Hi Van! Just seeing your lovely avatar makes me smile, but combined with a Sea Monkey reference - well, I'm just in Heaven!
Yes, you understood correctly - the unused portion of the stomach is completely removed (they pull it out through one of the little laparoscopic incisions, if you can believe it - I have this creepy/humorous image of a magician pulling one of those never-ending silk scarves out of his closed fist), which is why there's no going back once you've had the procedure, unlike the RNY.
It's a tough call. At first, I was very disturbed by this idea, but then I thought about whether it would bother me quite so much if the operation permanently
shrank my stomach to 1/10 its original size instead of removing 9/10 (or whatever) of it, and the answer was "no" - that wouldn't bother me a bit. So then I asked what the difference really was, and I couldn't see any significant difference in the end results, only the means to the end.
Then I started researching non-WLS gastrectomies and learned that cancer patients and others have survived full gastrectomies, in which their stomachs are removed entirely and their esophagi are connected directly to their small intestines. This reassured me that having a dramatically reduced stomach size, with regular connections and digestive functions, was definitely less disturbing than I had first thought and was something I could accept, even if it meant removal of the rest of the stomach. I've had an adenoidectomy, a tonsillectomy, and an appendectomy, so that also gave me some perspective on removal of some of my body parts, although my stomach is obviously more useful and important than those organs...