Gastric Bypass Surgery for my Type 2 Diabetes
What Led Me to Gastric Bypass Surgery
9 Years ago I got married and it was a great day. A great week in my life. One of the things I had to do before the wedding was get a blood test to obtain a marriage license. The Dr that I did this at came back with the results and said “ok you all set to get your marriage license but you got diabetes. you need to eat more vegetables. you too fat.”
Huh? What? Diabetes? Yea ok whatever.
So we went about our wedding day and night and it was fun. Looking forward to the honeymoon the next day was the cap on a perfect day. We couldn’t wait to get down to Key West and spend the week relaxing and having fun. Plus I had the most fun chic to hang with and share all this with.
We took an early flight from Boston to Tampa the next morning and everything was pretty smooth. The flight from Tampa to Key West was a different story. I didn’t eat that morning and we kinda rushed into the airport and into the terminal. A few hours later we landed in Tampa and hurried to get our connecting flight. Running through the airport I started to feel a little dizzy and shakey is the only way I can explain it. Whatev, I get on the plane with my new wife and get seated so we can take off.
Sitting on the 8 passenger plane taxiing out to the runway I start to get this weird numbing feeling in my body and my vision all but shuts off or something like tunnel vision. At this point I’m think ok this aint cool and getting stuck in a plane when I need some medical attention ain’t a cool idea either. So I get out of my seat and began to open the door to the plane to get off. I felt pretty calm at this point but most of it is still kinda hazy. I remember walking off the plane and some guy running at me from the terminal like he wants to tackle me. Laughing at the guy cause he looked funny but he wasn’t too happy. They directed me to the terminal and lots of people were staring at me. I walked up a bunch of steps and that’s about all I remember for a while. Luckily my wife followed behind me but she was probably better off going without me.
I remember kinda waking up sitting in the airport food court eating some shitty hamburger and drinking a Coca-Cola. What happened? My wife told me what went on and we chalked it up to a panic attack or something because the plane was so small. I’ve flown in those planes before and really didn’t think it was that. Whatev again. Let’s get down to Key West.
So we rented a Lincoln Towncar and drove down to Key West from Tampa. I think it took like 7 hours but it was an adventure.
Some time later on I went to the doctor’s and found out I was a Type 2 Diabetic and I need to start on some medication and get in better shape. So began my 10 year struggle with Diabetes and now I’m looking to cure all that with this Gastric Bypass weight loss surgery. I could try me best to explain everything I understand about it but this video below does a better job. Basically what happens is I re-route food I eat into a smaller pouch of a stomach and also do away with the first 18 inches of my small intestine. The combination of these 2 things actually cures my type 2 diabetes right after the surgery. Some thing about forcing the pancreas to work harder to secrete insulin into my body and preventing my liver from releasing sugar into my blood also.
So in just a few days I’ll be getting this surgery at Lahey Clinic in Burlington MA and recovering a few days in the hospital. Wish me luck and hopefully no complications like my Mother had with her gastric bypass surgery. I can’t look at pictures of my Dad anymore to see what I’ll look like when I get older cause he died when he was 37. It’s up to me how I live my life and I don’t want to leave any earlier than I have to. This surgery will extend my life rather than how I was living with Diabetes and being overweight.
Here’s What a Gastric Bypass Surgery Looks Like
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I just found out about your operation and I have type 2 diabetes also. I live in Somerville. I saw your tweet via Google Real Time Search. I am also a Health Care Organizer and want to support you in your quest for f-ing off diabetes. I am waiting to here back from MGH for my appointment with the MGH Weight Center. Take care Ken and email me.
Are you waiting to find out if you can get this surgery too? Good luck Vaughn.
just had gastric bypass surgery. im alive!!!
welcome to the other side. Had RNY about 7 years ago. Don’t worry the free fall will slow down in a month or two. Kinda freaked me out at first. Years of trying to lose weight and not doing so chnaged to 60 lbs in 30 days. I still have a belt with 14 inches of holes punched in it as I lost weight.
thanks Mike. I had my surgery 2 weeks ago and I’m doing ok. Finally got past the part where everything was sore and my body was acting weird.
Now on to trying and get my 60g of protein/day. And water is tough to drink too. Hard to stay hydrated all day.
It will come along. I know the dietary training kind of overwhelmed me so they basically broke it down to “get the protein, everything else will come along with it”. Know what you mean by the water and staying hydrated. I remember being 4 days out and having this large Ukrainian nurse that keep saying “howdy” with a Natasha accent telling me I had to drink my shot glass of water every hour or she was going to hurt me! Just don’t push it too soon. I ended up stretching my pouch (too much information??) by over eating and only ended up losing about 90 pounds in the end. I dropped to 240 within about 5 months but then “floated” back up to 270. Not as much as I would have liked to lose but still better than the 360 I was when I went in.
I had gastric bypass in january, have lost weight everywhere except my boobs, what is going on?
Everyone says that is the first place you lose weight but not in my case what can i do?
I feel your pain.
Oh will lose weight but it will be uneven and “lumpy” for quite a while. You are losing fat but your skin has been shaped by that fat for many years and it doesn’t shrink as you lose weight.
You need to go to the gym and work out. You don’t need to train for the Olympics but you need to do toning (weight training, lots of low weight reps) to convince your skin that it needs to tighten up
In 8 months to a year your body will settle into what it thinks is its normal shape. You may end up getting tummy tuck type of cosmetic surgery to tighten up here and there because the skin may just not tighten up as much as you want. It happens to a lot of us.