My Previous Story

Hello: My Name is Christina and this is the story of why I decided to take the chance of having a Gastric Bypass and how the process was since the very beginning.

I hope that this will help the people that like myself are going through the process and are nervous of what is it coming next.

I come from a family with a lot of cardiac problems, almost every member of my mom's side family have had something , my grandfather and grandmother died from heart problems, my mom and two of her brothers have had triple heart bypass; my father died from a massive heart attack too.

I always struggle with my weight, I was able to loose some pounds and then I gained them again. The years went by and when I reached 34 I had my first problem. A huge heart attack. The doctor said I was lucky of surviving it, because when you are young, the heart gets crazy without knowing what to do after a heart attack and most of the time in gets so crazy that it breaks apart. That is in clear English what the doctor told me in medical terms. LOL

I kept living with a bunch of medications every day, and of course taking care of myself. On 1998 I moved to America (L.A. California) and got married here. After a couple of years of waiting my husband and I decided that it was time to have a baby, and of course knowing my heart condition we needed the Cardiologist authorization. My Cardiologist is part of a group (South California Heart Specialists). Dr. Stephen J. Soldo who has been not only my cardiologist but also my friend listening to all my sadness and worries. Anyway, Dr. Soldo ran a few tests to see if I was going to be able to carry a baby and after a while he said what I was afraid to hear; "NO". My heart was too weak to handle a baby. So after a big depression we decided to go for adoption. But that's another story.

On 2003 I had pneumonia and while in the hospital the doctor said I was almost becoming diabetic. To be honest I didn't paid attention to it and I did became diabetic. By that time I was about 270 lbs already. They sent me home and I kept living with some extra pills on daily basis.

On October 2005 I was about 290 lbs, I started feeling some chest discomfort. Knowing how that was because my own experience and my mom's I call Dr. Soldo right away, and he asked me to go to see him the next morning. He sent me to the Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, Ca. to have an angiogram, he needed to see what was going on inside of my heart.

Dr. Soldo did the angiogram (or he tried) but my arteries were blocked and he couldn't get in. That was bad news. He came to my hospital room and talked to me and my husband and he said I needed a bypass surgery, three of my arteries were totally blocked, I could have died any minute.

I said ok, I'll come back next week LOL, but Dr. Soldo said it will have to be the following morning. To be honest I didn't even think about it, I just trusted him and said ok go ahead. He introduced me to the surgeon. Dr. Robert Gottner.

Dr. Gottner practices Cardiothoracic Surgery, General Surgery, and Thoracic Surgery and he is famous for doing heart transplants. Anyway, I had my surgery, I recovered from it and gained a lot of weight since then because I have been mostly sedentary. now I'm 314 lbs. and ready to go for my Gastric Bypass.