What hurdle has WLS NOT helped you with?

Interesting question - and Gwen, great thought provoking reply. I would think there would be many examples, after all it's only weight loss surgery, it can't help everything, right? And I'm sure there are some examples where it has little to no impact, but it really does affect so much about our lives.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say that it didn't help me with the arthritis in my hip. My knees (which also need to be replaced) are far from "fixed", but are much more tolerable post-weight loss, but it didn't help the pain in my hip at all. But when I actually stopped to consider it, the weight loss had a MAJOR impact on my hip. Sure, the pain was not at all diminished, but it made the surgery to replace it so much safer. My recovery time / rehab was so much quicker, and the replacement joint will last so much longer.

So my first reaction could not have been more wrong. The weight loss had major implications in dealing with my hip.

Physically, the WLS has improved so much. It is so hard to pull WLS and all the pluses in our lives apart. After asking the question I thought about just how big WLS plays a part in everything. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally :) best choice I have ever made in my life.

Hi Mersh!

At this point, I would definitely say osteoarthritis. I knew that surgery wouldn't regrow my cartilage, but I was hoping that with less weight I would have fewer problems. I think that with less weight I tried to do too much in the gym and now I am hobbling. Hopefully, as I continue to lose I will find some relief.

Off topic, but were you gaming this weekend? My sons seemed to be involved in all night Destiny matchups all weekend. They got a lucky snow day today to get them back on their sleep schedules.

I was! I played a bit of Destiny myself, but have been playing a lot more of a few other games recently with some friends I have online.

High cholesterol. Mine hasn't budged even a little.

And even though my diabetes is 100x more manageable, it's still there. I pretty much knew that would be the case when I had my surgery, but there was a small portion of me that was really hoping it would just disappear.

Have you been worried about muscle waste that comes with taking most statins? I have been super worried about it. Taking the medicine, but trying to keep my vitamins up and added COq10.

I worry about a lot of things with statins and so far I haven't taken them. I think I'm going to run out of excuses by my next lipid panel, so I'm going to ask for some additional tests to look at the type of cholesterol before I agree to go on one. My father has high cholesterol and has since his late 30's (probably before that) and he's of average weight, non-smoker, etc (and always has been).

Sleep apnea. It doesn't matter what I weigh, I need a CPAP machine. I've been a loud snorer since I was a kid. There is surgery for some but I'll take the machine.

Self hatred. I thought I was cured of a lifetime of self hatred in the first year post-op, but as soon as I stopped losing weight it came back just as debilitating as before.

Did you ever manage to start seeing a therapist?