Here in Southern California, we have a prominent talk radio personality who went through GB. His name is Bill Handel and I think he's pretty funny - no holds barred, tell it like it is. (Some people do believe he is a little offensive, but that's not relevant to this piece)
Anyway, Bill had GB two years ago and this year. He started out at 300+ pounds. After he lost the weight, he talked about the experience on his show. Even though it's about GB, I think a lot of it is relevant for us too. (His description of the bowel prep and post-surgery gas pains are especially...ahem...realistic.) And he talks about his wife's reaction (She was one of the ones who said GB was the "easy way out.") I was planning to have my surgery at the same place but had yet another insurance crisis yesterday and had to choose a new medical group. AGAIN.
Anyway, it's pretty interesting, so if you've got a high-speed connection, you can listen to it here:
http://www.centinelafreeman.com/memo...ces/BillHandel
Oh!and one thing I thought was interesting was he had a doctor come on the air and talke about the statistics and why health insurance companies are willing to pay for the surgery. One thing he said was was about a study of obese people. He said of all the morbidly obese people in the study who had considered GB and decided not to do it,
6 years later, 20% of them were dead. 
Of the morbidly obese people who went through GB,
9 years later only 6% had died. (I think I wrote it down correctly.) I'm sure there are other factors such as age, comorbidities, lifestyle, etc. that impacted the outcome, but that's a pretty freakin' scary statistic and probably even scarier when compared against the percent of people who die after being banded!
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