Introducing Me!

[Daisy30uk 6]

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!

[OmaJ 130]

CONGRATULATIONS on your surgery & such success already!!! Long journey getting there, but you did it! May God continue to bless you on your journey.

[James Marusek 5,244]

Congratulations Karen and let us know if we can be of any help.

[Sosewsue61 3,185]

Congrats Karen and keep posting.