Gastric Bypass – Changing lives

In a talk with Carl, 50, I got the chance to ask about the journey he has been on since he was 32 years old, as he began his weight loss journey. It is a journey that continues to this day.
Various types of bariatric surgery are available, but not all of them are suitable for all candidates.

How did you begin your journey, Carl? Could you tell me a little bit about that?

It was in February of 2004 when I had just celebrated my 32nd birthday when a health checkup with my doctor turned my life around. The scales in my doctor’s office went all the way to 375 pounds and when I stepped on the scale, it hit the bottom. Despite living in denial about my weight for quite some time, it turned out that I was morbidly obese at the time.
My native measurement is 170 kilograms, which is about 375 pounds

You must have felt something when you heard that, didn’t you?

This was bad. Or, to be honest, I would say it was more than bad. Apparently, my health had deteriorated rapidly and my doctor told me that if I let the situation continue, I would not be around for much longer than the age of fifty. In light of this information, I realized that I really needed to do something about my situation, so I inquired with my doctor about what I could do.
His assessment was that I was so far gone that my body was very unlikely to be able to return to a normal weight. Dieting would help me in some ways, but not fully. It was suggested to me that I should think about undergoing bariatric surgery to get rid of this problem. I was told that I needed more drastic measures.
He also said that I should spend some time thinking about this before making a decision. In addition, he encouraged me to do my own research on this matter before making my final decision and to take his findings into consideration as well before going ahead with it.

When you first heard about this information, what were your initial thoughts on it?

There is no doubt that when I left his office and headed home, my head was swimming with thoughts. It wasn’t too long before I came to the conclusion that my love for living, far outweighs my love for food and junk food. And I am a lover of food. So, naturally, I was overwhelmed by my thoughts when I left his office and went home.
Besides this, I determined that I would not do any research directly. Instead, I would give myself a few days to digest the information given to me, and then in the following days I would start looking into what this could mean for my life going forward.
During those days, I spent on myself, attempting to recover from the face slapping I received from my doctor. I was living on Finnish soil at this point in my life, I was aware of the fact that I would probably not be able to find and undergo this type of surgery in Finland, but rather in my own country, Sweden.
It was evident to me that Finland wasn’t an option since a number of my friends had told me that finding hospitals that had enough staff to provide aftercare in the Swedish language was extremely difficult. Although Finland is a bilingual country, its Swedish language is slowly becoming extinct as a national tongue. The fact that Finland and Sweden cooperate across the border when it comes to health care and hospitalization was extremely encouraging to me.
It is likely that I would have been more unwilling to undergo the procedure if I had not been aware that this kind of cooperation existed.

I understand. How did you start out? I am curious to hear how you did it.

As part of my research, I started by simply looking up what surgeries were available and where they could be performed. The information I obtained from my initial research soon guided me to the surgery I would be choosing, Gastric Bypass Roux-En-Y, also known as GBP for short. From now on, I will just say GBP.
It was not long before GBP emerged as a way to go, for me. I knew about other methods but they seemed to come with a lot of complications and had not had very good results, whereas the older, more tested ones seemed to have a lot of complications. I was also considering the possibility of newer and more sophisticated methods, but they were too unknown and, frankly, too dangerous for me to consider them.
My life was already on the line, so I wanted to make sure I did the best decision I could, in my own opinion, and that was the decision I made, GBP was the one I made.
Upon further research, I discovered that one of the worlds most experienced surgeons who performed this particular procedure was located at Uppsala university hospital, an institution affiliated with my Finnish hospital, meaning that I was eligible to apply for the surgery as well as have it covered by my Finnish health insurance.
As soon as I told my doctor about my findings, he was immediately on board and referred me to Uppsala Hospital for the surgery, informing me that the queue for it was expected to be around 12 months. Two weeks later, Uppsala Hospital informed me that they would perform it.

How did you pass the time until the day of your surgery? It seems like it was quite a long wait, how did you pass it?

As a result of this, I had 12 months in which to think about what was going to and could happen after I underwent surgery. However, I soon realized that I wanted more information about what I could expect post-surgery and began looking into what my life would be like in the future. While researching GBP, I was able to find a few online forums and also a dire list of complications that could occur after the surgery.
According to what I could read on the internet, about 25 percent of the patients who lost some or all of their weight gained some or all of it back after their initial weight loss.
The fact that those people gained their weight back after surgery did discourage me for quite some time, but I kept investigating and eventually, I found a pattern that was responsible for their regain. It appeared that those people didn’t change their lifestyle after surgery and just kept eating junk food.
My first impression of this procedure was that it wasn’t designed as a quick fix, but rather as a tool to assist in losing weight that would help me achieve my goals. I realized that I would have to work hard to stay healthy and keep the weight off in the long run.
It was clear to me from my research that I would be able to eat very small portions and that I would need to eat quite often in order to maintain a good level of vitamins, iron, and minerals so that I would remain healthy and able to stay alive. My food intake was planned several months in advance of the date when I was scheduled to go into the hospital, which allowed me to start making arrangements for it.
My diet consisted mostly of small portions, but I ate them five to eight times a day. And because of this, I started losing some weight, which led me to question my decision to undergo surgery. As a result, I contacted the hospital regarding it. In addition to telling me that it was a common thing for most patients who have attempted this method before, they also said that it was not likely to last very long.
As a result of changing my diet, my body was responding to it and I continued to move forward, but then it halted a few weeks later. I did realize that I was feeling much better in general than I had been for some time. That was probably due to the fact that I was giving my body a constant supply of energy.
I had a surgical date set for December 5th, 2005, so I was just before Christmas and everything that goes along with it, and I was getting closer to it. My spouse and I agreed that I would not be able to do much of what we normally do over the holidays since I had just been operated on, so I told them that I would not be able to do much of that stuff. Which was fine with me.

In the days, weeks, and months leading up to your surgery, did you ever have any jitters or second thoughts?

My nerves were running high for several weeks prior to the surgery and I was constantly thinking about canceling it for a variety of reasons. The day came around, and I went to the hospital the day before the surgery, as is common in my area. I was given medication to calm me down as I went to the hospital. There was no doubt in my mind that I could be ready for the surgery, and I was capable of controlling the nerves that I had no control over. This helped a lot with my doubts and I actually found that I was comfortable with the surgery.
Is everything going according to plan after the surgery, and how was it waking up after the surgery?
As far as my surgeon was concerned, it was a success and I had no complications at all. According to my surgeon, I was under for just over six hours, of which four and a half hours were spent in actual surgery. The other one and a half hours were spent in preparation and waking up.
The day before I went under, I was told that I would be connected to a morphine pump and that if I pushed the button to activate it, I would be able to receive pain relief every 15-20 minutes.
It’s true that I was very groggy when I awoke, and I don’t remember much of the first two hours of my life, but I, apparently pressed that button over a hundred times because I was in extreme pain for the first hour. I was operated on via an open cut and not laparoscopy, which is nowadays the preferred procedure. I was therefore experiencing severe abdominal pain at the time.
I fell asleep on the bed as my caregiver pushed me to my room, and was able to start my post-operation life after a couple of hours of waking up.

I was wondering how you felt after your surgery and the first few days following it.

In the first 12 hours, I was pretty much bed-bound and I wasn’t really able to move much at all. For the first 48 hours, I drifted in and out of sleep a good deal. I woke up with a pain in my stomach as it had around 140 stitches.
It took the nurses about 16 hours to encourage me to get out of bed and walk short distances, with the help of a walking chair, and they told me, I would heal better if I moved around. They were insistent that I get up and move around as much as possible. As I slowly got up and began walking, I took a break, finding chairs to sit in and rest in between every 30 steps that I walked.
In my determination to walk as long as possible, I was adamant that I would do so, even if it was very painful. Because I am stubborn, I did what the nurses and doctors asked me to do. My walks became longer and longer as my need for a walker chair started to decrease.
The third day was the day I wasn’t in need of the walker as much as I used to and I was able to walk with more ease than the two days prior, as long as the floor was flat. Despite the fact that stairs and such were still quite painful, I was able to climb four steps on day six for the first time, but it was a struggle. It was time for me to return home on day seven.

And how was coming home?

As I said earlier, I still lived on Finnish soil so I had to get from Sweden to my home, which was done by ferry. The journey was uneventful and I mostly just sat very still since I was sore. I was on some heavy painkillers so I felt rather content to just sit still and read. After arriving home I ate a home-cooked meal for the first time in a week. I remember it was very good to eat something home-cooked in opposition to the hospital food I had eaten the whole week. If I remember correctly, it was meatballs.
I was on sick leave for six weeks after the surgery, to make sure I was healing properly and to get my eating going. Those six weeks were needed since I had to take everything really slow. I wasn’t allowed to lift more than two pounds the first two weeks and just increased a little for each week. For someone who is used to being pretty active, this was more than a little annoying and also easy to forget that I shouldn’t lift heavy things. But my body promptly told me if I did something wrong.

Was it hard adjusting to the new life?

Very. Despite the fact that I had already started eating small portions prior to my operation, I was not completely prepared for how small the portions actually had to be. For reference, I could eat about two boiled eggs in a sitting and every bite over that was too much. It also took me almost an hour to eat that amount of food. I soon learned to appreciate cold food as much as warm but I did miss being able to eat fast. I often tried eating too much and it always resulted in pain and my body ejecting the food. Or dumping.

What is dumping?

It’s a nifty little tool that is built into this kind of surgery. Besides the stomach itself being reduced, the surgeon rearranges some of your intestines as well. One of these rearrangements makes the body react in a volatile way if you try to eat too much, too sweet, or too fatty food. Basically, the body reacts with a reaction close to a bad hangover. Sweating, headache, and so on. This reaction lasts differently depending on each person. For me, it lasts for a couple of hours. And I say lasts because I still get this reaction from time to time. Not all people do, but I am grateful I do since my body tells me that what I just ate is not good for me. A nifty little tool, as I said. With time it gets less volatile but it’s not ever a good feeling.

How quickly did you start to lose weight?

Technically, it starts instantly but it didn’t show on the bathroom scale until day three at home. The first month after surgery I dropped about 20 kilograms (just over 40 pounds) and kept dropping weight for about 18 months. After that, it leveled out and I became pretty even in my weight, landing just below 90 kilograms and keeping it off til this day. I’ve even dropped some more in the last two years so I am now just a little over 80 kilos (a little over 180 pounds), but that could also be the fact that my body is changing with age. I’m actually 50+ now and I hear that starts a change in the body for many men.

Carl keeps living his life. His operation has probably given him many extra years to live and enjoy the life he has.