The Parking Lot Decision

It was late summer in Houston, which means it was brutally hot and humid before you even reached the front door.

I was at the hospital almost every day that month. My wife Melinda had gone in for back surgery to repair a herniated disc — a procedure that was supposed to be outpatient. It was… until it wasn’t. She re-herniated the disc at home that night, needed a second surgery, and ended up in the ICU for nearly a week with a spinal fluid leak. I was there by 6 AM every morning and didn’t leave until after 5 PM every night. I went home to sleep and feed the dogs. That was it. That was my whole life for that week.

I wasn’t thinking about myself much during that stretch. I was focused on her.

But the hospital had a way of reminding me anyway.

The building was massive — multiple city blocks, long corridors, endless walking. Every trip from the parking lot to Melinda’s room left me winded and sweating before I’d even said good morning. I told myself it was the heat. I told myself it was the distance. I told myself a lot of things that summer that weren’t quite true.

I was over 570 pounds. I had been heavy most of my life, but this was a different level. My body was sending signals I’d gotten good at ignoring.

Then came the MRI.

I’d been dealing with a nagging ankle injury for months — a sprain I’d picked up working out, of all things, that never quite healed. I’d finally scheduled an MRI to figure out what was going on. I wasn’t worried about it. I just wanted an answer and a plan.

Two technicians came out to meet me. I could tell before they opened their mouths that something was wrong.

They told me I was too heavy for the machine. By about 20 pounds.

I pleaded with them. I’m not proud of that, but I did. The ankle had been bothering me for months. I just needed an image. Surely there was something they could do.

There wasn’t.

I walked back out through those long corridors, past the nurses’ stations and the waiting room chairs and the elevator banks, and out into the Houston heat. I stood in the parking lot and I texted Melinda what had happened.

And the I just stood there for a minute.

I’d thought about weight loss surgery before. My doctors had brought it up more than once over the years. I’d always pushed back. It felt like giving up — like admitting I couldn’t do it on my own. I had convinced myself that if I just found the right diet, the right routine, the right version of discipline, I could get there without intervention.

Standing in that parking lot, I finally told myself the truth: I was almost too far gone. I had been losing a fit I refused to admit I was in. And the only way forward was to stop pretending otherwise.

By the end of that day, I had scheduled a consultation with a weight loss surgeon.

In December 2023, I had gastric bypass surgery.

I lost a significant amount of weight (over 100 lbs.). And then, over the following year, I gained a lot of it back.

But that’s a story for another post. This is just the beginning — the moment I stopped lying to myself in a hospital parking lot in the Houston heat, with a bum ankle and a long walk back to the car.

It started there. Everything else started there.