NEWBIE - please help me....

Hi everyone! My Name is Dawn and I am from Duncombe, Iowa. I am calling a local surgeon tomorrow and asking what i have to do to get the ball rolling on a gastric bypass. I am 30 yrs old and weigh 304 lbs. I was diagnosed with diabetes 2 yrs ago and have been struggling with insuline and oral meds ever since. I am a little different than some on this site as I have already had weight loss surgery that was unsuccessful. 7 yrs ago i had vertical banded gastroplasty surgery. This surgery, as you might already know, leaves the rest of your stomach SCREAMING for food while the little pouch at the top slowly leaks the food down into it. The hunger pains were terrible, and i was wondering if any of you that have had the gastric bypass suffer severe hunger pains? I have been told by some that this surgery does something to help that side effect. My worst fear is of going thru all the pain and money involved with another surgery..just to fail again. Any info, advise or anything else that you all could give me would be GREATLY appreciated. My cousin is going to have this procedure done also, and we were going to try to coincide our surgeries so that we could do the support groups/physical therapy and exercising together... does that sound like a good idea??? ~awaiting all opinions (any iowa gossip would be good too )

Hi Dawn- Michelle here from Cedar Rapids. I have my first consult with the surgeon on May 22. I have opted for VGB but your message leaves me very apprehensive about that choice. I had thought it would be more natural and wouldn't have as many side effects as the RNY. But now I'm not so sure. The most important thing to me is that this surgery squashes my appetite and it doesn't sound like it did that for you. What I've read about RNY is that it may help decrease the production of gherelin which is a hunger hormone. Researchers don't know why or how it works, but they are trying to isolate the enzyme responsible for appetite suppression to hopefully get it into a therapeutic form. But of course that will take at least 10 more years and it will be horrendously expensive so insurance won't cover it for 5 years after that, and then they will find out it probably causes cancer in concentrated form, blah, blah, blah!!!! When they feed even tiny amounts of gherelin to mice, they eat voraciously even tho they might have just had a huge meal. (Sound familiar?) (Someday we WILL have revenge against the skinnies out there who think we are all gluttonous pigs and all we have to do is "cut back and exercise"!) I think its a great idea to work with your cousin. I wish I had that kind of support. Right now I am reading all I can about the procedures and post-care from this website. There is tons of info here. I think what has been most eye-opening to me is the fact that there are certain methods of eating\drinking that maximize weight loss. I used to think that as long as the pouch was small, I would only eat what it could handle and lose weight. Guess it doesn't work that way. Don't miss the question and answer part, especially the "last 300 questions." THere are some very practical questions presented, ones that you might think of but be embarrassed to ask your doctor. Welcome to the message board! I hope our little group keeps growing and we can help each other out! Michelle

to go to support group with and to work out/walk with is a great idea. I go to my monthly support group meeting with a girl that had her surgery half a month after me, we would walk together too but she lives about 30 minutes away, so I only see her once a month. I am lucky that I have a sister that walks with me pretty regularly, but it would be nice to have someone that has been through the surgery to go and do things with once in a while. You never know, you also might make friends at your support group, like I did. There are a lot of people that have had the vbg done that are going in and having revisions done in my support group. I also know a couple of girls that had no problems with their VBG and are keeping the weight off. I opted for the RNY from the get-go because I NEEDED dumping syndrome. I had to stay away from the sweets and that fear of getting sick was what did it for me. I was petrified of surgery again, but I can honestly say that I would do it again tomorrow, I am so happy with the results. I have never been really hungry, in fact it is the opposite for me. For the first few months I had to force myself to eat breakfast. Good luck with the surgeon, insurance etc... make sure come come to our little board and post often, I would LOVE for this board to be a "hot spot", LOL. Take care and if you have any questions for me, just send me an email!! ~Julie