AK82

2011 

As your typical WLS candidate, I have struggled with my weight for most of my life, but for the past 5 or 6 years I have been miserably loosing this battle.
Although I have struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember, I have only been overweight, and now obese, for the past few years. Due to an eating disorder and years of deep depression, I have gained 95 pounds in six years. This has caused major strain on my self-confidence, body image, energy and physical activity level, cholesterol, back, joints, marriage, and most especially, on my relationship with my own self and others.
WLS has been an extremely difficult decision, and something I never thought I would result to, but it has now become the light in the end of my tunnel.
I am an extremely blessed mother and woman, who is desperate to reclaim my life, my self-confidence and my "joie de vivre"! I am ready to be the person I have always been meant to be!

UPDATE 2017

Hello again, everyone!
A lot has happened in the past 6 years, but my struggle maintaining a health weight is real, once again. Back in May 2011 I opted for WLS and got the lap band. That tool helped me for some time, but unfortunately fell short in many other ways.

As most of us here, I have always been able to yo-yo diet all by myself. Losing weight isn't my biggest problem; keeping it off is. Which is why, after many diet attempts, I turned to WLS. Although the band helpd me drop a good amount of weight (about 80 lbs total), it created other problems and all the weight (along with an extra 20 lbs) piled back on. It was a BIG let down. 

I never expected the band to do the work for me, but I did expect and hope it would help me loose AND maintain the loss. Finding that "sweet spot" was much, much harder to do than I thought. It was always too lose, or too tight. I spent over 6 months throwing up after EVERY meal. A lot of days it was hard to take even water down. Although at first glance this may sound umcomfortable and unhealthy but weight-loss conducive, I assure you it wasn't. I was constantly hungry and began to turn back to unhealthy choices; which ironically went down just fine. Long story short, I developed a hernia, severe GERD, started to regain weight very rapidly, entered back into deep depression and felt completely defeated as I, once again, lost control of my health.

The band was not covered by my insurance. After MUCH consideration, my husband and I decided to spend our very hard earned money, in the hopes it would be the solution I needed. The disappointment was major, in every way (financially, psychologically, physically). My confidence was so shot, for some time I just accepted I was meant to be obese. I just couldn't accept my massive failure and hated myself more than I could describe it. 

Reluctantly I began to research WLS revision. I had reached an all time low. To me, WLS was already an extremely radical choice I never thought I would resort to. I thought when I got the band, I had reached my bottom. 6 years later, I found myself in a much deeper hole. I just couldn't believe I took that huge gamble, lost, and was now considering something even more extreme! I felt truly hopeless. However, as I began to research I began to learn that this failure wasn't exclusively mine. That perhaps, my lack of success wasn't all due to user-error. I found that over 80% of gastric band patients have had their bands removed due to complications and have revised to another procedure. Most bariatric surgeons do not even put them in any more! Knowing all of this allowed me to consider granting myself another chance. I am not sure how, but my incredible husband still believed in me enough to agree to leap into a revision (yes, in every way including financially, once again). 

After much research and soul-searching, I decided to revise to SIPS/SADI-S/modified DS.
It has been an exhausting, humbling, and tough journey, but I am continuing to fight through it.

Thanks for reading. May God bless you, always.