Acowanda's post: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Feb 03, 2011

I've copied his post so that I can be reminded to do this for myself, and because he was so honest about the life changes and the value of the OH board in his life.  I have surgery in 6 days and will return here to review this particular post around 6 months for me... in August.

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Post Date: 2/2/11 1:27 pm
Today I am six months out from RNY surgery. My pics are below. I wanted to share some of the best and worst of this process for me. Good and bad, I would do it again in a heartbeat and wish I had gotten up the courage to do it earlier. These sorts of posts were incredibly helpful to me when I was researching and getting my mind around having surgery. I hope this can do the same for some of the others

The good:

Down 134 lbs since I started the program and 102 since surgery
No longer morbidly obese, and heading toward just being overweight
Comorbidities gone: BP normal, blood sugar normal, sleeping normally (most of the time)
Not out of breath when I walk, climb stairs or do everyday activities
Playing with my nieces and nephew is a pleasure
Wearing XL shirts instead of 3XL
Wearing 36 pants instead of 48s
Shopping for clothes anywhere I want
Flying with ease and fitting in the airplane seat
No longer taking up 2 seats on the bus
Booths
A new appreciation for food and really good tasting food in small portions
Not feeling hungry
No issues with any foods so far and no dumping
A newfound sense of empowerment
The most supportive friends in the world
OH and the kindness of strangers

The bad:

Loose skin (the turkey waddle is getting really bad)
Keeping up with lots of vitamins
Remembering to eat (I never thought that would ever be on a list of mine)
A disconnect between what I see in the mirror and what I feel in my head
No longer having the last empty seat being the one next to me
Having to actually think about whether I should eat that instead of shoving it in my mouth
The foamies (only happened 3 times early on but yuck)
Hormones going nutty
The inability to self-medicate stress, anxiety and sadness with food
The fact that the surgery fixes our bodies and not our heads

The ugly:

A recent bout of major depression caused, at least in part, by the convergence of all these changes all at once with lots of other things going on in my life (now controlled by medication and therapy.)


Sometimes people on here look at others and compare themselves. People worry if they are lacking because they slip up or miss vitamins or eat the wrong thing. We are all humans made up of the sum of the good, the bad and the ugly. I wi**** had all been roses for me but it hasn't because it is life. It has still been very good overall.

I think OH has so many amazing people who give their time, energy and love to strangers. At the depth of my depression when I couldn't connect with people, I knew that my friends were out there for me, whatever was happening. I also knew that the people on OH were out there as well. I read posts even when I could not get up the energy to respond. And I knew I was part of this community that had been so supportive during this journey. I feel lucky to have found OH.

As I said at the beginning, I wouldn't trade my RNY for anything. I believe it saved and extended my life. But even if I could know that I would not live one additional second because of surgery I would have done it again. I wish the depression hadn't happened but it did, and it has helped me continue my journey to better myself. To the pre-ops who will read this, you can't know what life will throw at you, but getting WLS is one of the best gifts you can give to yourself, even if it is not a perfect gift. When I was pre-op, all I thought about was getting to surgery. But surgery is really just the beginning of a new chapter in your life. Despite the ugly, my quality of life has been better since surgery than it has been for years. I feel very lucky. What a gift!

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