Hey, my name is Karen. My life is alot like others. I started putting on weight as a teen. Never took the weight off after having 3 kids, all girls. I am an emotional and stress eater. I just have this relationship with food and to me, its just like driving a new truck and I just have to have it. That is one of the worst relationships I've ever had to break up with. I had been to see my dr.one day and she talked to me about my weight(sore subject). She told me about this surgery where they could make your stomach smaller so you can lose weight. My first thought was "hell no". I ain't gonna have no surgery. Besides having kids,my gallbladder removed, I hadn't had other surgery at all. After about 2 months I went back and told my dr. to set me up with an appointment with a dr to talk about this surgery. My surgeon and his staff were so informative, we started the paper work. It took about 2 week to get approved and I had already jumped through some of their hoopes and before I knew it, I had a surgery date. My first date was in Nov. 02. But due to diarrhea it was postponed. So then we moved it to Dec.. Same thing and a fever, so they set me up to have a colonoscopy. Yippee. Now I find out I have colitis. That dr. gives me some med. to take and it does help. Feb. 26,03 is my surgery date. I make it to that one. Everything went well. NO problems. Some of the next few hours and days I don't remember a whole lot Complications set in. I'm packed in ice cause of a very high fever. On the 28th, I am rushed in for an emergency surgery. We all hear about the 1%chance of something like a leak happening, I happened to be that 1%. The dr. calls my family together and tells them, the worst possible thing that could happened, did happen. He didn't know if I would make it through the night. I did (of course or how could I be writing this) The next few days I was in CCU, ICU and all over that hospital, from what I am told. My kidneys had shut down and I had gained 55 lbs of fluid. I was on a ventilator. I remember at point waking up and all kinds of tubes coming out of me. The worst in my nose. Yuck!! I was told I sure did some talking while I was out. To this day, I am reminded of things I said. Family can be so cruel. LOL My birthday is in March and kept asking if I would be home for my birthday, the middle of March and guess where I spent it. Yep. What was nice was one of my kids got to stay with me in my room. Sometime during my stay there I developed a fistula. Two of my 4 drains had fallen out, at different times, so those sent me back into surgery. In April, I was sent to a nursing home. I had to be take by ambulance once a week, a 2 hour trip one way, back to the hospital so my surgeon could see my progress. After a month at the nursing home, I was back in the hospital for an infection someplace and running a fever. Mind you, I had a pic line in my arm for meds and nutrition called TPN. The pic line had gotten infected so it had to come out and another put in my other arm. Oh yes, another IV put in. Finally the day comes and I get to go home, hurray. May 10th to be exact. Just before Mothers Day. I came home with my pic line, fistula and not eaten a thing since Feb.25. I had a health home nurse come in and she showed my daughter how to set up my TPN and how to change my wound. Still making trips back to see my surgern who was 3 hours away, ferry ride and all. To make this long story short, I had my fistula repaired and my last surgery was May of 2004. a hernia. I had lost 165 lbs at that time. In all, I had 8 surgeries from the gastric bypass. Things really went down hill from there. My mom passed away in May, My Oldest Daughter passed away in Dec. and my husband died in Feb.05. So needlessly to say, my old friend,food, came back to try and have a relationship with me. It has succeeded a lil' bit but I am back on track again.