26 Feb 10 CANCELED: Nick/Tuck
If you follow me on Twitter (as you all should of course), you may have read yesterday where my surgeon canceled my upcoming, and when I say upcoming I mean the surgery was literally happening within 288 hours, surgery.
My medical Doctor here in San Francisco gave me a pre-surgery physical as my surgeon wanted. As I stated before on here, I have a health issue which ultimately will be the death of me. Its because I am not doing well based on my labs, that my Doctor decided to write a letter to the surgeon saying that while nothing may go wrong, my risk for infection could be greater, but may not be.
It’s because of this letter that the surgeon called me up expressing his concern with proceeding and said that I come back within 3-6 months if I am doing better at that time.
HERE’S HOW THIS COULD HAD GONE DIFFERENTLY:
My surgeon wanted to do the physical, but since I was having the procedure done in Florida, it was easier for me to have the physical in San Francisco. I will now be looking for a surgeon either within the San Francisco area, or go with my second, and more expensive choice, in Florida, but have them do the physical.
EVERY SINGLE DOCTOR I SPOKE WITH…and I believe I had 6 consultations with various Doctors said that my condition wouldn’t be an issue in performing the surgery, or recovery. It’s because of one gray-ly worded letter from my medical Doctor that this entire thing has been put on the shelf. BTW, I have already called my rep at Kaiser and asked for a change in Doctors. I never want to see the face of the man who made 7 months of sleeping on the streets all a waste.
I am not sure how I will proceed. I might look for an apartment, and just continue saving and hope in 3-6 months I am ‘better’ and able to have the surgery, but more likely I will continue living on the streets in order to save up the extra ~$3000-5,000 needed to have the surgery done with a different surgeon, keeping my medical Doctor out of the loop.
I WILL HAVE THIS SURGERY WITHIN THE NEXT 196 DAYS…I DON’T CARE IF I HAVE TO CUT MYSELF OPEN IN ORDER TO HAVE IT DONE, IT WILL BE DONE!
Tags: abdomenplasty, fat, lipo, Nick Tuck, surgery, tummy tuck, weight, weight loss, weightloss
03 Aug 09 Questions and Answers
After one night on the streets, I will say that it is going to be tough, but I hope that this venture only lasts around 6 months in order to save the money I need for the first part of my surgery, aka $8,000.
It is a bit time consuming for me to answer everyone’s questions each and every time they are asked, especially since most of the questions are repeated, so I will list them here, answer them, and update this post if need be.
Q) Why are you homeless? Is it some sort of social experiment?
A) No it isn’t some sort of social experiment. I have gone through this answer numerous times here, here, here, and here. The bottom line is that I lost 100lbs and for my body to adjust properly to the weight loss, it is recommended by multiple doctors that I get an abdominoplasty, aka tummy tuck, to get rid of the excess skin and residual fat. To get my torso in the most presentable fashion, it is also recommended that I get my flanks fixed as well as the removal of my Gynecomastia, aka male breasts, treated.
Q) Why not just save up and live some where?
A) I’ve NEVER been good with money, as evidenced in the course of my 20-some years here on earth. I have a horrible credit score, I have wage garnishment for my student loans, and basically live paycheck to paycheck. I can’t get financing for a $300 credit card, and was barely able to find a bank to offer me a checking account. I’ve been with my current job a little over a year now, and lived in one of the cheapest places I’ve ever seen in San Francisco at $775/month. I would scrape by paycheck to paycheck, often not having enough for food or anything else by the time the next paycheck came along.
I lived in my car for a little over a year before, and find rent to be one of the largest and unnecessary expenses in my life. I KNOW that 99.99% of you don’t see it this way, but I do, so fuck off. While living in my car, I didn’t have a set goal, like I do now for the surgery, but I was able to afford the things I wanted and live my life in a happy manor.
Q) Where will you shower?
A) I prepaid for a 2 year gym membership at 24 Hour Fitness through this offer at Costco for $299. That works out to just under $12.50 a month. I’ve NEVER seen a gym deal that good ever. This also gets me in the gym more often, aka every day in order to work out and subsequently shower.
Q) Are you crazy?
A) Read this. Short answer no, I just don’t think the same way, or have the same priorities as you may have.
Q) How soft is cement?
A) Not at all. After my 1st night on the streets, I need to get some sort of padding, or more cushy sleeping bag.
Q) What about a hostel, or cheaper place to live?
A) A hostel in San Francisco is around $25-$45 a night, and thus more than I was paying for rent before. I want to get to my goal of $8,000 as fast as possible. This is the quickest way I know. Check out this listing for apartments in San Francisco. Do you see ONE which is less than the $775 I was paying?
Q) Where does your mail go? Where do you keep your stuff?
A) I got a PO Box 1 block away from work, and I have a friend who has graciously offered his garage to me for a 2nd time since moving to San Francisco during this period to store my stuff.
Q) Are you gay?
A) Umm yes read this.
Q) How long will this last?
A) I am trying to save up the $8,000 needed for just the abdominoplasty part of the surgeries I want. This will take around 6 months by saving on my own. I would LOVE to get all of three procedures done at the same time, but the cost is around $15,000 for all three. The tummy tuck is the one considered most prominent by the doctors I’ve seen and thus it is the one I want the most.
Q) What can I do to help?
A) Well I am taking donations on this site, just click the Nick Tuck logo. Also if you have a place to crash for a night, few nights, etc. I’ll sleep in a garage, couch, backyard, etc I don’t care. Anything is better and safer than sleeping on the streets. Other than that referrals to Doctors who might perform the operation at a lower cost/pro bono, or just an encouraging word or email goes a long way.
Q) How much are you saving per month?
A) Well with my estimated expenses and based on my income, I am able to save around $1,500 a month, which is around 5 months and a few weeks to reach my goal. I am also trying to cut back as much a possible, and spend less than $20 a day on food and all other expenses. You can follow a Twitter account I made for that goal here (@20aDay). Also my main Twitter account is @NickStarr and I have one for my procedure @NickTuck.
I hope this answers a majority of the questions I have been getting in some fashion or another. Please feel free to leave more in the comments, on Twitter, Facebook, etc and I will add them to this list.
Updated:
Q) Why don’t you buy a junk car and park in a paid parking lot? (Mary from the comments)
A) Mary you most likely don’t live in San Francisco. Parking lots in the city range from $300+ per month in terms of parking. I HIGHLY doubt that they allow for people to live in cars in these lots either. Paying al this extra money for expenses which I don’t need such as a car, registration, insurance, and a garage will set me even further back on my goals.
Tags: ca, Homeless, lipo, q&a, surgery, tummy tuck, weight, weightloss
29 Jul 09 Nick Tuck Article
The other day I was contacted by Donna Sue Talarico about my weight loss story and specifically the steps I am taking to get the surgery I need after such dramatic weight loss. The article which she wrote featured a good few paragraphs about my story and what is in store. Here is an exceprt of my portion, but check out the entire article here.
Nick Starr, 28, of San Francisco, weighed more than 250 pounds last year. Through diet and exercise, he shed more than 100 pounds, but he’s left with sagging skin and desperately wants plastic surgery to fix it. Always overweight, he’d wanted plastic surgery as long as he could remember but originally thought liposuction was the answer.
“I realized a tummy tuck was the better procedure for me now, since I have excess skin and fat which won’t go away, no matter how much I’ve worked out in the past year,” he said, adding that his consulting surgeon also suggested love-handle lipo and a breast reduction.
Starr admitted he’s never been good at managing money, so he’s taking an extreme measure to raise $8,000 for his abdominoplasty: becoming homeless.
“I had to change something. I was homeless, living in my car once before,” he explained, adding that now he doesn’t have wheels. “I figure I can do it without the car with a few months while I save up money for the tuck.”
Starr dubbed his journey Nick/Tuck and is chronicling his progress and accepting donations on his blog at www.nickstarr.com.
Like so many others, Starr feels plastic surgery is the solution to finally being happy inside out. Yaremchuk believes strongly that plastic surgery can be life-changing by improving appearance and boosting self-esteem, but he cautions patients that it’s not always the answer to “solve all life’s problems.”
Tags: abdomenplasty, Nick Tuck, plastic surgery, surgery, tuck, weight, weightloss
31 Dec 08 2008…The Year of Transformations
Two thousand eight…2008….wow what a year. I don’t even know where to begin. I started the year off…well I don’t even remember what I did for New Year’s Eve last year. The year started off though for me when I joined a gym and actually started going for real. I set a goal in February to change my life and body and come down from my all time high weight of 220-230 down to 160 within 120 days. This was surprisingly not as difficult as I would of thought, and while I still hate doing the weights at the gym, cardio is something I am less scared of now. I met my goal ahead of schedule, in time for the 2008 San Francisco Pride fest.
Speaking of which, I also finally came out this year. It was one of the scariest few weeks of my life as I drafted my email/post which I would send to my family and friends, and post on the site here. I got a reply from my mom a few hours before I had planned on posting it on the site and to my shock they took it a lot better then I would of thought.
It was one of the biggest reliefs after I hit submit ever. It was like a weight lifted, and I finally feel free to be myself without trying to hide who I am.
I got to travel quite a bit this year as well. I went to Toronto, Chicago, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Seattle, Los Angeles, and back to where I grew up in Tampa Bay, Florida to see my family for the first time since I moved out to San Francisco nearly a year and half ago.
HA! I also finally cut my hair, after years of growing it out and thinking that it looked good…wow was I blind or who knows what. It really was a transformational year for me. Quite a lot of changes, and hopefully 2009 will lead to more changes.
I am really proud of myself and accomplishing nearly everything I set out to do in 2008. In 2009 I want to set some tougher goals and hope that I can be as successful. I want to not just lose weight, but tone up and get over my dread of working weights at the gym. I want to more then double what I can bench press, which isn’t much at all, and have a body I am proud to show off when I head to Gay Days Disneyworld in June. I also REALLY need to get my finances in line. I am looking to getting a second job part time in order to help jump start this process, but I would really like to set aside 25% of my paycheck into a savings account, and build up a few month buffer as a ‘rainy day fund.’ Right now I am literally living payday advance to payday advance and often have little to no money by the time it is time to pay bills.
Also a sort of major thing for me is to get out more (I know I go out to bars all the time, but I mean in other venues), and go out on dates which hopefully will lead to a relationship. I have been single since 2002, when I was living with a girlfriend in Portland, Oregon. A lot in my life has changed since then, and I would like to share my life with someone else. I’ve signed up for 6 months on Chemistry.com (for $159) and hope this jump starts the process. I might sign up for Match.com as I sort of have become not a fan of the way Chemistry.com works by sending you only a select few matches.
I also want to develop friendships in 2009. I have a TON of “friends” as I see it. Plenty of people I see at various parties, clubs, bars, etc who know me and vice versa
and the conversation is always small talk yet nothing of substance. Sometimes it is nothing more then a, “Hey…” I really feel as if I don’t have any REAL friends here though. I want to develop friendships hopefully with some of the people already in my life, but also others who I might not know yet. I really feel alone here in San Francisco at times, like there is no one who KNOWS me. I know that a lot people who read my stuff online know more then anything my “friends” here know about me. I don’t even think a single one of my gay “friends” know that I lived in my car for over a year, or any of the other major events which have shaped my life. It really is depressing at times feeling so alone in a city where I know so many people.
Well that was my 2008, and hopes and dreams for 2009. I hope that I can be as successful this upcoming year as I was last. Regardless I’m sure that there will be no shortage of stories and exciting adventures which I will be sure to write about here as well as on Twitter (my microblog). I look forward to seeing what the future has in store.
Tags: 2008, 2009, coming out, gay, gym, new year, new years eve, nye, pride, san francisco, sf, toronto, travel, weight, weightloss
05 Aug 08 The secret to my success…
HA! If you know me for real, you know that I am not a wildly successful person, but recently I have been quite successful at losing weight. I remember going clothes shopping with my mother and buying size husky as a child. I’ve always been heavy as far back as I can remember, and was picked on at school for it. I got down to 177 back in 2002 in order to join the Navy, but haven’t been that low until now. Recently, I have gone from my all time high (that I measured on a scale) of around 220 (but there was a period where I didn’t get on a scale because I knew I had been eating poorly and gained a lot of weight since the last time I weighed myself and topped at around 250) all the way down to 155 where I am at now. I’m in the best shape of my life (including most of high school). How did I do it? Let me tell you.
Feb 2005
First off I started as most people do at New Year’s thinking to myself that I would love to shed some extra pounds. My friend (at the time) Billy and I were hanging out and going to the gym. He told me he wanted to lose weight in time for Pride, which I had no idea about at that time. Pride in San Francisco is the last weekend in June, which put the goal about 6 months out. I figured this was a good goal to set and decided on 165-160 as my goal. Quite lofty for a guy in his 200’s, but something to strive for.
Feb 2006
Before this I was doing a high carb; low fat diet. I would eat all the foods I wanted as long as there was little to no fat in them. Pretty much my diet consisted of beans & rice. While this diet might of been effective for some, it wasn’t working for me very well.
May 2006
I decided to go with an old diet I had done in the past with mild success. I got down to about 185 with it before and figured I would give it a full go this time. It isn’t the Atkins diet and it isn’t the South Beach diet, but somewhere in between. (Let me also interject here that I drink a SHITLOAD of water every day. While I do still occasionally drink diet soda, I make sure to have at least 9-10 8oz glasses of Voss water a day.)
Sept 2006
Breakfast: I would eat depending on time (which most days was very little) an Atkins breakfast bar or shake shortly after waking up (6am-8am). These chocolate shakes turn out to be pretty yummy. If I had more time, I would fix up about 2 eggs as scrambled or over medium. When I got to work, I would microwave 2-4 pieces of precooked bacon as a 9am-10am snack.
March 2007
Snack: If I got hungry outside of the bacon, I would have a string cheese. Cheese turned out to be one of the best snacks for me, as it is something I love, but also is very low in carbs. I would get 50% reduced fat cheese and other low-fat cheese to help reduce the daily fat intake.
June 2007
Lunch: Now let me explain that I am very much a meat and potatoes person. I don’t like most vegetables, fruits, salads, etc. I am one of the pickiest eaters I’ve ever met. My lunch would consist of 2 turkey sausages or 2-3 turkey hot dogs. I would microwave them for about 30-45 seconds, then pull them out and slice them down the middle. Pour my favorite condiment of the day on, then finish cooking.
Sept 2007 (I didn’t eat anything for 3 weeks)
Here is a HUGE tip…these meals are quite repetitive, at least they were for me. Here’s the tip on mixing them up. SPICES & SAUCES! Every day I would pick a different spice, mustard, etc to put on my meals to help mix things up and keep the tastes different. I love Emril’s Essence, Boar’s head spicy mustard, and low-carb/reduced sugar Heinz ketchup. BTW be careful with mustard, almost all of them are zero carbs, but once you start getting into honey mustards the carbs rack up quickly.
Sept 2007 (Obviously started eating again)
Snack: In the afternoon I would grab another string cheese or more often a sugar free Jello. Throw on a dollop of light whipped cream (0-2 carbs) and you have a yummy and low-carb snack.
November 2007
Snack: Between leaving work and dinner I would sometimes have a snack. It might of been a carrot, piece of cheese, or Atkins bar (which are going up in price recently, but still worth buying to help fight those chocolate/sugary cravings).
December 2007
Dinner: Being new to California and not used to the expensive cost of living, I would stay clear of eating out as much as possible. Instead I would buy frozen or raw chicken breasts and cook them up at home. There are plenty of great zero/low carb dressings to marinade your chicken in. This is where spices would play a huge factor as well. Every night a different spice or different sauce to pour on. I would occasionally eat a helping of cooked broccoli (with melted cheese on top) to round out my dinner and keep me from being hungry the rest of the night.
Feb 2008
Here is the key though…as much as diet played a factor….EXERCISE is what helped me lose the weight. I would go to the gym, even if I didn’t want to 3-6 times a week and do at least 30 minutes on the elliptical machine. I would go and work on some of the equipment as well, and always do at least 100-200 crunches. It wasn’t an intense workout, but I would maintain certain goals while on the elliptical.
April 2008
Working out became something that I looked forward to (so cliche I know), but it is true. I would typically go after work, but have recently started toning up more and doing more machines, so I go in the morning to do weights and still do my cardio on the way home from work.
May 2008
I also for a large portion of the diet have taken Alli. It is one of the first OTC diet/weightloss drugs the FDA has approved. It has some crazy “treatment effects” which I am glad to say I never had, but with the wrong intake of fat you are in for some nasty times. I would take one pill with each meal. Alli isn’t the answer for everyone, but it does help eliminate up to 25% of the fat put into your body while eating.
June 2008
That’s about it….diet, exercise, and Alli were the main secrets to my success. I am still not exactly where I want to be and with such rapid and dramatic weight loss I have some left over areas I am trying to tone up now. Am I where I want to be? No way…Don’t get me wrong, I love the new me and feel great as I went from a size 36 to 34 to 33 to 32/31 and now to 31/30. I just want to feel more comfortable nekkid and specifically with my shirt off. I am sure that I will get there with time and effort.
July 2008
I hope this helps you, I know this plan isn’t right of everyone, but being a very picky eater I think I can maintain the diet for sometime to come…as long as they keep slaughtering those stupid chickens, I will be sure to have them for dinner.
Tags: 155, 220, alli, alli weight loss, atkins, cardio, exercise, fat, fatso, loss, nick, nick starr, pride, pride sf, south beach, starr, weight, weight loss
