Nervous about VSG. How did you deal with concept of cutting your stomach?

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments.  I am leaning towards having VSG but am still nervous.  I guess that's normal...  

I don't view my stomach as the enemy. Instead, I view the enemies as sugar and yo-yo dieting for over 35 years.  My metabolism is probably that of a snail!   

Lexi

I think you're right to have some concern as it's human to do that and it  it shows you're giving a good surgery some serious consideration.  I wish you all the best.

The way I look at it is that my stomach was broken. It wasn't a perfect machine but a broken machine. I didn't hesitate to cut out my gallbladder when it was acting up so why should my broken stomach be any different?

I had a  harder time with the permanency of it. What if something went wrong and I was sorry? But my Aunt had stomach cancer in the 60s and had most of her stomach removed and was fine and also all WLS is permanent, even the band, in the sense that, if you take out a band, the weight comes back on. Also, the only reason you need to reverse a band is because it malfunctions. So I don't see that as a big advantage of it. It's like saying you can buy this car that will possibly kill you but don't worry because you can take it back if it acts up. With VSG, it's not going to act up like that in the first place. It's like buying a better car that can't be returned.

Can you tell me more about your aunt's life with a partial stomach? I've been trying to research this too since partial gastrectomies have been done for a long time. And technology in the 60's wasn't nearly as good as it is now!  

Thanks again.

We weren't that close so I never really talked to her about it. But she always seemed very normal to me as a child, I never noticed her eating strangely or anything, and then when I was an adult my mom mentioned it.

Her cancer did come back and now she has no stomach at all or very little. That was harder as she ended up with a slow leak. that took a while to heal. But she's fine now.

The way I look at is that she was able to live a normal life for decades and got to live to a pretty ripe old age (and she's still alive) in spite of a lot of (unrelated) health problems.

People often ask about WLS: what if I get cancer? What if I get this or that? Well she's gotten a lot of stuff and her little stomach didn't factor in at all. She survived several types of cancer for example.

LOL. Love the car metaphor.  :-)  Thank you.