Namaste...
Glad I found all of you, thank you for having me.
My story is really long so I'll condense it to just Long...
Only in looking backward do I see signs that something has -or may have- been up but really I didn't become aware of anything overtly until the early Summer of 2014.
I am married, a dad, I am fortunate to have a fantastic family. I have been a professional musician my whole life. Lived in New York City for 23 years and now reside in Oregon.
My mom passed in 1997 from Bone Cancer and we were very close, she was my support network... especially in light of my dad who never really morally supported many of my choices in life (mainly, music). And this past year, and sadly without a ton of chances to say what really needed saying, my dad passed... so I am essentially a 52 year old adult orphan (and that is one strange, yes obvious, but still strange nonetheless, revelation).
The bulk majority of my life, from about 13 years old until 2005 at 42 years old, I was huge. Fat. Massively so.
Eventually I made my way up to 501 pounds and was given a death sentence from the medical community... "Either surgery and/or pills or you're a dead man." I did nothing. Figured I got myself into this mess so it was on me to solve or die trying. Luckily I got an idea and solved it (another long story, which unfortunately I got semi-famous for, but I just changed up all facets of my lifestyle and had a bicycle made for me that would support my weight)... so by 2008 I had lost 332 pounds. Everyone said I had slayed the dragon and spoke of how glorious my life must be, would be forever more... and it was better, a lot better. But I think all the years of being huge and then the three years of getting small, the isolation on the bike added with close calls with automobiles, and once my story broke via the press--the pressure to become a spokesperson or messiah to other fat people, etc, well it took a toll.
Also, backtracking further and going forward:
I stopped playing music when our daughter was born so I could have the honor of becoming a Stay at Home Dad... after 14 years away from music, and having relocated from one edge of the States to the other, I slowly crept back into playing again. Things moved fast and before I knew it I was getting called for better gigs and then I got called for a very big gig -to play with a NYC based artist who was coming out to Oregon for a festival performance. I was excited, got the music in advance, was totally prepared. The schedule was to be two days of rehearsals (five hours each day) and on the third day, the gig. The music was very difficult but I was prepared, I had been back to playing for a couple years by this point and things were going very good for me on my return back to it all.
Holy crap did I derail myself... from about hour 2 of the first day of rehearsing to the last minute of the second day of rehearsals... it was a blood bath. Between full on panicking and brain farting, becoming that guy, "The one who is holding things up", to finally having the NYC guy clear the room so he could speak to me privately (he thought I was mad at him, no idea why he thought this but he did, and then me breaking down, literally, and sobbing about how much all this meant to me: my getting back into music, nearly losing my life and getting so big I couldn't even play music, etc, etc... it was a total disaster, and the poor guy just stood there with this look on his face like, "man, all I want to do is play music NOT be a therapist to screwed up Has-Beens")... so later that evening I emailed him and the festival organizers and took myself off the gig. Heartbreaking. And it about destroyed whatever confidence I had left inside me.
All my musical comrades basically said, "Screw it. It's done. The guy from NYC didn't exactly make things easy on you," there was a general consensus that while the rest of the band was local the leader from NYC knew that while I resided here too I had been a NYC musician for years, "forget about it and move on."
I tried but it was the beginning of a lot of bad to come...
Started having trouble with balance on my bicycle rides and walks (two things I cherish -- as moving my body not only saved my life but offers me real freedom from all the years where I was more or less a shut-in because of my weight). Also, I was becoming acutely aware that unless I was with my wife & daughter outside our house I would get this combination of what I call "HD Vision" (like my normal eyesight goes into hyperdrive and becomes High Definition), uncomfortable tingling/weakness in my upper thighs (like I am walking on someone else's legs) & upper arms, and lightheadedness.
My wife, an RN, started me on a steroid based sinus inhaler--thinking I had some sort of bad sinus/ear infection... we both messed up there and forgot that I don't do well with any kind of steroid (years earlier, just after we were married, I had been put on a steroid for a thumb problem and just about freaked out of my mind). Things got worse until we realized the inhaler was a steroid... pulled me off of it and I went back to just mostly horrible.
Things climaxed on a short weekend vacation a couple months after the failed gig... crossing a very tall bridge from Oregon into Washington state I completely had a meltdown. Tried to get out of the moving car, screaming and crying too. I have NEVER acted like this in my lifetime and NEVER been scared of bridges either. My wife stayed calm but our daughter was bawling and VERY worried about me.
My wife set up medical tests next...
CAT, PET, MRI, Lab work, all of it, negative (almost disappointingly so... at least had they found something it would have been physical proof of my sudden demise).
And then, meds... I did a year, Fall of '14 to Fall of '15, on Zoloft. And started seeing a Buddhist. And it helped tremendously. So much so that, like I said, I stopped (actually weaned myself off of with my MD's help) Zoloft but have continued on, delving deeply, into Buddhism and Mindfulness.
And things have improved... but the residue is always there. It's like doubt, anxiety, whatever it's called, is always there waiting.
Somedays I am okay with it always being there, others... I grow deeply tired of it.
It's like something got programmed into my brain and I can't delete or uninstall it.
Anyway, enough of my boring crap... glad I found all of you because I really get tired of my thoughts, feeling like a green zombie leper, like everyone else is just going about their lives and having a great time while I am cautiously stepping through every little thought process in anticipation of the next visit from my little unwanted friend.
-Scott
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