I am Maribel, and I want to share my experience of how I went from complete bitterness and despair to the state of happiness and emotional balance that I am in now since July 11, 2014.

I am a very organized person, who needs to have everything under control, and the dietary imbalance I was subjecting myself to made me feel very bad and caused me a great sense of absolute failure, which led to an anxiety that overwhelmed me and made me spiral down.

Before my surgery, I weighed almost 103 kilograms. I know there are many people in the same situation I was in, and thanks to the gastric bypass surgery performed by Dr. Carmen Hernández, her support, her advice, and the way she and her team guided me, along with my family’s support and my own effort, I have managed to overcome this. And if I could do it, anyone facing the same situation can too. Now I weigh 43 kilograms less, I’ve regained my health, the desire to be present, confidence, and I believe in myself again.

I was afraid of the surgery, not due to a lack of information, because Dr. Hernández explained everything to me: it was a minimally invasive surgery, the steps that would be taken, that I would be back to normal life in no time, the recovery would be very quick as would the satisfaction, and it was exactly as she had explained. But I was afraid of the unknown, of whether I would be able to do it right, of failing… I was afraid of myself and of not being able to succeed… I quickly lost the fear and had to believe because by following the guidelines one by one, step by step, everything was much easier than I could have imagined.

The support of the family is very important, and the whole family must be involved since you have made a decision that will be definitive; you have decided to change and to bet on yourself, and if you feel supported by your loved ones, everything is easier to face, more pleasant, more bearable. Seeing how you change and how your family takes pride in your effort and your “success” makes you feel very confident that you have done the best thing, and the feeling of “well done” is shared among everyone, which, at least for me, was and is very important.

It’s been almost 2 years since my surgery, and I still find myself surprised when I look at myself some mornings, I have not yet gotten used to being another person, both physically and psychologically, and I like that, I don’t want to get used to it, I want to keep being pleasantly surprised, or meeting people who haven’t seen me for a long time and have them struggle to recognize me, and it’s not out of vanity; it’s to see that I have achieved and maintained it, and that encourages me to keep going.