What was day 1 like?

When was day ONE for me? If in think back, it was honestly many years ago.

I am turning 46 next week, but when I was about twenty years old I had already visited a plastic surgeon to see if we could have my extra fat sucked out of my body.I was "bigger" than other, I had man breasts which was highly embarrassing in at swimming with the class and obviously was not as attractive to girls like my friends.

Today the story is somewhat different. I am happily married for 13 years and have had a great life together in different parts of the world. I have been able to travel alot and am generally a very happy person.

Last year I suddenly got a pancreatic crises and a second just months after. I was also in the process of moving to another country, make that another continent, and had a crisis in each. Both professors, in both countries, and with only months apart, then suddenly started talking to me about having a gastric bypass done, just so, out of the blue.

This time though, it was not me that started those thoughts, it was not for beauty purposes, but rather for survival purposes. They both said i should consider it as i am in a weight/height category that applies for such an operation. 

So am I this grossly overweight person? Well, at least I never saw myself as such, but I am definitely quite overweight according to the stats and graphs.
But how does one start thinking about doing such an operation?
Well, I did have those two pancreatic crises, and I did also have my gall bladder removed as it was deemed to be the cause of the pancreatic crises, but a apart from that I am relatively healthy.

Thing is, as both profs tried to explain to me, it is actually difficult even as a professor to tell a quasi healthy person to have an operation when the person is not in immediate risk of dying or anything such. God forbid, but if I had cancer for example, it would technically be an easier decision to have an operation as it is clear we are going to try to remove the "bad stuff" to "hopefully get better".
In my case though, as I said before, I am kind of healthy and have to make a decision to actually go and have a possibly risky operation to allow cutting and pasting inside my body to possibly prevent other problems later on in life.

If I have the operation it is risky in the sense that it a)is full anesthetics which always carries risks and b) it really is a literal bypass, they make your stomach smaller and create a bypass tube through which food bypasses the small intestines and as such does not get ingested by the body. You would have to agree that knowing the procedure, it would carry certain risks, no matter how much experience they have etc...

But NOT doing the operation also carries risks like a certainty of getting diabetes at an even later age (in fact I am lucky I do not have it as yet), combined with a certainty of blood pressure problems (that has started already, but isn't too bad as yet). But get those two problems on board in you body and then you may just as well get a fresh sheet of paper to list al the other problems which accompany these first two years after.

Ha! OK, so that was the decision I was facing!!!!

Essentially, they have convinced me essentially that NOT doing the operation would actually carry more risks than doing the operation.

Today I am a month and a couple of days away from the actual operation as I write this. Follow this blog if you want to know how the rest went. I will share my thoughts, possible fears, my anxieties and my glee and if all goes well, with the necessary humor as i will never forget what one of my docs once had in their waiting room on their message board:"laughing yourself to pieces is actually healthy!" and to date I am still a big time believer in that!