Initially I was planning on being banded, because (being uninformed) I always thought the serious risks of bypass were too high to take the chance.
After spending some time at a really good lap band forum (
www.lapbandtalk.com), I started getting nervous about all the problems people seemed to be having, at all post-op phases. It's only been done here in the states since 2001, so I started looking at long-term studies in Europe, where it's been done much longer, and the results were NOT encouraging... there's a very significant rate of long-term complications and removal of the band. I've decided that I don't want to mess with the minor complications and inconveniences if there's still a 30% chance that the band will have to come out in 10 years anyway.
(I don't remember where I read any of it, but I Googled "lap band complication rates Europe" or something like that.)
So for me, now that I've been done a lot more research into bypass, I think it's gonna be RNY or nothing.
