Reason 2,341,875 to lose weight: You can start wearing clothes that got too tight to wear before. Found another three shirts I bought hoping I could fit into them a year ago. NOW I can finally fit into them. :-)

Bullshit.

My mother had the Roux-en-Y surgery, or gastric bypass, weight loss surgery a number of years ago. The past year, however, she’s gained most of her weight back. She was afraid that she had compromised her gastric pouch by eating too much and stretched it out.

An unrelated medical test recently tells a different story, and I am upset.

It looks like the stitching of her pouch came undone, and it allowed food to enter the stomach like normal.

That’s not what peeves me. We all recognize that surgical procedures don’t always go perfectly and that gastric bypass complications occur. What peeves me is that she has had zero follow up care. The surgeon did the procedure, gave her a few pamphlets on what to eat, and that was it. She was released into the wild thinking she was automatically set for life. 

She has received not one post-surgical check-up. She didn’t know that she had to continue taking vitamins and supplements for the rest of her life. The level of service she received is appalling.

So I’m taking this time to remind everyone: Investigate your bariatric surgery center and surgeon. You will be a bariatric patient for the rest of your life. And if you skimp and try to cut corners, things can go very pear-shaped. My mother now has to go under the knife yet again and go through more surgery to fix this. If she had the procedure done at a real Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence, any problems would have been noticed and dealt with. 

Hey, hi ho everyone, Don here!

I went in for a fill last week. Funny story: I was under the impression that my size of lap band had a capacity of 9ml. My last fill put me at 8ml, so I thought that I hardly had any room left in my band. Well, the nurse corrected this silliness, and said I have a Large size band, which has a capacity of 14ml.

And I think I’m getting quite close to the sweet spot, too. I’ve noticed a big difference, and I think for once, my eyeballs are learning to shrink, too. Dinner now is a piece of chicken, maybe a stick of string cheese.

Had a mini composition report created for my fill on June 28th. This is my 9 month, one week point, and I’m officially down 46.1 pounds (according to the surgery center’s scales), and have a BMI of 34 which is below 35, which makes me only mildly obese!

And, I have good news, on the numerical accounting front, as well. My weight dipped into the 230 range Monday morning (July 2nd)!

I wasn’t the best of ‘dieters’ on July Fourth, I had some treats and a few hot dogs. So in repentance, I went on a good walk today:

A few shoutouts to Tumblr friends:

Erin, adjusttheaction, a young lady who had lap band surgery and from all accounts is kicking its nethers. And OneFatBloke in the UK who’s making terrific progress!