newfydog

I had sent the following to a friend and it is so long that I didn't want to have to type it again....As you know, I'm the size of a battleship which has affected my health.  I'm now a diabetic (only on medications though) plus I have gained MORE weight as a result of the side effects of taking drugs.  So a friend of mine told me about Lap Band surgery which is where they go into your intestine (microscopically) and put an elastic band around it to make it smaller, and you don't eat as much and you lose weight.  Well, Debbie had hers done a little over a year ago and she has lost 60-70 pounds so far...she looks great!  She encouraged me to put my name on the list.  In the whole four Atlantic provinces, there was only ONE doctor in Moncton that performed this procedure so I got my doctor to send in a referral in July 2008.  The waiting period with the surgeon is 5-7 years! Last year, we heard that a doctor in Bathurst was going to start doing the same procedure so my file was sent up there about a year and a half ago. I had been counting the days, weeks, months praying to get a phone call and finally, last week, I got my call.  I went up to Bathurst yesterday morning and had a long talk with the dietician and everything seemed fine there - we discussed our my pre-op prep would go and then how I would have to eat in tiny bits at first and gradually add more, etc.  Then I had another meeting with the nurse and that's when my bubble started to burst and I was starting to get VERY anxious.  I was so sure that I would be a good candidate - I met women coming and going in that office who had lost 50, 100, 150 pounds and I was so excited that I would be one of them.  Well, I was called into the doctor's office and he sat me down and then he started going on about MY AGE being hazardous to this surgery.  I tried everything except getting down on my knees to beg, (maybe I should have done that too)....any way, to make a long story short, I was told tht I'm too old and I have diabetes and so he refuses to operate on me.  I am so devastated...all I've been doing is crying since yesterday.  When I calm down a bit, I will start to enquire with other Bariatric doctors in the country to see if they have a stipulation about not operating people over 60 or is this only his personal choice.  He has only been doing this procedure for a short time and he said that it's too dangerous on an "older" person......all surgery is dangerous no matter what the age is!!!