Wednesday

It's happening all over, now. Fat? Let's rearrange your innards a little. Knife please.

All power to the people who are having bariatric surgery, and to those who market it so agressively. (It's all over the Internet, you know.) But it's not for me.

Gastric bypass. Just the name sounds inviting. 'Bypass' it all, that's the solution. Create a small pouch in the stomach, then detour around the rest of it and the first chunk of intestine.

My problem is not with the risks of the procedure (very low, with a laparoscopic approach). I don't think we have a lot of data about long-term effects yet, which is troubling, but that in itself wouldn't stop me having surgery.

I worry about the economic incentives for hospitals to be performing these procedures. Bariatric surgery is big business now. I dislike any surgery on spec which has such a powerful economic motivation behind it. That's hardly atypical these days; any number of cosmetic and elective surgeries fit the same description. Still, it makes me wary.

What really bothers me is that we haven't yet found a way to stop children and young people from becoming obese in the first place. We now have a significant and growing surgical infrastructure designed to 'cure' the morbidly obese -- at least, those among us who can afford it -- but no real idea of reducing the number of people who develop the condition. Trust me, general practitioners and nutritionists saying 'diet and exercise' doesn't work.

There is a deep-set, insidious, intractable failure of our communities, our families, to handle what is happening. We are beginning to abdicate responsibility, to stand aside for someone else to alter our plumbing in the name of recovery. We become too desparate, and finally too tired.

I will not arrive at the hospital with a smile and an 'incise here' mark on my belly. There is a greater responsibility at stake, for those of us affected to discover more. Why did we become this way? How can we prevent the next generation from undergoing worse hardship because we were not prepared to face ourselves?

1 comments:

Tish said...

"I will not arrive at the hospital with a smile and an 'incise here' mark on my belly."


I'm very happy to hear that.

Post a Comment