brad garland

So it’s almost been 7 months since my surgery and like I stated in my last post, I’m feeling great. If there has been anything that has been a recurring issue it has been the dizziness that I have on a semi-regular basis. It started pretty much right after the surgery and happens probably every other day or so (once or twice that day) since then. It not really bad dizziness, but I do get the light headed feeling and have to slow down a step or two until I come out of it. I also have to wait to stand up from sitting sometimes to get my equilibrium right because I know I will get dizzy. So this has been pretty standard and I don’t really consider it a big deal and have pretty much chalked it up to my rapid weight loss with my body is trying to adjust to less blood in my body, less ‘reserves’, etc….until last night.

Last night I actually had another one of my spells but totally blacked out afterwards. All I remember is me saying, “Whoa, whoa…” and next thing I remember is my wife is patting me on the face saying, “You’re okay Brad, you’re okay.” My wife said that after my ‘whoa, whoa’ comment I fell forward and smashed my head against the wall and proceeded to fall to the ground where she tried to hold me but due to my size she wasn’t able to and we both fell to the floor. Afterwards, I felt fine (little woozy mixed with a little embarrassment) but we went on with the rest of our night. Just to be cautious I went to the doc’s today to make sure it wasn’t anything bad and I’m getting my blood taken tomorrow. The doctor seems to think it might still an issue with not enough protein (which I think I’m doing alright on) but I got the feeling that they really didn’t know what was going on so they suggested the blood work. Anyway, I’m definitely no expert so we’ll see what the results are from me getting my blood drawn tomorrow.

On a more uplifting note, while I was at the doctors office the funniest thing happened to me. My appointment just happened to be scheduled just before a ‘pre-op’ group meeting was about to start and they started asking me questions. I popped out my IPhone and showed them my Flickr page with the recent weight loss progression. They couldn’t believe that I had lost that amount of weight in so little time and wanted to know everything about how I did it. Questions like: “How do you feel? Was your scarring bad? What type of working out do you do? How much are you eating now and what types of foods? Did you have lots of extra skin?”

It made me feel pretty good because I love helping others out and I know what it felt like to be in their shoes. I actually considered saying something to the doctors office about having me speak about my experience and telling them the how I have my own support group through my blog. The last thing one of the guys considering the surgery said was, “Man, if I didn’t know…I would’ve thought you would have always been skinny.” That made me feel pretty great, and I thanked him for the kind words.

Time sure does fly but it is still amazing to me it’s only been seven months. I wish all the pre-op’s well and I’ll definitely update everyone with what’s the latest with my dizziness. All for now!