Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.

I've accepted my weight and shape changes as a natural outcome of growing older. What I've not accepted about growing older are the multiple comorbidities that have attended my obesity. One of those comorbidities required a medication, and, the medication which was chosen for me, unfortunately affected my metabolism and caused a weight gain of about 50 pounds. This was over the top of an already obese frame. Now I'm just a whisper away from the "morbidly obese" category. It happened and I'm at peace with that. But I'm very troubled over the health consequences. I must eat to live, but I now realize I must eat much less if I am to lose enough weight to recover my health...to live. My hunger is too great to do this successfully. I'm choosing VSG to permanently reconfigure my portion control and alter my level of hunger. I'm not really obsessed with how I look. I'm just focused on what is.

What was (is) the worst thing about being overweight?

The worst thing about being overweight, for me, have been the medical complications of obesity. Sometimes it's just too much. I must now manage diabetes, sleep apnea, dry eye syndrome, blepharitis, ankle and leg edema, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, hearing loss, peripheral neuropathy, sliding hiatal hernia, stress incontinence and aortic atherosclerosis. I take medications for each and I'm only 66 years old. These are supposed to be the golden years.

If you have had weight loss surgery already, what things do you most enjoy doing now that you weren't able to do before?

I've not yet had the surgery.