Hi all,

New to the forum, I have read your postings for a couple of weeks and it has been a great source of information for me during my decisionmaking. I live in Sweden and health care works a lot different here (available for everyone and not based on insurance). When it comes to bariatric surgery however, only BMI +35 will be paid for by government and process can be extremely slow. I have investigated and decided on a Sleeve instead of GBP and this is only available privately. So both my choice of surgery and my "low" BMI (33) means I will have to pay myself. I met the surgeon a couple of weeks ago for a consultation and I now have my operation date set to 1st November. :scared0: I could go on forever describing my background as overweight, yo-yo dieting etc etc, but I'm sure you all know it already. Basically, I've decided that 20 years of dieting is enough. I want to spend my 40th birthday (next year) being normal weight and healthy! I find it difficult to understand that an operation will be the solution, but the surgeon gave me the statistics which convinced me. So, decision is made, now I just got a couple of weeks of being scared to look forward to; I'm scared of going into the operation and not wakeing up again, I'm scared of complications post-op and I'm scared of not knowing who I'll be once I'm not overweight anymore. :confused1:

So, lots of stupid questions will probably be coming your way in the next couple of weeks.

Welcome and congratulations on doing your research and trying to make informed decisions. I too decided that even with my lower BMI I was ready to lose this weight and actually have the tools to keep it off. My bmi is close to yours so I can feel ya. There are some really great people on this site that have tons of advice and solid information/references. So ask away.