How I got here…
I’ve been reading many of the ‘story’ threads, and decided I wanted one of my own so, like Cindy, when I want to vent (or in my case whine, sometimes).. I can without starting a new thread.
I started on this journey towards WLS last summer, when one of the vendor reps who frequently visits our office showed up after a long absence having lost a considerable amount of weight. I thought he looked fantastic and told him so. He shared his ‘secret’ with me.. He’d had a RNY done last April and in less than 4 months had lost over 80 lbs. He said if someone had offered him 10 million dollars but told him he had to stay fat forever, he would’ve turned the money down without a second thought.
I was, at this point, at my highest weight ever and my knees were hurting, I was not taking good care of myself *at all*.. my blood pressure was barely in check from the meds, my cholesterol was up.. the diabetes was in control with oral meds, but barely.
I hated going out to restaurants with booths as it made for a tight fit, etc. The final kicker.. my fiancé and I drove out to Ohio in Aug so I could meet the rest of his family… it’s a 13 hour drive which was, believe it or not.. a *wonderful* day.. I so enjoyed everything about this trip, with one glaring exception. The seatbelt. The entire time in that damn car, the seatbelt was so tight, it kept locking up on me.. Honda does not make any allowances for a seatbelt extender at all, citing liability issues as their reason and I just couldn’t stand it.
I started doing research on lap-band at that point, as I was scared of the very idea of the full by-pass. The more I read, the more I felt that I would be better off with the RNY, but I decided that I was going to ask my doctor about the options.
My 3 month diabetic check-up was September, so I waited for that appointment. My first words to the doc were “What do you think about me possibly getting a lap-band?”… She looks me square in the face and says “Kelly, I think you will die if you don’t” !!!!! WOW.. talk about a slap in the face- I was dumbfounded. If she thought this, why didn’t *she* bring up this option, I thought?
She tells me to choose one of four hospitals that she prefers her patients to have the surgery.. I research the doctors & hospitals and choose Brigham & Woman’s in Boston, with Dr. Ashley Vernon. My first appointment was early November. When I went for my psych evaluation, there were two women there with me that had family who worked at B & W’s, who said their family member insisted that if they had the surgery it had to be Dr. Vernon, so I felt I made a good choice; I really like her a lot. The hospital, on the other hand.. ugh… I can’t say the same.
In the end, I guess it was worth putting up with a lot of the crap I went through with the hospital, if it meant I had such a skilled surgeon.. There were complications and it almost came to having to have an open RNY instead of the lap.
I’ll post details of the surgery and my hospital stay in another post, to keep this hopefully in a readable length!