My Gastric Bypass Story

Gastric bypass is a surgery that will help you lose weight. The surgery will change and reform your stomach as well as reroute your small intestine. After the surgery, your stomach will literally be smaller in most cases half the original size. Also, the food you eat will no longer go into some parts of your stomach and small intestine that absorb food. Therefore you will get full faster consuming less food than the average person. Most importantly this surgery is just a weight-loss tool. If you take anything away from this let it be that again a Gastric bypass is a weight-loss tool!

Where my journey started

I got my surgery way back in 2008 in my early 20’s. I remember at the beginning of the year I went in for my yearly physical as I always do. Normally a week after said physical I would get lab results & a letter from my doctor which I never really read. I’ve worked for doctors 95% of my life so I know if there was anything serious about a test result you get a call, not a letter. This time was different a day after my physical I got a voice mail from my doctor saying she needed to speak with me asap and or I could come over no appointment necessary (I worked at the hospital where I had the surgery in the business office). So, this freaked me all the way out. It’s bad enough to get the call but for her to say “come over no appointment necessary ya it had to be something really bad. I listened to the message around 11:30 close to my lunch hour so I figured I would just head over & go to lunch right after. I walk to my boss's desk to let her know and to my surprise, my doctor has also called her to inform her that she needed to speak with me today so when I’m free to send me over. Okay I just know I was dying. I get to the hospital portion of the building and the nurse rushes me to the doctor’s office not an exam room, another red flag. She also wouldn’t look me in the eye, we had worked together for about five years and often jokes around. Yep, I was dying. So, the doctor comes first thing out of her mouth was “April you have got to make some major changes’. She proceeded to tell me I have high blood pressure, my cholesterol & glucose (blood sugar) levels were too high, she wanted me to do a sleep apnea study, and the reason I was having knee pain was due to my being morbidly obese. Now me being a medical biller I knew what all these medical terms meant. I knew what all these diagnoses meant. Morbidly obese is the medical term for super fat. After she said morbidly obese I kinda just broke down and started crying. Now I’m not a cryer, seriously I’m not. I hate to cry let alone in front of people, and never at work! My doctor came from around her desk put her hand on my shoulder and went on to say she has to prescribe me medication that I will be on for the majority of my life, and that these were medications that she normally prescribes for patients that are in their fifty. She finished by telling me that with my family history of diabetes, hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure, and heart disease she was very worried and we needed to get a treatment plan in place asap. I remember just being scared, embarrassed, and mostly ashamed. I couldn't remember feeling so low.

That all took place on a Friday so needless to say my weekend pretty much sucked LOL. I was so scared & depressed. Monday morning I got another call from my doctor asking me to come in again with no appointment necessary. Lawd what else I thought as I finished listing to her voice mail. So, I did ask I was told and headed to the hospital portion of the campus. So, I get to her office and to my surprise she had a big smile on her face. She told me I was on her mind all weekend and she wanted to talk to me about Gastric Bypass a tool for weight loss. Now up until this point, I had never heard of gastric bypass, I had never even had surgery. She explained that she felt this would be the best option for me and how urgent it was for me to get the weight off as soon as I could, in a healthy manner but I needed to act fast. So, she referred me to a top gastroenterologist and one of the first doctors to actually do the surgery. He came highly recommended. I was still freaked out but I didn’t want to be fat anymore. More importantly, I know I didn’t want to have to take medications for the rest of my life. So, I researched the doctor and found he was highly qualified and recommended. I couldn’t find not one complaint about him. So, I went in for the consultation. My new gastroenterologist/ surgeon was extremely nice and extremely straight forward. He told me that when my primary care doctor called him about me he didn’t want to take me on a patient as he felt I was too young but when she faxed him (yes y’all fax I told you guys this was back in the day LOL) and saw all my health issues along with her notes saying how long & how many times I tried to lose weight but I would always plateau around a certain weight that he wanted to meet with me. Next, he went into the side effects and risk which includes when it came to this surgery:

o a blood clots

o blood infection

o bleeding

o pneumonia

o bowel obstruction

o injury to the esophagus

o Acid reflux

o Anesthesia-related risks

o Chronic nausea and vomiting

o Inability to eat certain foods

o Infection

o Gallstones

o Hernias

o Hair loss

Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head guys there are more. Now I’m going to be completely honest the one that scared me was hair loss LOL keeping it all the way one hundred with y’all. I just imagined myself waking up after the surgery all kinda bawled headed. He also went into detail about what the surgery actually was and what it was going to do as well as the ways it was going to affect my body. He told me since I was already anemic I would have to really start on top of my iron (side note I didn’t but that’s a later blog) let me know there were two ways to actually do the surgery. Gastric bypass can be done in two ways. With open surgery, your surgeon makes a large surgical cut to open your belly. The bypass is done by working on your stomach, small intestine, and other organs. Another way to do this surgery is to use a tiny camera, called a laparoscope. This camera is placed in your belly. The surgery is called a laparoscopy. The scope allows the surgeon to see inside your belly. He said I was a great candidate for the laparoscopy surgery. He went into detail that this surgery was not going to work unless I was ready to change my eating habits & my mindset. He drilled into my head like I’m trying to do to y’all, that gastric bypass is only a weight-loss tool & should be treated as such. After speaking with him I thought it would be in my best intreated to go ahead with the surgery. Once agreed to the surgery there were all kinda jumping through hoops & uphill battles. Since I was very young my health insurance originally didn’t want to pay for the surgery. So, my gastroenterologist/ surgeon as well as my primary care physician with to battle with Blue Cross to show the medical justification. Once I got approved by the insurance company I had to go to a gastric bypass support group for three months, an “understanding gastric bypass” three-day seminar (split up into three Saturday sessions, as well as be evaluated by a psychologist. This took about six months before I could even schedule the surgery. Then worst of all, I had to be on a week-long none solid diet y’all. To the very day, the sight of jelly will make me nauseous.

The Big Day & Aftermath

After all, that was said and done its surgery day. I’m beyond scared as this is my first surgery ever. My older cousin dropped me off she had to work. My parents also had to work but promised to be there when I woke up. Pretty much there alone freaking out thinking about everything that could go wrong. The surgery was done I had a minor complication, I found out that I was what you call “a bleeder”. So instead of one night in a hospital, I spent a week there. My first thought when I got home was I made a huge mistake I was in so much pain I didn’t want to move. One thing for sure I wouldn’t hungry or thinking about food LOL. My mother had to really fore me to eat. Last thing I wanted to do. The first six months the weight feels off literally. I was told at the seminar as well as the support group what the first six months to a year was the most important year because this is when your weight will come off easily however you still need to eat right & exercise. Now I got control of the not eating as much & making better food choices but your girl did not exercise like at all! This was important to limit the amount of access to the skin as you lose so quickly. Yaaaaa didn’t do that at all! I’m paying for it now to this very day guys. That first year a lot of food didn’t taste the same. I’ve spoken to a few people who have had the same surgery and we all agree. I used to love McDonald's French fries like with a passion. I remember being at the mall with a friend and I was one month shy of a year after my surgery and I was starving and my friend was going to get McDonald's so I asked her to bring me a small fire. This was the first time I would be eating fast food since the surgery I ate two fried and wanted to throw up all I tasted was grease or oil it was disgusting! I use to love sweets now everything was too sweet. So sweet I often would spit it out. I have eaten something too sweet or greasy I would get what's called “dumping syndrome”. Dumping syndrome occurs when food, especially sugar, moves from your stomach into your small bowel too quickly. Feeling bloated or too full after eating:

· Nausea

· Vomiting

· Abdominal cramps

· Diarrhea

· Flushing

· Dizziness, lightheadedness

· Rapid heart rate

It is a horrible feeling. My body was just different. After being big for so long it was hard to think of myself as thinner. I remember going into the Lane Bryant store and shopping after my surgery. When I was much bigger or at least this is true for me You don’t want to try on clothes. I can remember after my surgery I went in and did just that. I noticed the salespeople looking at me kinda funny. I chalked it up to them being rude. I got the register & I engaged with the lady who was ringing me up and she asked who I was shopping for, I looked at her with a goofy face and said myself. She stopping ringing up the cloths and said “ honey I don’t think you can fit any of these. Y’all I had a good five outfits in the size 48 which was the size I was right before the surgery. I was thinner on the outside but not mentally.

Fast forward two to three years after the surgery I stayed in the 90 to 100 pounds litter then when I got the surgery, I wasn’t on any life long medications other than my supplements that were mandatory for any gastric bypass surgery patient, no high cholesterol or blood pressure, no trouble sleeping, and my knees had no pain. I felt awesome. Even though I was losing weight I still wasn’t exciting. When you have the surgery you want to excise daily as your body loses the weight you want to tone. I failed at this miserably. Again the surgery was a tool. I kept in contact with some of the people that I had met in the counseling sessions for years over social media. I was sad to see more than half had gained their weight all back after the first two years post-op. Some of them were even bigger than when they had started. I remember one man wrote on Facebook how the day after the surgery, literally going home from the hospital he went to a Taco bell drive though and order two burritos, a taco, and a large coke. Directly after eating he had to go back to the hospital for severe abdominal pain. He didn’t even make it all the way home. He suffered complications after eating the greasy heavy food. Also, people spoke about how they didn’t change their eating habits, they didn’t exercise. They felt that the first six months to a year the weight was coming off with little to no effect so they didn’t think there was a need. I’m not perfect as I said thought this post I was not one for exercise. I’m currently working on that now. I also didn’t stay on top of my supplements. Before the gastric bypass, I was anemic due to not staying on top of my iron I am chronic anemic and just finished up ten weeks of getting weekly iron infusions. Yes, you read that right weekly! I’m currently on hold with the infusions to see if my body will sustain the iron then we’ll know how often I’ll have to get the infusions. This was my own fault. I also gained weight. At my biggest, I was a size 48. Post-surgery my smallest was size 12. I’m currently a size 14. The journey continues yall.

I thank God for the surgery it has truly saved my life. I will never be the same & I’m forever grateful for that. Until next time yall!