[QUOTE=zmdh39;487813][QUOTE=Lauryn;487796]Hello, my BMI is 43. I am only 5 feet tall and 220 lbs. and I am only 32 to make matters worse. I have struggled with weight since I was a child and have recently spoken to someone whose daughter also had the sleeve. I am going for a consultation on Dec. 2, but am very nervous. My question is for those who have had the sleeve...Is it worth it? I had a friend who got gastric bypass surgery and she died from complications (I'm not sure exactly what), but this has me very nervous. I want to be healthy and feel good about myself and right now I am not.

The only thing that really scares me are the staples and the risk of leakage. I want to be healthy, but I also want to be alive! lol Any advice or feedback is very much appreciated.[/QUOTE]

I am 28, but had surgery at 26. My highest weight was 235 lbs, and I was only 5'4...to answer your question on whether it is worth it, I will let you know my opinion, and then post some article for you to read, so that they may help you decide for yourself. The risks of VSG, which is the surgery i had with Dr. Quinones down in Tijuana, Mexico, are very low...so it is a calculated risk, and I took many factors into consideration when choosing my surgeon, and having surgery in general.

In my opinion, I think, and truly believe with everything in my that the surgery was worth the risk...but a few things have happened since my surgery that really hit home for me, on just how important my decision to become healthier really was...and though I though about them, they never became real until I had to go through them. Here are the first 2 articles...the first is an SOS message I sent out on this board...my mom was due to have knee replacement surgery, and even though I was 2 years out from surgery myself, and had great success, and had offered to pay for her own surgery many times in that 2 years, she was too scared to do it...so I figured the SOS might attract responses from people she could better relate to, people more her age, with similar or even worse health concerns etc. The responses were amazing:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/51442-need-some-help-please-respond.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/51442-need-some-help-please-respond.html[/URL]

This next thread I will post is one I made after her surgery, when it really hit home for me in a very personal sense of how much not only affects the obese person, but can affect others as well:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53537-how-much-can-obesity-still-affect-our-lives-even-after-wls.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53537-how-much-can-obesity-still-affect-our-lives-even-after-wls.html[/URL]

This is a thread wrote breaking down some of the things obesity costs us...financially, I didn't think many people really thought about:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53904-how-much-is-obesity-costing-you.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53904-how-much-is-obesity-costing-you.html[/URL]

And here is my own 2 year out post that I made:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/52607-6-days-until-my-2-year-anniversary-relfection.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/52607-6-days-until-my-2-year-anniversary-relfection.html[/URL]

And this last one is a post I made asking people to pick songs, 1 that represented how they felt in life before surgery, and 1 for how they felt afterwards...if you take the time to listen to some of their choices the difference it quite amazing:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/48712-i-thought-this-would-make-for-an-interesting-journey-post-what-do-you-think.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/48712-i-thought-this-would-make-for-an-interesting-journey-post-what-do-you-think.html[/URL]

I hope that some of this will help you out...I know that surgery is not an easy one to make, but I really believed that I would rather take a risk when i was 26, in good health, my only problem was that I was over weight, I knew that I could handle surgery well from previous experience...and honestly, I didn't want to wait for my obesity to deteriorate my body...which even at 26, it was still doing. My personal belief is that we face hundreds of things a day that could easily take our lives, we could drown swimming, get in a car crash on the way to work, choke on our favorite meal..etc. I personally was raised to believe that God only gives us a certain number of days on this earth, so I figured if I was born with an expiration date, that I could do nothing to change...does it really matter how I pass?...I would much rather take the risks, knowing I was putting up my best fight, than allow obesity continue to make my precious time on this earth miserable...there may be a ton of things that can take me out...but I was hell bent on obesity NOT having that pleasure!

This is how miserable I had become when I was over weight...when you can go through something like this and the only thing you can focus on is how unhappy your weight is making your life...it time for a change...I was SO ashamed of my weight, I have NO pictures from my sons pregnancy, and VERY few of us together from the time he was born, until after I had surgery...I wasn't just depriving myself, I was letting obesity take things away from my son...and that HAD to stop:

[URL="http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53879-14-million-dollars-what.html"]http://www.gastricsleeve.com/forum/tell-us-about-your-journey-getting-a-gastric-sleeve/53879-14-million-dollars-what.html[/URL]

God bless you on whatever you decided, I wish you the very best!

Click on the pictures to see them in a larger format...hell yes it is worth it in my opinion:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22450[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22451[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22452[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22453[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22454[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22455[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22456[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]22457[/ATTACH]

And this is what surgery did for a dear friend of mine:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22458[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]