REPOST: Welcome Newbies! Make sure you learn about the DS before choosing which WLS...

Since this is for pre-ops and I am one, I am going to choose to respond. 

I appreciate the fact that you want to make other options known to people such as myself.  I am still choosing to have the RNY though.  I know that it is the best choice for me personally.  I'm not having surgery in order to have an easier lifestyle as I lose weight.  I am having surgery to help me lose the weight I have been trying to for years by changing how I live.  I feel that if my lifestyle doesn't change, there is no point in having surgery.  And like I said, this is my personal decision.  The DS or LapBand might be right for others.

So, for anyone else new out there reading this, I hope that you do your research and find out what is ultimately best for you.  Don't get caught up in what others say.

Jenn

That's all I'm aiming at: to make sure pre-ops know -- ESPECIALLY in CA -- about all their options, which isn't always the case.  For example, Kaiser says they don't cover the DS, and most people wouldn't know that it exists, or that it is in fact available to them simply by appealing to the DMHC, which will force Kaiser to pay for it 100%.

Me personally?  I totally wanted to have an easier lifestyle while losing weight and while maintaining long term, and that's what I got.  I cannot imagine WANTING to do things the hard way.  BTDT -- and it didn't work.  This does.

Good luck with whatever you chose to do to/for yourself.

WOW! I haven't visited nor posted to the board in a while but I must say I'm shocked at the back and forth taking place about opinions. We have all made a life choice in deciding to have WLS surgery; and it is a choice. My overall assumption is that we all did our research weighed the pros and cons of the various options available and with careful consideration chose wisely for our particular cir****tance. I come to this board for support and encouragement; I didn't particularly decide to visit or post to the board to make my final decision; that was done with my surgeon, friends and family and yes ultimately me. What I hope is that all of us can move on from the sarcasm, and unpleasant tones of these posts and get back to basics - providing support to those who have had surgery and to those in the decision making process. Good luck to all of you on your weight loss journey - and Happy New Year!

Not singling you, or anyone else here out per se, but ASSUMPTIONS that we all arrive at our chosen WLS making fully informed decisions is astoundingly NAÏVE. Almost as staggeringly IGNORANT is the suggestion that Bariatric surgeons have nothing but our best interests involved and that we should just take whatever they say as the unquestioned gospel.  In fact, what is presented on this board as well meaning helpful support is often categorically WRONG and even disingenuous. And I could say the same for nearly every OH board category here. While I tend to try and lean toward civil tact in my approach, blowing happy rainbows up one’s arse is not particularly useful or helpful in aiding someone clearly off track or who is being misinformed by a physician or by his or her staff. God knows I spend an inordinate amount of my personal unpaid time directing post-ops in trouble to the right physicians and making nonlicensed medical suggestions subject to their treating’s OK to correct the rather serious medical sequella these sad folks find themselves in. Frankly, I’m AMAZED at the ignorance I see on a nearly daily basis on OH, and frankly, what the medical community at large dictates regardless of the specialty disciplines represents when it comes to WLS post and pre-ops. Truly SAD!

Take off your ROSE COLORED GLASSES and EXAMINE what just happened here and with the related titled post. Diana, has as she has occasioned in the past here and elsewhere, made an innocuous, informative post and would have gladly left it at that, and has done so in the past. It’s an appropriate time as we all can likely remember making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Yet, with this single innocuous post which she clearly directs to pre-ops and those seeking revisions generates not gratitude or support for her efforts to be fully informed, but wielded barbs from many of you.... Janine’s post- perhaps being the exception as more reasoned, but I think she even errs here. She cites, as do others I’ve heard from here- some nondescript person who failed at having the DS. Fine.... certainly possible and I have read some medical accounts, but I have yet to meet one. But I also recall Janine herself bemoaning some significant regain when I last had the pleasure of seeing her at an OH convention. An OH convention which was hardly atypical where MOST of the long term post-ops were clearly still OBESE and where I was nearly the only DS'r represented there.

I have heard from DS’rs who have specific nutritional sequelae they have been concerned with but not a single one seeking a revision. Contrast this with hundreds of tearful PMs and nearly as many public posts from other WLS post-ops with MAJOR regret, serious lack of weight loss, serious regain and/or equally serious correlated sequelae.

Frankly, these posts from many of you make me ASHAMED at being a resident in CA and even more so at the posts I see displayed here as member of OH. I was in Alaska in November were people seem more real and I just got back from Michigan where I buried my rather young mom on my birthday.  I still took time there to respond privately to PMs from distressed post-ops. NO, I ain’t no saintly enterprise. I just try and pay if forward when or where I can which, frankly has been too sparse lately.

Unlike what seems the consensus HERE. The DS is NOT a license to eat so called junk with abandon. It’s really about eating like a normally thin person eats whi*****ludes some of what is traditionally taboo for dieters.  It would seem not having to spend the rest of your lives with yet another strict dieting proticol isn’t such a bad thing if one remains healthy and has the envious labs and sustained weight loss to prove it. - Again, the way normally thin people eat. Are they to be CONDEMNED, TOO!!!????  Diets are generally foreign to naturally thin people and certainly have never worked in the long-term for any of us!  Have they? Why is a surgical solution for the rest of us morbidly or supermorbidly obese wanting similar lifestyles to that of the naturally thin person so soundly rejected here?

I apologize, but many of your posts are so profoundly callow. I didn’t stop researching after deciding on and having the DS. I’ve done thousands of hours of research since because of my medical background and interest thereof. Am I an authority? Hardly!!!! But I would gladly argue quite convincingly in court given any standing that neither are the many so called general Bariatric surgeons advising their patients pre and post-op about what is best for them. Trust me, I have the patient's records in hand that are nothing short of medical malpractice!! Chalk it up to my nature and my love of science and medicine in particular, but I love being helpful when and where I can. And taking on the medical community and managed care where it needs to be made accountable is something more knowledged capable people need to do. 

Make no mistake! I'm delighted with the success stories here having had other WLS surgical interventions. I know for a fact at how much harder you have to work in general maintaining what is essentially so effortless for yours truly who rarely has to think more than how much protein I have taken in for the day. Most of you success stories have to diet for life and are to be applauded for being able do so after what so often failed you dieting preoperatively. But I would argue you folks are hardly in the majority long-term.

For those of you not intimated by the ignorance and defensiveness presented here, do feel to PM me or Diana if you’re so inclined.

Rock

 

I am not going to get into it with you Rock, but since you called me out in your post, I just wanted you to know that yes I did gain. However in the last year and being over 6 years post op, I have lost the 25 lbs I gained and went on to lose a total of 60 pounds this year. Thank you very much on a RNY!

Living life large in a smaller body!

Happy New Years to you!

I have no intention of getting into it with you, Janine. Again, I thought your post more reasoned. Congarudaltions on your weight loss with your regain, something I have not had to deal with since  having my DS.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the infantile, childish staggering ignorance displayed in some of these other posts wears a little old after awhile. Inparting simple information not often readily available to the uninitiated pre-ops and those seeking a revision shouldn’t be met with such reactionary vile by a group here claiming to be so accepting and supportive.

People understandably NOT interested could have and were INVITED to move along.

Have a Happy New Year, Janine

Rock

What part of the OP post is offensive? She is offering valuable info for pre-opers. Why post-opers are getting upset about it is beyond me. If you have reading comphrension skills you would see this

Yes, I'm going to repost this several times over the next week or so, as newbies who arrive here to start their annual research of weight loss surgery need to see this.  If it bores you, move along.


Knowledge is power...what's the big deal on getting info out and helping people? Of course the final decision is up to you but if you don't know about what is available how can you make an informed decision.  Don't read a post if it bothers you, its as simple as that.
 

It is the attitude in which responses are made. It has been like this since I became a member. My response was actually made to enlighten the OP as to why people were put off, but it got twisted into that I was too unintelligent to make an educated decision. This is the last post I am making on this subject.

Gee thanks, but really, you needn't have.  Really.  I don't need your "enlightenment."  I know exactly what I am doing, and why.  If it turned you off, congratulations, you failed the first test, and don't need to know any more.  Go work your tool, and nevermind the rest of us.

And somehow, I really doubt this is your last post on this subject.  Your type can't control yourselves.