In the end only kindness matters...

I'm so sorry you've had this experience too. I really hope with awareness, people will rethink things a bit. Nothing is ever perfect, but I don't think people mean to come off insensitive sometimes, so I'm hoping things might improve. Good luck on your journey!

Hi,

I have read ALL the post. I had reversion band to by pass. I am very happy with my choices. I have gained back about 10lbs in the last yr and I know its all ME. Old habits are so difficult they creep back up on me and I slip right back into them. I always feel like I need to get in here and post ask for help or suggestions then I tell myself "you know what your doing wrong so change it" If only it were that simple...

"It almost feels like there is now a divide on this site between people whose weight loss surgeries have worked and those whose have not."

I really don't see that divide. I can't speak for others but for me I don't fall into either category. I am a revision and I know that for me my first surgery worked fine. For a long time I thought it had failed until I took a long look at it. It did work, when I did what I should do. My first surgery failed in that my intestines weren't configured correctly and I had a lot of side effects but as far as the weight loss went, when I ate what I was supposed to I lost weight and kept it off. Just like I did when I didn't have surgery.

So I have a hard time saying there are people whose surgery failed them when it really hasn't.

Of course there are failed surgeries. Just about anyone who had a band will tell you that. But for the people who have been successful they weren't lucky. Their surgery was successful because they were.

So really I think the divide you are talking about is between those who were compliant. Don't get me wrong. I understand that as a population most who have WLS do it because they have failed every diet they tried. We aren't here because we had good control over our eating. Exactly the opposite. We found ourselves on the operating table because we could not control our eating and were hoping that WLS would give us the help we needed in order to control our out of control eating.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Of course we can fail our surgery. We failed all our previous diets. No one came here on a winning streak. We wound up here because we couldn't control our eating and we were hoping that rearranging our bodies would help us do that.

But to have the surgery and still continue overeating and assuming that having more surgery will fix that problem doesn't make a lot of sense. It is faulty thinking to assume that more surgery will fix the problem when we didn't use the tools we got the first time out. First you have to figure out why it didn't work and if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

So even though they didn't ask for dieting advice she got it because that is where the problem lies. I'm not going to give someone advice on having more surgery when they have shown that they aren't able to use the tools they got with the first one.

So looking at the eating is the obvious place to start. Giving her the name of a great revision surgeon won't help if the problem isn't physical. Giving her advice on how to best utilize what she already has is the logical thing to do. If she chooses not to listen to that advice and insists that a different surgery will fix the problem we aren't doing her any favors in encouraging that.

Does that mean that some people don't have the best tool for what they need and can benefit from another surgery to one that will give her the tools? Of course that happens. In hindsight malabsorption wasn't the best tool for me, restriction was and my first surgery didn't have any so changing tools was a good thing. But that conclusion came in hindsight.
Maybe someone does need more than restriction but you have to give the restriction a fair shot before you can decide that. If she was being compliant and still not losing than it would be fair to see if there were other options but you can't declare that your surgery has failed if you haven't really given it a chance to do it's job.

And finding a tool that can help you eat better isn't easy. The best it can do is help restrict the amount eaten but no surgery can change what we put into our mouths. And that is what needs to be fixed before we consider any more physical fixes.