ain't it?

[fflo]

This morning Loved One A writes that Loved One A is trying to talk Loved One B into "the lap-binding procedure instead of gastric bypass."

I hopped on the e-mail to Loved One B so fast there may have been smoke coming from where my fingers were hitting the keyboard.

I'm pretty sure Loved One B is not going to agree to mutilation. But not sure enough not to set aside Other Things There to get my arse right on it.

Plus Loved One B had just been touchingly loving earlier.

Shit is so complicated sometimes.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Eep.

I've been following the trials and tribulations of an LJ friend's lap-band and post-lap-band experiences. And complicated is the word.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I'll second that Eep! Sorry to hear of your friend.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been following the trials and tribulations of another LJ friend's post-I-forgot-which-kind-of-anti-fat-surgery, and she's already been hospitalized twice for emergency follow-up surgery for life-threatening complications. And has had similar complications since the last surgery that she hasn't seen a doctor about yet, because she doesn't have health insurance anymore. If she dies of untreated complications, I'm going to have a very difficult time not suddenly dropping my general opposition to the death penalty and demanding that everyone everywhere who had any connection to causing that surgery to be performed on her be hanged. She was a kid who didn't even really want the surgery in the first place, whose parents talked her into it.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

This is an adult who seems to have made the choice of her own free will. The whole thing was effective, in the sense that she was too sick to eat for some number of months (I came in in the middle--I don't know if it was over a year). She seemed pleased with the whole thing, aside from the complications, and the emergency surgury to remove it. And the scarring. And how weird it was to suddenly be seen as attractive, and the way she is now gaining weight back since the thing was removed.

That sounds sarcastic, but it isn't. It clearly has a down side, but she also felt it had an up side. It was her decision, made freely, and her right to see it how she chooses, as a good choice, as a mixed result, as a mistake. or as a risk whose ultimate outcome is yet to be seen.

In other words, it is complicated.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I won't quibble with the free will part, though I kinda wanna offer complications on that point involving cultural input. Something like that it's not a level playing field for decision making, if you're not actively working really hard to resist (what i consider) bogus presumptions hammered home every bloody day six ways from Sunday and that's no exaggeration. And she has a right to choose to see it how she wants, sure. That "suddenly to be seen as attractive" part is just about ripping my heart out, though. What won't people do to "enjoy" participation in a system that considers them (us), untransformed, just about the worst of the worst? I guess you could be fat AND a leper, but then you'd probably lose weight and be able to be relatively attractive, for a while, to some. Who am i kidding: to many, relatively to when you were still fat.

Maybe they could vary leprosy genetically just enough to get a patent and bring about weight loss with it. Or some other disease. Which wasting disease has the fewest complications, I wonder? Statistically/financially? And could require repeated dosaging?

Okay, I'm both angry and drunk, and not constructing great arguments. But that's not why the gods made blogs. Not this blog, anyway. Fuckin' A! Roaarrrrrrrrrr!!

@&*%#.

What I'm saying is that the question "intentional mutilation: good idea?" is about as complicated to me as "yankees and yankee fans: love 'em?" Which is to say: not complicated.

In the face of an actual human being who's gone through it, or who debates going through it, yeah, that's complicated. But, I think just now, it's tragic, no matter how it goes down. And one big tragedy is, when the poor sucker dies or has a terrible quality of life afterwards, that people will decry that the person suffered so from the horrible scourge of fat that this thing was so tragically necessary.

It's not moving me over to support the death penalty, as it does queerbychoice, but it does infuriate me.

Fury. Furious.

Furiosity.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Drunk or not, you mnaged to say everything I wanted to say here, except even better than I would have said it.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

. . . And you also managed to have a noticeably lower rate of typos per sentence than I did!

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm both angry and drunk, and not constructing great arguments.

For angry and drunk you are bringing up worthy points and constructing cogent arguments.

I would argue them, probably with less vigor than you, to someone indimated to me that they were considering such surgery. I would refrain from arguing them to someone who has undergone such surgery.

I'd also like to clarify that my comment was arguing that there is a difference between a young person pressured personally from all sides to have this done, and a middle-aged adult immersed in a culture that is weight-obsessed, but still shows ambivalence to these surgical measures.

You have convinced me that the difference may be smaller than I thought, but there is a difference.

But believe me, I appreciate your argument that it is hard to live in a culture where people who look like me are considered defective.

Frankly if it were nothing more than Russian roulette, with five chambers with the magic bullet of no longer being deemed defective, and one chamber with a lead bullet for an easy exit, no complications, well, hand me the pistol.

I don't believe that's the real nature of the game. I don't believe weight loss would suddenly render me no-longer-defective in the eyes of this culture (Hell, just insisting on living without cats, dogs, or gods pretty much eliminates me from consideration by at least 95% of women). I think the side effects of a successful result are gruesome, let alone the unsuccessful side effect. But it would be my choice to take foolish risks to live up to the culture's expectations. My culture is my world, and I cannot escape it. Just as one has a right to rebel against it, one has the right to aquiesce.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I hear you, Peter. Agreed, on that last line. Bummer on the pistol game, but hardly a shock; I'da pulled that trigger pretty much any time up until not so very long ago, and there are still days now I might.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

What.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

What what.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

What what what.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Exactamundo.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

ugh.

what is a "lap-binding procedure"?

i do hope A has nothing tied up inside. it's not good.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

it's "banding," not "binding." though it's plenty binding, i'm sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_gastric_band

from that article:

Documented adverse effects

[From the FDA website]

Band & Port Specific

* Band slippage/Pouch dilation
* Esophageal dilatation/dysmotility
* Erosion of the band into the gastric lumen
* Mechanical malfunctions - port leakage, cracking of the kink-resistant tubing or disruption of the tubing connection from the port to the band
* Port site pain
* Port displacement

Digestive

* Nausea and/or vomiting
* Gastroesophageal reflux
* Stoma obstruction
* Constipation
* Dysphagia
* Diarrhea
* Abnormal stools / Constipation

Body as a whole

* Abdominal pain
* Asthenia
* Death
* Infection
* Fever
* Hernia
* Pain
* Chest pain
* Incisional infection
* Incision pain

Miscellaneous

* Abnormal healing
* Alopecia

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

gruesome it all is.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I love how "death" is just sort of casually thrown into the middle of the list. Cripe! That's scary!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

that's EXACTLY what i was thinking!

sometimes, Willie, i swear--- either great minds run on the same track, or you and i are the same Cancerian brand of fool... ;)

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I think that Loved One A needsto lay off. I would figure that Loved One A is with Loved One B because she loves what's inside. And if that's indeed the case, then asking Loved One B to mutilate himself because she's not entirely satisfied with what's on the outside is just plain wrong. (Or I'm way off base.)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

well, it's that health concern that always crops up. i wanna put quotation marks around that, but to do so seems to go a little far in the other direction. there are also issues of what B enjoys doing, and how that might change for what A thinks is the better if only B changed... but i do believe i don't need to suggest to you what's (also) being communicated with that kind of love.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

check this out: http://sprig5.livejournal.com/75909.html

is it lap-binding or lap-banding?

i now think it's the latter: http://www.northshorelij.com/body.cfm?id=3321

you must have been thinking of a heinous historical chinese practice, fflo.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yeah, my typo

i ain't lookin' at the video barbarism either

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

there was also a link to a youtube video when i searched google for lap-banding, but i forwent (?) the pleasure.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

my two cents: no, no, no.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

your cents are the same as my cents

we have sense

only isn't that three cents? no, no, no... :]

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

i always give more than is sensible!