Tears in their eyes, they tell him about how being 200 or 300 pounds overweight has affected their lives. How they can't be parents because they can't lie on the floor to play with their children. How they can't go to PTA meetings because they become laughingstocks. How they can't go to work because they're too embarrassed to be seen in public. In short, how their lives have turned into a living hell.
Waites knows what it means to have an addiction ruin a life.
Feb. 13, 1980. That's the day Waites entered the drug and alcohol rehab program that would save his medical career and, quite possibly, his life. It began innocently. Waites was a general practice surgeon who suffered the occasional twinge of lower back pain. An avid runner who pounded mile after concrete mile into his personal odometer, Waites' condition was aggravated because when he wasn't running, he was constantly on his feet leaning over his patients.