Gastric bypass on TLC TV show

My dearest friend in life, Trish, who died way too early, from complications of a WLS she had had several years previous.  I still miss her and this blog is dedicated to her.

 

The Long Island Medium is a show on TLC about a lady who supposedly talks to dead people. The following article is not arguing whether or not she really is contacting the dead but rather that this week's show was mostly dedicated to a mother of a gastric bypass patient who died after his surgery... Following are the highlights:

Theresa Caputo, who is the "Long Island Medium" was doing a group reading at a restaurant.

She hesitated for a moment and then asked one of her general questions which tend to encourage people to tell her about their deaths in the family etc.

Theresa said "I want to talk about the young man who passed in a tragedy."

A woman in the back of the room, raised her hand quickly.

Theresa, facing her, said, " Your son has been gone for some time..."

The woman whose name is Elaine, answered: "Eleven years."

Continuing, Elaine added: "LJ was my only child - I waited a lifetime for him - now that he's gone, a piece of me is gone."

Therese, pausing for a moment, said: "Your son says it was difficult for you, his mother, because it was a total freaky thing."  (in retrospect - this was something she probably said because the son had passed from complications of WLS - as sort of a disclaimer. Like all reality shows, I'm sure this show is somewhat scripted and it has been written that Theresa Caputo spends some time with each person to be "read" on the show, before taping the show.)

Elaine described her son as a football star in college, admitting she had saved his jerseys from his participation in the sport.

Elaine then continued with: "I never expected LJ to die...LJ was 6'1" and 443 lbs... he had gastric bypass surgery. Obviously there's a risk with any surgery
but LJ's surgery was supposed to be 'textbook' and after the surgery, he seemed to be ok but then a month later, he started having complications..."

The complications put him back in the hospital and soon he required the necessity of life support machines.  Elaine did not specify what the complications were but the attending physicians all stated they were a result of his gastric bypass surgery.

In July, a month after LJ's surgery, his mother had to make the difficult decision to turn off the life support machines and even now, 11 years later, she said, weeping,  that there isn't a day, every day, that she doesn't re-live that moment.

" I go through it every day... he passed away from complications - it was sepsis" Elaine said adding that
"I kissed his eyes, his hands and his feet.", after he had died.

When the doctor broke the bad news that their son was in cardiac arrest to Elaine and her husband, her husband had a heart attack on the spot.  Although he survived that heart attack, he died 18 months later.

Theresa described Elaine as having a shattered soul...and Elaine agreed with her.

Bottom line, no one really talks about the relatives, the family of gastric bypass patients who pass on, but from the few I've met, they seem broken up about it for years after the fact... perhaps because weight loss surgery is an elective surgery and often their adult progeny are healthy before surgery albeit overweight, (in this case, the son was a star athlete).  Watching a kid die has been said to be the worst thing a parent can witness.

This particular show can probably be seen on Netflix or even somewhere on the web - or wait for the re-runs.  (photo is the blog author in 2009 trying to ask a WLS provider at a Women's Expo about complications of WLS and getting nowhere!)

Permanent Weight loss only Possible with Surgery?

 

 

So say the providers in the latest article circulating the net...  that the ONLY way to keep off weight is to have one's stomach basically deleted!

 

Frankly, this article seems like it's another plug for surgery (picturing the usual midline shots of overweight people, of course) because they say permanent weight loss is just about impossible unless you get surgery preferably the surgery "du jour" now, the gastric sleeve which in most cases, calls for the removal of 95% of the stomach, leaving things wide open for not only nutritional deficiencies like B12 which is digested in the stomach but lack of necessary fats and more. (You can supplement protein if you drink protein drinks but things like calcium from supplements is not used well and can cause kidney stones - I found that out the hard way). Yes people can live without a stomach but how well they live, is questionable.

And the sleeve, unlike the gastric bypass, is in no way, reversible.  If people do some research on weight loss surgery, they might find that if it were so great, why do they have to keep coming up with "new procedures" (when the old procedures not only don't work for most people in the long run but also tend to cause rather gnarly health problems.)....

One individual who did stay slim and seemed the poster child for a drastric weight loss surgery which took out not only most of their stomach but most of their small bowel too, found out when they fell and broke several bones, that they had an extreme case of osteoporosis despite being careful about supplementing.

Watching a gastric sleeve surgery is interesting - the picture is worth 1000 words? As they staple away most of the stomach, leaving something about as big as your thumb (and about twice as long as your thumb), they take what looks like the stomach and toss it into a pan destined for "pathology" (i.e. the step before it becomes garbage).

And that's why if people have the gastric sleeve, even if they get very sick, there is no chance for reversal of this surgery.  As surgeon, Dr Terry Simpson puts it, "fat and healthy greatly beats slim and sick!"

Truth be known, even with basically no stomach, most people end up regaining weight and if you read the fine print on the surgical sites, the surgeons EXPECT people ... most people to regain at least 50% of what they lost... so... if you lose 100 lbs with the surgery, your surgeon will expect you to regain at least 50 lbs which still makes you significantly overweight even though you will be a success in the surgeon's book!

It has always amazed me how open surgeons are about these er...drawbacks to surgery.... how it's not going to work unless you diet and exercise (well that works without surgery too!).... how it causes repercussions....how 1% of patients die in the first month,  how if people eat too much, it comes up again (they joke about that).  And of course, there are lots of things one can eat too much of like milkshakes which go down well.

And yet people still keep opting for surgery - only to find out the sad truth later on - that with or without surgery, keeping weight off requires OUR OWN surgery to the brain - how well I know about that one.

"There is no easy road to a place worth going" (Beverly Sills)

Questionable studies on obesity and weight loss surgery abound

Yet another eye catching headline hit recently.  "Obesity primes the colon for cancer!", it triumphantly announced.

And what was this "landmark study" you might ask?  They fed mice lard and then tested, and only the ones which were fat, had the "markers" for cancer.  Huh?  Are people supposed to believe this would apply to humans? 

Although we might have our suspicions about some humans, I can safely say we are NOT mice and a mouse GI tract barely resembles a human GI tract, if at all, and also, the mice which got fat, didn't get cancer -they only "had the markers" for cancer which means they might or might not get cancer by the time their short lives are ended.

If that's not questionable enough, try the the following study - the headline on this was about how Weight Loss surgery "cures" diabetes.  This study was on humans however, among those who had had a gastric bypass (which forces starvation for the first couple of years - starvation will always bring blood sugar levels down), barely more than 1/3 of the patients saw a remission, even in the first three years after surgery.

I wouldn't call those results impressive, especially considering that gastric bypass is so invasive.  Among patients who had the sleeve gastrectomy, the popular "surgery du jour" which only reduces the stomach (to the size of a thumb and about twice as long as a thumb), only 25% experienced a remission of their diabetes in the first three years.  Keeping in mind that without a stomach, digestion of fats and proteins is basically, not happening and patients must for the rest of their lives, consume protein drinks which are expensive, not paid by insurance and not good tasting to avoid protein deficiency diseases which have not been seen since the 1800's... they should also take B12 shots at least once a week since a greatly reduced stomach likely no longer digests vitamin B12 which can cause many and varied problems.... this doesn't seem worth the expense and pain of surgery for the small number of remissions of diabetes early on.

In a buyer, seller's society, consumers must be careful of what they buy -to avoid the myths seen on TV etc - and sadly, for post ops who experience one of the many complications, there is little available to support them.

Definitely, "buyer beware!" or...
  If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't...

The Demise of a Great Blog

One of the most honest blogs on WLS (this patient sustained a seizure disorder after her gastric bypass and found 150 other patients who had suffered the same) is apparently closing shop. 

I know the blogger had gotten a lot of pressure from those who wish to cheer-lead the surgery because she had mentioned that several times but it mostly, seems that the more involved she became with providers, the less she seemed to want to blog candidly about what she experienced on the negative side of WLS.  Providers started asking her to speak at their booths, and paid for her trips to conventions... when that started happening, I wondered how long her candid blog would continue - it's difficult - next to impossible, to refuse those types of perks, especially for a young mother whose disability (epilepsy after WLS) kept her from working and that's exactly how those who have had a difficult time with the surgery tend to be silenced - that or settling lawsuits out of court in exchange for the patient's silence about the repercussions from their WLS surgeries. 

I've stuck in so long (since 1999) because I have not had WLS and thus there is nothing they can really offer me to shut up (although I know my name is not spoken with love in many WLS circles).  One patient, Trish Hargis (RIP) called it the "conspiracy of silence". Trish courageously got on "Obesity-help"  which is financed by the WLS industry, as well as wls_uncensored listserve, and talked plainly about what she had experienced but unfortunately, her WLS contributed to her early demise at the age of 54.  I see so many folks go into weight loss surgery without knowing that, at best, with a lot of work on a daily basis and blood work every 6 months etc, the WLS surgery can only offer them a 2% greater chance of keeping their weight off than going at it with a non surgical program like Weight Watchers (Mayo Clinic study early 2000's for one - Swedish Obesity study for another). 

Sorry to see that blog go - it was a good one....

Another one lost

One of the most difficult things with being involved with weight loss surgery patients is when one observes people passing on, way too early.  A couple of years ago, I lost my bestest friend ever (pictured above) - she was a VBG patient which is a stomach stapling only - the surgery worked for her for about 12 years (with a lot of hard work on her part) and then, she got very ill with fibro and lots of other things to the point where in her early 50's, she not only gained weight very easily, eating very little food, but was basically bedfast.  She was a highly intelligent lady and her courage was amazing. She would boldly post about WLS, warning people despite getting numerous "nastigrams" in the mail. We chatted on the phone daily and shared everything with each other.  Then one day her husband called, distraught.  He had come home to find her deceased.  At the age of 54.

I don't understand why folks write nasty emails to people who try to present a realistic view of WLS.  Basically,  it seems, that pre-ops who want to believe the dream and new post ops who have lost a lot of weight and are thrilled at this, seem to feel that people should post nothing negative about WLS least a person might be "denied" this "life saving" surgery. 

Trouble is, in all these years, I've not seen it save any lives - on the contrary.  Cash cow, definitely.. and one WLS surgeon told me laughingly, "I bury my mistakes!"  It's true that dead people don't talk.

Lately, another patient has died, probably earlier than would have, had they not had WLS.  This patient had had the duodenal switch which is a surgery which calls for cutting away 90 percent of the stomach and bypassing most of the small bowel.  They lose weight well but in the long run, it's almost impossible to replace the nutritional deficiencies.  Less than 25% of the surgeons in the USA do the duodenal switch as there are safer procedures available but they don't want to openly diss it either, even if they have stopped doing the procedure because they are worried about lawsuits (and many surgeons have multiple lawsuits pending).

This patient was 57 or 58 years old and had their surgery in year 1999 or 2000 - was very pro surgery and very much angry that I dared to say anything against it.  Was a young person with their life ahead of them and now they are gone like so many other of my WLS friends, died from lack of nutrition, it is thought.

The truth about any WLS is not only do people have to do the same things that non surgical people do to keep off the weight but also, they have to have regular checkups and take a lot of expensive supplements, in other words, work very very hard to keep off the weight, and even then, they might not have a good prognosis.

I have a cousin whose BMI is over 75 - she is 77 years old and going strong.  Had she had WLS, she probably would not have lived to that age.

It's ironic that in this day of super communications, things which should be  communicated, somehow may not be. In other words, if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.  There is no easy way out and certainly not having surgery to lose weight!