My wife, Kriston, and I have struggled with our weights for most of our lives. Over the years we have tried dieting, exercise, medications, and so on….with no luck. A few years ago she started to bring up the idea of weight loss surgery as a possibility. This was an idea that I was dead set against partly for fear of having major surgery and partly because it felt like cheating to me. In my mind, I believed that I should have been able to lose the weight if I really wanted to do so. Kriston continued to bring up the subject. She talked about friends who had had the surgery and how well they were doing with their weight loss. I still resisted the idea until she made the argument that if we didn’t do something about our weight then we might not live to see our daughter grow up and have children of her own someday. That was when I realized that I had to investigate the surgery and what it entailed.

We made an appointment to meet with Dr. Keshishian for an orientation and listened to him as he talked about the problems many people have with weight loss, obesity, genetics, metabolism, what surgeries were available, and the pros and cons of each of them. After meeting him and learning about the surgeries and obesity, I felt very confident that this was the man that could help us with our weight loss struggles. We decided to go with the Duodenal Switch and I scheduled my surgery for June of 2013 and Kriston scheduled hers for November of that same year. We felt this would allow me time to heal and then I would be able to help Kriston after her surgery. I won’t go in to all the details of the surgeries except to say that they both went very well. My recovery was a bit rocky, my wife will say that I was a big baby, but I did recover. I will admit that she was a much better patient than I. Fast forward two years and we are both doing very well. I have lost 180 lbs and Kriston has lost a little over 100 lbs. We look and feel great and we enjoy a much happier and active life style, we even went ocean kayaking last week which is something I could have never done at 370 lbs. This surgery has changed our lives and we could not be happier. We will be forever grateful to Dr. Keshishian, and his incredible staff, for all that they have done to help us become the healthy and happy people we are today.