Weight loss surgery meeting is Thursday night at GRMC
By Joey Aguirre, The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Sundberg will offer a program about weight-loss surgery for anyone interested in the procedure at
Sundberg, who has done more than 400 gastric bypass surgeries, had the surgery in 2002.
"There are a lot of candidates out there, but right now, only about 1 percent of people that are eligible are actually going and getting it," he said. "It's a lifesaving procedure."
There is no obligation for anyone to sign up Thursday night. The session is informational.
The surgery restricts the amount of food a person can eat by changing how your stomach and small intestine handle the food you eat.
"You're not as hungry, you can't eat as much and quickly learn that one extra bite is too much, so you stop." Sundberg said. "But it's also about changing how you live and permanently saying, 'I don't eat what everyone else eats.' "
In 2002, Sundberg was overweight and had diabetes, along with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. After attending a seminar with other surgeons and sitting through a presentation about who typically has the surgery, he realized he was a candidate. He found a friend in
"I was back to work in a couple of weeks," he said. "I just started dropping the weight, started walking every morning and riding my bike. I did RAGBRAI this year."
Two weeks is not a typical recovery time, according to
Sundberg estimated he lost about 90 pounds in the first nine months. He gained some weight back, noting 25 percent of patients typically do, but he said eating three or four bites of a steak leaves him stuffed.
"I'm not diabetic anymore. I don't take any high blood pressure meds, and my cholesterol is down," he said.
Birlson, whose sister lost 130 pounds from bariatric surgery, said the results speak for themselves.
"We have some really good candidates coming up who are going to drop a lot of weight," she said. "It's going to be fun watching them go through the process, and here they are in 2014. By this time next year, they won't even look like the same person."
"These folks on their first day out of surgery we hand them two little medicine cups of glop, and they're stuffed," Sundberg said, chuckling. "Typically, nine months or a year out, you are eating what everyone else is eating, but just smaller portions."
The process to get approved by an insurance company is lengthy and takes up to six months. Sundberg said 40 percent of interested people drop out in those six months after going through tests, including a personality assessment to determine if the person is suitable for the surgery.
"In most surgeries that you go for, it fixes whatever problem you have," Birlson said. "This surgery fixes multiple things, pretty much all at once. It's going to help you lose weight. It's going to all but get rid of your diabetes, the sleep apnea, acid reflex, cholesterol. So how many diseases are you going to almost cure or cure with one operation? No other operation does that."
"After you lose all that weight, you have so much energy," Sundberg said. "You don't take the elevator, you take the stairs; you don't park right by the door, you park way the heck out there."
"And it can be very annoying to the people around you. Instead of flopping on the couch at 5 o'clock, you say 'Hey, let's go do something,' " Sundberg said.
There are more than 50 people now enrolled in the six-month waiting program at
About three to five years after the surgery is performed, Sundberg said, there's a break-even point where the patient has saved the amount of money the surgery cost from reducing all of the other health issues.
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