Albuquerque Tribune article:

This is my friend Yvette who works with me and who has gone to some of our support meetings: By Sue Vorenberg Tribune Reporter All Yvette Trujillo wanted was to get on a roller coaster with her 1-year-old daughter. She couldn't. She was too "fluffy," she said. At 365 pounds, Trujillo couldn't fit in the seat of a roller coaster at the New York, New York hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nev. On a summer vacation in 2002, the Albuquerque woman was forced to watch as her boyfriend and daughter took the ride without her. That was the final straw, she said. With her weight affecting her relationship with her daughter, she decided to opt for a controversial procedure rapidly gaining popularity all over the world: gastric bypass surgery. If it worked, Trujillo would lose weight. If it didn't, she might die. "Right before I went into the surgery, I hugged my daughter and told her `I'm doing this for you,' " she said. "Before I got the surgery, I thought for sure I was going to die of a heart attack at a young age. I'm not afraid of that anymore." Available for 20 years, the procedure has only recently become widely used. Throughout the early 1990s, U.S. doctors performed about 16,000 gastric bypass surgeries a year, compared with about 103,000 in 2003, according to the March 11 New England Journal of Medicine. In New Mexico, the total grew from six surgeries in 2000 to 116 in 2003 - the vast majority of them on women, according to the New Mexico Health Policy Commission. Despite that popularity, health experts debate if the surgery is safe. Anesthesia is risky, and as more people request the surgery, less experienced doctors are doing it, said Bob Ferraro, medical director of Southwest Endocrinology's Weight Management Diabetes Program in Albuquerque. "There have been botched surgeries in some cases, and obese patients are at greater risks for complications during surgery anyway," Ferraro said. For Trujillo, 32 and working at T-Mobile in Albuquerque, the surgery was a saving grace. She is finally losing weight after a lifetime of unsuccessful dieting. The surgery isolated a portion of her stomach into a thumb-sized pouch, which was attached to her small intestine. It significantly reduced the amount of food she can eat but also made her feel full more easily, said Dr. Shyam Dahiya, a California surgeon who did Trujillo's operation. "It's a big procedure," he said. "You should only have it done if the weight is decreasing your life expectancy and quality of life." In most cases, that type of patient is morbidly obese - a term doctors define as being at least 100 pounds overweight. At 365 pounds and 5 feet 5 inches tall, Trujillo was about 230 pounds overweight. Dahiya performed her surgery on Dec. 3. Since then, she has lost 90 pounds. This summer, she plans to make her dream a reality by taking her daughter, now 3 years old, to Six Flags over San Antonio in Texas for a roller-coaster ride. "I'm a completely different person," she said. "I used to go to Wal-Mart only at night; I'd make my mom go put gas in my truck. I never wanted to do things; I was so afraid of people staring at me because of my weight."

Hi Martina, does she have a profile on OH?