BariatricEating.com Health & Nutrition

Rant - OHere we go again... fear mongering!

Someone sent me a link to a post on a popular bariatric surgery message board where a somewhat ‘respected’ and dedicated answerer of posts was making fun of my stressing the importance of wearing a medical ID bracelet. When I read her post and saw the others who ‘chirped in’ with their silly affirmations of her ridiculing the importance of identifying ourselves as bariatric surgery patients, it made me realize how divided a group we are.

I think it is important that if I were unconscious or unable to speak for myself that a medical professional know that my stomach and intestines are not in a normal configuration. I didn’t always feel this way, but changed my view after learning how many surgeons feel it is important. I don’t sell medical ID bracelets; in fact we gave away over a thousand dollars worth of Lauren’s Hope bracelets as a part of a special promotion on my website last month. The people who were selected to receive the beautiful crystal and beaded medical bracelets were thrilled to have the opportunity to go to LaurensHope.com and choose their own colors and decide what they needed to have engraved on their personal medical tag.

That anyone would make fun of me and the premise of medical ID’s in this forum was unbelievable to me. It was that same defiance that this person and others with a similar mindset often exhibit that would lead her to refer to some of us as ‘fear mongers’.

Many people use laughter and ridicule to disarm a situation where they know that they are not necessarily doing the right thing. They laugh through the bad behavior as it makes them feel better. If they can find others who defy the rules, the more the merrier. When we go to lunch, a post op friend of mine laughs while she eats the hot rolls placed on our table and orders the pasta dish she knows is a bad choice. She also nervously laughs when she has to get a size 12 from the rack when she used to wear a size 8. She laughingly told me the other day that she ‘isn’t really a size 12, it’s just that the 12’s were more comfortable than the 10’s’. It is the same nonchalance of a smoker who mocks the surgeon and questions as to whether or not they really need to quit prior to surgery and if it really makes a difference. (Would the doctor really know that I didn’t quit?) It is the laugh of a new post op that tries sugar and almost boasts to their cronies that they don’t get sick at all. It’s the same laugh of the person who states on the message board that they ate pizza at ten days post op and they were able to keep it down. The laugh of the person posting to the pizza message that she too eats pizza even though she isn’t supposed to, but she ‘must be doing something right as she has lost 76 pounds’. Then there are the bread eaters, the donut eaters, and the Dorito eaters. Best of all are the ‘I don’t use protein’ people who have that hollow look of starvation and a few remaining sprigs of hair at the crown of their head even though they are not able to get below 180 pounds or eat more than a few ounces of protein a day.

I had someone walk into my store while I was writing this rant… who told me the story of how she passed out cold at Wal-Mart the other day and that the OR doctor yelled at her for not having a medical id bracelet. Another customer of mine related a story of how she called her surgeon after having kidney spasms and the doc had her call 911. When the EMT’s arrived at her home, she didn’t think about telling them about her gastric bypass as soon as they came in the door as she was worried about her child, and her dog getting out. They told her that having an ID bracelet eliminates forgetting about crucial information and that she needed one. Maybe not everyone would choose to wear a bracelet even after considering all this, but it is certainly not anything to laugh about, by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, I will admit to being a ‘fear monger’; if that is what you want to call me. I am fearful! Fearful of returning to my former 300 pound girth. Fearful of losing my hair. Fearful of once again being able to plow into a bowl of real ice cream without incident. Fearful of having to submit to a four hour iron infusion IV drip if I don’t take my vitamins. Fearful of having a thiamine deficiency and losing feeling in my fingertips. Fearful of being wheeled into an ER and the attending physician not immediately thinking of afflictions more common to gastric bypass patients because he didn’t know of my surgery.

Most important of all I am fearful of few folks and their minions who get a little attention on a message board and laugh at people who use their gastric bypass surgery as a turning point in their life and live by the rules.

Ciao,
Susan Maria