Hello

Its been a very long time since I posted to this website, so let me introduce myself. My name is Joann, 51 yrs old and married to a wonderful man for over 25 yrs. I had gastric bypass surgery in July of '03 by Dr. Lavin who is the founder of Surgical Specialist of Louisiana. He's an excellent doctor. I had no problems with him whatsoever and I might add that he's also very easy to look at. I'm 5'5 and my initial weight was 243. I met my goal of losing 100 lbs in 8-9 months. Then I had plastic surgery. Everything was going great for me until my world fell apart in December '05. I was diagnosed with having epilepsy after suffering a grand mal seizure. I know its not the end of the world. There are alot of people that have epilepsy. It just took me awhile to accept it. And then I had three more seizures in August of last year. I went thru alot of different seizure medications until two of them finally worked. No more seizures (knock on wood). Except one of the medications had side effects of losing hair and losing weight. My hair started falling out big time and my weight got down to 117. Family and friends were telling me I looked anorexic. I didn't really see it until I started seeing myself in pictures. I felt fine but looked very very thin. I had my thyroid checked including a slew of other levels checked and everything was good. So my neurologist lowered my dose. My hairloss continued and my weight got back up to 130 and stabalized. Instead of being a size 2, I was wearing size 4. I couldn't take losing more hair or I would have been bald within a few months. I've tried everything, increasing my protein and everything thats out there for losing hair and nothing seemed to work. So as recent as April 1st i was taken off of that medicine. My hairloss has slowed way down but now my weight is going up. In less than a month I went from wearing a size 4 up to a size 8! Now i'm scared that the scale will continue to go up. And to make matters worst, the hunger pains have returned. I don't eat at any fast food restaurants, I don't drink caffeinated drinks cause they taste terrible to me, and I can't eat ice cream cause i'm lactose. I also can't eat alot of sugar or I dump. So now i'm torn with the decision whether I should go back on that medicine, be bald and thin? Or continue to gain more weight and have a head full of hair. I saw Dr. Lavin a couple of weeks ago and told him whats going on and he suggested that I see a nutritionist. Has anyone seen one? And i'm so so sorry that this post was longer than it should have been. I'm just down in the dumps right now with decisions to make and I needed to vent.