hello, info and pics

Hi Alma, Sorry it took me so long to reply, I have been away all weekend and just now got online. Anyway, thank you for your sweet compliments! I am just under 5'3, more like 5'2 and a half. I really wish I was a couple inches taller! It is hell trying to find pants that fit. I always have to buy petite pants and as such, have to go to the misses section mainly. Problem there is, everything is too big. The junior sizes fit me best but are always too long....it sucks! But hey....I would rather have them too big than too small, right? LOL You really look gorgeous, Alma! COngrats girl! Hugs, Denise

OKay, I just went and looked at all of your pics and girl!!!! You have no extra skin!!! WOW! How did you get so lucky? You can't even tell you were ever overweight, never mind obese! You are so gorgeous! I remember when you first had your surgery....you had major regrets. You wanted a reversal, right? I think that was you, right? I bet you have no regrets now!!! You look hot!!! Hugs, Denise

Yes that was me....my problem was I was around all negative people Hearing all this horror stories...thinking that all of those things they were telling me about were gonna happen to me. But I thank god that I have had nothing...I have not gotten sick once (knock on wood) The first 2 months were very hard. Plus I live way done southwest MN so there are no support groups for at least 3 hours away. So I had no one to talk to that knew what I was going thru. And the WLS people I found all seem to have something wrong going on at that time... So I was in this deep black hole and it was very hard to climb out. And it didn't help that I was going thru a divorce. But thank god a few months later (after making me leave the house) I started feeling better. I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. However to be completely honest I still feel overweight...Travis tells me I'm been silly I would love to go to some kindda of support group meeting... or just to some of the get togethers they have here, but they are SOO far away and having 5 kids its hard to just get up and leave to a 2 hr meeting when it will take a total of 6 hrs to get there and back home.... Any way, how do u deal with the new you?

Hi there, Alma! Sweetie, I totally understand where you are coming from. I also went through a period when all I heard was horror stories, and I was thinking, "My God....I am going to die from hacking my body like this!" So, even though I didn't have regrets, I was scared that I was going to die or get really sick. Even to this day sometimes, I wonder if by having the surgery, I screwed my system up. It is scary when I stop and think about it. I totally understand where you are coming from on that. And I had an awesome support group that was very accessible. We met all the time. I had many good friends who had the surgery. So my support system was there, Thank God! I can't imagine going through it without that in place. You must have been a wreck! I don't blame you for have been scared to death. I would have been as well. I would suggest that you keep coming to the boards and post as many messages as you need to; if you have an questions, thoughts, concerns, etc, post away! This is like an online support group meeting, if you think about it! I would love to be an online buddy for you if you ever need to chat! I really would. Don't hesitate to e-mail me and maybe we can exchange numbers and chat sometime. I think we have a lot in common in terms of age, having WLS, etc....I can relate to a lot of what you are saying. Hope to chat with you soon! Hugs, Denise [email protected]

you are so sweet! i have added you to my msn. talk to you soon! ALMA

Alma, I agree you do look great. Sounds like you have a good man. Wishing you continued successses and happiness. Hopefuly soon you will feel better about yourself. Mary Rny aug 4th 05

THANK YOU !!! alma

Hi Alma, I haven't been here in quite awhile and I don't recognize everyone. I used to post here a lot but I'm looking for the old faces and everyone's done so well, they're unrecognizable. lol. So ok, I'm the old lady of the group here and I'm here to tell you, you are beautiful! Aren't we hard on ourselves? Looking at your pictures, I was thinking that you were one the lucky ones whose skin tone is still good. So is Denise BTW. You hardly look old enough to be a mom much less the mom of a teenager. I've got some real body distortion issues myself, I'm not judging. I had a circumcual l body lift, brachioplasty ( (bat wing removal) and a breast lift almost two weeks ago. Needless to say, I'm not feeling my best. I look in the mirror and think What have I done to myself&^%##@!!!I paid to have this done to me????????I feel grotesque. My ps has talked to me extensively about body image and weight loss patients. . Plastic surgeons do what they .can but we have to have realistic expectations. No matter how thin we get, we'll never look like a person who's never been MO. Unless you're very young, haven't had the weight on all that long or genetically lucky, most of us have irreparable skeletal damage. If you want to see some very graffic pgotos of the damage of overweight and reconstructive surgery, go to my picturetrail site. http://www.picturetrail.com/members/editMy member name is nanabb . click on the 'post plastic surgery' album. For obvious reasons it's password protected. My password is ps. There now, don't you feel a whole lot better? I hope you can find a way to resolve this with yourself. BTW, the man you're going to marry sounds like a wonderfyl guy. Good luck sweetie. ~bb