Ed

 A commercial farm fisherman, Ed fishes an area of Long Island Sound for clams the Ed’s company, Pepe’s Cream of the Crop, sells to local farmers’ markets. “I’ve been on the water since I was 21,” he says. “I’m at work at 5:15 in the morning and, honestly, I love that life. But it was getting harder and harder to move around.  We’d dock the boat and walk up a steep ramp to the van. My 135-lb wife would have to push me from behind to help me get there. Lucky for me she’s so strong!”

 

His honest nature is immediately apparent, but in those days the Stratford resident says he avoided the dangerous reality of his weight. Then he experienced a moment of truth. “I’d been having knee issues and needed an operation, but couldn’t have it because I couldn’t use crutches due to my size.” He also had diabetes, high blood pressure and was suffering from depression. 

 

“So one day I’m sitting in my big recliner, and all of a sudden out of the blue I said, ‘This chair is my coffin.’” That image rattled him, but he deals with the memory using a little dark humor. “Coffin or no coffin, I still managed to get up to find something to eat!’” he says with a brief laugh.

 

There are turning points in life for each of us — important moments we may not identify until long after they’ve passed. For Ed, it was this coffin image that inspired his determination to lose for real this time. He reached out to an old friend who’d just had a procedure called gastric bypass. Ed had read about it and was interested. 

 

“She recommended Dr. Ehrlich,” he says. “Told me how he was great with patients and the best doc in his field. I thought, okay, but what about for a guy who has weighed as much as me for so long?”

 

The question was valid, the answer clear. Dr. Ehrlich is known for providing patients with comprehensive information on the weight-loss surgery program he heads. Ed needed to lose weight first, the surgeon explained, because his liver had enlarged and could obstruct the procedure. “He detailed how that happens so I understood how important reducing the liver was. No one had explained it so completely before,” Ed says. “Plus he had this program that helped me to actually do it.” 

 

His gastric bypass was performed in November 2004. Ed weighed in that day at 395 lbs — already a stunning victory for a 500-lb man who had “tried every diet in the book.” After the surgery, he lost steadily, as long as he followed the program. Close to 150 lbs came off over the course of the next several months.

 

“But then I started to backslide,” he says. “It happens. I hadn’t paid enough attention to what the program nutritionist said, and hadn’t done the self-examination recommended through counseling. I started to gain back the weight.”

 

That scared him, sending him down the road toward depression again. Today he’s done that self-examination and fully accepts that control over his weight lies with him. “But back then? I never even registered the one rule the program emphasizes, which is that whether it’s the Lap Band or gastric bypass, the surgery is really just a tool in the weight-loss battle. Good nutrition, calorie limits, exercise — it’s doing those things that wins the war.”

 

Back on the program, Ed hit his stride again and lost weight. “You can’t afford to give negative thoughts free rent in your mind. I looked back at the things I’d learned and at what I was doing, like drinking lots of coffee with cream and sugar, and cut them out. It worked.”

 

At 230 lbs — 35 lbs less than the last time Dr. Ehrlich had seen him and free of the medical problems that once threatened his life — Ed showed up at a seminar. “I stood way in the back, where I thought he couldn’t see me. But Dr. Ehrlich knows all his patients so well. He just looked my way and next I know he’s shouting, ‘My gosh, it’s Ed! Hey, how’s it going, Ed? How’s Laurie?’

 

“But that’s Dr. Ehrlich for you,” this extraordinary man concludes. “I guess that’s why we all love the guy. For that, and for saving our lives.”