The Skinny on Weight-Loss Surgery
New ways to tip the scales in your favor
By Lynn Kirk
Face it: If you’re carrying 30 pounds more than you should, you’re obese. It’s a label no one welcomes but 40 percent of boomers share, according to experts. The number of overweight middle-agers is reaching epidemic proportions, growing almost as quickly as their waistlines. Just like sags and wrinkles, obesity and boomerhood tend to go hand-in-hand.
Often obesity is a package deal of emotional pain – depression, helplessness, poor self-esteem – coupled with social stigma. Along with out-of-control weight come a host of serious physical ills, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, joint pain and on and on till death do us part.
So why don’t overweight boomers just step back from the table and onto the StairMaster? If only it were that easy. Not everyone touting a plus-size frame can turn back the scales by simply downsizing meals and upsizing activity. Sometimes obesity’s cause involves other health issues that are difficult to control or improperly diagnosed.
“I weighed more than a linebacker in the NFL before they figured out what was wrong with me,” says Judi Telenko, a “near-boomer” who carried 283 pounds at her peak weight. Telenko, 40, is an art director with Ross Publishing, owner of Boomer Life and other magazines. “I had never been overweight – in fact I wasn’t half bad to look at in my early 20s when I weighed 140 to 150 pounds. But then I started to really gain and ended up a size 22-24. It was as if my body had turned against me.”
Telenko’s weight gain was a slow process that wouldn’t level off despite personal trainers, cardiovascular exercise, a mishmash of diets and just as many doctors and medications. Finally, after a decade of increasing weight and decreasing hope, she was diagnosed with underlying medical conditions (polycystic ovaries and insulin resistance) that impacted weight control. Her doctor recommended bariatric surgery as a weight-loss intervention with lifesaving benefits.
“No one wants to hear that they’re fat enough for ‘lap-band’ surgery, but I had to admit defeat,” Telenko says. “I couldn’t do it on my own, and I was tired of feeling like the elephant in the room.”
Several surgical options
Gastric bypass is America’s most common weight-loss surgery. In layman’s terms, the bariatric surgeon staples or bands the stomach into a smaller pouch, then connects it to the small intestine. The patient eats less because he feels full more quickly, and he absorbs fewer calories because of the surgically produced “digestive detour.” Pounds drop rather rapidly – sometimes as much as two-thirds of the patient’s excess weight in just a couple of years.
Complications can include band or staple failure, stomach content leakage and anemia. Sometimes the weight loss is temporary because the stomach pouch stretches back to its initial size. For these patients, there’s a new incision-free procedure called ROSE (restorative obesity surgery, endolumenal) that reduces the stomach pouch and small intestine opening back to their sizes after the initial surgery.
Telenko did not consider gastric bypass surgery because she was concerned about the potential for regaining weight. Shedding pounds too quickly might also result in excessive skin sagging. With that in mind, she opted for lap-band (short for laparoscopic gastric banding) surgery, experienced no major complications and missed only two days from work.
“My surgeon made five small incisions and made sort of a ponytail out of my stomach” is how she explains the creation of a 4-ounce stomach pouch with its adjustable band. A port was inserted, allowing the surgeon to adjust the band’s tightness as needed over time through saline addition or removal. The surgery was performed at St. Mary’s Hospital and cost $15,000 to $18,000, a portion of which an insurance rider covered. (Telenko was able to offset the costs of the surgery because she purchased an obesity rider through her insurance company; otherwise the entire cost of the procedure would have been out of pocket.)
St. Mary’s also is among a handful of hospitals that have introduced the ROSE procedure and another advanced bariatric option, single-incision laparoscopy surgery (SILS), which involves only one incision and therefore even quicker recovery with fewer risks.
80 pounds lost and counting
Sixteen months after surgery, Telenko had shed close to 80 pounds and exchanged her XXXL for a size 12-14.
“When I eat, I can’t take big bites, swallow too quickly or gulp – but you shouldn’t eat that way anyway. It may take me 45 minutes to eat a child-sized bowl of spaghetti, but the surgery was one of the best decisions I ever made,” she says.
“Obesity even blessed me in some ways because it gave me the opportunity to look inward. I hated looking at myself on the outside, so I counted more on who I was on the inside. This journey has been a sweet victory—a rebirth of ‘me.’”
.....................................................
Lynn Kirk is a Richmond, Virginia based freelance writer and public relations consultant.
.....................................................
FOR BEST RESULTS
For best results, weight-loss surgery should be combined with dietary changes, exercise and counseling. Typically a candidate for weight-reduction surgery must have:
• Life-shortening health conditions
• Severe obesity (Some authorities define that as a body mass index of 25-30+.
The American Heart Association defines obesity as having a BMI of 30 or greater,
while severe obesity includes a 40+ BMI)
• Limited weight loss after traditional weight-reducing methods
• Healthy psychological state
For more, visit:
• www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/tools/
• www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/weightlosssurgery.html
• http://www.bonsecours.com/surgicalweightloss/
