With This Band...

If you’ve been married as long as I have (we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary), you’ll probably know what I mean when I say that at times, my relationship with my husband is a love-hate thing. The hate is provoked by stupid little things, like: why must an adult male in good health and in possession of all his faculties spit toothpaste on the bathroom mirror every single day of his life? Ten minutes after wanting to throttle him for that, I catch a glimpse of him cuddling a tiny kitten and my heart melts. He has truly been there for me through thick and thin (more thick than thin) and I can’t imagine life without him, but the next time I walk into the bathroom and see the Colgate version of a Jackson Pollock painting on the mirror, my husband’s life will hang by a thread, at least for a few moments.

I also have a love-hate relationship with my band at times. I resent it because it prevents me from eating mindlessly. I love it for the very same reason, but when I’m tired or hurried or distracted, the effort to eat carefully seems enormous. Why can’t my band just do its job and leave me the heck alone? I’m by no means a lazy person but there are days when living with an adjustable gastric band is a lot of work. It’s certainly not a spectator sport – to win this game, you have to jump right in and get busy, and it’s not over when the cheers fade away…it starts all over again the next day, and the next day, for the rest of your life. Like me and the stupid bathroom mirror.

Happily Ever After?

I think that many people have bariatric surgery believing or hoping that it will solve everything, that they’ll never have to struggle with their food or eating again. Most of the time, that’s not the happy ending to their story. Their story has a different ending that could be happier if they adjust their thinking to it. Is the burden of good eating choices too heavy? If surgery helps you lose all the excess weight, shouldn’t it help you maintain that weight loss without another thought for the rest of your life? Dream on.

I’ve seen a lot of bandsters (including the short blonde one in that bathroom mirror) crash into the Forever Wall, kind of like hitting the “seven-year itch” in a marriage. We prepare for band surgery with all the hope and care of a bride and groom planning a wedding – what we’ll wear, what we’ll eat, what music we’ll dance to. We enjoy a romantic honeymoon with the band, things go great for a while, and then things get harder and harder. At that point, you can fall in love with another bariatric procedure, believing that a revision to gastric bypass or whatever will hand you the key to happily-ever-after. Or you can stick with the partner you’ve already got, survive some tough times, and come out of it all the stronger.

My friend Tami send me these wise comments:

“Your comparison of WLS to marriage made me chuckle. One time my daughter asked me whether I’d ever divorce her dad (sometimes he can be such an ass!). I said, “Absolutely not. He’s family. You sometimes can’t stand your brother, but you can’t divorce him.” Now, if there was a serious “complication” in my marriage, like abuse, I’d have to reconsider my options. And that’s exactly how I feel about my band. It’s part of me, and as long as it doesn’t abuse me with serious complications, we’ll stick together. And just like my husband, I have to respect my band, take care of it, and learn from mistakes.”

To Have & To Hold – til it’s no fun any more?

I’ve survived some complications with my band that I suppose you could classify as on the low side of serious: a band slip, and a flipped port. Since the actions my surgeon and I took in response to these complications were swift (in the case of the slip) and sensible (in the case of the port flip), neither one of them ever endangered me – not in terms of my health, and not in terms of my quality of life. In fact, they seemed quite minor to me compared to other problems that my fellow humans face every day – a terminal cancer diagnosis; a fatal automobile accident; a crippling disease; the loss of a partner; parent or child – that except for the occasional moment of frustration or angry, “Why me, God?”, I just kept trudging onward. Perhaps another person with a different world-view and/or different expectations would consider a band slip grounds for divorce. I can’t criticize people who choose divorce, whether it involves their spouse or their band. Only I can decide what’s acceptable and tolerable for me, and others must decide that for themselves. But if you walk down the church aisle three minutes before your wedding begins thinking, “If I don’t like marriage, I can always get a divorce,” perhaps you don’t belong in the church in that fancy get-up in front of all your family and friends after all.

At this (fairly advanced) stage of my life, I’m convinced that God or the universe throws nails on the road before me as a way to get my attention, make me stop and get my bearings, make me enjoy the scenery and make me appreciate how far I’ve traveled so far. So I do my best to learn what I can from each challenging situation with the gastric band that’s complaining or my husband who’s vigorously brushing his teeth or the dog who’s chewing on a chair leg. For all I know, my greatest goal in life is to be a champion cleaner of bathroom mirrors!