 Hi YouTube family! I promised you guys that I was going to do a Q&A about my bariatric bypass surgery and so I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna answer a few of your questions and I want to make sure that I cover as much as I can. There were several on Facebook and there were several also on Instagram so I don't know if I'm gonna get to everything today but I'm gonna cover as much as I can so that you guys have all the information that you are best me for. So I want to start off with one of the questions. This is from one of my subscribers. Her name is Cynthia and she asks, I'm very curious about why you chose Mexico and what and the complications. Okay, I had done all of my research about having the surgery here in the United States. My insurance will not cover it. It is a disclaimer or an optional surgery and so I wanted it really bad and I had researched it for so long and every doctor was right around $20,000 and I don't have $20,000 and my sister actually works in a big warehouse and about eight of the women, seven, eight of the women somewhere in there, had gone down to Mexico and done this so she got me in touch with one of her good friends that had done this and so then she put me in touch with that clinic down there and then I began to research that clinic and what I found out and it's really interesting is that this particular doctor that works with them, he has a better tract record than the seven, I think I researched seven different, eight different doctors here in the States. He has a better tract record than they did. I also wanted to make sure that it was clean. It was safe. It was all those things, you know, what did they do? Are they as up to date as they are here in the States? So it was a long-term research for me to be able to do that and as far as this one goes, you have blood work to go through, you do have to talk to nutritionists and of course, speak with the doctor and have consults with the doctor and since I was in fairly good health, I don't have diabetes, I don't have heart problems, those kinds of things. I felt fairly confident with the choice of going down there and like I said, his tract record more than anything, there are bad clinics down there in Tijuana in Mexico. There are clinics that do have problems. There's one that's been on the news where seven different people have died because their clinic has bacteria. This clinic that I went to was very clean, was very professional and I just didn't have to pay that. You know, $20,000 was not something I had to pay. Now, what did I pay? I had bypass and I paid $5,400. So quite a bit less. If you're doing sleeve, I think it was around $4,500. But your BMI has to be at a certain point. I'm going to link below the actual bariatric clinic and then if you have any questions about any of that, it will tell you. This clinic does not do any plastic surgery. They don't do the lap band, any of that kind of stuff just so you guys know. Now, what did my doctor say? This is my actual personal family physician that I've been going to for years and when I told him, he said, really, congratulations and he was so excited for me. He told me that a few years ago, he had been at a conference for surgeons and he had gone to a lecture where the keynote speaker was one of the premier or foremost bariatric surgeons in the United States that has an actual humongous clinic in Miami and that's where lots of people go to get their bariatric surgery in the states because it's just renowned for how wonderful it is. And somebody raised their hand and asked this bariatric doctor, what do you think about all these US citizens going down to Mexico and getting bariatric surgery? And he said, you know what? It's fine. They're doing good. He said, there is no problem with it. The complications that happen could happen in the United States just as easily. He said, most of these clinics are very thorough and very good. And so I was so pleased with that and that's the reason that I went ahead with that. My doctor was so positive with me and I'm so blessed to have him as my doctor. So I hope that you guys, if any of you decide that, that you get that same kind of reaction from your doctor, because he's being so supportive with me in my aftercare and taking care of it. Now, let's talk about the complication that I had. That was actually a bowel blockage and it happened seven days post-op. And I went in, I was vomiting, I had, you know, couldn't wasn't passing anything through the other way. And I was just sick pain, so much pain. And they did a CAT scan, found it. And I was in there crying because I thought like you guys do, this happened because I went to Mexico and there was a nurse in there that actually had gone to Mexico and he had had it done too. And he was doing fine and no complications whatsoever. So actually healthcare professionals and while I was down there, there was two or three nurses down there having it done too. So they're doing it down there because of cost and because of, you know, you can't get it done here in the States, like I said, unless you jump through all the hoops. So my nurses and my doctor said, you know what, this is a particular complication that could happen to anybody that has any abdominal surgery. It can happen anytime without having abdominal surgery. When you get bypassed, you actually get your small intestine joined to a different part of your intestine. So you have less small intestine to absorb less food. So that happened. And right there at that juncture, it had kinked. And that is a very common complication. Sometimes it happens quickly in the post op. Sometimes it happens later, but it had kinked. And all they had to do was unkink it, clean up some of the scar tissue that had begun to form. And it was fine after that. So the second surgery, even though I was scared, and I had to go through another surgery so quickly, it really was very common. It wasn't a complication that happened because of Mexico. So I hope that answers that question. Okay, another person asked about having a doctor look at me after I had the surgery done in Mexico, because she had heard that doctors won't look at you. And of course, like I just told you, my doctor was very cooperative, very, just very bubbly and happy for me, which I was so blessed with. But when I went to the emergency room, they were equally as understanding. I only had one doctor over when I was transferred over to a bigger hospital in Seattle, asked me why Mexico. And I told him that and he said, that's understandable. So in getting aftercare or getting care that I needed because, you know, I was in trouble, it wasn't a problem. Everybody that I have run into has been so professional and so caring. And really, if you go to an ER, they can't turn you away. That is the law. They can't turn you away. If you are in need of care, they can't just send you home and say, well, you've been operated on Mexico. I can't touch you. That, that just doesn't happen. Now, some doctors, personal physicians, I'm sure can turn you away and refuse care. If they're in a private clinic, they can do that. But as far as the hospital goes and that kind of care, urgent care, that kind of stuff, they can't turn you away. So just so you know that and, and you might run across a few doctors that are really nasty. I, I haven't heard of that yet, but I know that there are some. Okay, somebody asked me about the language barriers in Mexico. All of the people that you deal with, except for a few of my nurses, actually speak really good English and Spanish. There was a couple nurses where they weren't understanding me. I wasn't understanding them, but the team, the actual team that I went with, it's actually called Medical Tourism. If you guys don't know what that is, go ahead and look it up. Medical Tourism is the term. So there is facilitators that actually help you facilitate between the hospital and you, um, what you're going to do. So what happened was you pay your money and you are, you are responsible for your flight itself. You get down to San Diego. I live in Washington, so I flew to San Diego. And then one of those facilitators picked us up at the airport. And at the airport, he spoke beautiful English. He was really great, beautiful car. We go across the border and we were, I was taken directly to the hospital because I had same day surgery. So I had surgery later on that night. Now as soon as I got to the hospital, there was that facilitator. There was an English speaking person there that could translate from Spanish all the time. And lots of times when the nurses would do their rounds, this English speaking person would come in and she would translate for you. So if at any time you need a translator, she is right there. Now there might be times when she was busy with other patients, but I do know that this particular doctor refuses to overbook. So I, I want to say there was like eight rooms. So in three days or so, there was about eight of us in there. And there's some, when you have the sleeve, you're a little bit quicker. When you have the bypass, you're in there for a little bit longer. He's not like overbooking so much that these translators are overwhelmed and can't help everybody. They were really good about translating. There was a couple of times when it was a little bit hard for me to make them understand what was going on. I had a really hard, the only thing that was hard down there was I was a hard stick. And I have heard that other people have talked about that they need to get a little bit better about giving IVs down there. But in the end, the IVs ended up being okay. I did have some bruising on one hand from some infiltration from the meds. That lasted a few weeks, but my hand is back to normal now and that's fine. So really, the only complaint that I had about down there was the IVs. It wasn't about talking to them or making them understand or anything like that. They were still on top of things with pain and everything like that. Okay, had a lot of people ask about what I ate before and what I ate after. Okay, so to get to my weight, which was huge, I definitely was more but Leo Beast. To get to that weight, I ate crap 24-7. I was just sugar junkies, sugar addict, all those things you want to talk about. I, they did want you to go on their pre-op diet for a certain amount of time depending on where your BMI was. My BMI was quite high. They wanted me to be on it for at least four weeks. I decided to go on it for seven, eight weeks somewhere in there. I was really good about it at the four-week mark, but at six weeks I started to adopt some of their things. So I'll just tell you a few of the things that you have to adopt permanently. Okay, so no soda. I can never drink soda again. The bubbles in carbonation kind of pull your stomach or plump your stomach up and you really just can't have that because you could really expand your stomach too much. Drinking through a straw, same thing. You get air when you drink through a straw and you know you can't get the right amount of food in there or the right amount of water in there if it's all full of bubbles. The other thing about carbonated drinks, whether they're artificial sweetener or whether they are regular, is that it still makes you crave and so that's kind of hard too. Caffeine. The pre-op diet, you do stop caffeine. You stop it for a while. Afterwards, I have heard some people say that they allow themselves a cup of coffee like two months post-op or something like that. I have never been a coffee drinker so that was not a big deal for me and I've never been a Pepsi or Coke drinker so same thing. I do miss my sprite, my soda, my diet sodas and stuff because I did used to really enjoy that but it's something that I gave up very fairly easily right from the beginning. The other thing is in the pre-op diet you have to have protein with every meal. They want you to have five to six very very small meals. They went back to that but they said they they want it but they said that they wanted them to be protein-based and so that I adopted almost immediately it's not it's also not high fat. They want your protein to be fairly lean. They want it to be fish, chicken, turkey, lean cuts of pork, very very lean lunch meats. You can do cottage cheese, sometimes legumes, beans for your protein, things like that. I was also doing Greek yogurt, sugar-free Greek non-fat sugar-free non-fat Greek yogurt. So those kinds of things and you could all you can also have fruit on that pre-op diet. You can have vegetables but any fats that you have would be a very very minimal amount and they want you to stick to the good fats. They want you to have olive oil, coconut oil, olives, avocados, walnut oil, that kind of thing. So you wouldn't be getting a lot of the fats that you would be getting in your normal diet and you would be cutting out all processed carbs, all refined carbs, all vegetables that are high in carbs such as corn, peas. Dairy was okay but cheese is not okay. So you would have very low-fat dairy so you could have low-fat cottage cheese, non-fat on the yogurt and the milk. So on the cottage cheese you could have the 2% but you had had non-fat on the other. They do have that all on that website in the Q&A if you want to take a look at that that is there as well. So going post-op the very first three days you're obviously on liquids. After that for a month you're on soft food, puree food almost like you're a baby again because your stomach is healing. So you're on very very soft food. I, any soup I had if I bought a can of soup, you know chicken noodle soup I would put extra protein in that a scoop of protein that doesn't taste like anything and I'd have to puree it. You can have things like a little bit of chicken salad which would be chicken with a little bit of light mayonnaise in it and pureed. Also you can have egg whites they would have to be pureed with a little bit of light mayonnaise in them as well. So that would be that stage and then after a month of being on the pureed stage or the very very soft food stage then you transition into a little bit more solid foods but you're going very slowly. You can have whole eggs at this point. You can have softer meats. One of the things that they tell you is chew your food. You have to chew your food they're telling you at least chew it 20 times in your mouth and then swallow it because then you're already getting that pureed motion with you know chewing and to take your time you have to go really slow. I learned this one the hard way. You have to go really slow when you're eating because you know when you're obese and you eat you don't realize how big a mouthful of stuff you take. I was taking big mouthfuls so now I'm like cutting my meat into little teeny tiny pieces and taking that piece and really you know chewing it a lot and then going ahead and swallowing it. So go slow chew your food really good. That was another one that they told us. I did forget that somebody asked me about the nursing care down there. The nursing care down there was so much more one-on-one that it is here in the States. Now keep in mind that seven days later I went over to Seattle and had nurses take care of me over there so I had that to compare with. The nursing care in Mexico they were so fast about everything whereas in Seattle I had to wait for everything. I felt like they weren't stretched to their capacity like they are in the States you know there's not enough nurses in the United States to go around. We all know this we've all dealt with it. But down there the nurse nursing care they only had a few patients to take care of. I think my nurses I think they had at a maximum of one time three people to take care of. So it was really one-on-one a lot better nursing care. They were very attentive. It didn't matter what happened to me what I needed. They were right there to help me through it and if they couldn't do it they brought somebody else in and it was just really felt like they were on top of their nursing care. So really good nursing care as far as I can as far as I could tell. Also somebody asked me if I was why did the Mexican doctors discharge me if I wasn't stable. I was completely stable. There was nothing wrong with me for another seven days. So the complication that happened happened seven days after it wasn't something that happened while I was down there. So they would not have discharged me if there was anything wrong. One of my gals Laurie asked how I feel about the aftercare. The aftercare program for down there is really designed that anytime you need when you can schedule a conference with the doctor down there like FaceTime or Skype or whatever you need to. So you can actually talk to him one on one if you want to. You actually do have a request of meeting with him a certain amount of times after your surgery too. And my aftercare and the training that they gave me I felt like it was really good. But the other thing is that being the kind of person that I am I read all the time. I read about all the care that I need to have for myself and all the things that I need to do you know having bypass means that you don't absorb as many nutrients as someone that has the sleeve or is the person that doesn't have any surgery at all. So I am on a very strict vitamin regimen which I will be on for the rest of my life. And that is one thing that I had heard from some of you beforehand is that you had had bypass and you hadn't stuck to your vitamin regimen. But I feel very passionately about that I've always felt very passionately about vitamins and that the need that our body doesn't absorb as much from the food that we get because the food is very depleted of vitamins that we get now as the way agriculture is in our day and age. So I felt like I needed to be very proactive. Make sure that you do your research. Make sure that you find that you're very comfortable with it. Make sure that it is right for you. You know you're not just going to a doctor and saying is it okay if I have this because that's the doctor's opinion about you. You know your body better than anybody. So if you feel like it's something that you want to do and you feel like it's something that you want to go forward with research research research dig in know what you're getting into because even the emotional part of it that I'm dealing with now. You know like my family still eats around me and I know that a lot of people are going to say your family needs to be on board. Well that's all well and good but what if you told your your kid you could never have pizza again. You know that's my decision not their decision. So you know it's kind of like you know they're sitting there they're eating their meal and I'm slurping my soup my pureed soup. That's hard. It's really hard. It's also really hard to get used to the thought that those things are not a part of my life anymore because you know when you're overweight when you get to be morbidly obese it is a lot about what's going on between the ears because our brain is so set up to be morbidly obese and to use food as comfort to use food as entertainment to use food as you know soothing whatever we need at the time that's how we get to be morbidly obese we turn to food as our friend and so now we have to think of it as just a tool and that's a whole different mindset and I would highly recommend that if you can't get into some sort of counseling that you definitely get into you know reading books about it what the mindset is and how you can change your feelings about it food because food is really fuel for us it should just be a tool it shouldn't be something that we turn to in a time of need whether you know no matter what it is so that part of my mindset I think I'm going to be working on probably for the rest of my life because you know you don't go 50 years like I've gone with food being your best friend to it being something different without mourning the loss of it or wanting it it's still there those wants are still there so it's just a lot different as far as what I've chosen to do and made my mind up to do so be sure that it's something that you're prepared for that would be my advice about that okay a lot of you asked about extra skin I'm going to have extra skin because I had three C sections I had all three of my babies through C sections so I'm going to have skin I have a pretty good nasty fold there on my stomach which I'm not happy about plus I nursed all three babies so I have saggy boobs so I've thought about it I arms legs yeah I've thought about it I don't know about if I have any plans for that sure I would like to have those things done but I don't know yet because I'm not there you know I'm still 90 pounds away from my goal so I definitely have thoughts of it and as you know I'm starting to lose weight I'm starting to not like that part but I don't really think about it much now there is medical tourism for plastic surgery in Mexico again and a couple of you did ask me about that I don't know about that because the one that I went to they do not offer that I do know that the folks that I dealt with will refer you if you want to I know that it's very expensive in the States again I don't I don't know anything about that down there so I did have a couple questions about that I apologize I haven't researched it that much for me I'm not going to worry about that until this weight comes off and I see where it is now somebody said can exercise help you not have sagging skin that depends on how overweight you were being almost 150 pounds overweight myself I will have sagging skin and like I said I had C-sections I nursed babies I will have that there's no getting around it I don't have very a lot of elasticity to my skin that's another thing you know some people are more genetically prone to have stretch marks and you know skin that stretches out and some people have skin that's very elastic and then just comes back normally naturally after they have a baby I was not one of those fortunate people I have stretch marks everywhere so I you know I'm sure that I will have sagging skin all over exercise will build and tone the muscle underneath the skin it will help some with a person like me that does is going to have a lot of sagging skin but it will not take care of you know the other things and so as I go along if I get brave I will show you my sagging skin and what it is right now I'm not very comfortable with that but you guys know that I'm pretty much an open book so I will probably at some point show you some of you know my arms my sagging arms I'm obviously not going to show you my boobs but you know that kind of thing so definitely something I thought about but I'm not going to you know just stress over right now because I'm just enjoying where I'm at okay some people said do you have to be a certain weight before you can consider this surgery down in the clinic that I went to or down the hospital and the doctor that I dealt with it was about your BMI you have to have a BMI above 30 now some people say well that's going a little bit too low for people it just depends on where you're at my BMI was really high it was almost to the point of being scary so there is a BMI that they hit that they want you to lose weight to get down to but you have to at least have a BMI of 30 so if you've got like you're in the 29 below BMI range they won't do surgery on you because you're just going to lose too much weight and that's you know detrimental the other way so they don't want to do that okay two more questions and then that is just about it I hope I answer everybody's if I don't I apologize just ask me down below and I will make sure that I answer your question in person if you do have any further questions than what I've covered here somebody asked me about my hair falling out I would I do expect that to happen it has started a little bit I'm let's see I'm probably three months since I actually started the actual pre-op diet and by the way I lost approximately 29 to 30 pounds on that pre-op diet about for seven to eight weeks so I lost a good amount then and now I've lost about 30 more pounds post-op and I'm post-op about six six weeks I think so anytime that you go through a trauma and I went through two very drastic surgeries on my abdominal cavity with the bypass and then the complication so anytime you go through trauma anytime you have high stress anytime your body is stressed anytime you have depleted nutrients your hair is one of the first things that goes and so I have started to notice some things I did just do a hair care video where I talked about that a little bit on some shampoo I'm using and Nioxin I'm sorry Minoxidil that I actually use on my hair because I experienced this before last year when I went on a fast to try and lose weight for my daughter's wedding I lost half of my hair volume and no oh my gosh it was so hard but I'm expecting that this time but I feel like I'm more prepared because I know what to expect and I do realize that it will grow back if I have to sacrifice you know a little bit of luminous hair for that period of time I'm okay with that if it does start to you know really really fall out a lot to where you can see my scalp I'm probably going to start wearing a wig but I am I'm ready for that so I'm not too worried about that one and then the last question is what about exercise do they set up any exercise for you or physical therapy they didn't set up physical therapy for me they want you to do a lot of walking before the surgery I was doing I couldn't do very much because I was in pain from my fibromyalgia and all of that and so I was doing two 10 minute walks a day was all I could do and I just was walking outside with my husband my kids my dogs and then just trying to get up and be more active and that is really what they want you to do after surgery too because for three months they don't want you doing anything very strenuous you can do an elliptical and you can do treadmill and probably bicycle I would think too but they don't want you to be super strenuous because you have all this healing going on so you need all of that energy to go into your healing plus afterwards your calorie intake is so down I mean at the beginning you're taking in like 400 calories just to get your stomach used to everything and then you get up to you know I'm in stage two and I probably only eat 800 calories a day at this point it will get more and more as I go on but you know I you have to be really careful because all of your food is going to giving your body just a bit of energy it can't be stressed out by super high exercise or strength training or anything like that he does give you the go ahead to go and do that kind of exercise I believe it's about month three I might be wrong and be month four and that is answered on that website as well so I hope that I answered everybody's questions I know that it was a lot of information I know that I probably didn't and like I said please leave those comments below if you have any more questions I know that so many of you are here that have already been on this journey and I want to say thank you guys so much for helping me with your you know letting me know about your experience because it really did help me have more confidence in what I was going to do and if I can impart that to any of you that are thinking about it then I'm more than happy to do that also so thank you so much for being here with me today if you did enjoy the video please give it a thumbs up I know that it was a little bit longer and I got a little bit windy but there was a lot of things that we needed to talk about that you guys wanted to know about and I do appreciate your patience you guys are the best part of my day I hope that you're all having a wonderful day I love you very much and I'll see you in my very next video take care of yourselves bye-bye