A little over a month ago I went to my general practitioner regarding some problems I had coming off of some medications that resulted in a sudden weight gain. I had been between 280 and 290 for 4 years and all of a sudden found myself at 318 within a couple months. I was horrified when he told me that the only solution he could see for me was bariatric surgery. When he said that I instantly felt like a failure, to think that I couldn't manage my own weight with out having to mutilate my body. After I finished crying at home I decided to look into it to see exactly what those procedures would do to me and how much they would cost. I think I was trying to prove to myself that he was totally off base but instead found that not only did I qualify for bariatric surgery but that I was way beyond what my insurance deemed as heavy enough.

Devestated again I continued to look at the options. By-pass did not appeal to me, I did not like the thought of permanently changing my physiology. I remember stories from my childhood where my mom, a nurse, would talk about patients who had gastric bypass surgeries that had horrible results and they were called GBGB's for gastric bypass gone bad. I liked the idea of the band, being adjustable AND reversable if necessary.

Last week I looked into various surgeons and centers and made an appointment with True Results this last saturday to find out a bit more about the doctor and the procedure. I had read up a lot so nothing they said really struck me as outrageous or negative. They took my insurance information and will hopefully be able to tell me what is required by the insurance in order for me to have the surgery. The information I had available from my insurance was a BMI of 40 or greater (and I am somewhere around 49) but no other things such as previous diet history, medically supervised diets, psych eval, or any co-morbidities. Right now I have high cholesterol and sleep apnea (the latter hasn't been officially diagnosed but it's not a far reach). I also have a hiatal hernia that is really causing me problems and the blessing of a band is that they fix the hernia in order to place the band. So now it's wait and see.

I have made the decision not to tell anybody about my decision on this. My husband knows and supports me in it and that's all I need for now. My mom has a negative view of weight loss surgeries, they have advanced quite a bit but I don't want to find out if she's changed her mind on it until after I have it done. Other friends and family just don't need to know yet.....eventually I'll get over feeling like a failure for wanting to do this and then I'll be able to talk about it openly.