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Many patients say it was
worth it because it's a permanent change and the idea that they might have
lost something forever is much too painful.
I just chatted with a "happy patient" (gastric bypass patient)
my age, 61 the other day. She described how excited she was that if she
took an hour for lunch and ate tiny bites and chewed well and took breaks
(to let things go down) she could eat a whole chicken breast. Imagine
going through that with every meal!
This 61-year-old friend with a gastric bypass had two weeks previously,
experienced total body pain and found out she was very anemic and needs
iron infusions (which is neither comfortable nor without risk) regularly.
After her iron infusions, she feels a lot better, but she seems to need
these every couple of months. And of course, she has to give herself
vitamin B12 shots once or twice a week for the rest of her life. She gets
blood draws often - like every couple of months.
Another friend just had a takedown (WLS undone) and is so thrilled to eat
"normally" for the first time in 22 years! "I always use to
eat cold food," she told me, because it took her so long to eat
anything and make sure it went down. And if it doesn't go down, the food
causes a few hours of pain until it DOES go down.
Reminds me of a fat friend of mine who told me she'd never get WLS
"You can never eat normally again". Many who get WLS never
consider just the daily grind of eating with a digestive tract which no
longer works well.
Living with the fear of complications (and that can happen at any time
like bowel obstruction etc) often gives these patients a rather bad case
of post traumatic stress syndrome. Plus if they gain weight or don't lose
"enough" it's psychologically devastating as it is also, if they
lose "too much" and cannot keep up their weight. Most WLS
patients are on anti depressants.
..
That is the REAL face of gastricbypass and not the 5 percent of happy
faces you see on TV (but note, I've never seen a poster kid more than 2
years post op). But since people ONLY see the happy faces of the 5
percent, they think that's the rule, not the exception.
I've followed some of those poster kids. One of the saddest cases was a
lady who started out at 550 lbs. So she lost down to 190 or something like
that (was very tall). But then she gained back 80 lbs and was up to 270 or
so. The doctor she was working for (a WLS surgeon) fired her telling her
that now that she's regained so much she is no longer a "good
image" for his office. Never mind that surgeons expect a 50 percent
rebound gain which she was way under - she still was keeping off over 200
lbs. Well, since she had appeared on a billboard advertising this doc etc,
she was absolutely devastated. She kind of dropped out of the support
groups but was talking about having additional WLS to bypass most of her
small bowel.
I've seen WLS ruin quite a few lives. I've seen WLS post ops who were
perfect patients, keel over in sudden heart attack 2-5 years post op. I've
seen WLS get plastic surgery all over their bodies to the tune of
thousands of bucks and much pain, only to still hate their bodies. And
I've seen WLS patients who look like concentration camp victims because
they are so ill. Some of these don't live.
The long termers I know all say that their litter mates (those who had WLS
at the same time they did) died years ago. And most patients who are more
than 4 years post op take not only pain medication but anti depressants as
well.
This is a no-brainer. The stomach is not just a storage organ but a
critical part of the digestive system. (in a gastric bypass, the pouch is
fashioned from the ring of muscles at the bottom of the esophagus called
the LES -lower esophagal spinctor- or CARDIA and the working part of the
stomach is bypassed totally... this is a fact not easily obtainable unless
you actually interview docs - which I have done). This to say that the
digestive tract is, in a gastric bypass, totally changed into something
the body never intended and that causes global repercussions as the body
is a finely tuned system as it comes from the factory.
What is needed is for the public to learn the facts of WLS and then if
each of us tells a friend about the dealbreakers, that will inform a lot
of people so people will no longer go into these procedures without being
warned about the other side. Some may still make the decision to have it,
but as they say "forewarned is forearmed".
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