Obesity Surgery: Stories Of Altered Lives

Chapter 5 Facing the Music of Self When Weight Is No Longer the Reason

chapter 5 Facing the Music of Self When Weight Is No Longer the Reason As you strip away the layers of fat, you discover who you really are. —Mona Despite the tremendous growth in the popularity of obesity surgery in the past few years, it is still considered a relatively extreme intervention. It involves very direct surgical interference with our anatomy and physiology. It has significant risks and, depending on the type of surgery recommended (Lap-Band or gastric bypass or duodenal switch), it can be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.1 The very invasiveness of the procedure results in an interesting paradox. It’s an extreme intervention typically reserved for extreme cases resulting in extreme outcomes. So why the big surprise when big changes happened? Why were most of our interviewees so shocked? Isn’t that why they did it? Apparently, the extent and nature of the changes surpassed all expectations. It’s almost as if the surgery itself were saying, “You wanted a big change? Well, you’re going to get one! Fasten your seat belts!” And it was indeed a wild ride for many of the individuals we spoke to. Most expressed that they would do it again in a heartbeat, but they also seemed to be saying, “Be careful what you wish for” or maybe just “Know what you wish for.” Their transitions were not always easy, but they involved an unexpected journey of personal growth that no one expressed a desire to reverse. Immediately after the surgery, the weight started falling off at an incredibly quick rate. Six to eight months out of surgery, our interviewees had lost 159 160 O B E S I T Y S U R G E R Y anywhere from 90 to more than 200 pounds. This is the honeymoon period in which many were deliriously happy with the amazing results. This surgery keeps its promise like few interventions do. A few months to a year into it, however, the weight loss started to slow down. The self-reflection and postsurgical questioning we discussed in the previous chapter started to make its way into their everyday thinking. They started realizing that this was about a lot more than weight. Somewhere between six months and a year after surgery , the honeymoon period was over. They were then faced with the fallout, good and bad, of the massive change they had undergone. They had arrived at their new destination, and, though most found it great and had no regrets, it was not always exactly as they thought it would be. In some cases, it was not even close. Things had happened to their lives they might never have believed had they been told beforehand. Or maybe having been told what could happen would have had a constructive impact in their coping with this unfamiliar postsurgical world. lawrence: The big thing that changed in my life . . . it was more of a mental thing. Six months after my surgery, I had lost all my weight. After that it was adjusting emotionally and mentally to what had happened. Those first few months are such a blur of activity, and you’re excited because you’re losing weight. Then, reality sets in. Some folks found that new reality easier than the old obese one on all fronts. Others found that each reality, the presurgical and the postsurgical one, held its own special set of challenges. Across the board, people reported a lot of personal growth as a function of the transition, along with significant growing pains. Insightful conclusions were not always easy to digest, so to speak, but they brought most of our interviewees closer to the truth of whom they were and who they really wanted to be. What Made Me Fat in the First Place? One of the unexpected consequences of the surgery was the personal search for the causes of the obesity. Everyone we interviewed had attended the same clinic and had been treated by the same doctor. Each had been required to attend a seminar on obesity and the details of the surgery prior to being evaluated as to their suitability for the procedure. That seminar reviewed the literature on clinically severe obesity comprehensively and emphasized the genetic contribution to the development of obesity. Yet as we mentioned in the last chapter, very few of our interviewees fell back on genetic explanations for their own obesity. This is...