Hello from Tampa 8/29/2011

Sorry for the time inbetween getting this done, but its at the right time. After a month  My vitals have stabelized. I had a attack of afib, racing of the heart valve. Why they give people pace makers. I had a bout of it a year previous and thus why I am on blood thinners. I go to the clinic at the VA once a month to havemy blood work done. I have reduced medications since the surgery. Pain meds and blood pressure pills as well as diabetes pills and lowering of the amount of insulin I take. I feel a hell of alot better.

I had tremendous pain for 5 days after the surgery and then it subsided. I had to go back to the hospital emergency to the cardiac unit for a day to be monitered and am trying a new heart med to slow down the beat for 6 weeks before another check up.

I can tell you 40 lbs off the back is amazing , I cant imagine 200 total. i HAVE HAD AMAZING SUPPORT EXPECIALLY FROM MY FAMILY AND MY BOSS JOE. Who is a brother from a different mother and some of the greatest group of friends a person can have. Unfortunatly the person that started me on this path Lisa, again isnt talking to me, but I am eternaly thankful to her and always will be.  We all go thru issues and I hope she comes back around again some day to play. I love her! She was there for me prior to going thru the operation and that was awsome.

Well enjoy the video and I promice to update you on my first "fill" as soon as I can!

D-DAY

From July 6th, 2011 untill today the 27th Somehow I have not eaten food, solid food. I have been on the opti fast diet drinking what are close to milk shakes but with out the calories. Now I will be for the next three more weeks still drinking my meals untill I am able to go on solid food again. I am scared to be operated on as can be expected. I have done my share of crying and I just have to give it over to the Dr who is preforming the operation and trust in his expertize. I will report to you on the after math.

No matter what happens, I feel so very fortunate to have the greatest friends and family.

5 Days Prior to surgery

More vids

I will catch up soon, Thanks for looking., just getting this down

CAPTAINS LOG , STAR DAY 1

A couple more, top one was first day yesterday early am

The first steps..............trust me are the worst! Or lots of heavy Breathing

I have started drinking Optifast, starting weight 396. Gained 25 lbs the last two weeks eating every thing in antisipation. Really stupid. Ill post a couple vids here to get me started Day 1, I couldnt type, today day 2 , I got the squirts bad, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

July 2OTH 2011 DAY 1? And away we go........

My life blood was made by these two humans. Harry and Dorothy Kodish. My father passed away in 2004 at the age of 86 and thanking all the spirits there are, my mother Dorothy is 90 years young. Dad most of his life that I knew him was over weight and my mother in very good shape. Now she has lower back pain, I feel mostly from helping me in my life. I can tell you she is spry and her thoughts are sharper than yours!  

My father was a baker's delivery boy back in his youth and a customer on his route wanted to fix him up with the great Jewish baseball player Hank Greenberg's niece. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/greenha01.shtml

Well my father went to meet this girl and came across this amazing girl swinging on her front stoop. He walked up to her and said "Your going to be my wife someday", she said"your crazy, I don't even know you". Well  61 years later, 4 boys later.......

In WW11 My father was the platoon Officer in charge of paper work. He was the procurement officer.  He was in Officer training school with The actor Clark Gable.

During his Pacific area travels he once picked up, Charles Limberg, who flew into the base my father was out. He wasn't impressed.

Dad was telling me to smile

My parents loved their children. I am the little one.

My father worked at a Glass Shop on Miami beach  for Twenty some odd years while my mother raised me. Boy she had her hands full! I was a sickly sort with very bad asthma. Its was quite a challenge for all of us, but a heavy burden for my Mother. It was very heavy for myself as well. Endless hours of laying in a hospital bed off and on in a O2 tent fighting for my very next breath. Than the next for hours.

But somehow I grew out of it over the years.

I took with the experience a love for the Beatles who I played on a 45 over and over "LET IT BE" and "HEY JUDE"

as well as a understanding of what life really is about. I learned at a very young age what people find out at the end of their life. I lived it over and over. I suspect there is always something to take from something else, the whore one door opened another closes.  I was sent to the Asthmatic Children's Foundation for a year because it was just to much for mom and dad and they wanted me to get the best help.

In the hospital

There I learned the compassion of men towards one another as well as the evil men can do to one another. There was a nurse that used to come visit me on her days off, to mentor me, to talk to me about fighting, not giving up the fight for life and the wonders I will see once I got out of the situation I was in. That my parents were pulling for me.

In that hospital , three children with deformities and horrible problems died in my presence.    I felt my own mortality.    It was scary.

Looking back to the situation I am in today, I will draw upon the things that formulated my spirit from the past, that have fortified me to this very moment in time. I have many people that I have to be thankful in my life for, many many friends that endear themselves to me and many more yet to meet and help in some way.

I hope that this blog and my journey not only is cathartic for myself, but is able to someday help another person, be them young or old. I will speak honestly here here  and undoubtedly be judged by others for something I might say. 200 years from now no one will know I existed. Ultimately it matter not what any of us say of does. I try to live by the thought of being kind and honest to others.

To inspire and free the mind of the people I touch. To offer of myself to someone as I was inspired by others that gave to me.