Next Tuesday, April 10th, my wife Susan checks in to the hospital for lapband surgery. It is hard for me to describe exactly how I feel about the impending experience. Obviously, we’re both very excited. I’m also a little scared, and maybe a little … well, jealous isn’t the right word … envy, perhaps? Not envious that she’s doing the surgery — I’m glad she is — but perhaps a little envious that she has the courage to go through with it, where I know I don’t. The biggest thing I’m feeling right now is anxiety. Every surgery (even laparoscopic) has risks involved, so there is anxiety that everything will go right, anxiety about recovery, anxiety about short term and long term effects, etc.

When I was in third grade, my mom had gastric bypass surgery — “stomach stapling,” as they elequantly dubbed it back then. My grandma later had the same surgery, so I’ve seen the ups and downs of these surgeries first hand now a couple of times. There’s no doubt that by medically shrinking your stomach, you can lose weight; however, messing around with “mother nature” can produce some side effects as well. My mom needs a monthly B-12 shot because of her surgery. Granted, lapband is the least intrusive form of “restrictive weight loss” surgery, but it’s still changing the way your body works.

The biggest hurdles in my mind will be the mental ones. At least for me, the hardest part of my own quest for weight loss hasn’t been the physical needs as much as it’s been the mental ones. Like I said earlier today, when you’re on a strict diet all of a sudden you’re the jerk that won’t go out and have a beer with co-workers after work, the health snob who orders a salad when everyone else at the table orders a steak, or the loner at the birthday party who sits in the corner while everyone else enjoys cake and ice cream. It’s hard, it’s damn hard. It means giving up going out to dinner with friends just to “catch up.” It means not going out to dinner to “celebrate” because of a good report card. It means finding something to do on Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter, and every other holiday when everyone else you know is sitting at the table, eating. It is a complete life change for as long as you live.

On the flip side of this is all the positive reasons behind choosing this surgery — the potential to increase not only your life span but your quality of life as well. It’s a personal decision that unless you’ve lived as a morbidly obese person and had the exact same experiences as another person, you probably cannot completely comprehend. I hope that everything goes as planned and that she’s happy with the results, both physical and mental.

Susan now has a MySpace page and will be posting blog entries about her surgery there.