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It’s been quite some time now that Dorit and I have been living next to each other rather than with each other. She’s a teacher, I work in the high tech industry. Indeed, we’re free to go at the end of the work day, we don’t live in small shacks and we don’t have to pick corn or cotton for living. We have some time off, but it’s always overshadowed by the chance that someone will call you on the phone, chat with you when you’re almost ready to drop after a fifteen hour workday, or send you a seemingly innocent email asking for some charts the next day. In short, we had to get away.
When we surveyed the options, we looked at a “zimmer” – a room in German, which translates to a fully furnished room in a quiet place, surrounded with amazing scenery, panoramic views, wholesome people, candlelight lit hot tubs and dinners, really strange people with a strong relationships to the environment. In short – this is the anti-city environment.
We chose Rosh Pina. Various reasons. The grandparents live in Cabri, a Kibbutz near Nahariya. It was like a military operation. We picked the kids from school. They were packed already and so were we. We drove to the Gramps and after thirty seconds of kisses and warnings, we hit the road.
We arrived at Molly’s Suite at 15:00 and at 15:05 Dorit already told me to change position so the snoring stops, and she could sleep too. If it wasn’t for the stupid cat stumping on the next door neighbor’s door, we would have slept for the night. But, when we woke up at 18:00, the hot tub – a two engine full size two adults hot tub – looked extremely inviting. I lit a few candles, poured some liquid into the tub, and two minutes later, we were basically boiling our asses in water so hot, that adding some celery and potatoes would have taken care of dinner as well.
We emerged out of the hot tub, red, relaxed, tired, and starving. We looked at the few brochures and found “Julian”, a bar – restaurant. we got dressed and drove over. A side comment: I eat a lot less than I look. Dorit and I started to order for one lately. It’s working pretty well for us. House salad (excellent, although someone must explain the presence of the pears), creamy Broccoli soup (divine), an entrecôte steak done to perfection, with some strange (but outstanding) mashed potato and sweet potato, nailed it. As I said, one diner only, amazingly reasonable price. Julian of Rosh Pina – a definite yes.
Back to the “Zimmer”. Good night sleep. Excellent mattress, complete silence, no interruptions.
Amazingly, in nine hours, we were able to achieve an afternoon siesta, a hot tub experience, an outstanding dinner, some quality time together. If you’re looking to get away, quick disappearance into nothingness, good time – I recommend Molly’s Suite in Rosh Pina.
Link: Molly’s Suit. Call Molly at 054-4859592. Just like her suite (zimmer), she is calm, accommodating, helpful. If you want to get closer to someone close, you may want to consider Molly’s Suit…
Israel is a small country in the Middle East, rich in bureaucracy and ineffective government, but very poor in water. To circumvent the water crisis, the government took the only logical step. No, it’s not what you think, desalinization of seawater is indeed a good idea, but the Israeli government had a better one. Raising the price of fresh water is far more effective than desalinization of seawater. Governmental excellence at its best.
Watering one’s back yard would have become a significant expense. We decided to take countermeasures and take out the lawn. Instead, we poured concrete over the entire back yard, place ceramic tiles over it, and let plants around the edges take care of themselves. Fortunately for us, our neighbours on the east and south water their gardens often. We have advised our plants to redirect their roots to the east and south, or else. So far, I’m happy to say, they have complied, and have survived.
We also fired the gardener, who was doing absolutely nothing anyway. Every month he would have come to collect his pay, and every month it would have been harder to explain the gardener’s contribution to the misery of the back yard.
However, the surviving plants did need grooming, as we realized six months later, so we found this new guy, who was willing to work without a retainer. He agreed to come on occasion and charge a reasonable price while leaving the garden spotless and well groomed. Last week, in preparation to Guy’s seventh birthday, I called him and told him to come at his earliest convenience. He was there the next day.
I cam back early from work and was working in the garden. I offered coffee, and said no thanks. I insisted, and he agreed. I then returned embarrassed because we ran out of black coffee. I offered tea. He accepted. I added a birthday cake. He liked it. We started to talk.
He said his family originated in Tripoli, Libya. I offered that my family was from Romania, The Ukraine, Russia, Morocco, Spain and Turkey. My wife has all the above, plus Bulgaria. We started talking about food. I can’t remember how, but the conversation went to spicy fish. Khreime. I said I loved it. He said his father makes the best Khreime ever. He said his father wouldn’t give up the recipe. Amazingly, or not, my grandmother, who was a great cook of a few dishes, left none of them behind, except one, which I gladly make any time I have a chance…
To make a long story short, he finished working on the garden, packed his things and left. Twenty minutes later he came back with a plastic container with two slices of the best Khreime I ever tasted.
And the point is? The world is full of good people. In fact the absolute most people are good. All you need to find is the way to their hearts. Finding the way to one person’s heart is an accomplishment I am really proud of. Make sure you look around today, see the good in people, and find ways to their hearts. It will make our world a better place…
The last time I had an adult size meal is almost a month ago. I remember it clearly. It was a large plate of hummus, a few falafel balls, a pita, and a diet sprite. We could probably debate the diet sprite in the presence of the other food, but I remember regretting this meal as soon as I finished it. Hummus is delicious, healthy, and surprisingly not as fattening as you would think. It is however, heavy and potentially explosive. Falafel is similarly combustible. It’s been almost a month since that meal, and a few things happened.
While I still like hummus, and while I still eat it almost daily, I measure the amounts I eat in teaspoons rather than pounds. Since I don’t eat bread, pita is out of the question. Soda is out of the question as well. And last but not least, at this point in time, falafel is suicide…
I don’t miss the larger size meals at all. In fact, when I look at a large amount of food in one place (someone else’s plate for example), I can think of many things, none of them is eating it.
I am not hungry. Only lately I started to notice that on occasion, I feel as if a bit to eat would be nice. But exactly that. A bite. My meals are small and frequent, like babies’. A half cup of yogurt, a few teaspoons of hummus, tahina. Last week I added a ground chicken burger and a few spoons of mashed potatoes. I fill up quickly.
I separate drinks and food. Otherwise, I’d up not eating at all… I drink either twenty minutes before a meal, or an hour after. It’s working out pretty well.
I feel much more energized, surprisingly happy, more optimistic, lighter, and younger.
I dug up old clothes, a few sizes down, and I wear them with pride. My wife mentioned that my belt can actually be seen. I lost a chin.
And roughly 20 kilos. Or about 45 Lbs. In less than one month.
No need to be alarmed. It was the upper side of the expected, given the fact that I don’t eat very much.
I will not write more about my progress in the near future. I may refer to it later, when I get to my target weight in a few months (hopefully). But I must pitch the following to whoever is out there looking for a solution for obesity. You can spend you life and life savings at the gym, on dieticians, acupuncture, Voodoo, low carbohydrate food, magicians and witches. You can go hungry for a while. You will feel as if you have no will power. But maybe you should know. Chances are, you will lose weight, and gain it back. And then some. Then you would make a decision that you are losing the excess pounds, and you will again indeed lose them all. And gain them back. Almost for certain. The overeating-dieting-exercising-medicating-overeating again, is way too lucrative a market to be given up. Each cycle you would go through will contribute thousands of dollars to the food/drug/self improvement industries. They won’t give you up so easily. They will sell you fast food loaded with fat and sugar, they will sell you gym subscriptions, psychotherapy, drugs for your heart disease/hypertension/diabetes/high cholesterol, and they will convince you that the “problem is in your head”. They will tell you to run/swim/ride a bicycle.
And one day, like me, you’d understand. If you want to break the cycle, you have to do something extreme. You have to take the personal responsibility to understand that living hungry is not a good way to live. Bariatric surgery is a way to break the cycle. I’d done it. If you are obese to the point it puts your life in danger, you should consider it too. This surgery is not a cosmetic surgery. This surgery is a life lengthening procedure. Please don’t confuse the two.
I’d be happy to provide advice on a personal basis. Use the “email me” button on the page. I promise I would answer every question. The ones I believe are worthy for a larger community will be published on the site.
Warning, there is some graphic description below. If you don’t have the stomach for it (pun intended), surf away…
At 17:20 the surgery was over. When I woke up, about twenty minutes later, my first thought was “son of a bitch, I’m still alive”. I know it may sound cliche, but I did have some thought about not being back. My wife Dorit was there. So I’m told, as I have no recollection whatsoever. I have no clue what happened in the next hour either except flashes and short flickers of memory. I don’t remember being hauled back to the ward. I do remember opening my eyes in the ward room, with Dorit next to me. I was hooked up to an IV line, an oxygen mask, and there were two little drain pipes coming out of my belly into and into two pomegranate like plastic containers, my two new buddies, with whom I was about to live for a couple of days. Studies show that the presence of the drainers following surgery, significantly reduce the risk of infection.
I wanted to do nothing but sleep, and so I did.
This would be a good time to mention, if I haven’t before, that the surgery ward at Meir Medical Center has a very strict schedule. The nurses shift changes three times a day (the doctors’ shift never seem to change at all). At 7:00 AM, at 15:00 PM, and at 23:00 PM. In order to transfer the ward in an orderly manner, wake up time is 5:00 AM. Vital sign are taken and recorded before the new shift arrives. When the new shift starts, another round is started in order to report at bedside what the status is of each patient. Then there’s the doctors round (twice a day), the medicine rounds (three times per day), the cleaning and showering rounds. And since there are no official visiting hours, at least not firm ones that are actually enforced, tons of friends and family members come in and out merrily all day long. I fail to see the social benefit of gathering next to a patient bedside for many hours, I fail to see the purpose of bringing children along, I fail to see why certain families show up at full strength – all the way to third cousin twice removed – to spend time with some distant and apparently not very well family member. Food is distributed, jokes are told. The patient is the only one who doesn’t enjoy the jokes. People after surgery cannot really laugh. It’s damn painful. Coughing, sneezing, blowing noses is considered high risk sports activities.
My phone was stolen a little before 7:00 AM. It was an old clunker I didn’t care much about, still it took me a few hours to get a replacement (which proved a blessing, as nobody had its number except the absolutely closest people in the world). In any case, out of my kind heart, I wish upon the thief, to be using this phone well, mainly for calling emergency assistance frequently.
At about 7:00, a nurse showed up and told me to get out of bed. I said I was pretty comfortable lying down. She said so was she, but she can’t afford it and neither can I. With her help and supervision, I got up and walked around. I was sore, it was painful. But I was on my feet. And that felt good. I was holding my tall friend the IV pole, and the two little ones, the drainers, were in my robe pockets. Superman.
I started to learn the routine of the ward. My mother showed up early in the morning and stayed till late afternoon. I can only imagine that she was thinking to herself while strolling the hallway back and forth with me: “I taught him to walk already, forty six years ago”. This may be a good opportunity to thank my parents, my siblings, and my wife for being there for me every step (literally) of the way. Between the strolls, the nurses and the doctors rounds, the medicine rounds and the pains and aches, I learned that staying in a hospital is not a relaxing experience. It’s in fact very tiring. In my condition, there was an additional problem. I never sleep on my back. But I couldn’t sleep any other way, so I basically woke up every ten minutes. Horrific.
On Wednesday, I realized that I’m cool with the routine. I learned how to live with the drains and the IV. I learned how to wear the hospital issued robes, to keep a watch on the IV line and call the nurses when pain was present. And then I had a strange thought. I was adjusting. I couldn’t believe that in two days I actually changed my surroundings, my clothes, my routine, my sleep, and I wasn’t particularly suffering. If I was asked for an advice how to live in a hospital for a few days, that would be it. Adjust. It makes life a little easier. Then again, it does outside of hospitals as well…
I was still not eating nor drinking, and then later that day I realized that something was missing from my life. Hunger was gone. I wasn’t hungry at all. Truth is, I still am not and we’re one full week later.
On January 3, 2010, I reported to the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, Israel. It was a nice morning. The sun was shining, the traffic was as horrible as every Sunday. I was anxious, but determined. I remember clearly that my anxiety fed mainly on the fact that I had no clue as for what to expect. I didn’t know how I will be prepared to the surgery, and worse, what would I feel afterwards. How would I function, what would I be hooked up to, how long will I have to be at the hospital. I had plenty of questions, and not surprisingly, every answer sprouted many more. I realized at one point that being the control freak that I am, more data would not make me feel more in control. The reason was simple. I wasn’t. Once I understood that for a limited time I had to give up control over my own life, I had less questions, and in general, I felt a lot better.
I was a little late showing up, but it didn’t appear to be a problem. All my co-patients were late on that Sunday. And the anxiety wasn’t such an uncommon behavior either. In fact, compare to the rest I was relatively calm. After being admitted into a room, and relocated to another room, I was asked a few questions by a doctor, many others by a nurse, and then they told me I could go home and come back for an interview with the anaesthesiologist the next day. My wife came to drive me home, and I spent the night being a little more anxious, but at home in my own bed.
Monday morning we drove back to the hospital and I in late afternoon I went through the interview with the anaesthesiologist. Uneventful, yet very important. General anaesthesia is a risk factor in any surgery. It can cause complications during and following the surgery. The doctor was very professional, and not without a sense of humor. When the meeting was over, I went back to the surgical ward.
The chief nurse, a tiny, pretty woman in her forties told me to take two showers. One right away and another the next morning. I had to use a special red, stinking, antiseptic liquid soap, and, well, engage in the first unpleasant task of the coming days. Trimming my hairy belly. In all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning scared shitless.
Surgeries usually start at 8:00 A.M. I was third in line, two more significant ladies was in front of me. I was surrounded by my wife, Dorit, my mother, my sister and my brother. Their presence gave me a strange mixture of feelings: the comfort associated with being with loved ones, and the tension associated with being with loved ones at difficult, sometimes critical times. I was by my mother’s hospital bed when she went through her medical ordeal fifteen years ago. I remember clearly the three of us, and my father sitting by her bed, pacing, tense, trying unsuccessfully to make he feel better and confident. Needless to say, my loving and dear family was as successful as we were fifteen years ago in making me feel calm and confident. Yet, let it be very clear: There was no way in hell I could do it without them, their concern for me was physically felt, and finally, the most important people in my life (children excluded, I didn’t want them to see me this way) were present next to my bed.
Apparently, there’s a wider circle of people who care for me. It was a very pleasant feeling to know that outside the close circle of the family, there were others who were worried, who were crossing fingers, or praying for success and recovery.
11:00 came and went, and so did 12:00, 13:00 and 14:00. I started to worry that the surgery would be postponed to the next day. I wasn’t sure I would be able to go through another day of this kind of anxiety. I wanted it over. My sister made a phone call, and was told that I would be called to the OR momentarily. As she hung up the phone, the nurse showed up. It was showtime.
The nurse went over the file, made sure all forms are present and properly signed. That all medical checks were present. That I was prepared for surgery. I was. A sanitary nurse came in to haul me to the OR. I wanted to walk, but standard procedure prevented me from doing so. The way to the Operation Room is long. An elevator takes you down to the first floor, then you roll over to the adjacent building, another elevator, waiting room full of nervous relatives, and another waiting room for the patients to be while the OR is being prepared. I spent the next twenty minutes in the patient before surgery waiting room. The nurse’s name was Ora. That’s my mother’s name. I thought it was a good sign. On the way, my brother reach down and told me that this is the time that would register in my mind. He was right.
Twenty minutes later I was rolled into the OR. I moved to the operating table, a narrow stretcher with hand extensions. Immediately, the crew started to hook me up to all kind of stuff. Vital signs, oxygen, a system that makes sure blood continues to circulate while I was under. I am not a very spiritual person. But this was probably the closest I would ever get to having an out of body experience. I was watching it all in great curiosity, as if it wasn’t me who was about to be put under and cut. I was expecting the anesthesiologist to tell me to count down from one hundred, knowing of course that I would get to about ninety seven. It didn’t happen. He said he was going to put me out. And then I was out cold.
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