The following is part three of my personal account of Gastic Bypass surgery. This will cover your long term diet, possible side effects and complications and a few words of advice for anyone considering the procedure. My wife took a picture of me a couple days ago just for this article. It is located at the bottom. No cheating and scrolling ahead.
When I was a teenager, I snored like a chainsaw. I know this because one time my stepdad came from another room in the middle of the night to wake me up and tell me that my snoring woke him up. I wasn’t overweight, because I didn’t start putting on the pounds until I had gotten past high school. I’m telling you this because it was very weird that I stopped snoring about a month after the surgery. It was like BOOM! No more sleep apnea. My high blood pressure issues also vanished in the first month, I had to take myself off my medication. My surgeon told me that most patients went off their pills following the surgery but I hadn’t believed him. I had gone from taking nine pills a day to just a couple. My blood pressure actually dropped so low that I passed out getting out of the hot tub at the YMCA and fell over. I lay on the ground for a couple of minutes with my head spinning before I realized nobody was coming to help me. Way to go, lifeguards!
Another thing that was cured was my nosebleeds. I had always had terrible nosebleeds since I was a child. I remember getting ones that lasted 4 hours or longer, they wouldn’t stop no matter what I tried. They continued into my adult life and I know there were nights I would be up all night long trying to stop the blood pouring from my nose. Within a couple months of the surgery I turned to my wife and said “You know what, I think my nosebleeds have stopped.” I still get them occasionally but they are nothing like before, I just find it odd that the surgery fixed this problem. Not when I hit my target weight mind you, but after losing only a few pounds. It was a very surreal experience. Another benefit I have noticed is that I no longer get heart burn, no matter what I eat. This has really upped my enjoyment of spicy food and food with lots of garlic in it.
Before the surgery my pants size was a whopping 54 and I was wearing 5xl shirts. Today I wear a size 32/34 in the waist and an XL shirt. I could wear a large but I like my shirts to be a little loose because I am naturally barrel-chested. For the first 18 months or so we were buying me new clothes every 3-4 months because I was dropping sizes so fast. I think one of the best days I had was when I hit size 38 again and I finally felt like I could wear jeans. I hadn’t worn jeans in about 16 years. Being able to buy a regular belt was also pretty nice. I could finally buy shirts from TV shows and websites I liked because I was finally small enough to get the sizes they sold in. It’s things like this people who are not overweight take for granted.
Your diet after one year is pretty much whatever you want to eat, although you should maintain a high-protein diet, because you will not eat nearly as much as anyone else does in a normal meal. When I go to a restaurant and order food I often eat less than a third of what they serve and take the rest home with me. I never get an appetizer anymore because it’s a giant waste. Once the weight is gone does not mean it will stay off forever, and the surgery is not a magical cure, you need to work at it. Three high-protein meals a day and you should participate in some form of exercise (something I am terrible about because I am too tired to work out thanks to being anemic). Sometimes you just have to have a snack and I try to stay healthy by eating yogurt or maybe a piece of cheese. I occasionally indulge in sweets or chips but nowhere near the level I did before the surgery and I always feel bad about it afterwards.
Part of the surgery’s effects is that your digestive system works a lot differently than a normal person. You absorb food differently and malabsorption of vitamins can be a problem, which is why I will spend the rest of my life chewing a specially-formulated multivitamin four times a day. You also should really avoid foods high in sugar or you might experience the dreaded “dumping” syndrome. Lots of high-sugar foods can result in your body chemistry getting out of whack. You’ll get dizzy and hot and in a worst case scenario you will end up with terrible diarrhea. This is one of the disadvantages bypass patients have over lapband, but it also acts to help keep you in check. A lapband patient can eat whatever they want, making it harder to stick to the diet, but a bypass patient risks dumping by eating high sugar foods. Once you experience even a mild case, you don’t want to experience it again. I have eaten cake and pie since the surgery but in VERY limited quantities. Cheesecake however is my personal kryptonite and 3-4 bites can send me into a weakened state where I just want to die. Also, sadly, I can no longer drink milk. I can eat cheese, yogurt, even a little ice cream, but drinking milk (even lactose-free kind) causes stabbing pains in my stomach. I really miss milk.
Another noticeable side effect is gas. Not just some normal little “Oh look, who farted?” kind of gas. It’s more of a run-from-the-room-screaming “OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY DIED” kind of smell. Over time I have discovered this is mainly related to the types of food I eat. As long as I avoid foods that are super high in carbs I don’t really have much of a problem. Certain combinations also seem to set it off (chicken and cheese, whole wheat pasta), and during these times it can be pretty embarrassing to be me. But it’s the price I and the people around me must pay so I can live a longer healthier life. I was warned of this before the surgery as my nutritionist said, “You mess with the intestines and they will make you pay.”
The third major side effect is one that some people might consider good. You, to put it bluntly, become a cheap date. Before the surgery I had a pretty good alcohol tolerance. Now after three beers I am well on my way to hammered. For this reason I have had to give up hard liquor because a single drink containing vodka is enough to get me stupid drunk. It also affects how medication affects you; about a year ago I took half a Vicodin and within ten minutes I was unconscious. You absorb these things a lot faster than before the surgery so you have to learn your new limits and not to go past them.
Recent years have brought the complication rate for this type of procedure to a low number. I believe my surgeon said he had a 2% complication rate. Things like strictures (scars that close off the passage between the stomach and the intestine) or burst stitches are pretty rare as opposed to previous years. Any surgery carries a risk the moment they put you under, but post-op care has gotten a lot better with this procedure and the risk is minimal at worst.
In summary, if I had to do it all over again, I would definitely undergo the surgery. I had a ton of weight-related health problems and they weren’t getting any better. If someone were to ask me if they should do this I would want to know their situation. If you are just overweight but still relatively healthy then start working out and eating better, the risks, changes and possible side effects are a difficult thing to endure. For someone who is overweight and is having seriously health complications then I would say you should seriously start looking into this. Losing all that weight probably added 10 years or more to my life span, because before the surgery I doubt I would have made it past 50. I still have some health issues the surgery couldn’t fix. The damage to my kidneys is permanent and my doctor keeps a close eye on my numbers. My heart still has a bad valve and eventually I will need to get it repaired or replaced, but that is something I have delayed by many years. When I started my journey three years ago I weighed 320 pounds; today I weigh a relatively svelte 175 pounds, which was about what I weighed my senior year in high school.
If you have any specific questions feel free to ask them in the comments section as I may have left something out. I will answer what I can to the best of my ability. Thanks for reading my story, I hope it helps you or helps you help someone you know survive this challenging procedure.
