After a year of many discussions concerning the book about my struggles with obesity that I've mentioned in previous blogs , we are finally making some traction. The long talked about book is coming together at last. To give you the gist of some of the details that you can expect to read about such as who the authors are, what the subject matter is and what target market would be best served by the content of this book, I offer the following.

The authors are myself, Nick Mirrione, who was born and raised in Massachusetts in 1950 and still resides there, and Dr R. Armor Forse, who was born and raised in Montreal, Canada in 1950 and currently lives in Nebraska.  Nick is the subject of the book and Dr Forse is the Bariatric Surgeon who performed the gastric bypass surgery on Nick on January 16, 2001 that changed his life significantly.

The book will be approximately 17 to 20 chapters in length.  The story begins during Nick's teenage years, growing up in Braintree.  You will read about  a seemingly normal life that somehow tumbles out of control as, over a period of time, his weight begins to yo-yo from an average of 180 pounds to a high of somewhere in the vicinity of 475 to 500 pounds. You will follow him through his Military days, which included two tours in Vietnam, and then the adjustment period when he returned home.  It moves on through his marriage, business successes and failures and the eventual failure of the marriage.  You will follow his struggles with doing anything at all in moderation, and as he moves into middle age and feels time is "running out" on the opportunities to get a handle on his life, you will see how he came to the decision to have gastric bypass surgery, and how that decision brought him to Dr. Forse.

Dr Forse provides background on his own life, along with the evolution of bariatric surgery from the onset, when it got so little respect as a tool in the struggle with obesity, to today's belief that the surgery is a very viable solution for a better quality of life for many patients dealing with morbid obesity.  Dr Forse will take you through the changes and improvements in the methods used over the years and will fill in details as to how the surgery relates to Nick, specifically.

We are making significant progress and our goal is to have the book proposal in the hands of a literary agent by the end of summer and published by the end of November 2013.  Let's see how it goes.