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Surgeon: Dr. Keshishian, Delano, CA
by Alison: My Story: March 17, 2004 My life is awesome now. I am getting back to the Alison I used to be!!! I love to eat now, it is great, I can eat with total abandon. I do not need to watch calories, I do not need to watch fat, I am like a kid in a candy store, literally. I have never in my life been able to eat the way I do now. I can drink pop with SUGAR in it! I am still losing weight. My poor husband has gained so much weight since my surgery, our doctor finally told him it is NOT a competition and to stop trying to keep up with me!!! What is the downside? Believe it or not, my newer friends, the ones that did not know how I ate before, they think I was fat based on my current eating habits. I am realizing I need to hide my newfound joy in eating or keep my surgery a secret… Or put up with people thinking I had surgery to keep up with my gluttony. That is sad. Other than that, people are nice to me again! Strangers will actually carry on a conversation with me. Would I do it again? Yep, you bet, in a minute. Life is much better when you're not obese. I am so much happier. THE PAST Ahhh, how does one put their life's story on one page? I was not fat all of my life, I grew up a thin child and a relatively thin teenager. I developed a "full figure" after the birth of my first child (at the tender age of 19). I could eat whatever I wanted and when my clothes got a little tight I would just slow down and skip a meal here and there, have a few more salads cut out the fries. This is how my life went for 10+ years. Then my world fell apart! I underwent fertility treatment and gained quite a bit of weight with that, 3-8#s/month. My son was finally conceived after over a year of nearly non-stop fertility treatment. After his birth I was losing the baby weight just fine when all of a sudden the scale started going the other direction… okay, skip meals, more salads, baked chips instead of normal, etc. The whole low fat thing that had always worked. I still kept gaining. I had a newborn at home and I started working full time filing charts at a hospital, this sounds rather sedentary but in reality it involved climbing up and down ladders all day long, literally working up a sweat. I was horrified when I tried to tie my sweater around my waist and the arms wouldn't reach! I was bigger than I had ever been pregnant! I was still gaining in spite of my increased exercise and reduced diet. I reached the point my muscles hurt so much I thought I had a potassium deficiency, the Dr. did a thyroid test and my TSH was an astronomical 140!!!! (normal is 0.5-4.5) She had only ever seen one person with a thyroid worse than mine. It took nearly a year to get into the normal range. (With thyroid it is an inverse relationship, the higher the TSH the slower the thyroid function.) Once my thyroid was normal I still didn't get better. My entire endocrine system went haywire. I tested positive for Cushing's Disease twice, tested negative three times! I would spontaneously start lactating in spite of not having breast fed for over a year. Every hormone tested was out of whack at one point or another, unfortunately never consistently defying any possibility of meaningful diagnosis. I went out of state to see specialists. I was diagnosed with a kidney disease and an "unidentified metabolic disorder". Basically Metabolic Syndrome X/Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I was told to eat a low fat diet, to avoid high protein diets due to my kidney disease. My body had gone from an hourglass figure to an apple. Bizarre. This was the first time weight loss surgery was mentioned to me. I was horrified, I still remember my response, "Don't you think that's a rather permanent solution for a temporary condition?" That was in May 2000. I went back to Alaska miserable and dejected. I suppose part of it could have been my own attitude but people sure treated me a lot differently now that I was morbidly obese. My weight was well over 300#. I started researching WLS summer of 2001. I just couldn't see having an RNY when I didn't have a problem with binge eating or sugar, lap band seemed to make the most sense. I was at the AMOS chat site when Bruce (bless you!!!) started questioning my reasoning for a lap band. He gently led me in the direction of the DS. After a long insurance battle, they never denied me, just kept looking for excuses NOT to approve me, I was on COBRA and I think they were hoping I would miss a payment. I was finally approved if I paid my COBRA ahead through the date of the surgery (4 mos out). I had to travel to the Lower 48 so we were trying to figure out the best place to go based on finances and dr. reputation. My husband wanted me to go to Dr. Keshishian because he was in network and we thought I would be able to get the surgery done lap, plus he had a pretty good reputation. I had an open DS/Gastric Reduction surgery November 6th, 2002, three days before my 35th birthday, approximately one year after I decided on the DS. The surgery went smoothly and I was recovering nicely until the night of my birthday. The drain tube moved and interfered with my pancreas, that was the most excruciating pain I had experienced in my life. I was told that if I didn't get up and walk through the pain I would die. I believed them and figured I was going to die. The doctor refused to give me adequate pain control, in the past the only medicine that has worked has been dilaudid (I am allergic to morphine) which I informed them during my pre-op appt. The Dr. felt that was too hardcore in spite of the fact it is a synthetic version of morphine, the same drug he freely gave the rest of the patients. I will cut this short by saying that I was finally given dilaudid AFTER my old operative reports were faxed from Alaska. Unbelievable!
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I am over a year post op. I went from my highest pre-op weight of 341# down to 198# in February, 17 months post op. I developed a huge hernia just under my rib cage, larger than a basketball! I had the hernia repaired and an abdominoplasty done February 9th, 2004. My weight one month later is 185#. I think I am going through a losing surge because of the hernia repair, the quantity of food I can eat has definitely gone down. All of a sudden I don't have the room I once had, LOL! I am waiting for my weight to stabilize. I am within the range of my personal goal, 175#-190#. This is the size I was most of my adult life. I am 5'9" and this puts me in a pant size of 12/14. A far cry from the days I couldn't fit into a 28!!!