Question for the vets....Would you have RNY again knowing what you know now?

 I'm 2.5 weeks out.  I've definitely had the "buyers remorse" a few times... especially last night where I keep thinking "I'll never be able to eat that again... :("  

However, I pulled a MyFitnessPal report this morning, and I'm officially down 50.2 pounds since April.

Can I say "Yes" yet?  Not quite... but it's a great start.

 i think everyone feels that way the first month or two. it gets better.

Hang in there - at 2-1/2 weeks out I am sure that most of us were having some serious regrets... it gets better, it really does.  At over a year (not a vet by any means) things have improved greatly. 

That depends on whether the core of your question is whether I would have any WLS again or whether I would have RNY again.  I would definitely have WLS again, but if I were going to do it now, I think would probably opt for the sleeve rather than the RNY (assuming my insurance would cover the sleeve).  (I never liked the whole bypass part and not being able to take NSAIDs has been more troublesome than I expected.)

Lora

I definitely agree with this.  I think that with the sleeve I would not be struggling so much with iron deficiency, hypoglycemia, etc.  I could be wrong, though.  But I do wonder...

Thank you for posting this question. My surgery is coming up and I'm starting to second guess if this is what I should do. I understand there will be some speed bumps along the way, but reading everyone's posts reiterates why I am doing this.

~Dawn

If I had a time machine, so I could go back and change my mind about WLS, I wouldn't use it to go back to then. I'd go back to me at 18, and convince that me person how fat is mostly good, sugar is mostly bad, and protein forward is the way to go.

Since I haven't perfected my time-machine just yet, I don't regret my choice. Some of my challenges prior to WLS: 

PAIN - My whole body hurt to be so overweight. A lot of that pain wasn't obvious. not until it was gone. I used to wake up in the night with one arm aching .... almost in agony, from my lying on my side and losing the blood flow to the arm. So the agony of my body bearing the 350 lbs has been alleviated, BIG WIN

Cardiovascular health. I was generally pretty good in this manner, my blood pressure was slightly elevated, but never dangerously so, the weight loss surgery dropped it to low normal or almost too low. Never taken meds for high blood pressure, but have had to take meds for low blood pressure. I also had VERY high cholesterol pre-op, and now it's normal. Perhaps not as low as it could be, but not considered high by any means whatsoever.

GERD - I had gerd, and it wasn't as bad as a LOT of people have it. For me the man reason I needed it cured is that my larynx was bruised when I had a breast biopsy, and the injury was further damaged (and remained damaged) because of the acid. I wanted the GERD cured at any and all costs. My ear-nose-throat doc told me that the only way to stop hurting every time I spoke, was to give up speaking for a living. I couldn't do that, so every day, I went to work, andd from word-one to the end of the day (6 hours or so) I'd be teaching and speaking and every word out of my mouth was painful. I lost my voice frequently, and my career was going to be ruined if I couldn't do anything. Now that I had the WLS, my gastroenterologist says that my pouch is basically acid free, and that is good news indeed. My voice still hurts in my last class of the day, and generally, if I stop speaking for 15 minutes after the last class gets out, my voice is done for the day. Zero sound. So it didn't eliminate the apparantly permanent damage to my larynx, but it removed the majority of the pain, and I can still teach....as long as my voice holds out. For the ability to work with minimal pain alone, it was worth it.

Issues that being thin have brought me aren't all that pleasant either. Some of the things that RNY (or weight loss alone in some cases) brought me:

I dump. i hate dumping. Wish I didn't.
I'm now lactose intolerant. With the discovery of Almond Milk, this is not an issue.
I can't drink straight unadulterated water any more.
Cooked fish like water, makes me nauseous. Pure water, milk, fish, not too much to give up.

I also have Reactive Hypoglycemia. My understanding of the mechanism behind this, particularly in my situation, is that I would likely have gotten RH with or without surgery, if I lost this much weight, it would likely have been an issue. I hate RH more than dumping, and since I started eating in a way to curb the RH the dumping is almost non-existant and I'm always surprised when I dump because I frankly forget most of the time that I still dump.

In addition, there's my tailbone. For me, it was directly related to losing 200 pounds. My tailbone couldn't take it. Most people have muscles that pull their tailbone up when they sit, even if it's not very strong anymore. In my case it was fully atrophied, couldn't do the job, and my tailbone had to come out, a rare surgery fraught with all sorts of complications and lack of results. I think if people knew that WLS had a one in five probability of people gaining instead of losing, and only a one in five chance of being fully successful, it would be just as rare as ****ygectomy. But losing weight lost me my tailbone.

And then there's the skin. But I had it fat, and I'd have it thin no matter how I lost the weight, so there ya go.

Balancing the good over the bad, RNY was still a good choice for me.

My tailbone hurts really badly... I figured it would eventually get used to having very little padding.  I didn't even realize they could remove it.  I also have the RH... but adjusting my meals to 7 per day has helped a lot... and knowing that simple carbs were gonna kill me here.

Most people don't get their tailbone removed. get a ****yx Cushion (not a donut one) and use that everywhere you sit. Likely the soreness will go away on its own. Some folks need to see a pain specialist and get one, two or three cortisone shots before the problem is alleviated. In my case, even when I was a skinny child I had a big butt (and I believed everyone who called me a fat child, until I unearthed a couple of photographs of me as a child and saw that I was actually a very skinny girl). So my tailbone retractor muscle never had to do any work pretty much my whole life. By the time I was 40, it was just not in existence. When I saw my pain specialist he told me straight up: I will NEVER refer you to have your tailbone removed. But within two years he did just that. The MRI results were very conclusive. My tailbone was undergoing repeated daily trauma. You can't fix something if you injure it daily. When the first surgeon rejected me, the pain specialist actually had to do the searching for me. To be honest, I was too afraid to ask, but I'm pretty darn sure that I was the first ****ygectomy my surgeon ever performed! (it wasn't a perfect solution, either, I still have a lot of residual "phantom limb" type pains)

As far as the RH, I don't really do "meals" I just sort of consume my way through each day. Most of the things I have are from 100 to 250 calories. (morning quiche, 250, protein shake, 120, grapefruit, 100, protein shake 120, snack 100, protein shake 120, first meal of the day 400, snack or beverage 100, pillow snack, 150) Approximately 1500 calories on a normal "snacky day" and less on other days. I focus on fatty foods with more protein less carbs. As soon as I shifted away from carby snacks to fatty snacks the RH has become almost a non-issue. (and my weight has begun to fluctuate in 10-lb swings overnight. Congratulate me on losing ten pounds last night.... though now that I think about it, my weight climbed sharply two days in a row when my insomnia was uncontrollable, and last night I took a Lunesta and dropped it all)

I have a complex history so I guess my answer would have to be complex, too.  The short answer is that I know without a doubt that I could never keep the excess weight off without WLS.  But at this stage I'm not too sure if I'll be able to keep it off with it, either.  I have already failed one WLS.  It isn't about losing weight for me.  I've literally done that a hundred times but I've never managed to keep it off.  Time will tell I guess.  In hindsight I may have done well with just restriction.  Malabsorption may have been overkill for me since I have lost too much weight but given that my restriction may yet lessen who knows?  Once my crystal ball gets out of the shop and I can tell what the future holds I'll let you know.