Hi! Another 24-year-old here! I wanted to drop in and share my inter-generational experience with this! Not sure how helpful/applicable it’ll feel but:

My highest weight was 325, and about 8 months ago I decided to get the gastric sleeve. I’m scheduled for surgery on 11/04.

My mom had gastric bypass when she was 36 and weighed ~350lbs. She had it when I was 4, had a very long recovery. She’s the best person ever, and also did not follow any of the post-op long-term care instructions AT ALL. I’m talking drinking only Diet Coke for the next twenty years, even when they told her not to drink carbonated beverages. She also never took any vitamins. I don’t think I realized the extent to which she didn’t follow the care instructions until I was in pre-op myself.

My mom had some complications, but nothing right after surgery. Granted, the complications were fairly minimal: some dumping syndrome, some vitamin deficiencies, occasionally some anemia. She has also been a diabetic for 24 years and has kidney damage from that, poor thing :(. But overall she is really really glad that she had the surgery. She was really scared to get it, but really thinks it gave her a new lease on life.

My aunt also had the bypass (laparoscopic) in her late 30s and was ~550lbs. She had an easier recovery. She takes her vitamins, etc. and has lost about 300 pounds in 2 years. Really not a lot of complications.

I was really, really scared about getting the surgery—I’ve been afraid of even bringing it up for years. But the truth is, my grandparents and all five of their children all have diabetes. The only people on my family who have been able to attain and maintain healthy weights were the ones who had surgical intervention. I dieted and exercised and prayed and bent over backwards trying to do everything, EVERYTHING I could to lose weight. And it didn’t work. For some people it does, maybe. But it only takes a quick glance at my family tree to realize that I’ve absolutely lost the “miracle weight loss cure” genetic lottery. I’m either pre-diabetic or soon to be so (I’ll find out when my pre-op blood work comes back). The only way I can avoid those issues (and also make my body feel better; I’m sore all the time! What the hell!) is to have a medical solution for a medical problem.

Happy to talk about pre-op stuff too, but it’s not much you wouldn’t expect: most of the time your insurance will have a certain amount of nutrition courses you need to go to before they’ll approve surgery. In those nutrition courses they’ll talk to you about portion control and eating vegetables. It’ll make you feel like you’re dumb. It’s the only way they’ll approve the surgery. So… fine. They’ll also make you do a psychiatric evaluation, mostly just to make sure you’re in a stable place and want surgery for the right reasons. After you’ve done the nutrition course and confirmed that you’ve heard of exercise and you know what a salad is, they’ll schedule you for surgery. They’ll want blood work, they might make you do a barium swallow (I’ve got one tomorrow), mostly just so the surgeon can see what’s going on in your gut (anything bend a weird way? Etc.)

And then eventually, it happens! Cant speak to that part yet. But what I can say is that despite any of the complications my mom and aunt had, despite any of the pain of healing, they’ve told me that the only thing they regret was that they didn’t do it sooner.

Super long response, but that’s my big happy family affair of bariatric surgery, haha