Elmore

Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, Elmore shares his experience about his illness and the effect that Gastric Band surgery has had on returning him to health.

Video Transcript

I’ve lost a total of 82 pounds*. Weight has been an issue with me since probably about 2001, shortly after I got diagnosed with diabetes. And just basically trying to keep it off, keep the weight down. I go up and I go down, but just with the medications with the diabetes and then high blood pressure. I’ve never been a big person. Over the past five years I started seeing a slow increase because my medication started getting more trying to deal with the diabetes, and then about three years ago I got placed on insulin and as we all know insulin makes you gain weight. So that’s when the bulk of my weight was pretty much started getting more weight wise for the past three years. So I just got to where it just got unbearable. And then I looked myself in the mirror one day, and I said what… I really just almost, I stopped short of being just in full tears about the whole thing, I just hated the person I had become because historically I haven’t been there, I’ve always been an active person. Then I went back to my primary doctor and he knew Dr. Baptista, they actually know each other personally, and I said look I’ve got to change this. I said because I don’t want to get like my Mom who was a diabetic, and on dialysis and everything because of her diabetes. And she’s having you know tips and bits and pieces are being amputated because of her diabetes, and I just couldn’t see myself doing that. I want to be active, I want to be able to hold my grandkids, be able to do things with them, take trips with my wife and do different things. So I had to make that decision to change.

I end up having the lap band surgery. I did the lap band surgery because unlike the sleeve, the sleeve is more permanent. I wanted something that if you know it works that’s fine, but then it can be reversible and then try something else. But I decided to have the gastric band, the lap band.

I started seeing results probably maybe three to four weeks later when I put on some pants, and they actually started feeling like wow this is different. And I just started feeling a whole lot better, because like I said before I mean it didn’t take anything, I could eat something and just fall asleep. Now I just started seeing slowly but surely, I started having all this energy I couldn’t define that I could beat the alarm clock up. Usually I would hit snooze five or six times, now I’m beating the alarm clock up. And I start seeing changes in myself; I started seeing my blood sugars going down to where I was having blood sugars in like the 200s. Now I’m waking up in the morning, my blood sugars like 130, 120, 90 and I was like this is working its really working. So I’m proud to say within a month to maybe six weeks I went to my endocrinologist Dr. Deeb and he started seeing changes in a months’ time. And then by November which is probably six, seven weeks later I was off all insulin all together*. I mean my blood sugar were normal, I was just on one pill and then eventually I got off the blood pressure medicine in time to where I’m at today, to where I only take one pill for diabetes and I’ll probably be off of that in the next month or so. So it’s just been, I see where I was at with my diabetes to then to now and it’s like night and day. I don’t even recognize this person sitting in the chair sometimes it’s just amazing. Anybody that wants to have the surgery you have to ask yourself this, do you want to stay on meds all your life? The price of medicine, health care is going up in this nation I mean and you have to just ask yourself do I want a better quality of life? If you do take the leap of faith and have the surgery because it works.

The hardest thing about the surgery for me was deciding to have it. But if you had to ask me, if I had to do it all over again I would do it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

For More Information on Weight Loss Surgery.

For more information on bariatric surgery, or to schedule a consultation with Dr. Baptista, please contact Florida Surgical Physicians today.

*Results are not guaranteed and may differ from person to person.



Elmore

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