Oh! The waiting is terrible...

Just kidding... but I got your attention didn't I?

My first appointment is for Friday, February 16th -- which I'm sure will be here before I even know it. I have a million questions for the surgeon, most of which (I hope) are intelligent! I'm concerned about what procedure he will recommend for me because I would really prefer the 'full meal deal' - so to speak - of the gastric bypass. I want to have the excellent built-in consequences of eating sugar (dumping syndrome) as I'm good with avoiding nasty consequences (I currently avoid dairy pretty much completely as it does such a number on my system almost every time).

Also, I like the idea of the mal-absorptive side of this surgery as well. Gastic bypass surgery has the highest success rates, lowest regaining statistics and largest impact on Metabolic Syndrome.

I ran across a very interesting quote from a person who really should know about all of this:

Despite triumphant tales on reality shows of weight loss without drugs or surgery, most seriously overweight people stand a better chance of appearing on American Idol than they do of logging a triple-digit weight loss and keeping it off. "Diet, exercise, and behavior modification alone with people who are 100 pounds or more overweight has been a uniform failure," says Neil Hutcher, president of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery.

Click here for the full article "Weighing the Risks".

Okay, so he works in the industry that is promoting surgery as a solution, but certainly he would have all the most current information, don't you think? And with all of that info on weight loss, diets, and likely thousands of personal stories and information on obese patients, that is his conclusion.

I would say that the numbers would bear this out as well, as the article goes on to say "In 1995, just 20,000 weight-loss operations were performed in the United States. Last year (2005), there were 170,000, according to the ASBS." That's an incredible increase! And that's good news for people wanting this surgery as the more practice a surgeon has the lower his incidence of complications (and death). Comments? Great! Send them in!