Hi,
Well I know that in my medical group that did my gastric bypass surgery they are getting away from doing the lap band surgery.
The reason is it is the least sucsessful of the three surgeries and alot of people later have to have it revised to a different surgery like to the gastric bypass due to complication or the lack of the success of it working.
With gastric bypass I was up walking around from day one and everyday after. The pain truthfully I've had worse with smaller surgeries. You can't lift anything over 10 LBS for the first month after that it's up to your doctor to decide. I know some people that went back to work after a week of surgery which is real fast. Most people go back after two weeks but your self employed so this is a different thing and I don't know what you do so for you this is could be much sooner.
I would say study both surgeries as much as you can and go to bariatric meetings to ask questions of people that have had these surgeries and how they feel about them.
I'm not an expert I'm just going by what I've heard from going to the bariatric meetings in my area, I've heard from the surgeons in the group, and read.
Good luck in your decsion of whatever surgery you do and make it your choice that you feel is right for you.