Tornado Alley (PROG)

[newmedman]

My friend that was Xoie's original owner weighed over 500 pounds at one point. He could hardly move and had debilitating pain that limited him every time he did. I attended college with him and watched him just get bigger and bigger throughout the years. It all came to a head when I was hired to remodel his mother's house and was seeing him on a daily basis for a few months.

I quit. I walked off the job and handed it to another guy that we knew. I told him that I couldn't stand to see him like that anymore and it was bugging the hell out of me..

We didn't talk for over a year and then one day he called me out of the blue and explained that the got a stomach reduction surgery. We started to stay in contact again after that. He had hip and knee replacements because all that weight for years took its toll. He also had heart trouble but was religiously seeing a cardiologist.

He eventually lost 300 pounds and was near healthy again. He got Xoie and was going for walks with her every day. He died at his mom's place in Florida from a sudden heart attack. He was gone in seconds. At his memorial, his mom told me how much I influenced his decision to lose all that weight and what I meant to him. I never heard him say that to me but we were very open about his journey back from obesity and how proud I was for him.

I'm sorry that I lost him so soon but he was on death's door to begin with, which is why I could not stand to look at him and walked away in the first place.

Honesty is always the best policy with people you care about. I'm glad for the time he was able to extend and to see him start to flourish again. He always joked that Obamacare saved his life but having an extremely wealthy mother didn't hurt either.