hello i am having a ds done and would love to hear from the over 50 who had ds

I am glad my dr is doing the ds but I also know it has more risks than others. I would appreciate any and all feedback

Hi there,

Welcome to our corner! I didn't have a ds. But I'm having a revision of my gastric bypass soon. 

Hope all goes well for you!

Tell us more about yourself

Carla

Thank you I will say more when I get a date

Hi!  I don't post much on any of the boards I follow and this is a first on the "WLS 50 and over" but I can tell you a little about the DS.  I am 67 years young and had my DS March 2008 when I was 59.  At that time health wise I was on the verge of major catastrophe and probably wouldn't been alive today if I hadn't lost weight.  My all time high weight was 405 and when I decided to have the surgery I was on my way back to that weight. I started the program to get surgery at 387. I now maintain my weight between 175 and 180 which seems high but I am 5'9".  I achieved this weight about 18 months after the DS.  My original surgery which was suppose to be done laproscopically had to changed to full open and was 2 hours longer than average because of scar tissue from several previous surgeries but other than that it went smoothly.  Because of this my recovery took a little longer I was out of work 5 weeks (desk job) .  But since then it has been smooth sailing.

 I am very diligent about taking all of my supplements which is a must for any WLS patient.  I have my blood work done every 6 months to ensure that I maintain everything in the correct range and I track changes because a dip from one reading to the next could mean you need to increase something  I take a lot of vitamins especially the fat soluble ones: A, D, E and K and adjust on my own if I see anything dipping. My labs have been good and  I've had no complications related to this surgery but did have a surgical hernia repair from a prior and was able to use this to my advantage and have some of the excess skin removed from my stomach.  Also had some excess skin removed from my eyelids which was fully covered because it was partially blocking my vision.  All my co-morbitities of the excess weight went away. I had sleep apnea, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, pre-diabetic with insulin resistance, a lot of pain from arthritis and all of this has been resolved.  The apnea took the longest to resolve but after losing my first 100 it went away.  The one thing I do have is still a lot of loose skin which I could have removed but I am not sure I want to do elective surgeries at my age.

My diet is low carb but not super low carb like some of the people who post on the DS forum.   I enjoy a treat now and again and some times more frequently than I should.  Be warned that some carbs can cause digestive upsets.  I have worked around it and found a few things I can eat without distressing my system and still enjoy a treat.  It seems like each person has different sensitivities so when you are about 1 year out you learn from trial and error.  Since I am tall my doctors have told me to eat between 135 - 150 grams of protein a day. Th suggested minimum for the DS is 100 grams. At first I used shakes but I wasn't really fond of them so I find other ways to get protein into my diet.  This does not leave a lot of room for other foods.  Even at almost 8 years out I still have a lot of restriction.  I don't exercise much except to walk my 2 little dogs about a mile or two each day.  Besides the improvements in health I have so much more energy.  

Check out the DS forum there are some veterans who post much more than I who could give you their side of the surgery.  Good luck!

Thank you so much. Im learning