Taking a stand.
This is amazing.
anyway, surgery itself is stressful and major weight loss is stressful and this can make things worse.
people flat out need support.
once upon a time I had a group to talk about Binge Eating Disorder, and later one about Clean Eating.
PM me if you are interested in either of these.
size 8, life is great
- Carol Bradley, RN, CS, MSN, The Value of Ongoing Psychological Support for the Bariatric Patient, Surgeon, and Multidisciplinary Team, Bariatric Times June 2007
When I was in graduate school over 20 years ago, many of my colleagues were specializing in eating disorders and other forms of self injury. I spent most of my career working with abused women from battered women, rape victims and survivors, Cambodian victims of the sex trade, and everything in between. The topic is alive. People are paying attention.
When any one of us posts here, I think it’s very important to weigh what kind of benefit/harm we’re bringing to readers. Yes, everyone needs to know about mental health issues, yes there needs to be access to more pre and post operative mental health care. I believe that’s happening – this is still a very young field.
My concern is that too much of this will dissuade many fragile but deserving and capable people from having this surgery . If you’re depressed and believe you’re a failure excessive exposure to complications might do more harm than good. “See, I’ll even fail at this. I’ll probably be so out of control I’ll commit suicide. Nevermind." Of course no one should have surgery while suffering from untreated severe depression, however surgery can be one piece of a treatment plan, implemented at the right time (largely by her), designed to empower her. One of the things almost every battered woman I worked with told me was some variant of "Everyone is telling me what to do." We have a responsibility here to empower women to make her own choices based on the best available research, outcomes, and probability.
We have control over our bodies, sisters! And, we have control about how we think about what others have done to us. We don’t have to agree w/ all the trauma! This is the power or psychotherapy, working w/ abused women,
Women like to share scare stories about pregnancy and childbirth. So much can go wrong! Of course post-partum depression happens, complications occur and we live in an aware time; our doctor, midwives, nurses and friends mostly monitor us and offer remedies for suffering. And very few of us have no access to this help. And if we don't we can find it.
All caps, and bold face is often construed online as yelling online – I know I read it as such. We also have to keep that as well as our personal/axes to grind, issues in check. Because those don't serve others who deserve a balanced view. I have a learning disabled child - I could persist in warning parents about signs in their children, I could do it repeatedly and forcefully, on LD message boards as well as boards about neuro-typical kids and it's tempting to do it here with we talk about out kids.
Some of us have had bad outcomes and those of us who have should share. To a point. And always bracketed by the hope, probability, and the fact that there are ways to cope.
It's just as negligent to catastrophize as to trivialize complications.
Aren't most "pools" filled with pee?
Does this mean we should pretend the pool is clean? We all know it's not, we're all swallowing pee.
I haven't had any major complications, my issue is not related to WLS, so far as we know. So, if you think I'm peeing in your pool, I'm not.
They should be dissuaded, they're that FRAGILE. If they're not getting help before surgery, what makes you think they'll get it afterward when their depression is running rampant and suicidal because they think they should be happy since they're thin, but they're not feeling that? If they are getting help, this won't dissuade them because they have something to bring up in counseling sessions and discuss strategies for this event. The FRAGILE ones are fragile because they won't get help, they refuse to see what's going on BEFORE surgery. Scare them off.
I've yet to see MM post without including some hope and her desire to marshal on and cope with her complications. The original post was the article which was pretty clear in encouraging more studies and encouraging people to seek help. She didn't post personal commentary around it and she shouldn't have because it's factual information. There's plenty of time to comment on coping strategies and encouraging seeking counseling throughout the thread which is the correct way to get people to dialog and think through the communication.
I have zero interest in doing so.
If you're so fragile that you can't handle reading about someone else's rough go of it -- you need to get past that LONG before a scalpel is in your GUT.
HELP.
we all need support, dammit! life is stressful and people need support. that is the take-home message.
once upon a time I had a group to talk about Binge Eating Disorder, and later one about Clean Eating.
PM me if you are interested in either of these.
size 8, life is great