Daisy30uk

This happened to me on my very first visit to see my bariatric surgeon. The lady that was next in line to me at the office window asked me if I was there to discuss weight loss surgery, and when I said 'yes', she responded quite loudly that she didn't think that I was big enough to need it! I was initially very offended since it was none of her business anyway, but someone pointed out that maybe she was trying to pay me a compliment! Whatever her reasons, and whatever anyone else's reasons are for saying it, I don't feel the need to justify why I have done this and if others choose to get offended, then that is on them and not anything that I can control. It's also why very few people know that I have had the surgery - my family in the UK don't know and most of my friend's don't know - just a couple of my closest friend's who have been supportive since the very beginning of my journey.

Did the pain go away Mel or are you still suffering from it? I just wondered whether you contacted your surgeon's office and got a response?

Hi, my name is Karen and I had my bypass surgery on October 11th 2017. I had been researching various kinds of weight loss surgery for a while, first in the UK where I was born and lived until 7 years ago, and then in the US. I first looked at the band back in 2008 but the process in the UK was long and expensive and my bariatric surgeon was very unfriendly and very conceited. I had to put things on hold when we decided to make the move to the US and it took some time to get life set up here. In 2013 I broke my knee - the tibial plateau in particular, and was not allowed to weight bear for nearly 12 weeks. Of course, I packed on more pounds during that time and even worse, the rehabilitation from that injury was made significantly harder by being morbidly obese. In 2015 I decided that I had had enough and I contacted a surgeon in the local area. I started the process to get approved by insurance and part of that was a six month supervised diet. During that time I lost over 50 lbs and the nutritionist encouraged me to carry on losing by myself without the surgery. That worked for a while, but stress and going back to work meant a return to my old habits and the weight soon came back. Before I could put all of those 50 lbs back on, I got back in contact with my surgeon as I had decided that I really could not do this on my own. My husband, who had previously not been happy about the idea of the surgery, also had a change of heart and encouraged me to pursue it again. I was lucky that my insurance accepted my six months supervised weight loss from the previous attempt so all I had to do was get the psych evaluation done again plus an EGD. That surprisingly took way longer than I imagined since the surgeon's office managed to mess up both appointments plus leave me out of pocket for the psych eval. Anyway, my papers finally got submitted this September, insurance approved me within 4 days and surgery took place just over six weeks ago. I am down 31 lbs from my highest weight and 24 lbs from my surgery weight and feeling so much better already. My now arthritic knee (from the break) is benefiting from the weight loss and clothes that had once again become too tight to wear are now fitting nicely again. It's early days but I am happy with how things are going!

Welcome! All your fears are understandable - so many of the people that you talk to and the articles that you read will tell you all about the complications rather than the successes and I strongly believe that there are way more successes than those who have complications. Plus, there are many complications and health issues with being obese too. The most important thing is that you do your research from finding a good surgeon (does your insurance recommend a Center of Excellence?) to learning what you can about the procedure and what you need to do to make it a success and to avoid complications where it is possible to have some control over them, plus recognizing the signs of potential issues post op as well. Make the most of your six month supervised diet to learn what you can - I know a lot of people (myself included) wanted surgery the next week / month and were impatient to get on our journey, but in the end, having those six months was useful time to find out as much as I could about what I would be able to eat, things to expect and all the other things that you might come across. It was also time for my husband to accept the fact that I was going to do this since initially he was very concerned about it though supportive of me doing it but that concern made me drag my heels. As for your other family, it is understandable that they have concerns given what happened in the past but I would continue to pursue your decision regardless, answer any questions that they have and try to allay their concerns. You are not your Uncle's ex wife, she may have had underlying issues that you are not aware of, or maybe did not follow what she was meant to do (not saying this is the case, but there may be things that happened that your parents are not aware of) and things are very different now to back then. Good luck with your journey! I hope that you will update us as you progress!

My sense of smell has been really heightened since surgery in October. It isn't food that has been an issue but other smells especially things like perfume and aftershave. When I came back to work last week, I could hardly walk through some of the sections since the smell was overpowering. Not sure how long this will last!

That's great news. After all the hard preparation work, it is such a relief to get that approval and know that you are on the path to getting your surgery soon. Do you know how soon your surgeon's office will be able to set a date? - and good luck!