nzwithlove
Jo, aged 51 I live with my husband in Auckland, New Zealand. Two children aged 23 and 20 plus two furbabies, Oscar the dog and Ella the pussycat. 20yr old still at home. I work for our national airline at the international airport as a Customer Serive Agent.
I was slim until my early 20's when I slowly put weight on over the next several years until I found myself morbidly obese. Unable to enjoy my firstborn like I should have and be an active Mum like I should have been.
I first started on a weight loss journey back in May 1998 when I had a gastric lapband inserted. My weight at that time was about 308lbs (140kg). I struggled for quite some time losing weight but discovered that it wasn't inflated as it should be. Once this was corrected I started to lose. My final weight loss was about 88lb (40kg) all up. Over the years I fluctuated up and down. Lowest I got to was 194lb (88kg) after doing weight watchers. Kept most of it off for several years but in early/mid 2016 I started to put weight back on. Slowly at first but then I noticed I was eating the same size meal as my husband again and eating sweet treats with every coffee and cup of tea that I had! I decided that I would see a surgeon as I suspected that the lapband wasn't working as it used to and after a couple of tests it was discovered that the band was leaking at the port site. This was about Sept/Oct 16 and my weight was now 249lb (113kg) I was advised that the band needed to come out and so began my current journey with revisional surgery. I finally had the lapband removed on the 10 Jan 2017 and weighed in at 122kg for this surgery. I was told that I could not have the revisional surgery until 3 months after the band was out to allow for everything to settle down and heal internally.
I got the call up for a gastric sleeve surgery date on 28 March. I was so excited to think that on 18 April I would be having this surgery. A couple of days later I was rung and told it was brought forward to 10 April, I was so happy! While the thought of doing the Optifast was daunting, in reality I found it a lot easier to follow. I lost 4kg in the first week alone! 10 April rolled around and I went to surgery weighing 258lb (117kg). When I woke I was advised that they couldn't do the sleeve as my liver had adhered itself to my stomach at the lapband site and the surgeon had spent the surgery time seperating both organs. I had so much scar tissue that he didn't feel confident that had he gone ahead and done the sleeve once both organs had been seperated that the staples would have held the stomach together. I am absolutely devastated. He has advised that the best option is a gastric bypass which has more risks associated with it. I have spent the last few days of recuperating at home reading absolutely everything that I can about bypass surgery because frankly the word bypass scared the bejesus out of me!
Having found this site I am beginning to think that the bypass is not as scary as I first thought. I do keep doubting myself, by the end of the day I'm quite at ease having it but then off I go to bed and away goes the thoughts and by morning I'm back on this site and doing more research on the internet to put my mind at rest again. I'm due to see the surgeon in a weeks time (end of April) so will be able to have an indepth discussion with him then. He did mention end of May for doing the bypass but I would really like it sooner rather than later as I have a trip to Australia with my Mum at the end of May which I don't want to give up, it's been planned since Oct last year.
