I was one of the nut jobs that went out on Black Friday, only it was to return an item to my local Target store. I was wearing one of my Bariatric Brat “Ask Me About My Gastric Bypass” shirts, and it wasn’t long before I was deep in conversation with a fellow post-op who was visiting from Pennsylvania. We are both past the three-year post-op mark, so we were comparing notes.
I admitted to my “Wonder Woman of Weight Loss” syndrome, where sometimes I find myself thinking that I have been magically cured of my food issues and no longer have to work at losing or maintaining weight (um, wrong!) “Even now I sometimes forget to take my vitamins,” I confessed. “I have to set an alarm in my Treo so I don’t forget.”
Pennsylvania post-op replied, “I don’t even take vitamins anymore. My labs are perfect, and I eat enough now so that I get everything that I need through my food sources.”
I was intrigued. “Wow, you are lucky. My calcium is usually the first thing that suffers. Who told you that you have perfect labs?”
“My internist. She is very pleased with my weight loss results as well,” he said.
“What does your bariatric surgeon say about your labs? I only ask because what an internist considers normal for things like iron and B12 are actually abnormally low for malabsorptive bariatric post-ops. And calcium labs can give false positives, too. Post-ops need to make sure that they have something called a PTH Intact done.”
“What is it? I’ve never heard of a PTH test,” said he.
I replied, “It’s a test that shows the level of parathyroid hormone in your blood. If the results are high, that means that your body is not getting enough calcium from food and supplement sources so it is leeching what it needs from your bones. So a normal calcium result could actually be masking an abnormal condition. That’s why it is so important to maintain at least an annual relationship with your surgeon because deficiencies like these are foremost in their mind.”
His jaw dropped. “You are kidding me.”
“No,” I said. “I wish I were kidding.”
We talked a little more and eventually went our separate ways. I am hoping that enough of an impression was made so that he will get back on his bariatric-formulated vitamins. I felt good that I was able to help someone to hopefully maintain the good health that they worked so hard to achieve through weight loss surgery. And that good feeling lasted a whole ten minutes, until my foot was run over by a Camry in the parking lot.
But that’s another story.
