In November 2021, Robert Jones of Oakland, Calif., went to the emergency room. He thought his right big toe was infected, and he had a fever. He didn’t think too much of it, figuring they would give him some pills and send him home. But that’s not what happened.
He was diagnosed with diabetes, and complications from the disease meant his toe needed to be amputated.
“I’ll never forget the feeling when the doctor looked over and said, ‘Well, Mr. Jones, I don’t know if we can save the toe.’ I was numb. I didn’t react. It didn’t hit me that whole day,” he says. “I was prediabetic about ten years ago, but I didn’t take it seriously. I was young, so I thought I had time. But because of the diabetes, I wasn’t feeling my feet.”
They removed his toe the next day, and he was hospitalized for two weeks. After that, he spent four weeks recovering in a nursing facility. He also later needed part of his left big toe amputated.
“When I got home, I said to myself, ‘I’m never going to lose another body part.’ That’s what changed my mindset. I don’t want to get sick again,” he says.
His health problems grew over time
Jones was so thin growing up that his nickname was “Bones.” He ate a lot — he remembers buying cookies and cakes and hiding them under his bed at age 8 or 9 so his mother wouldn’t see them. But he was an active child and he stayed thin.
That changed around age 18 when he started working, first at a Jack in the Box restaurant and then at a library. “My weight just started increasing. When I was 30, I was let go from the library because I was falling asleep on the job. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had sleep apnea.”
Over time, his weight kept creeping up, and by 2010, he weighed 500 pounds. “I knew it was up there, but I didn’t know it was that high,” he says. “I had a lot of depression and self-doubt. I didn’t even want to leave the house. I would never ride the bus when kids were going to or from school…
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