Obesity Weekend Roundup, January 17, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014As not everyone may have a chance during the week to read every post, here’s a roundup of last week’s posts:
- What Can Best Practices Achieve in The Treatment of Severe Obesity?
- Bariatric Care: How Sick is Big?
- Bariatric Care: Weighing in on Waiting Lists
- Bariatric Care: What Can Behavioural Intervention Deliver?
- Bariatric Care: What Surgery Delivers
Have a great Sunday! (or what is left of it)
@DrSharma
Banff, AB
Monday, January 20, 2014
I found this series extremely interesting. I had a band inserted five years ago at a personal cost of $16,000. I have lost 10 lbs which is what came off presurgery with Optafast. The band has been empty for three years now because of frequent food sticks and resulting vomiting. Dr Wharton has advised me to have the band removed in order to allow me to eat the proteins that currently get stuck. Despite the lack of results and discomfort and embarrassment caused by the band, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around getting it removed. This band was supposed to be my salvation!!
Once again I feel a failure. Not only for selfishly putting my family in financial risk, but for allowing myself to hope there could be an end to this struggle.
The results you noted did surprise and dishearten me despite my own outcome. Dr Wharton told me that my situation was common but I had not heard/read anything along those lines previously. Others, like myself, choose to suffer our situation silently and continue to believe that we failed never even considering that it could be the band or lack of support from the clinic. I never ate pieces small enough, or chewed enough or tried hard enough or chose the right food or exercised enough or….
Surgery alone is not the answer. Constant counseling is required in conjunction to reverse the psychological effects of morbid obesity. We are prone to isolation and reject help if we think we are failing. This is a pattern that is hard to change. I believe we need to be in small counseling groups that consist of a counsellor as well as men and women who are in various stages of a program. Who can meet and call each other outside of the counseling sessions. Who can meet more frequently than the “every 3weeks” program I am currently in.
I am so tired of thinking of food constantly. Not just eating it but the effects of it. I would love dearly to get this monkey off my back.