WLS Suicide - It's all backwards. What can we do?

Stomach Surgery To Get Thin...
But Not Necessarily Happy?
Here it comes.

RIP Lisa Sohr.  A beautiful soul.

^{http://nymag.com/nymetro/health/features/1868/ from 2005}

I vividly remember this woman and this article:  

My Life as a Thin Person

People like Lisa Marie Sohr, who lose 100 pounds or more with stomach surgery, find that with their new bodies often come new friends, new spouses, new lives. But happiness is not a foregone conclusion.

 (I reposted this article on my own blog in 2005, probably back on Blogspot.)

I remember this clearly as it spooked me.  I was only one year post op, and pushing my own lowest weight.  But, I knew it was realistic if a bit dark, and I have never once held out to anything wild or crazy in my own expectations.  

Looking back, reading articles like that gave me a good balance between the mass postings and books filled with --

"YOU CAN DO IT!  Look at ME!  I did it!  Look at my size ZERO! GLITTER AND BUTTERFLIES and XXX POUNDS LOST FOREVAH!  THANKS TO BABY JESUS AND MY SURGEON!" 

No.  No, sometimes you can't, or you simply feel like you can't.  (Save it.)

Post-ops do not talk about this stuff openly often enough.  

According to everything I have read and listened to in the last seven years ^{(as a non-professional, just a peer with lots of people talking to her, please do not give me another speech about "professional," if you want a PRO - go find one)} there is a G I G A N T I C hole in the care of psychological and psychosocial issues in the post op world of bariatric surgery.

More often than not, people struggle.  People struggle harder than you may ever realize.

Sometimes simply seeing your peers succeed and blow past you -- is enough to make you wallow in a pit of Lucky Charms. What happens with bigger life stresses?  What then?  If you never learned how to cope, and do not have the capacity or the means to find help in learning how to cope?  

How does this manifest for you?  Eating problems, inappropriate behaviors, transfer addictions to drugs, alcohol, spending money, gambling, promiscuous behavior, compulsivity or being totally reckless with your life?  

Short answer:  YES.

(I actually feel lucky at times, that even with added stresses and issues, that I have been able to maintain some a little sanity.  However, I am perfectly aware that I am six degrees of separation from a padded cell if I don't pay attention.)

I fear that there is so much attention placed on being a successful weight LOSS patient, and a successful re-loss patient, that lots of people forget about being a healthy person.  You can't have an entirely healthy person without a (somewhat) sound mind.  It's like, "GET TO YOUR GOAL WEIGHT AND STAY THERE AND YOU WIN!  Forget about your family, job, life, goals, they don't matter so much as HOW GOOD THIN FEELS!"  

To me, it's all backwards.  But, again, I am not in the business of selling weight loss surgery, and instant gratification results sell, amazingly well.  

Bariatric surgery is NOT going away, "we" are only getting more obese by the day, and "we" are going to be scheduling more and more bariatric procedures as "we" need them.  There will be countless less-than-stable individuals adding to our current pool.  

We obviously have work to do, as post ops who are aware of these issues.  We don't need to lose another peer.  Doctors can only do so much, they have a job, "to surgically alter the digestive tract," they do not alter our brains.  (That will happen, eventually.)

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*Lisa Sohr committed suicide, article here.

http://www.meltingmama.net/wls/2010/09/stomach-surgery-to-get-thin-but-not-necessarily-happy-here-it-comes.html