PT-LawMom

A cautionary tale of why it’s important to pay attention to the small details!

Sitting in my home office, trying to study for exams.
Using school VPN to pull up library material.
Realize my office is suspiciously quiet.
Look up at printer and see no paper in the tray.
Refill paper tray.
Waiting…
Pushing printer buttons.
Waiting…
Checking printer connections.
Waiting.
Yep, all my print jobs (quickly dashed off in a large batch, back-to-back) have gone to a school-networked printer and the law school is a good hour’s drive round-trip.
CRAP.
Re-tracing my electronic steps.
Printing to my local printer (which will probably take a good chunk of the time it would take to just drive to school and get the damn printouts!).

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I had a roux-en-y gastric bypass in 2001 and am now suffering the often unadvertised consequences (severe malnutrition [iron, B12, D, calcium, serum protein], peripheral neuropathy, etc.), along with nasty neurological side effects from the medication they are using to try to treat the neuropathy (which makes law school so much easier, I tell you!)

Fortunately this week everyone is writing my blog posts for me. MeltingMama, another young mother who had the same surgery four years ago and who is suffering similar malnutrition issues (except she also has hypoglycemia) has posted a really well-done post on why she would NOT have a roux-en-y gastric bypass again. I encourage those of you who read my blog to hear about the WLS stuff to view her whole post here. For those of you who just want to hear her story, view this:

My story is the same, complete with iron infusions, B12 shots, etc., except that I was 21 when I had the surgery and I had it because I grew up with a morbidly obese mother who couldn’t play with us much. I wanted to have healthy pregnancies and be able to run around with my kid. 100+ lbs down, I can do that somewhat. But when the neuropathic pain brings me to my knees, I typically just want to lay in bed with my law books and not do anything with my arms or legs. When I had the surgery, the doctor talked for maybe 2 minutes about vitamins and then moved on. He basically said, “Take a multivitamin and calcium and you’ll be fine.” I did. I wasn’t.

I agree with MeltingMama completely. I would not recommend Roux-en-Y to any healthy, vital, person. If the LapBand had been widely available in 2001, I would have done that. (Caveat: I do believe there is something age-related here. My mother, aunt, and I have all had Roux-en-Y and my mother and aunt aren’t having these problems. My mother had it a year before and my aunt had it two years later. I don’t know why they aren’t facing these issues, but I think there could be an age and/or hormone link since MeltingMama and I are both young women.)

Hopefully this info is helpful to someone out there.