What can you tell me about Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy? (Details).

Maybe three years ago, my brother-in-law had the “sleeve” procedure.

PROs:

—He lost the weight (I believe it was over 200 lbs.), and hasn’t gained it back.
—After years of living with morbid obesity, he probably saved his own life.
—After years of unsuccessfully trying to diet, the procedure was effective.

CONs:

—This is radical surgery. He suffered pain, and it took him a long time to get back to return to life as usual.
—He had several complications (liver and gallbladder, I believe) and needed some follow-up surgeries.
—The procedure is permanent. It can never be reversed.
—He lost the weight so quickly, he was left with some bad skin tone. Pre-weight-loss, he’d had a very fat neck. Now, the skin on his neck hangs in long folds. He needs some cosmetic surgery to fix the problem.

I had the sleeve in May 2011 and within 6 months I lost about 90 lbs. Since having the surgery, my total weight loss has been about 120 lbs. My pain was minimal and because I was not using any painkillers in the hospital, I stayed only one night not two, which is standard. I drove home and went on vacation two days later.

If you google the sleeve, you will find it has a bunch of advantages over the bypass. It’s not a malapsorptive procedure, so your body’s ability to get nutrition from the food you eat is not impaired. You can eat anything you want to, just in limited quantities.

One reason I chose the sleeve is that I know someone who had the sleeve and I saw that he could eat whatever he wanted to, and was not in any kind of distress.

With any surgery, the surgeon you choose is very important. My surgeon was a Healthgrades Bariatric Center of Excellence. I know people who used other surgeons for this surgery who did not have as much success as I had.

My Jelly friends who are on FB can see my before and after photos. If you want, I will pm you my name and you can friend me on FB and see them for yourself.

It appears to be an expensive and risky alternative to diet modification and exercise. But these days, everybody has some excuse as to why these objectively superior methods are not acceptable. Cut away, be traumatized by surgery and anesthetic, and hope somebody else will pay for it, and live a life of unfulfilled self esteem.
Sounds awful to me, but what do I know?

@josie Uncool to generalize all people who have this type of surgery as people who won’t watch their diets and exercise. There are reasons they do the surgery that you are unaware of.

I have a friend who did it and she is very happy with the results of the surgery. Her weight loss was around 100 pounds. Now, four years later, she is an exercise fanatic, she does competitive bicycle racing, and ai think that helps her keep her weight stable at the lower weight, because I think she continues to love to eat, but is still able to control her portions. She had surgery to remove excess skin on her body and is very unhappy with it. She looks great in clothing, but says the surgeon really botched the job. I have not seen her without clothes, but another friend of ours has and said it is pretty bad. She was very lucky that her faced thinned out beautifully and she did not need any surgery there. About a year after her surgery she went to a large extended family, family reunion and her brother was talking to her for a good minute when he said, “OMG, Kim!” He had no idea he was talking to his sister.

My neighbors have said they didn’t recognize me when I was outside, and others have asked me “Are you new here?” and I then had the pleasure of telling them I’ve lived here for 12 years.

@josie: It’s about more than what you say it’s about. The majority of people who have weight loss surgery who have co-morbidities (i.e. high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol) stop taking all or most of their medications immediately after surgery (can someone spell “savings to the insurance companies for medication and treatment of those illnesses?”). Even if someone lost weight on their own, it would take years for people to lose the quantities of weight that can be lost within months with weight loss surgery (and in those years, illnesses progress, people may die, and all the while, medications and treatment continue). Statistics show that the something like 97% of people who lose weight (we’re talking large quantities of weight, not just 10 or 20 lbs) on their own will gain it back, however with weight loss surgery the stats are much less and the weight gain is much less in most cases. As far as your insults of people who have had weight loss surgery, I’m so glad that even though I barely speak of this surgery on Fluther and you don’t know me personally, yet can sum me up so incredibly well! You must be psychic! Kudos to you!

Thank you so much for your answers. They were all very helpful!
@josie Sounds awful to me, but what do I know?
Apparently Jack squat.

@Ayesha I really can’t understand @josie‘s anger. All you did was ask for information.