Kaelesa

It seems like I've been thinking about losing weight my whole life.  When I got married I weighed 145 lbs, and thought I was too heavy then.  With each baby - there were 3 of them - I put on more weight.  I worked full time, and ate at fast food places all the time, until I realized I was eating fast food 3 times a day!!  No wonder the pounds just kept piling on.  I was working as a customer service representative for a large company. The job involved taking phone calls from mostly very unhappy clients.  I found it very stressful, so much so that I finally had a meltdown and asked my husband if I could quit. He was totally supportive, since he had seen how depressed I was getting.  Since I had health insurance with that company, when I quit I needed to be added to my husband's policy. That meant finding a new primary care doctor.  Angels must have been watching over me, and led me to Dr. Maria Mason.  She went through all my records, and ordered test and procedures that ruled out whether or not I had specific health problems - like heart issues, sleep apnea, thyroid, etc. When all that came back negative, she brought up the idea of having lapband surgery. I told her I would consider it, and she referred me to the Orange Coast Memorial Hospital Weight Loss program.  
I attended the requisite group meetings, got the psych evaluation and talked with Dr Ali, who would be doing my surgery.  After all that, I was excited to get it done and start a new phase of my life. I have had no regrets about having the lapband surgery - it literally saved my life.  My diabetes is so well controlled by my diet that I no longer have to take any medications. Instead of 4 or 5 blood pressure medications, I take one. After I lost 50 pounds, I decided to get the knee surgery I needed, 
I recommend the lapband surgery and Orange Coast Memorial's weight loss group to anyone that says they think they might get the surgery.