Anyone With Experience With Gastric Bypass Surgery?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m thinking about undergoing gastric bypass surgery.

Can anyone who has undergone this procedure give me some information about their experiences?

Specifically, I’m interested in how long it takes before you can go back to work, what the emotional effects were, etc.

I’m also interested in knowing if there is a way to do it in such a way that it isn’t so dramatic. Specifically, is it possible to do it in such a way that my stomach is not now the size of an espresso cup, and I can eat more than a couple of tablespoons in one sitting?

TIA

2

I had it in November, 2004 - laparascopic RNY.

I was back at work in 4 weeks.

The emotional/psychological aspects have been more difficult to deal with than the surgery/weight loss itself, which was a snap (for me - YMMV). Here are two articles that deal with this aspect:

http://eastbayexpress.com/2007-01-17/news/life-after-the-knife/

You may consider the lap band; it’s considered less invasive and is reversible. The RNY is reversible under certain circumstances, but it’s a very very difficult surgery and only a few surgeons even perform it.

Either surgery requires a lifetime of commitment to making the tool work for you. Incidentally, only being able to “eat a couple of tablespoons in one sitting” is not a permanent feature of this surgery.

www.obesityhelp.com is a fairly OK site (once you get past the smoochie kissy posts).

I prefer http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/tek - mostly post-ops, but pre & new post-ops are genuinely welcomed. Definite straight talk there.

Let me know if I can answer any other questions.

VCNJ~

3

The younger brother of a childhood friend of mine did it. He was 30 or so, and he never went back to work - he died instead.

4

Well, I’ve got the lap-band, and I’d say it is “less dramatic” than the bypass is, in both a good way and a bad way: Most lap-band patients lose weight more slowly than the bypass people do, so you don’t have the “Wow, the weight’s just melting off!” thing, but the lap-band surgery is also less risky so you don’t have the dramatic risk of death either.

As for portion sizes, well, the lap-band is totally adjustable so it’s up to you to decide how tight you want it to be (and how little you can eat as a result) based on how satisfied you are with your weight loss. Filling and unfilling the band is done with a saline injection into a “port” (similar to the chemo ports used for cancer) and it takes only a minute or two in the doc’s office. Not a big deal.

My own experience is that I have had the lap-band since May 2003 and lost 150 pounds within the first 2 years. I can eat portions that are on the small side of normal with the way my band is currently adjusted.
If I wanted to have it filled more, I’d probably lose some more weight, but I’m satisfied with the balance I have now between being able to eat “normally” and the weight I am at now, so I’m not having it tightened up for now.

As for recovery, since it has been years (and I did it during a summer vacation) the details are kind of hazy now, but I was definitely not seriously debilitated. Since hte lap-band doesn’t require cutting your stomach, it’s basically a matter of letting your incisions and the abdominal muscles heal up. I think if I had to, I could have gone back to working a desk job in a week (I think I also slept sitting up for about a week to make sure I didn’t hurt my abdominal muscles trying to sit up in bed).

http://www.lapbandtalk.com is a good place to ask lots of lap-band patients about their experiences, both the good and bad parts.
Best of luck. :slight_smile:

5

I had lap RNY in April of 2005. I eat a normal serving of food nowdays. Of course in the beginning, I could only eat a few TB of food at a sitting, but that was fine with me – I had more than enough fat to sustain me. That’s how you lose the weight so quickly – your body is forced to burn fat stores because you physically cannot eat more than you burn. If you really want to continue eating like you do now, gastric bypass is not what you need.

With the lapband, you can eat a larger variety of foods, without risk of dumping as well as you can have your band filled only to a small point of restriction. Of course, you won’t lose as much or as quickly. What is your goal? If it is to just lose some weight in some amount of time, dieting can do that, too. If it is to lose the most weight in the least amount of time, you may want to research the DS. While the DS is considered to be much more “drastic” than RNY, it leaves a larger amount of the stomach intact (generally 4-6 oz capacity), so DS’ers can eat a lot more in one sitting – but a lot more of the intestine is bypassed, so the loss tends to be faster and more permanent.

I would suggest you check out www.obesityhelp.com for more information than you may want to know. You will be able to read a lot of true stories there. Both real horror stories and real success stories. Announcing that you are considering WLS will invite a lot of assholes to share their “a friend of my cousin’s sister’s brother died because of that surgery” but at OH, you can read the relatively rare real incidents first-hand and see that most of the people who actually do die as a result of WLS had major health problems that would have killed them regardless. WLS is (or at leats SHOULD be) a last resort.

In the end, the most common fatal complication of WLS is the pulmonary embolism – these can happen with any surgery. One of my cousins had a PE after having a tooth pulled at the dentist and died, but do people warn you that you can die from having routine dental work? Nope. Because there’s no stigma to having cavities like there is to being fat. “oh, if you would just do push aways – push away from the table – you wouldn’t be fat!” nope, never had anyone tell me “if you would just brush your teeth, you would never have to see a dentist.”

Good luck in whatever you decide to do and feel free to message/email me directly if you want to know my whole story. Be aware though, that while you can’t eat much in the beginning, by 2 years post, most people eat normally – normally being defined as healthy portions (I still bring home more than 2/3 of my dinner when we eat out, but that’s because restaurants nowdays give ridiculously huge portions!) I lost all of my weight (down to my goal weight) within the first 13 months, then lost another 23lbs, I still have a very healthy BMI (20.6 I think?) and look great. I have excellent bloodwork and eat a balanced diet. I get as much exercise as my life allows, and everything is just fine with me. I have been very lucky in that I have had no real complications other than a few things that would have happened regardless, just were sped up due to the rapid weight loss (gallbladder went bad, and I have gout which is controlled by medicine).

ETA – I was back to normal activity within 2 weeks.

6

Hopefully OpalCat will stop in- she had a surgery which IIRC does not result in the “stomache the size of an espresso cup” thing. It has gone very well for her.

7

Well, I don’t see Opal here yet, but I had the same weight loss surgery she did: the biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, aka, the DS. I had my surgery on June 2nd of last year, and have lost about 130lbs. so far.

The DS is comprised of two main parts:
One, restriction. My surgeon cut my stomach down to about 4oz. in size. The stomach is actually cut, not just stapled off. It will stretch, over time, to hold 8-12oz. Right now, at almost a year out, it can hold about 6oz. It will never stretch back to its original size, because it was cut along the greater curvature, aka, the ‘stretchy part’.

Two, malabsorption. My intestines were, well, re-plumbed, for lack of a better term, so that I malabsorb most of the fat that I eat, as well as some of the complex carbs and some of the protein.

The DS does not have “dumping”, which happens sometimes with the RNY. However, it’s the most drastic of all the surgeries, and there are only about 50 surgeons world-wide that do it.

My insurance paid for it.

For photographs of my “journey”, go to http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?username=norinew&Submit.x=15&Submit.y=15&Submit=Go

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

8

Both of my in laws did it.
Looking at Norinew’s pics, I think they both started bigger then you. MIL is probably a bit smaller then you and FIL was for a while as well but has since stretched his stomach back out and has put some of the weight back on, but he still looks great.

They are both happier people from doing it. As in they used to be grumpy sometimes even nasty people and now…I hardly ever see them angry at all.

It was odd at first, that I (I’m about 140 pounds and I can’t eat much in one sitting, I the one who never cleans their plate) could out eat my 300 lb FIL, but now they both eat just a hair less then a ‘normal’ person of their size. In fact, if no one told you, you’d never know they had the surgery or that they were ever over weight. But, yes, for the first few months, they really could only eat a few bites for a meal and they where done. Now, they will usually have a hamburger, a few potato wedges and maybe a small glass of milk or water, split between the two of them. This surgery does involve a major lifestyle change. You have to remember that since you can only have a few bites of food (compared to what you used to have) it can’t be junkfood, or you’ll wind up malnourished.
As a side note, around the time of the surgery my wife was anorexic, it was very very hard for her when her mom was wearing smaller clothes then she was a few months before.