Daredevil Nik Wallenda ‘on cloud nine’ after making 1st tightrope walk across Niagara Falls

Nik Wallenda walks over Niagara Falls on a tightrope in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Friday, June 15, 2012. Wallenda has finished his attempt to become the first person to walk on a tightrope 1,800 feet across the mist-fogged brink of roaring Niagara Falls. The..

 

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – There was “wind coming from every which way,” mist so powerful it clouded his vision and an unfamiliar wire beneath him, but daredevil Nik Wallenda didn’t let that stop him from becoming the first person to walk on a tightrope across the Niagara Falls.

He took steady, measured steps Friday night for 1,800 feet on a wire across the widest part of the gorge of the roaring falls separating the U.S. and Canada, accomplishing what he said was his childhood dream — albeit wearing a tether.

“I feel like I’m on cloud nine right now,” an exuberant Wallenda told reporters after his feat, which he performed before an estimated 112,000 people crowding the shores of both countries and millions more who watched a live television broadcast.

“I hope what I do and what I just did inspires people around the world to reach for the skies,” he said.

He described a breathtaking view during the nighttime walk illuminated by spotlights that “compared to nothing.”

“There was no way to focus on the movement of the cable,” said Wallenda, 33. “If I looked down at the cable there was water moving everywhere. And if I looked up there was heavy mist blowing in front of my face. So it was a very unique, a weird sensation.”

He said he accomplished the feat through “a lot of praying, that’s for sure. But, you know, it’s all about the concentration, the focus, and the training.”

The seventh-generation member of the famed Flying Wallendas had long dreamed of pulling off the stunt, never before attempted. Other daredevils have wire-walked over the Niagara River but farther downstream and not since 1896.

“This is what dreams are made of, people,” said Wallenda, who wore a microphone for the broadcast, shortly after he stepped off from a platform on the American shore.

Along the way, he calmly prayed aloud.

After passing the halfway mark, Wallenda expressed fatigue. “I’m strained, I’m drained,” he said. “This is so physical, not only mental but physical.”

Toward the end, as he neared the Canadian shore, Wallenda dropped to one knee and pumped his fist while the spectators cheered. He broke into a playful run about 15 feet from the finish line, where his wife and three children waited.

“I am so blessed,” he said later. “How blessed I am to have the life that I have.”

ABC televised the walk and insisted Wallenda use a tether to keep him from falling in the river. Wallenda said he agreed because he wasn’t willing to lose the chance to perform the walk it took him well over a year to win permission from two countries to do. Such stunts are normally illegal. ABC’s sponsorship helped offset some of the $1.3 million cost of the spectacle.

Wallenda said he thought about the tether, which was secured at his waist and dragged behind him, at several points along the 30-minute walk but wasn’t hindered by it as he’d feared.

“Awesome! The whole thing is awesome,” 8-year-old William Clements of Dresden, Ontario, said after watching the walk with his family from the Canadian side, adding he wouldn’t want to walk “even over something not high.”

“He was meant to do it. The weather was perfect,” said Glenda Rutherford of Ontario. “It was amazing.”

For Wallenda, who has grown up on the high wire and holds six Guinness records for various stunts, the Niagara Falls walk was unlike anything he’d ever done. Because it was over water, the 2-inch wire didn’t have the usual stabilizer cables to keep it from swinging. Pendulum anchors were designed to keep it from twisting under the elkskin-soled shoes designed by his mother.

The Wallendas trace their roots to 1780 Austria-Hungary, when ancestors traveled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and trapeze artists. The clan has been touched by tragedy, notably in 1978 when patriarch Karl Wallenda, Nik’s great-grandfather, fell to his death during a stunt in Puerto Rico.

Wallenda said that at one point in the middle of the walk, he thought about his great-grandfather and the walks he had taken: “That’s what this is all about, paying tribute to my ancestors, and my hero, Karl Wallenda.”

About a dozen other tightrope artists have crossed the Niagara Gorge downstream, dating to Jean Francois Gravelet, aka The Great Blondin, in 1859. But no one had walked directly over the falls, and authorities hadn’t allowed any tightrope acts in the area since 1896. It took Wallenda two years to persuade U.S. and Canadian authorities to allow it, and many civic leaders hoped to use the publicity to jumpstart the region’s struggling economy, particularly on the U.S. side of the falls.   Source

 

‘Shot Girls,’ Underground Butt Injections Exposed

In five years, Vanity Wonder, 30, has had more than 16 butt and hip injections to curve her waist line. Her butt has more than doubled its size since she began injections.

“I had always wanted a better body and, on top of that, I liked the compliments that I’d got when I was a little thicker,” Wonder wrote in her book, “Shot Girls.”

Fat is the most common substance injected for implants among certified plastic surgeons, which is typically transferred from another part of the body. Wonder’s experience is a different story.

Ask her what kind of injections she has had, and she’ll say that for at least the first two times, she’s not quite sure.

That’s because, in many cases, Wonder went to hotels in Detroit, lay on a massage table and let a “shot girl” — someone who she said was clearly not certified — give her the injections. Indeed, after each of at least her first two injections, Wonder was patched up at her injection site with cotton balls and super glue to keep from leaking, she chronicled in her book.

The practice is more common than thought, Wonder said. In her book, “Shot Girls,” Wonder exposes the not-so-underground world of black-market cosmetic procedures in which many people are injected with liquid silicone, tire rubber and even super glue.

Although Wonder said the injections worked for her and helped her to reach her goal without any harmful side effects, she’s now on a mission to stop others from doing the same. The goal of her book is to warn women about the dangers of underground shot operations, she said.

“Don’t look at me and think that I’m living happy,” Wonder said. “You may not come out like me.

In five years, Vanity Wonder, 30, has had more than 16 butt and hip injections to curve her waist line. Her butt has more than doubled its size since she began injections.

“I had always wanted a better body and, on top of that, I liked the compliments that I’d got when I was a little thicker,” Wonder wrote in her book, “Shot Girls.”

Fat is the most common substance injected for implants among certified plastic surgeons, which is typically transferred from another part of the body. Wonder’s experience is a different story.

Ask her what kind of injections she has had, and she’ll say that for at least the first two times, she’s not quite sure.

That’s because, in many cases, Wonder went to hotels in Detroit, lay on a massage table and let a “shot girl” — someone who she said was clearly not certified — give her the injections. Indeed, after each of at least her first two injections, Wonder was patched up at her injection site with cotton balls and super glue to keep from leaking, she chronicled in her book.

The practice is more common than thought, Wonder said. In her book, “Shot Girls,” Wonder exposes the not-so-underground world of black-market cosmetic procedures in which many people are injected with liquid silicone, tire rubber and even super glue.

Although Wonder said the injections worked for her and helped her to reach her goal without any harmful side effects, she’s now on a mission to stop others from doing the same. The goal of her book is to warn women about the dangers of underground shot operations, she said.

“Don’t look at me and think that I’m living happy,” Wonder said. “You may not come out like me.

In a growing number of cases, such practices have led to damaging and, at times, fatal consequences.

Wonder, who later became an assistant to a “shot girl” before she faced jail time for being involved in a shot operation, told ABC News that many girls refuse to get butt implants because they “are not trendy and cool.”

Injections are seen as the better alternative because they provide a more firm and natural look, she said.

Black women, who once shunned any kind of medical enhancement procedures, are now growing more accepting of conventional means of undergoing cosmetic procedures, a report by ABC News’ “20/20” found.

Still, Wonder said that many women, especially those who turn to underground practices, do so because they don’t want others to know they have had any kind of cosmetic procedure.

About 12.2 million cosmetic minimally invasive procedures were performed in 2011, a 6 percent increase from 2010, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. It’s unclear how many people participated in illegal black market procedures.

According to Dr. Malcolm Roth, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the Wonder book might mislead many to think that these kinds of procedures are safe.

“We’ve all seen horror stories of people who have done the quick and seemingly easy procedure done by the non-medical community,” Roth said.

Although Wonder details one of the shot girls as someone who she said was rude and uncouth, many people comment on her fan pages begging for the contact information so they can get the same procedure.

“They beg me for her number even though I don’t know what was injected into me, and people want to know where she’s at,” Wonder said. “Nobody listens.”

Some of the most common side effects of botched injections are severe allergic reactions and even ulcers around the injection site, according to Dr. Mark Abdelmalek, chief of the division of laser and dermatologic surgery at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

“There’s a spectrum of danger,” Abdelmalek said. “It can start as a little infection, but infections can be dangerous if you don’t get control over it in a timely manner.”

Silicone injections are among the most dangerous kinds of botched procedures, Roth said.
1 | 2    Source

 

Texas Teen Loses More Than 150 Pounds With Controversial Gastric Bypass

A year ago, Nick Preto, a 16-year-old from Baytown, Texas, weighed an astounding 403 pounds. He was about to enter his senior year in high school and was plagued with potentially life-threatening health problems.

“Nightline” asked Preto and his mother, Toni Preto, if we could follow him as he underwent a highly controversial surgery for teenagers: gastric bypass.

Over the course of the past year, Preto has gone on a remarkable weight-loss journey, losing 150 pounds and changing the way he lives his life. But it has not been easy.

Last June, before the surgery, Preto took “Nightline” on a tour of the fast food joints he regularly visited. He was routinely consuming 7,000 calories a day, three times the recommended total for an adult man, and knew he had to make changes.

“It’s senior year, you know, you want to date the homecoming queen. You want to have the cutest girl,” he said at the time. “I guess just because I’ve been bigger, nothing has really happened with … the ladies.”

But Preto’s doctors told him if he didn’t lose the weight, the ladies were going to be the least of his problems. The teenager was careening towards an early death. He was already a pre-diabetic and suffering from sleep apnea, liver damage and joint pains. So he decided to get some radical help through gastric bypass surgery.

Preto’s surgeon, Dr. Mary Brandt, was hesitant about doing such a major and irreversible operation on a teenager   “I really didn’t think it was a good idea,” she said. “I mean, metabolically changing someone who’s a growing adolescent to me, made no sense. But this is the first generation that’s not going to outlive their parents. That’s the scariest thing to me.”

The procedure, which completely rewired Preto’s digestive system and reduced his stomach from the size of a small toaster oven to the size of an egg, took about two hours. The first weeks after surgery were tough for Preto as he adjusted to eating tiny portions.

Seven weeks later, his weight was down from 403 pounds to 315 pounds. But Preto told “Nightline” anchor Cynthia McFadden that changing his diet was difficult. Not only was he frequently vomiting, the whole process had been an emotional roller coaster.

“You feel depressed a lot, like, my emotions have been really kind of thrown everywhere,” he said. “I cry at sad movies and chick flicks and stuff, when usually I don’t cry at stuff like that.”

But despite the tough road, Preto was determined to keep going, and said he intended to lose 100 pounds in the next six months.

“Nightline” reconnected with Preto a few weeks ago after the six months was up for the big weigh-in. When he stepped on the scale, he had dropped another 70 pounds, which was not quite the 100-pound goal he had set for himself, but still an impressive achievement, weighing a total of 247 pounds. A year ago, his waist was 60 inches. Today, it’s 34    But more important than the number on the scale was the joy in Preto’s eyes as he stepped out to attend his senior prom with his new girlfriend, Jordan. Not only was he healthier, he was happier too.

Preto said losing the weight led to a great senior year. He joined the swim team and the water polo team. And got the girl of his dreams. What a difference a year can make in the life of a young man determined to change. He said fast food is now a memory. He is too busy living   Source