12 year old gastric sleeve patient

GMTA! ;-)

 My off the cuff answer was hell yes 12 is too young for WLS but after watching the slide show, I humbly retract that response.   This girl started seeing doctors and nutritionists since she was FOUR yrs old and nothing worked for her....except the surgery  8 years after trying everything else.

 I was born with a broken  metabolism .. whether due to the giant  congenital hiatal hernia that spewed  irritating stomach acid into my esophagus forever  ( whose best medication was to eat and keep eating )   or  for some other reason. 

I was the  tallest and the BIGGEST  person in every class up to the  eighth grade and I  felt  like a WALRUS every DAY .   

I would given ANYTHING  at 11 to be thin and attractive ... and  after  trying a three hundred calorie aday diet fora few weeks  I became a bulimic .  

So THAT as far as I'm concerned is the ALTERNATIVE to this surgery .  

Gosh I WISH i could have gotten a  sleeve at that age ... goten my hernia fixed and had a normal  teenage hood .  

My life would have been SO much better  ...and I would have had so many more options. 

I say that kids who aren't done growing shouldn't have WLS surgery. But once they are done growing, it's about their maturity level and there are certainly teenagers mature enough to deal with WLS.

That is a tricky one....I think it is also important to realize that this surgery will not protect her from teasing and bullying so I *hope* that her support system (mother, father, family, whomever) are also providing her with coping skills needed to make it through adolescents overall.

Its a tricky issue. I had a cousin (who is now well OVER 600 pounds) who spent his life being bumped from one fad diet to another, one medically supervised (or not) program to another and he is now 37 and riddled with co-morbidities, barely mobile.  Had this surgery been available for him when he was still at a safe(r) size to go under, would my aunt have done it for him? I can tell you this, she did everything they could to help him cope...

I'm torn too, but it looks like she has done very well, she's 2+ years out and looks healthy and happy and hasn't had a problem with maintenance. Kudos to her, plenty of adults can't commit to the changes necessary to lose and maintain.