Imagine all the doctor shows and movies when the doctor says, “scalpel,” and someone hands them a scalpel. That’s me. I’ve been a surgical tech for 25 years and I’ve worked at six different hospitals. Currently I’m a tech at University Hospital for trauma surgery.
I used to be a marine biologist at a fish farm, and I decided to join the local fire department, where they had free EMT training. So, I got my basic EMT and thought, you know, this medicine stuff is a whole lot more fun than slopping fish feeder. Eventually, I was hired at a hospital in Fort Worth as a surgical tech, and I’ve been doing that ever since.
However, I didn’t start in trauma surgery. I actually started out mostly doing orthopedics. At my first hospital, I walked in and they looked at me and they’re like, “Oh, big strong guy. You’re an ortho guy”. No choice. And then about four and a half years ago, I suffered an acute aortic arch aneurysm. If that ruptures even on the operating table, you don’t survive it. But I managed to make it all the way through. And when I went back, I realized I needed to reduce my stress level. So, I stepped out of ortho and stepped into general surgery trauma for the last three years now, and since then that’s strictly what I do.
Daniel’s aortic aneurysm before and after repair
One huge thing I’m proud of is losing a ton of weight doing martial arts. A hundred pounds. When my oldest child was about three, she was so painfully shy. So much so that it hurt. My wife and I talked about it. We were like, what can we do to get her out of her shell? And my thought was that we could put her in martial arts, which is supposed to be really good at building confidence and stuff. So we put her in martial arts. The first week she was in it, she seemed to love it. She was outgoing, she ran, and she did classes.
Unfortunately, starting on the second week, she reverted back to how she was, and she wouldn’t go out on the floor. And so I talked to the owner of the dojo who’s the wife of the head instructor. Her suggestion was that we would just pivot the contract from Katie (my daughter) being the person on the contract to me being the person on the contract. And she said that I should bring Katie with me to watch me do class every day.
Sure enough, about two to three months into me doing classes, one day, Katie’s like, “can I go back and do my classes?” I had been having too much fun doing classes myself. It was a stress reliever that I actually needed. So we opted to go for a family plan. Katie did classes earlier in the afternoon, and I did evening classes.
I was really advancing up the ranks too. Eventually, I got to the point where I could test for a black belt. We had people advance through their black belt ranks, and it is not an easy test. It is brutal. And I was like, I can’t be the fat guy. I gotta lose some weight.
So I talked to my doctor and my doctor’s suggestion at the time was to start with a calorie counting app. She said, don’t try and do it all at one time. Figure out what you’re eating now and cut back a hundred calories until that’s not a big deal for you, and then cut back another hundred until that just doesn’t seem like a big loss. And keep cutting it back until you get closer to the goal. In the first week, just input everything and find out where you’re at.
Five thousand calories a day. Wow. I counted it, and over the course of three days, that was my average intake per day. Oh my goodness, I told myself, I need to stop this. So I started the process, cutting back a hundred calories at a time. And because I was training for a black belt at the same time, I was also increasing my exercise levels. I was starting to do more. I started running because I needed to get my cardio up. So I weighed myself every day. Once you start that process of just watching the weight fall off…man, that is the best feeling in the world! It’s exhilarating. I was running seven to twelve miles a day and eating fourteen hundred calories. Bread didn’t exist in the house. I actually got down from 320 to about 167 pounds.
"My advice on losing weight from personal experience is baby steps. It’s really easy to try and do too much too fast, fail, and say “oh well, I tried."
I ended up taking my black belt test. I was the only person in the test who finished the six hour long endeavor. Master Tom jokingly said, “okay. Now just run around the dojo five more times and I can give you the belt”. And so I started running. And he’s like, “I’m kidding. You know, everyone else is laying on the ground. You’ll pass.”
I stayed with martial arts up until about a year ago, mostly because I kept my girls in it long enough for them to finally get their black belts. I tested for my fourth degree black belt, and then shortly after that is when I had my aneurysm. For most people who have an aortic aneurysm, getting them alive and functional to where they can work around the house is the goal. But because I was in such good shape since beginning martial arts, the rehab people were shocked that I was walking two miles a day during my recovery. They said, “I think we’re gonna sign you off because there’s no way we could help you more than what you’re already doing.”
So I went back to the dojo, where I ended up testing for a black belt in Krav Maga, which is one of the systems of martial arts we did. And the test was pretty rough. I wasn’t nearly at the level of fitness I was at when I took my original black belt test, but I got through it just fine. A year later, I was up for my 5th degree black belt in my original system, which is as high as we could go. When I passed the test, I became Master Daniel at the dojo. But by this time, the kids had been out of it for at least three years, and I had run out of steam. So I bowed out from the dojo.
Krav Maga Black Belt!
The author and Daniel post-interview
But I didn’t want to sit at home and do nothing. So in August of this past year, I joined Planet Fitness. After work, I’ve kept up my usual fitness routine, except instead of going to the dojo, I head to the gym. I lift weights for 30 minutes. I run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and then I go home. And that’s actually helped me lose more weight, since I put on a little bit more since my original black belt test.
My advice on losing weight from personal experience is baby steps. It’s really easy to try and do too much too fast, fail, and say “oh well, I tried.” It’s much easier to set many small goals and try to make the next goal. And if you fail at making a small goal, it’s not too hard to get back up and aim to get it done next week. The same thing worked in martial arts. You can’t walk into the dojo and test for a black belt in a week. You have to learn how to start just by standing correctly. And then you have to learn to hold your arms correctly. Sometimes you progress through the steps and learn a new thing, but forget an old thing. And so you reset and go back to the basics.
When I’m not handing over scalpels, working out, or spending time with my daughters, I love playing Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve played since college, ever since the second edition. I have a group, with all of us from the dojo. We all figured out that we have a shared love for D&D and so every Sunday at two o’clock, we get together and play for three or four hours. Every Dungeons and Dragons campaign is like the Three Stooges comedy running around. Half of the fun of the campaign is that you create these creatures who should be great, heroic movie-style creatures. But it devolves into, “I’m gonna jump over that little stream to get to that side. Okay, I fall into the stream. It’s empty right? Nope, there were piranhas in it.” It’s so much fun.