Hi, everyone.

My mom and I are very close. She recently had gastric bypass and I feel like we aren't close anymore. She had surgery in August. I have been there for her through every diet, a hard fight against diabetes, a fight against an insurance company and the surgery itself.

Over the last two to three weeks, my mom has hurt my feelings more than she ever has in my life. There are a lot of different things that I could use as examples, but here's one. She ignores phone calls, e-mails or texts from me. If she wants something, she texts or e-mails me repeatedly and wants an immediate response. I was at dinner with friends last week and her e-mails were like, "Where are you? Why aren't you answering me??" but she could barely acknowledge my birthday last week. It's just weird.

I just feel like her personality has changed with this surgery. It makes sense. Her whole life has changed. Her lifestyle is changing. I just wonder how to support her. I have tried to address this with her several times and her response is to cry, act upset and threaten to not go on a family vacation.

I guess what I am looking for is someone who has had this surgery who can tell me what you're going through. I feel like I am not able to understand from her perspective and I am having a hard time expressing mine to her without conflict.

I am so proud of her and happy for her and I want to make things better.

Anyone?

Just a suggestion- if you can't say it to her then I'd write it in an email and send it to her.

Good luck- I'm sure she's going through a lot but it's hurtful to feel someone only contacts you when they need you.

I've not gone through wls, but I have had similar issues with my weight loss over the decades, especially with very low calorie diets.

In my experience, very low calorie diets wreak havoc on emotional stability, and with wls, you're stuck on that rollercoaster with no way to get off. At least on starvation diets, when I finally noticed I was being a b****, I could eat more to become human again. WLS patients really don't have that option.

I'm normally not a mean, nasty person, but blood sugar spikes and dives can turn me into a moster. I lose best on low-carb, but when I go "too low" I get very crabby and have an extremely short fuse. Hubby will notice it before I do (in my mind, it's him that's being a bigger jerk than usual, for no apparent reason).

As horrible as my issues can be, I can't even imagine what wls would do to me. There's not only the blood sugar rollercoaster from the low calorie level, there's also all the physical, emotional, and physiological changes, not to mention just the recovery and healing process itself.

It's going to take months for her to adjust to all the changes, so I think just realizing that she IS on a rollercoaster can help.

I have to disagree with kaplods - not EVERYONE who's had the surgery has a blood sugar rollercoaster. and not everyone has major personality changes. very low calorie diets and WLS are NOT the same thing from a physiological perspective, especially if we're talking about gastric bypass or duodenal switch.

ok. now, having got that out of the way. Randi - your mom has had to change her relationship with food, and that means that she's probably having to change the way she reacts to EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. is the weight falling off of her or is she sort of stuck? can you tell if she's meeting her protein and water goals? taking her vitamins? going to support groups? keeping her doc appts?

the reason i'm asking is that the more the answer is NO to those Qs, the more serious her issues are - from the perspective of her ability to control her life.

OTOH, if she's keeping up with all that STUFF above, then she's probably got the head game going on - the 'how can i cope with a life where i can't eat my emotions' issues.

my suggestion - after you try the gentle email beerab suggested - and maybe after the two of you have some gentle, loving chats in NEUTRAL territory - is to find a therapist. yeah - i know it sounds weird. this doesn't mean that either of you is nuts [at least not about THIS ]. we're talking about your mom finding a different path for coping and you to find out what your 'new' mom is like.

it's not really a personality change - it's more that what she's been literally swallowing with food is coming out [awful visual there, i know - and i apologize].

just a few thoughts. BTW, i felt angrier for awhile - until i realized that it was only the anger i ALWAYS had but swallowed. i figured out how to manage it differently. knitting helped me. so did exercise. here's hoping that your mom will find her path through this. it might take a couple of tries, but ti's well worth the effort.

Thank you, everyone, for your advice.

I had a long talk with my mom last night and we certaintly didn't resolve everything, but I understand a lot more of what she is going through.

I think that she doesn't have food to cope anymore and she is dealing with a lot of things she has been avoiding for years. She shared some of that with me and while it was painful to hear, it was helpful to know where she is coming from.

JiffyPop, I don't find the idea of therapy weird at all! Mom and I have both been going for years. I go to one where I live and she goes to hers. I told her last night maybe the next time I visit home, we can go to hers together. I would like to work on how we communicate.

Thanks for the support, everyone!

And JiffyPop, your stats are FANTASTIC!

In absolutely no way whatsoever, not for a single second did I mean to imply that weight loss surgery or low calorie diets inevitably result universally in personality changes for everyone. Not only did I not mean personality changes would be inevitable, I also did not mean that changes, even if they occurred, would inevitably be permanent.


My point was only that any drastic physiological change can have emotional consequences that can affect a person's behavior and outlook, their "personality" could be different. Heck a good toothache can do the same (I recently had a tooth pulled after having to endure three months of severe pain to afford the pull, you can bet it affected my personality). So I'm just saying that it's perfectly understandable that op's mother might not be her "normal self" so soon after major surgery, and that the recovery process itself, as well as the physiological changes the surgery causes, and the adaptations and changes to her life might reasonably and understandably be affecting her behavior and even "personality."

I'm just suggesting that if a person does undergo personality changes in such circumstances, that their friends and family might consider cutting the person a little slack while they adjust to all of the changes.

Kaplods, I think those are great points and I appreciate the persepctive.