Help others evaluate weight loss surgery as an option for treating their morbid obesity -- tell us your story! Learn how to send us your story.

When making a decision about weight loss surgery, the personal experiences of other patients are sometimes just as important as scientific publications.

These patients have shared their experience and personal success stories with us:

Emily
Since my daughter was born, I decided that I needed to make a change in a big way. I came to Duke Weight Loss Surgery Center with nothing more than curiosity at first. After attending the information session, I was sold that this was the answer I had been looking for.

Sharon
I got tired of watching my family enjoy life. I felt like I was 80 years old. I felt like everybody else was enjoying my children, everybody else was enjoying the company of my husband -- except me. And I hated it. I wanted to live again, and I knew I couldn’t continue to live in this body. So I had to make a choice.

Mark
Mark is a big-time Florida State University football fan, and loves to travel to games. But on a trip to Colorado, Mark couldn’t walk up a hill to get to the stadium, and his friends got really worried. “That was my crisis point,” he says. “I knew I needed to do something.”

Barbara
In 2008, Barbara read that obese older people were more apt to die of problems related to obesity than they were to die of weight loss surgery. Overweight herself, this was the push she needed to find out more.

Priscilla
In her job at a local orthopaedic clinic, Priscilla regularly saw overweight patients with serious knee, foot, and joint problems. But although she was overweight herself, she never saw it as an issue -- until she began struggling with sleep apnea.

Marie-Anntoinette
For years, Marie-Anntoinette tried every plan, diet, exercise regimen, and fad to lose weight. The pounds would come off at first, then come back with some extra in tow. Continually losing her battle with weight profoundly changed Marie-Anntoinette.

Jennifer
By many accounts, Jennifer was a success. She was happily married, the mother of healthy twins, and successful professionally. But by her own measure, Jennifer felt like a failure.