I'm glad to hear that your wife has had good results with the surgery. My best girlfriend had the surgery and has not been as lucky. She had to have the surgery twice as the staples blew out of the first one. She had an absess after the first surgery which required a home health aide coming into her house twice a day to pack and unpack her wound....that means stuffing her OPEN surgery site with over 8 feet of gauze with a very long q-tip to push it into her surgery site and then up from her navel to almost her breastbone. She was incredible pain. Then ulcers developed on the inside and the remaining hanging skin (she lost over 200 pounds) leaves her naked body looking like a theatre curtain. She's down to 125 pounds....her face is all sucked in, her skin hangs, she has ferocious headaches and she is wearing a girl's size 16 (children's...not womens). People tell her she looks sick and she should eat something....but as you have described...she can't. This surgery is a very dangerous thing and is absolutely NOT the easy way out.