought.

At this point, I have already begun a pre-surgery high-protein diet. The purpose of which is to shrink up my liver a little, reducing the chance of it getting in the way during the procedure. On Monday, I will be consuming clear liquids only, in preparation for surgery. The procedure is first thing Tuesday morning.

I will have to stay overnight in the hospital. Assuming there are no leaks in the staples and assuming my digestive system functions as expected, and assuming everything else is fine, I should go home the following afternoon. I’ll be home from work for two weeks, and away from golf for about four weeks.

I’ll be on a soft diet for four to six weeks, at which point, I will begin to be able to introduce normal foods again. I’ll have to take a multi-vitamin every day forever and make extra certain that I always stay hydrated, and be sure to eat sufficient protein at each meal, which are all things I’m willing to live with.

While I’m anxious to move on with it, I’m also fearful of the unknown. Just being on this pre-surgery diet has been more mentally difficult than I ever expected. Knowing I’ve not succeeded with weight loss in the past makes me have that kernel of doubt that I can succeed now. Especially since, as I said at the top, this isn’t a magic cure, it’s a tool. It’s still going to be incumbent upon me to change life-long bad habits.

I certainly don’t relish the idea of getting surgery of any kind. I know that things can go wrong and that my life is literally in the hands of others. There’s a minefield of complications that are possible (though statistically very unlikely).

I’m definitely feeling the anxiety of the situation. But I’m also sure that I’m making the right decision. There’s too much to gain to not do this. I know all the risks and the down sides, and they don’t even come close to the risks and down sides of not doing it.

Part of me wanted to not even tell you all about this and just do it. But that would be kind of ignoring a big part of what it’s going to take to get me where I want to be. And another part of me typed all this out to make sure I’m really as convinced as I think I am. And yet another part of me realizes that there are some of you in the same situation that can benefit from knowledge of my experience.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updates mixed in with regular posts. I’ll let you know how everything turns out. If you want to know more about my experience feel free to leave comments and ask questions and of course, you’re welcomed to contact me privately, if you prefer.

Sleep: The Fundamental Building Block

Mike Gray — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:06:57 +0000

In my last progress update, I promised to let you in on a couple of things that have turned my well-being around in the last couple of months. I alluded to sleep being one of them. This is one of the few times I’m touching on something much larger than golf, so hang in there because I think this is important.

Without a doubt, sleep is the fundamental building block of everything we do. It’s a fundamental human requirement along with food and water. You can eat poorly or not get adequate water and probably get by for a long while. If you don’t sleep properly, though, life becomes a mess.

Let me give you an accounting of my last 5-10 years.

I’m a software engineer so being able to concentrate is kind of important. Several years ago, I noticed that I was having trouble concentrating at work. I was having trouble getting to work before 10:00 or even 11:00 in the morning. I didn’t really feel rested in the morning when I woke up. I slept until 10:00 or 11:00 on the weekend. I woke up and tossed and turned all night long.

It became difficult to do anything. Making time to go to the gym or to the driving range was difficult, because I was exhausted all the time. Especially after work. I could take a nap at any hour of the day, 10am, 4pm, 8pm, it didn’t matter. I woke up with headaches.

For years, I chalked it up to stress or eating late or whatever else I could think of.

Then, I had two friends who had been diagnosed with sleep apnea around the same time and talked to them about their situations and noticed some similarities with my own life. I figured I should get checked out, but I kind of put it off because I didn’t perceive my problem to be that bad.

Finally, I had enough and was fed up with feeling bad and spoke with my doctor. That led to a sleep study for me that showed that, in fact, I do have obstructive sleep apnea. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a condition where, during sleep, the muscles around the airway relax and actually block air flow to the lungs. This causes the brain to wake up many, many, many times during the night, depriving a person from restful sleep.

There are a few different treatments, but in my case, my doctor and I decided to go with CPAP (Constant Positive Air Pressure) machine therapy. This entails me wearing a mask during sleep that keeps constant pressure in my airway, preventing it from closing off.

The first week wearing a mask was pretty awful. I struggled to make it through the whole night wearing it. I would lay there awake in bed listening to myself breathe. I felt like my breathing was restricted, possibly a little mini-claustrophobia.

After a couple of weeks, I was making it through the whole night. I was also waking up some days feeling really good. I was also waking up some days feeling as bad as before.

Right now, I’m about a month in and I’m almost fully used to wearing the mask. Most days I feel much better. Even my “bad” days are much better than and I can recall from the time before I was using the machine. I actually look forward to going to bed now, where before I dreaded it.

I’m still sleepy many days, but after reading many accounts of sleep apnea sufferers online on a couple of forums, it seems that it’s normal to feel that way for weeks or even months, because the body finally realizes that it can get real sleep again and wants to fill up the “sleep bank”. It seems like in many cases, this ends after two or three months.

Just to be sure the therapy is working, I took the data from my CPAP machine (awesome technology!) back to my doctor and he reassured me that the numbers look fine and that I’m going through normal stages of recovery.

In my case, the sleep apnea is considered “minor”. During the two sleep studies that I did (one to check me out, and one to try me on a CPAP machine), it was found that when I sleep on my side, I have about 15 apnea brain arousal episodes per hour. When I’m on my back, it’s about 50 times per hour. That means, that for who knows how long, I’ve been sleeping for only about 1-4 minutes at a stretch and spending a lot of that time depriving myself of oxygen.

I’m fortunate that my CPAP machine treatment doesn’t require very high pressure. The pressure is measured as cm H2O (I have no idea why). The minimum pressure on the machine is 4. My setting is 6. That’s considered very low and is due to the fact that when my muscles relax, they don’t close my airway with much force, but it’s enough to bring my brain out of deep sleep frequently. Many people require a much, much higher pressure which takes a long time to get used to. I’m at the point now where I barely notice it.

I’m telling you all this because sleep apnea can absolutely be deadly. If it goes untreated, it can cause heart attacks and strokes. It’s thought that it may have contributed to the death of Reggie White, NFL hall of famer. Even in the non-worst case, it severely degrades a person’s lifestyle.

If you read this and any of it seems like it could be you, I implore you, speak with your doctor to see if you might be a candidate. There are a number of risk factors, but people who are overweight (me) are at a much higher risk.

I really regret waiting so long to be checked out. It gets to a point where you simply get used to it. While I knew I didn’t really feel good, what was long lost to me was what “good” felt like. I literally did not even perceive how bad it was.

I believe it has absolutely hindered my journey to become a golf pro. I believe it has contributed to my trouble losing weight, difficulty in maintaing a regular workout regimen, difficulty in practicing as much as I want, break down in my body (sleep is when we heal!), and difficulty in playing effectively.

In this one short month, I have been working out more effectively than I have in years, my memory is starting to return, and I feel physically and mentally better, and importantly, I’m losing weight. I feel so optimistic about this year because I now know what good sleep is starting to do for me.

Again, I urge you, if you even have the slightest suspicion that you might suffer from sleep apnea, speak with your doctor without delay. If you think you might be a sufferer and just want to know more about my siutation, feel free to leave a comment or contact me via e-mail and I’m glad to share all the details.

As I said at the top, quality sleep goes way beyond golf. Your life is at stake.