Paul Mitacek:  

Life After high school, I began working in retail for a number of years and attended Turnpike Tech (Nassau Community College) for a couple of semesters before deciding that I wasn't ready to go back to school. Over ten years later, I met my wife and we moved out to Suffolk for a couple of years before deciding that we were furthur from our families than we wanted to be at that time. We were having fun; going to Atlantic City and Las Vegas, Caribbean cruises, Hershey Park, DisneyWorld; all before having kids. In January of 2004, I had reached a whopping 450 lbs in bodyweight. I had reached the breaking point and decided at that point that I desperately needed to reset my priorities to-GET BUSY LIVING or GET BUSY DYING . After numerous consultations with several doctors and specialists who stated that there WOULD BE risks involved and there was also a 1 in 400 chance that I might not survive I decided that I was caught in Catch 22 either way (damned if you do-damned if you don't); so on May 15th, 2004 I had Gastric Bypass Surgery which was a total succ...Expand for more