WELCOME dakota and hey there mezzo. We all had fear before surgery, in varying degrees. But they knock you out so hard in the hospital, the worst thing is the IV placement, or if you get one, the heparin shot administered into your abdomen. The surgery itself is a breeze and it's only after surgery you will have any complaints at all.
If you feel uncomfortable after, just stay in bed when you need to but make sure you do a little walking around the house in order to allow the gas the surgeon pumped into you to escape. It hurts more than surgery! The gas has nowhere to go but out through muscle and tissue, so it's a big ache for a few days until it leaves you.
There's nothing to fear unless you go to a surgeon who doesn't know how to perform a bariatric procedure. The technique has been perfected over years. The toughest part is re-learning how to eat. And in a way, your own body might take care of that for you, as you may feel nauseated at the thought of something you might have craved in the past.
There is a part of your stomach that sends the hunger signal to your brain, and another part where digestive enzymes are manufactured. For many people, these parts are removed or made much smaller, so you don't have the crazy appetite you once had, and your digestion mostly happens after your stomach empties.
I say GO FOR IT, and follow you surgeon's instructions to the letter. Also make sure there's a nutritionist attached to your surgeon. This is a team like salt & pepper and you cannot succeed without them both.
In this group I've only encountered one person who wished she'd never had the surgery. And I think she changed her tune after having second thoughts in the group. For everyone else, it was a necessary life-saving procedure. How else are you going to lose the weight you need to lose? Most people just keep going on diets, but you can go on 20 diets and the weight will never go away. For some of us, surgery IS the only option.
We'll always be here for you and personally, I can't remember having pain after the surgery except for nerve pain from one part of the staple line where they closed me up. I had that for years and it was awful in the beginning. But it was just the luck of the draw that day and I've never heard anyone else say they had it chronically.
