Michele67
I don't really know how to begin....when I met my husband Steve 22 years ago, I was about 30 lbs. overweight, we married and had 3 wonderful children, and my weight just began to escalate with each birth, which obviously never came back off.
I tried weight watchers, diet workshop, slimfast, phen phen, adkins, vegetable soup....and they all worked somewhat, but just never stuck. I thought that the vertical sleevectomy was going to be my life change.
My girlfriend Roxanne, and my mother all went to the Sinai Hospital's Bariatric Seminars in Baltimore, MD to begin our journey. We did everything we needed to. We all went through the 6 months of weight loss counseling, ekg, chest xray, bloodwork, sleep tests, ultrasounds, endoscopy, cardiac workups.........and yet my girlfriend had no problems at all and is doing great.
My 59 year old mother is not......Dr. Alex Gandsas was going to perform the sleevectomy on her, and until she was admitted for surgery, and had the IV in her hand, did he inform her that her insurance did not approve her for the sleevectomy because they considered it to be experimental. So his staff just took it upon themselves to schedule her for the full blown gastric bypass. She called me and asked me what would I do....I told her to leave! She should not make this decision lying on the table, under the knife. So she did, when she left she was enraged, disgusted, disapointed, upset, she had to explain this to her place of employment, and figure out how badly she wanted this surgery.
Well she wanted it pretty badly......a month later he decided to have Dr. Gandsas perform the Rou-en-y bypass.
She went in for surgery on March 31, 2008 around 7am and at 8:30 am he came out of surgery and told my father and brother that her abdomen was full of adhesions, and that he would not be able to perform the bypass, but felt compelled to clean up the adhesions and wait another month to finish the surgery.
She went into recovery and was put in a regular room, with a morphine pump, and was somewhat monitored. She was coherent very little, but laughed a couple of times, and slept mostly she was on fluids, and had color and was in pain.
But seemed fine to me......we did not find out until 2pm the next day that she wasn't urinating, and it was feared that she could have a tear in her bowel. After re-inserting the catheter, they were not happy with her output, so decided to take her into surgery to find out if she had a tear. After 5 hours in surgery they found her cavity was full of bile, and she in fact had a perforation of her bowel. They repaired it but it was too late.....
We had to make the agonizing decision to take my beloved mother off of the ventilator and let her go.....her body was in septic shock, her kidneys were failing, and they feared she had a massive stroke.
I too have made some decisions about my life.....that my young children need their mother......that my wonderful husband needs his wife.....more than I need to be thin.
I am going to walk every day for my mother... I am going to eat healthier for my mother...and if I lose weight....it will be for my mother...
This surgery is not all that it is cracked up to be....the staff there is totally overwhelmed with obese patients trying to get in to get surgery, the doctors & nutritionist are not as attentive as they should be, they are unorganized and I believe that we are all just a number at their office.
There are other ways to handle obesity....please make your decisions wisely and think of the people who love you.
