JRyan

My story is kind of long I guess, but I'll write it up anyway.  
     Back in February, I had what turned out to be a nearly two week flu.  Towards the end of it, I finally decided to go to the doctors.  I am 27, and went to my pediatrician till I was 21 out of sheer laziness.  So I had to sign up for this new doctor's office, and after going in to find out I had the flu, my new doctor told me to come back in two weeks to get a full check up.  Upon my return, my poor sleeping came into discussion, and was told I could possibly have some version of sleep apnea, so we scheduled an overnight sleep study the town over.  After the sleep study, I got my results, Severe sleep apnea.  While the doctor was telling me of the standard treatment for this, which is the CPAP machine, he brought up a new study going on at the Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston.  The study was designed to see if it was better for someone who has sleep apnea (and is over weight) to be put on the CPAP machine OR have the person have bariatric weight loss surgery and lose the weight and see how their apnea gets.  I signed up for the program, just thinking that I would get the CPAP machine, I had never thought about getting surgery.  I have always been a "big" guy, but I never thought it bad enough to need surgery.  But i signed up anyway, and shockingly ended up being randomly selected for the bariatric arm of the study.  So the morning of May 11th, I found out i was having LapBand surgery on July 5th.  Needless to say, it was a fast paced couple months.
        Being that I didn't intentionally go looking for this, I was apprehensive about having this procedure.  I spent almost two weeks with this in my head and didn't tell anyone, I guess i was embarrassed for some reason.  I was very nervous about the procedure or what people would think about me getting it.  But after finally telling my room mate, I realized I had nothing to be ashamed of.  So I started slowly telling people who were important to me, everyone was so supportive, I was amazed.  
     The personnel that are part of the coordinating study have been a great help, the study supervisor, the surgeon Dr. Tavakkoli or Dr. T, everyone else.  It made going through the process up to the surgery so much easier.  Also, friends and family have been amazing.  I'm am currently one week post surgery, and getting back to normal.  I am excited for the months to come and to progress into this new lifestyle I am coming into.