Checking in

Hey all. I'm coming out of lurking and trying to get involved more in the forums here on OH.com. I"m a 43 yo GWM and I"m just about ready to have the surgery. I have my psych eval on 5/17/05 and a second visit to my cardiologist the same day. I had a slight problem with my ekg so I had to have a heart echo this week. I"m hoping he's gonna give me the green light for the surgery on this next visit but I got a feeling he's gonna want me to do a stress test. Are there any other guys on here that were involved in the chub and chaser community and had the surgery or are planning to have the surgery? I've only told a couple of people from there and I'd like to keep this to myself for as long as possible. What has been the reaction of your friends once you told them what you were planning on doing? Thanks for listening. BobbyBear

I don't read the message boards here very often anymore, but thought I would like to respond to this. I have experienced a fairly mixed reaction. My close friends were all supportive of me and what me to do what I thought was best. However, the people that were more of casual friends were not supportive at all. Those were the friends that only liked me because I was fat. Those are the very same people that won't have much to do with me now that I am thinner. I was never much into the whole chub/chaser thing before and definitely am not included in that scene anymore. A funny story... the other night I was in a group of people that didn't know and hadn't known before. If you have ever been to San Francisco, you know about the hills and how hard it is to find parking. Anyway, they were talking about having to park far away and walk up hill and how they didn't like it. I kind of chuckled to myself a little bit and one of the guys said to me, "It's a big boy thing, you wouldn't understand." I didn't chuckle because I thought it was funny, but how I could totally relate to what they were talking about. I went on to explain how I did understand and after losing 200# in the past year, it's amazing looking back on my previous life and thinking how that was me just a short time ago. It was a new experience to be not to be viewed as being a very fat man. Anyway, long story short, do what you feel is best for you and your true friends will support you no matter what. I hope everything works out well for you.