173 DAYS

DR FINKELSTEIN: This is something you don’t see but once in a career. Someone that young, that big—you can’t help but be excited.

DOCUMENTARY VOICE-OVER: Dr Finkelstein is one of the world’s leading gastroenterologists.

DR FINKELSTEIN: Gastric bypass surgery? Well, it’s barbaric but beautiful. You cut out a perfectly healthy stomach and rewire it for starvation. Think of the stomach like a buffalo—wild. You can’t train a buffalo. Even if they count to seven with their foot or jump through a ring of fire—they’re always a wild animal only playing at being tame. And you can’t trust a wild animal. No more than you’d trust a crackhead that swears they need the money for the bus to see their kid. If you offered me a blowjob from a pretty undergrad who needs my recommendation or a 700-pound fat man who wants me to cut him—the fat man wins every time. Bariatric surgery is better than sex—ask my wife. And if you want a career with longevity—obesity is where it’s at. With half the population barely able to tie their shoes and governments channelling more and more money into anti-obesity surgery, I get to carve up more porkers every year.

And I love it.

Stark skin

Paint a rectangle the size of a shoebox (men’s loafers, size 10) orange with antiseptic

The flesh ripples thickly like crème brûlée

Crack him open like a book

And this can shock those who are new to the surgery because you don’t expect the smell

Like hamburgers on a grill

As God is my witness

The inside of the stomach smells like hamburgers on a grill

Pull out a glutinous apron of fat and blood vessels

Arm up to the elbow pushing aside a horse-sized liver

Reaching

Feeling

Hernia after hernia until…

And there’s my bad boy!

The stomach’s glistening, firm

Taking aim with the Endo-GIA II stapler

Which cuts as well as rivets

A thing of beauty

Smooth, powerful, clean

Spits out 64 stainless steel staples at a trigger pull

I divide the stomach in two

And staple the top portion into the size of an olive

An organ that could once proudly contain a bucket of fried chicken can now barely hold a shot glass of fat-free yoghurt

I feel down for the small intestine

Past the duodenum to the jejunum

Slice through the sausage-like structure

And nail it to the olive, creating a passageway circumference the size of an M&M

And now I’m really riding

Like a rodeo star roping a calf

I grab the slippery end of the small intestine

Flip it

And staple it to the lower small intestine

So when this fat bastard cheats

And he will

’Cause they always cheat

And he swallows a sausage roll

This contorted gut shoots panic signals to the brain

And these panic signals force him to ‘dump’

A violent rejection of that sausage roll as if it were poison

Cramps, hot flushes, pain, diarrhoea