High Blood Pressure & Dealing With Depression severely

I was wondering if any of you have had any blood pressure problems or serious depression since your surgery?  I am having blood pressure readings of 195/115 and suffering from some bad depression!  my wife had the mini gastric bypass surgery 6 years ago and she is a alcoholic.  She can put away alot of Merlot wine and back in September she got a DWI.  She is going thru the change of life and is very moody when she isn't drinking.  I feel like sometimes I want to end my life because of the loss of my mother and trying to cope with her death and all the depressed things around me:-(  I had my surgery 8/2/07 and I went in weighing 299 pds and I have only lost 52 pds since that time.  My mom died  8/22/07 while having a heart transplant and it has been very hard.  My wife was drunk thru this whole ordeal and I am very upset inside!   I am on Cymbalta and 3 other blood pressure medications.  I am taking more meds now before I went in for surgery!  I am so fed up with life in general anymore.  Can someone suggest anything?  Thanks, George

sadly it sounds like you have both made a classic mistake and traded one addiction for another.  since we can no longer abuse food and use it as our addiction, we often look for another one.  your wife turned to wine.  It is depressing to lose your comfort zone of food, but that is why it is soooo important to get counseling along the way and learn to  deal with feeling that we used to just stuff away with food.   You and your wife would benefit greatly from some counseling... either from a  therapist or even a pastor who knows about addiction and the loss of a crutch.  I wish you the best of luck!! Faith

I don' have an addiction to alcohol it is my wife.  I have been going to counseling and I am glad that I got the surgery.  In what way do you feel I made a classic mistake?  I appreciate your input

if you re read my note I said your Wife was the drinker not you.   what I mean by classic mistake is that it is very very common for people to switch addictions.  Pretend you were a drug user.... now you get help and kick the habit..... but along the wy you might start using food to replace the drugs...... see what I mean?  It is the same with food, for many of us it is an addction like a drug and when we can no longer get a fix from the food, we seek out other things to replace it. Thats all I meant. It is very very common and a lot of people who go thru weight loss surgery also go thru depression  or addiction transfer. Faith

"It is very very common and a lot of people who go thru weight loss surgery also go thru depression  or addiction transfer." Not trying to stir the pot here, but you make depression sound like a character flaw.  It is not.  Depression is an illness, just like obesity is an illness, just like diabetes is an illness, just like cancer is an illness.  The current state of research on depression shows that it's actually an altered state of brain chemistry.  People who are depressed can't just snap out of it "like that" and stop being depressed.  Not only that, but general anethesia can cause or exacerbate depression.  Think about it: anesthesia depresses your central nervous system.  The effects can be ongoing for several months.

my dear you have no idea who you are  speaking to about depression...lol I have severe clinical depression and have had it all my life.  I am on meds for the rest of my life for it and NEVER have or would make it sound like a character flaw or anything less than a REAL Illness. HOWEVER  there is more than one type of depression and people giving up an addiction face a depression that is VERY different than clinical depression.  that is the point I was making.  That they are PRONE to feeling depressed because thier " fix " has been taken away.  People  who have weight loss surgery  face many battles on the wat to a new life, depression is only one of them. Faith

I have depression as well.  I self-medicated with food through most of my 20's and 30's, before discovering what the problem was.  Between that and yo-yo dieting, here I am. My husband also has severe clinical depression.  My surgery was very hard on him.  He got really anxious, especially when it looked like I was having complications.

I hear ya!!  Oh if only real medications were as easily gotten as self medication  LOL

Well, I will go one further. If only society in general would recognize depression for the illness it is.  If people would recognize and talk about the symptoms more, many of us would have gotten treatment before we reached the morbidly obese category.  I'm not severely depressed, but do suffer from mild clinical depression. I can look back and remember symptoms that I didn't recognize, and doctors told me would just go away. Not to open another can of worms, but it is just like my PCOS diagnosis. I begged more than one doctor to find out what was wrong with me. Every doctor, and most of the people I knew kept telling me that all I had to do was eat less.  I had a nutritionist put me on a low fat diet, which was pretty high in sugar. When I called my company EAP for a referral for my psyche consult, they referred me to a local therapist.  For once in my life, after seeing countless therapists, I found someone I really connect with, THANK YOU GOD.  I plan on continuing therapy after surgery with this person, and I think I will be able to handle the changes in my body and my mind with her help.

You are so right and thank you