[Hammer]

Okay, so today I saw my gastroenterologist. I went because I get these on again/off again weird stomach problems. Apparently, it's related to diabetes, which I thought it might be. I think it will go away once I get control of my diabetes, which I think I'm close to doing.

Anyway, while we were discussing the results of an ultrasound I had a while back, he mentioned something that was related to my being overweight. I said, "I know, but I gave on on the weight loss routine." He then said, well, there's always more drastic measures. I knew what he meant, since we talked about it a long time ago. He was referring to one of those stomach banding operations or gastric bypass surgery that help you lose weight. He said, "It's a drastic measure, but if you decide to have something like that done, you won't need to take blood pressure medicine and insulin anymore. You BG levels will go back to normal, and so will your blood pressure.

So, do I or don't I go for the operation and get off meds forever? I'll have to talk to him more about it when I see him in a month, to get more details. Sounds like a good thing though, doesn't it? This is the second time I've heard about this effect from either the stomach banding or gastric bypass surgery, so there must be something to it.

What do you think?

[Janlaton]

Personaly I have always been really skeptical of all those procedures. I almost lost a cousin to the lap band procedure last fall. He spent 6 months in the hospital and is still having extensive therapy and reteaching on everything. Walking, talking just as if he had a stroke.

Review all options, get all the info you can find and make an informed decision.

Also lost a 60 yr old cousin to a small blister on a foot. That turned strep and spread thru his body and he was not even a diabetic. This has been a rough year!

[BIGDAVES7]

Did you watch 60 minutes last sunday evening?

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by BIGDAVES7

Did you watch 60 minutes last sunday evening?

No, I was out visiting. Did they have an article about this?

[fgummett]

You can watch the whole 60 minutes report on-line here...

and a couple of threads:

here...

[princesslinda]

Hammer, this is a decision that only you can make for yourself. I would suggest you research it, perhaps find a forum where you could talk to others who've went through it to find out both the positives and negatives to this procedure from people who've been there themselves.

We see people in the urology office I work in who now have problems with kidney stones after the procedure, individuals who have never had problems with kidney stones prior to diagnosis. The individuals I have spoken to have had very significant weight loss, and have been able to get off their BP meds and diabetic meds.

Our insurance (plan self-funded by my employers) will not cover any weight loss meds or procedures, so its not an option for me, even if I wanted to have it done.

THe local hospital that does the procedure offers evening question/answer meetings for anyone interested. Check with the hospitals in your area and see if they have something like this...or if your doc has other patients who have had this done....often they are willing to talk to others considering the same surgery and your doc could pass along your phone number to them...that's what we do with our prostate cancer patients..they counsel others considering procedures they've had done.

Above all, get the best information you can to make an informed decision.

[Hammer]

I would be surprised if my insurance paid for it also. That would be a major factor to consider if I was going to have it done. I'll talk to the gastroenterologist about it next month when I see him, but I doubt that I'd have it done. I wasn't thinking about the insurance when I made the first post.

One thing I did ask him was if diabetes could affect your digestive system...or more accurately, if uncontrolled diabetes could affect your digestive system, since I wasn't doing anything to control it for so long. He said that yes, there were many things in your digestive process that uncontrolled diabetes could affect, so I'm convinced now that my so called IBS was really not IBS but was in fact, diabetes induced ailments.

My digestive problems were so erratic, that they didn't follow the course of what you'd expect from IBS, which was why I suspected the diabetes. By taking the insulin and Byetta, my digestive problems have changed drastically. I still have problems, but they are less severe and are slowly disappearing.

[desperado]

Hammer, I have a friend that did the gastric by pass because fo his Dr pushing him.He went through it and did great. And it has been 2 years. He was on pills for blood pressure and diabetes. No no more pills BUT I have trouble being around him any more because now he has developed the attitude that any one that doesn't loss weight like him is a lazy slob... Some days I want to pop him for his mouth But he does have wrinkles and looks like he is in his 70's excess skin ,big time and I know he told me he paid 25k for the surgery and no his insurance didn't cover it .

He is doing the one thing I saw part of a show on Oprah about and that is us compuslive over eaters find something else to replace the compulsvie eating with .. If I had the money which I don't and if I thought I could deal with my conpulsvie eating after the surgery and not replace it with something worse maybe I would have the surgery. BUt I honestly don't seethis as any thing more than a "quick fix" for us diabetics even though it does work how about long term peple and results

[fgummett]

^^I can't believe your friend's attitude... he of all people should know better

I don't think we have a compulsive eating disorder... I think our disordered blood sugars are sending messages to our body that we are hungry... these messages/drives can be just as real and difficult to ignore as our need to breathe, or a thirsty man walking across a desert (maybe that should be dessert?)

[Janlaton]

Don't let my reaction yesterday be the only one you use in making a decision but I know it is an expensive, experimental procedure.

My cousin will never pay all the debts. There have been a couple benefits to help but that was just a drop in the bucket.

Good luck, Go exercise and work toward getting the food under control. Of course diabetes affects the digestive track that is one of the areas of neuropathy no one talks about. Like my cardiovascular problem the nerves in the digestive track can be affected by the diabetes and that can cause problems. The endocrine glands and pancreas are part of the digestive system so what is diabetes but a digestive problem?

Have a great weekend.

Janlaton
Type 2 40 yrs

[Aurelius]

Hammer,

I know there are financing options available. You will just have to ask for those details at the hospital and they can point you in the right direction.

I know of two cases personally where a close friend was a type 2 diabetic for 7 years and then had the gastric bypass surgery. She hasn't taken a single med or injection since 2001 and her A1C's are consistantly normal (<6)

My mother-in-law was considered pre-diabetic at the time of her surgery and she had the surgery in early 2005. She had a few minor issues with it but nothing serious. She is now nowhere near even pre-diabetic according to her blood work.

As far as the banding procedure is concerned, the studies say they put diabetes into remission. I did some research on how they defined "remission". It turns out that they defined remission as having an A1C of less than 6.2 without meds at the end of two years of the study. 6.2 is a good number but still VERY diabetic if you ask me. This CAN be acheived through weightloss.

If I were to do any kind of surgery, it would be the duodenal switch. Less drastic than the all-out bypass but just as effective, or so we are lead to believe.

My issue is that at my dx, I had a BMI of over 40. After 4 months of intense dieting and exercise, I am now at a BMI of 35 which is the cut-off point for the surgery in the USA. I am essentially at a point of no return in the sense that if I continue to lose the weight, I will not be eligable anymore.

For me, I am going to continue the diet that my dietition put me on as it has greatly improved my BG numbers and the pounds keep coming off.

Hopefully, if all goes right in the near future, the duodenal switch will become available for non-obeise type 2's and at that time, I will have the procedure done. To me, it seems like the closest thing to a cure we have at this point.

As many have said already. Make sure you find out what life is going to be like after the procedure. Sure you may not have D to worry about, but other issues related to the surgery could produce other complications.

Keep an eye on this study

Surgical Treatment of Non-Obese Type 2 Diabetic Patients With Duodenal Exclusion - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

[Hammer]

I've read articles in the past that explained why they believe a gastric bypass "cures" diabetes. I don't have the article, but I think they said that the procedure bypasses part of the intestine and in this part of the intestine is where the resistance to insulin is created. I can't remember if there was some chemical or hormone that was released in this part of the intestine that inhibited insulin usage, but whatever it was, it stopped your body from resisting insulin and by bypassing this part of the intestine, your body returned to working normally again. It only took a few days after the surgery for this to happen. From what I read and saw on the video, patients stayed diabetes free. The video said that they have tracked patients for 12 years so far, and all are still diabetes free. Sounds like a cure to me. It also has about an 80-85% success rate.

The thing is, they will only do this surgery on very obese people. It's illegal to do it on anyone who's not very obese.(why should it be illegal? The government meddling again where they shouldn't be.)

Since most insurance companies don't want to pay for this surgery, it wouldn't be an option for me. I guess the insurance companies would rather pay the $12,000 a year for the insulin, the $6000 a year for the Byetta, the $2,000 a year for the Hyzaar, and the $1,000 a year for the test strips. That's $21,000 a year for my medical needs. In 10 years that's $210,000 as opposed to $25,000 for one procedure. You can tell these insurance companies have some real geniuses working there.

Also, at my age (55), it wouldn't be a good idea. I doubt that I'll be around much longer anyway, so why go through an operation. I'm better off staying with the status quo.

[Aurelius]

Please don't think you will not be around for much longer. That leads to just giving up any attempts at trying to control this ugly beast. 55 is still very young. My mother-in-law was 60 when she had her bypass surgery.

Don't forget, you have a lot of support from all of us.

Have you spoke with a dietition yet? I know a number of people here think dietitions are just pushing out diets according to numbers given by the ADA but that is not always the case.

What I have done is get a base diet plan from my dietition and then lowered the number of carbs I take in. The carbs I do take in are very low on the glycemic index while the rest of the diet plan remains pretty much intact.

Just a suggestion

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Aurelius

Please don't think you will not be around for much longer. That leads to just giving up any attempts at trying to control this ugly beast. 55 is still very young. My mother-in-law was 60 when she had her bypass surgery.

Don't forget, you have a lot of support from all of us.

Have you spoke with a dietition yet? I know a number of people here think dietitions are just pushing out diets according to numbers given by the ADA but that is not always the case.

What I have done is get a base diet plan from my dietition and then lowered the number of carbs I take in. The carbs I do take in are very low on the glycemic index while the rest of the diet plan remains pretty much intact.

Just a suggestion

No, I haven't spoken to a dietitian....never will. I really don't think there's anything that a dietitian could tell me that I don't already know. I used to study nutrition in my spare time, way back when I was pumping iron.

The reason I say that I will not be around much longer isn't because I'm worried about my diabetes, I just know I won't be. I can't explain it but I know when someone is going to die. I get this overall sense of impending doom when I'm around the person, and I know they are going to die. It's happened to me numerous times over the years, and I have a perfect track record. I've never been wrong.

Sounds a little crazy, I know, but I get these strange sensations when something is about to happen. I saw a little girl skipping along the sidewalk outside our car one day. I was in the backseat of my father's car, waiting for the traffic light to change.(I was 14) I instantly knew this little girl was going to get hit by a car, and I just sat there frozen. Ten seconds later, boom, she was hit by a car.

My stepfather wasn't feeling well one day when I was visiting my parents house. He got up and went to lie down for a few minutes. As he walked by me, I got that sense of foreboding, and I knew I'd never see him alive again. He had a heart attack the next day and died two weeks later. The same thing happened with my father, my uncle, and my grandfather.

I was driving my mom home from lunch, and as I sat at a traffic light waiting to make a left turn, I knew the car in front of me was going to wreck into another car that would come out of the parking lot that we would pass once we made the turn. I mentioned it to my mom. When I made the turn, I backed off from the guy in front of me. Five seconds later he broadsided a car that pulled out of the parking lot, just as I said. My mom asked me how I knew that would happen. I told her I couldn't explain it.

There are many of these things that I've sensed over the years. The only thing I don't know is when the person is going to die, I just know that they will. Well, it's my time. I can sense it. It's not as strong as the other people I've sensed, so that probably means it's not going to be in the very near future, but it's coming.

I have sensed a few things that benefited me....like the first time I went to the horse races with my parents. It was all new to me (I was 12), and I asked how you played. My mom explained it to me. I had three dollars in my pocket (I was saving for an antenna for my ham radio. I needed 30 dollars, and I had only saved $3 at that point.) I asked what the next race was and my mom told me it was the second. I looked at the horses as they were being led to the starting gate and I sensed that the #8 horse was going to win. I asked my mom if the tellers at the windows would let me make a bet, since I was only 12, and she said they might, so I walked down to the windows and placed $2 on the number 8 horse. It won. As the horse crossed the finish line, everyone was standing and yelling for their horses. I was sitting quietly in my seat. My mom looked at me and asked me why I wasn't standing and cheering for my horse. I told her that I didn't need to. I knew it would win. I won $30...enough to buy the antenna I wanted.

Later that evening as I was sitting next to my mom, I asked her what race it was and she said the 9th. I looked at the horses and told her that the #5 horse was going to win. She asked me how I knew that, and I told her I didn't know, but it was the same way I knew the #8 horse was going to win. She asked me why didn't I play it and I told her I had enough money for my antenna and I didn't need anymore, so she went down and played it. It won.

I've known for years who was going to win the SuperBowl every year, and I didn't even know who was in it till I got the sense.(I don't keep up with sports...well, except boxing...go Calzaghe!) Whenever this sense hits me, I'm right. This sense isn't there all the time, it just comes on once in a great while, but when it comes on, I know what it means.

So you see, this sense is telling me I'm not going to be around much longer. I'm going to die of a heart attack, only I'm not sure exactly when. I'm not upset or worried about it. I just hope it isn't all that painful, but knowing my luck, it will be. Oh well, what can you do, right? If I should suddenly disappear from the boards, well, you'll know why. I'm hoping that I'll still be able to make a last post to thank everyone here, but you never know.

I hope this post isn't unsettling to anyone. I wasn't going to talk about this, but I thought people might want to know why I sometimes sound a bit fatalistic.(if you remember when I first started posting here, you can now understand why my posts had such a negativity to them.) If this post in any way offends anyone, I apologize to you as that wasn't my intent. I just thought you should know where I'm coming from and heck, I may be wrong about it. They say there's always a first time for everything, so who knows, this may be that time.

[Kim_in_TN]

Hammer, I don't think I want to hang out with you any time soon! I'm afraid you might get a bad sensation about me and I don't want to know! LOL!!!!!

Seriously, I know that the gastric bypass thing isn't a permanent "fix" in the weightloss game. I know of several people who have gained much of the weight back. You still have a responsibility to eat right and exercise afterwards. The initial loss is fast because your tummy is so small, you have no choice but to eat like a bird! However, it can gradually stretch out and in time, you can get back to eating too much again. Also, there definitely is the sagging skin .. and it's not pretty! LOL! It's a personal choice but I don't think it's worth all the risks! Just my opinion!