Melting Mama on the pros and cons of WLS

Link: melting mama: I like to sit on fences. Then, ain't nobody gonna beat me up.

I posted a long comment to this entry, and then decided I might as well reproduce my comment in my own blog (edited a little for clarity or to accommodate further musings).  I should have done so to begin with, rather than take up space on hers!
______________________

Well, for what it's worth, I totally agree with everything you wrote. 

Even as a woman in her mid-40s with multiple life-threatening co-morbidities (uncontrolled though medicated Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.), who opted for the gastric reduction/duodenal switch, I realized I was exchanging one set of known serious health problems for another set of potential and unpredictable problems down the line.

I've been lucky at 18 months out: so far my co-morbidities have reversed and the only diagnosable problems are 1) severe anemia; 2) an abdominal hernia. (However, those aren't exactly minor, particularly the first.)

And I'm still a toddler in the WLS game. What about 3-5 years from now? 10 years? Answer: I won't know until I get there. And that's the cold, hard reality: I chose this option because I was running out of time and I didn't think I'd be alive in 10 years.  I thought I might easily be disabled in 3-5 years. But the realities of complications from weight-loss surgery years down the road are very real: they're why I maintain a subscription to a daily digest of a bulletin board that discusses real and serious health problems connected to my specific form of WLS -- because they can and do happen (with any and all forms of WLS -- yes, including the "minimally invasive" lap band), and until they do, you think they're not going to happen to you.

Right now? I would do this again in a heartbeat -- because right now I'm healthier than I've ever been. But by definition, given the surgical alterations in my body, I'm living on the nutritional edge, which in turn compromises my health, even if I don't see it now. And I know it.  I, for one, think that I've bought myself some time -- but I also think I'll be dealing with health issues related to WLS as I age, perhaps sooner rather than later. This is something that is always in the back of my mind, even when I'm posting more light-hearted reflections, as I did earlier today.

I live with hope -- but also with fingers crossed and with vigilance regarding complications as they develop.

Comments

[MM (Beth)]

Aye aye. Toddler, well, I'm a young preschooler then. What's going to happen to me when I'm, say, in high school?!

[Dagny]

I'll comment here instead of Melting Mama's site because I have more in common with Deluzy than I do with MM. I'm also mid-40s, had co-morbidities that were ruining my quality of life and I was on a collision course with diabetes (which I ultimately avoided). And I am also the healthiest I've ever been.

Something my doctor said to me early on has stuck with me. I asked her what would I be in for years and years down the road. What she said made a lot of sense to me---that this surgery developed as a result of seeing what happened to cancer patients whose insides had to rearranged and that the medical community has years of experience with those cases. Cancer survivors who underwent surgical treatment are the very beginning of our learning curve. There are data and research and living human beings out there who constitute antecedents to us.

The way I see it, I've crossed the biggest, highest, longest bridge already. Show me another bridge, I'll run across it now.