My name is Isobel, I'm 24 years old, and am an ICU RN. For most of my life, I've been obese. Countless are the factors which have brought me to undergo WLS, but of that endless list, my top 2 reasons would be these:

1. Genetics are not on my side: My dad's side of the family, though skinny, is notorious for dying of heart conditions in their 40's. My mom's side runs rampant with cancer, and as the saying goes, cancer follows fat. My BMI was 47.9 at it's highest and I've been digging myself an early grave, to which I'm riding a wave of bad habits and slowly worsening health by the year.
    
   I have a life to live.
    
   
2. My line of work: I treat people dying of comorbidities secondary to obesity. I meet the families who suffer the (sometimes) slow death of their morbidly obese loved ones. I remember one day I thought to myself, "How could she let it get this bad?", when the hypocrisy of that moment hit me. It was my moment of realization that no number of excuses would save me from landing where my patient lay. Staring at that patient was like staring at myself in 20 years, and those were my kids making the decision to terminally extubate me. My decision was made.
   

I was happily sleeved August 8, 2012. My highest weight was 279, pre-op 263.4, current is 259. The first three days were nothing short of Hell. Day one I spent in the hospital, dry-heaving to the point that in my groggy, anesthesia-fogged mind, I knew my sleeve was going to somehow explode. It did not . Day two I was feeling much better and they let me go home that night after my barium swallow test. Day three through five I spent at home without the luxury of IV pain medications, thus experiencing the full wrath of gas pains. This was my first experience with this sort of pain, the kind which hurt when I breathed in or turned my torso in bed. The kind of pain that radiated from my diaphragm to my upper back between the shoulder blades. As a nurse, I am also a chronic hypochondriac and was 60% positive these were signs that I must have had a leak. Luckily, I obeyed the 40% of my mind which was sane and did as I was told (and knew) to do--walk, sip, rest, rinse and repeat.

Lo and behold, day 6 is here and I feel almost normal .

I am excited to be a part of the WLS community on this website. I've been creeping on every forum since six months pre-op, and have found that people seem much more welcoming and supportive here. Although I've found some great information on ObesityHelp, I couldn't help but laugh at a post in which one user called another user a fat wildebeest.

Hello, everyone .