I thought you were here because you were trying to convince your girlfriend NOT to have WLS?

Can you provide the sources of your information above?  I'm asking sincerely as I am still a pre-op and do want to know the bad as well as the good. 

Yeah, who the heck are you and why ARE YOU HERE?  Anyone who has read my blog knows that I have had a bunch of problems, but you don't see me hating on here...what's up? What is your real issue??  I still don't have any regrets because that weight was going to kill me!

I'm freaking out too. I had surgery lap rny 1/13/09, so about four months ago...my hair started falling out a little more than usual a month or less ago. It wasn't much more than usual, and I even thought I was probably being paranoid.

However, now it has clearly thinned a lot. I have always had a LOT of hair. It's really thick, and each hair is big,  too, so lots lots lots of hair. On one hand that probably means I can lose more than some other people w/o it being noticeable. On the other hand I'm getting big wads of hair coming out every shower! 

I wash my hair every day. I'm wondering if it would help to NOT wa**** every day. Maybe that damages it more? Probably nothing I do is making it fall out more...but I keep finding stray hairs all over my clothes, my sheets.

It is REALLY freaking me out.

I have less than half the hair I had a couple of months ago. No bald spots or anything, but it sounds like I'm not even halfway through the hair loss process. I can tell it's about half as much as before because of how big it was when I'd put it in a ponytail...how many times I'd have to wrap the elastic around. Now I have to do it TWICE as much.

Of course, it doesn't matter, because I'm afraid to wear my hair up or do anything tight with it for fear more hair will fall out, so it's always VERY lightly secured, or left straight down.

I guess I'm not looking for answers so much as just wanting to  tell people who understand how much this is freaking me out.

So. Thanks for listening.

Well, I am 4 years post RNY surgery, lost 100 pounds and have kept all but 20 pounds of that off.  Over the weekend, while at work on a conversion, I all at once got extremely sweaty - sweat dripping off of me - and then became so very confused.  I did not understand what was on the computer screen or the papers in front of me.  Was dizzy, felt like I was losing consciousness.  I walked over to a co-worker's desk and he called paramedics.  My sugars were down to 64, they fed me a toothpaste type tube of some type of sugar and my sugars came up again.  By the time I got to the ER, my sugars were down again.  They took me right into the ER, and fed me a glass of OJ.  That seems to help.  They did a CAT scan and blood work on me.  I thought they'd send me home with instructions to see my regular doc, but they wanted to admit me.  They said that low blood sugars are usually a result of something else.  They did a workup for a stroke.  I had an abdominal ultrasound, a cardiac echo, brain MRI and carotid echo - all coming back negative.  I am assuming I have hypoglycemia, but do not know.  Started reading information about reactive hypoglycemia... and it soulds plausible.  I have never really had a problem with sugar.  I couldn't eat any first thing in the am, but as long as I had other things in my stomach, I could eat smaller amounts of sugar.  I am guessing I need to cut them out.  I just recently started drinking diet-dr-pepper again after not drinking pop for 4 years.  Maybe I should stop.  Maybe the fake sugar fakes out the insulin makers.  It was a very scary situation.  All the stroke tests came back negative.   Sue

 I agree with you saying that "There is a great amount of personal responsibility for one's own health that some people don't take seriously enough".  The problem is that people are not screened by their
Doctors carefully.  There are ways to find out if someone is psychologically able to follow the
strict guidelines this surgery requires the problem is that Doctors are more concerned about lining
up their pocket than about the realistic chances that this type of risky and demanding surgery would
succeed in some patients.