For the last several months, the blog has been eerily quiet.
Much of that time has been spent working
on a project. That project has now been
completed and I am thrilled to announce the publication of my memoir, Half the Man I Used to Be: My Yearlong
Journey to Stronger Faith and Better Health. Many of you have followed my health concerns
over the past eighteen months and this book recounts my struggle to overcome my
declining health and my pursuit to live a healthier, and consequently happier,
life. I have faced the challenges of being severely
overweight and I have overcome those challenges by placing them in the hands of
a loving, caring Father. If you face the
same challenges, don’t be afraid and don’t give in to defeat. You can overcome. If was able to do this, then surely anybody
can. And the best part is that you don’t
have to do it alone. Let go and let
God. I used to think those were just
words to make people feel better, but they can be so much more if you let them.
For now, the book is
only available on the publisher’s website, iUniverse. If anyone is interested in a copy, you can
access the book in paperback, hardcover, or ebook at the following website: http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000648807/Half-the-Man-I-Used-to-Be.aspx.
The book should be available at places
like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other retailers within the next 4-6 weeks. As a preview, I have included an excerpt from
the first chapter on the blog. Hope you
enjoy and please share with all your friends and family.
Chapter 1
The Man-Mogram
Randy Travis sang in the classic country
song “1982,” “They say hindsight’s 20/20 but I’m nearly going blind.” When you think about it, that makes a lot of
sense. Looking back on things, we can
see them clearly but often if it is unpleasant, we choose to still not see it
for what it is. Most of us have been
through something we would rather not look back on with the clarity that time
and distance give us so we choose to remember it the way that makes us feel the
most comfortable. This, of course, is
usually not a great idea.
My
eye-opener came in the spring of 2012, and looking back, I should have
recognized it for that instead of treating it as no big deal. I am usually pretty good at dealing with
things and accepting difficulties that life throws my way. But we all have times when, in retrospect, we
would have done things differently. I
believe the Lord was trying to tell me something that spring, but I chose to
look at it blindly instead of realistically, and several months later my whole
world almost came crashing down on me.
It went a little something like this.
One
day when I was coming home from educating the youth at the juvenile detention
facility where I teach, I noticed the seatbelt was rubbing across my right
nipple and it was rather painful. I
thought maybe one of my three rambunctious kids had hit me there by accident
and left a bruise in that sensitive area.
When I got home and started feeling around, I discovered a knot right
under the skin by the nipple. Needless
to say, I freaked out. The knot wasn’t
excruciating but it was painful and uncomfortable to touch. So I did what any guy who loves and respects
his wife utterly and completely would do: I didn’t tell her about it for nearly
a month. I figured it would clear up
sooner or later.
Naturally,
it didn’t happen that way and eventually I broke down and told my wife, Kristy,
what was happening. By this time I was
really starting to get paranoid. There
was so much in the news about men getting breast cancer and I was greatly
concerned. I did not have a doctor at
the time; the one I had been seeing was no longer in private practice. Kristy called her doctor to get me an
appointment … but they could not see me until October. She went ahead and made the appointment so I could
get in with her doctor, but my lumpy nipple hurt, and I wasn’t going to wait
almost six months to get it checked out.
That’s when things began to get weird.
Kristy
has a friend who is a gynecologist, and she called to ask his opinion about
what I needed to do. He told her, “Tell
Brian to come by the office tomorrow, and I’ll check him out. Tell him to tell the receptionist that he is
here to see me, and that I know what it’s about.” I know what you’re thinking, because I was
thinking the same thing: How can this NOT
go wrong? It had disaster written
all over it.
I
showed up at his office the following day, and to say I was hesitant about
stepping inside the doors would be an understatement akin to saying the Titanic had a slight mishap in the Atlantic Ocean . I
was completely and utterly freaked out and my mind was not put at ease when I
entered the waiting room. I looked
around and there were at least half a dozen elderly ladies waiting patiently to
be seen by the doctor. I walked up to
the receptionist and said, “I’m Brian Gross.
I’m here to see the doctor. He
knows what it’s about.” She looked at me,
clearly puzzled, but then said, “OK.” I
wondered how many other guys had come in and said the same thing. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long before
the good doctor came to get me because one can only stare at a floor for so
long.
Unfortunately,
being ushered back to the exam room did nothing to allay the hurricane of
nerves I had swirling in my stomach. The
doctor grabbed me by the elbow and almost started running down the hallway. I had the impression he really didn’t want
anyone to see him with me. The whole time
he was muttering something incomprehensible to himself before saying, “Come on.” When he finally got me into an exam room, he
decided it was not the right place, and we then went in search of another room
and found one: a storage room/broom closet.
Actually, it had been an examination room at one time but was now the
catch-all for things that weren’t currently being used. Before rushing out of the room, he looked at
me and said, “Take your shirt off.” When he was in the hall, I overheard him tell
a nurse, “There’s a man in this room.
Don’t let anyone else go in there.”
The
wait seemed to last forever and it was pretty cold in the room. It struck me as a little strange that he had
instructed no one to come into the room, but it also helped to calm my nerves
for a few minutes as I stared at myself in the large mirror that was directly
across from the chair in which I was sitting.
There are many thoughts that rush through the mind of a nearly
400-pound, topless man as he sits in solitude, ogling himself in a large
mirror. One of those thoughts was, I’m glad he told the nurse to not let anyone
come in here.
Of
course, someone didn’t get the memo, and the look on the poor lady’s face when
she walked into the supply room and saw me sitting there bare-chested was
beyond compare. I guarantee that a very
large, half-naked man was the last thing she was expecting to see at work that
day. She didn’t know what to say and
neither did I, so we just looked at each other for a few seconds, and then she
mumbled something, grabbed what she was looking for and made a beeline for the
door. I was wishing I could do the same
thing. As she closed the door, I could
hear her as she asked someone, “What is that man doing here?” The nurse who epically failed to keep anyone
out replied, “He’s here to see the doctor.
No one was supposed to go in there.”
From
that point on I was taking no chances. I
put my shirt back on while the storm in the pit of my stomach continued to rage. Shortly thereafter the doctor came back in
and looked at me with an odd expression.
He said, “I thought I told you to take your shirt off.” Then he thought for a second and followed
that up with, “Oh, yeah … the nurse. OK,
just pull your shirt up.” He felt around
my right breast for a few minutes, found the nodule, and asked some cursory
questions. Upon completing the examination,
he said, “I’m pretty sure the lump isn’t serious. Losing weight will probably take care of it.” I couldn’t keep myself from thinking, I’ve dodged another bullet. I was abruptly brought out of my reverie,
however, when he went on to tell me, “But just to make sure I want to get that
checked out at the imaging center. Let’s
go up to the front desk so we can get you an appointment for a mammogram.”
My
mind started racing, and I wasn’t so sure I heard him correctly. He assured me it was only to confirm the lump
was what he thought it was and not something significant. He paraded me up to the receptionist I had spoken
to earlier, and he said loud enough for the people in the building across the
street to hear, “Call imaging and get this man scheduled for a mammogram.” OK, so his volume was not quite that loud,
but he was no longer acting as if this were some kind of clandestine mission,
perhaps because the cover had been blown by the unsuspecting nurse.
As
I was leaving the office, relief washed over me. I was glad to be getting out of that bizarre
situation, and I was hanging onto the fact that he was reasonably sure it was
nothing serious. I was a little freaked
out by needing to have a mammogram, but the whole situation was beginning to get
funnier. Being the self-deprecating soul
I am, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, When
a man has a mammogram, is the proper term for it a man-mogram? The thought made me chuckle at the
humiliation I had just subjected myself to and made me wonder what would be in
store for me when I actually had my man-mogram.
