This is overwhelming :)

Congratulations.

YES!!!!! 4 1/2 years out RNY, I'm still below my goal.  5'7" and 120 lbs living life and loving it!!!!!! I can eat any meat I want and now problems with fat.  I don't have any problems with things getting stuck.

 As I sit here and watch two of my coworkers struggle with MASSIVE regain six years out from the RNY, while my DS colleague and I,  both five years out, have had none, I will say that YOU need to know what you are talking about.   You're a year and a half out.    Additionally, 30% of all RNY'ers dump, so yes, they DO have to limit what they eat.   That's what I happen to know about the RNY.   

I agree Steve...you may be happy with the Blue shirt, but I love my Red on. 
Where did that come from ???? 

Jazzbabe,

I don't have a clue where you're getting the BS you are spreading about RNY, but you are out of your ever loving mind!!!

I've had RNY, which makes me much more of an "expert" on this subject than you, and what you are saying is simply not true.

With the exception of one person, everyone I know who has had weight loss surgery has had the RNY, and we are hardly dieting all the time and eating ground meat and pablum!  Where the heck did you come up with this?

I'm not saying the RNY is any better than the DS, or that RNY is the only way to go because I happen to think each surgery has its merits, but what I am saying is that the "facts" you are presenting about RNY are so distorted and misleading that it's mind boggling.

Shame on you!!

DebsGiz-

The "BS " comes from going to months of support group meetings, watching the RNY moderator getting bigger every time I attended, and the stories I heard from the majority RNY's in the room.  There were only two DSers in the group, myself and another lady. 

The information at the group was not even relevant to my experiences, and just like it has become on this board - "my surgery is better than your surgery".  I just stopped going.

I know plenty of RNY's who have regained what they lost and more.  RNY's get more dense villi in the small intestine after about two years,  and lose some or all of their malabsorption.  The DS configuration and malabsorption is permanent, although the DS part of the surgery can be reversed, if health warrants it. For instance, if a DSer was diagnosed with cancer of some kind, malabsorption is definitely not something you would want to have going on. Severe malnutrition can occur with the DS, and for some, revision to a VSG, the top half of the DS,  has been the only solution,  For me, partial reversal came in the form of Creon, a digestive enzyme to help absorption, so I have a bit of a pharmaceutical partial reversal. 

Still, I would not have been successful in losing weight, and keeping it off, without the DS.  That is why I'm so passionate about my surgery.  I'm sure there are RNY's who feel the same way.

This surgery can make you very ill...and even kill you if you just throw caution to the wind, don't get your protein, vites and hydration in!  As it turned out for me, I'm hypermalabsorptive, (75 cm common channel) and I have to work very hard to keep my weight stable, and make sure I get all my nutrients in, with a combination of food, vites and protein supplements.  I'm admitting to being a bad dieter.  However, I would much rather pay more attention to nutrition, which I have to do with the DS, than calories, which is what got me to 405 pounds.

A salad plate is now my dinner plate, yet I must eat small meals and snacks far more often than I did pre-op, just to maintain my weight.   I cannot finish a restaurant meal in one sitting, so I always have a take home box, and ask the waiter to only serve me half-portions, and box up the rest.  The sight of a lot of food on my plate actually makes me gag!   However, if I feel like having dessert, or sweets are included in a celebration, I can indulge modestly and not worry about becoming violently ill, as many (notice I said *many*, not all) RNY's do.  Gas that would peel the paint off the walls and very stinky, liquid diarrhea are the consequences if I get too much simple sugar or too many simple carbs in my diet. Those are the only things DSers absorb 100% of.  Hence, I use artificial sweetener (Nuvella with probiotics) for my lemonade and soft drinks. 

As for where I got my information, you must have missed the part where I said I *almost* had an RNY, even though I knew I wanted a DS.  The information came from reading about the RNY on surgeon's sites, reading studies on the RNY, talking to  RNY's, many of whom were unhappy and regaining, and from all the thinning hair I saw, probably not in the best of nutritional health, either. These were not newbies, these were people who'd had RNYs for years. A RNY showed me  a three page list of "problem" foods.  She told me she had to get scoped three times to remove some meat that got stuck in her stoma!  She says she does eat meat and salad now, but it has to be chopped up very, very fine, and she has to chew until the food is almost liquid before she swallows. 

I know there are RNY success stories, but for me, the regain rate was way too high, and that's something I didn't want to deal with. 

My surgeon bases her surgeries on the type of eater you are.  I was a volume eater and emotional eater.  The emotional eating does kick in every now and then, but I have tools now to deal with that, along with my DS.  Constant overeating will put weight on a DSer, but think about it... due to higher malabsorption, it would have to be a hell of a lot of food!
 
It's not overeating that gets me, since physically, I can't (some DSers can).  What gets me every time is eating too fast, which does happen occasionally, if I let myself get too hungry. Even though the portion of the stomach that produces the hunger hormone ghrelin was removed, hunger did return for me.  The result of eating too fast?  Moving with a quickness to the ladies room...it comes right back up.  Wasted food, which I have to make up for with my next meal, or down a protein shake to make sure I'm getting what I need.

For me, the DS is worth all the effort.  For the first time in my life, I don't have to worry about gaining any significant amount of weight, and because of better nutrition habits, which I was lacking prior to surgery, I'm much healthier now than I have ever been in my life.

Everybody who has WLS makes their own choice.  I hope everyone here makes or made the choice that is right for them.

Jazzbabe,  (by the way I love the name)

I do appreciate what you're saying, but the impression I was left with when reading your original post was the "my surgery is better than your surgery" bias. 

Seriously, I can't tell you whether DS is better than RNY or not because, again, each of the surgeries has their merits.  But what I can say is that the comment:  "meat choices for  RNY's are fairly limited to finely ground meat pablum, if that, or easy to digest fish" is simply inaccurate.

Is this statement true for some RNY'ers, I'm sure it is as each surgery has some number of folks who are absolutely going to suffer complications; however, to imply that the standard eating protocols for every person who has RNY is what you've stated is false.

I just had dinner with a fellow RNY'er (8 years post-op) and she had a terrific steak and I had duck. I regularly eat beef, pork, chicken, veal, fish, crustaceans, salads, pastas, rice, potatoes, and pretty much anything else you might want to add to the list, and I have never had the first issue. 

I've never had anything get stuck, and I eat and chew as I always did before surgery.  I do not chew food to the liquid stage...

As well, my friend who is 8 years out remains thin, and at 3 years post-op I am actually a few pounds below my goal weight, and neither of us diets.  In fact, I eat whatever it is I want within reason.

While you can certainly say that some RNY'ers have problems, to apply it across the board, as the standard for RNY, is where my objection came from.

I also want you to know that I love nothing more than an intelligent debate, so am sending you warm kudos for your response.

Thank you for the lively and impassioned response...

DebsGiz-

Everyone chooses their own surgeries for their own reasons.  I was definitely not about "my surgery is better...." in my comments. That's what made me leave the local support group, and the fact that my and the other DSer's questions were often bushed off, or we weren't even acknowledged, and sometimes even got "the evil eye".  There was no relevant information for me at all! The group is part of my hospital's statewide network of support groups, and I though the moderators were required to be well versed in all bariatric surgeries.

In that respect, all the pre-op counselors, and the nurse moderator in the support group were always giving the "chew,chew,chew," advice, and the support group leader also added "until it's almost liquid".  Ths information was given to me by health professionals, and I was already in the RNY pre-op stage when I found my DS surgeon, and had to back up six months to get my surgery.  When I got the list of RNY forbidden foods, that solidified my decision to do the DS.

Here are some more links that could clear things up for why the DS is known as "The Platinum Standard" of WLS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060922095040.ht m

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420170808.ht m
http://archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/144/4/312

http://www.duodenalswitchdoc.com/biliopancreatic-diversion.h tml