"It has been a long journey for me, and I wasn't in the mental state I am today or I probably wouldn't have had the surgery," said Cates. "I thought it was going to be my magic bullet."

Cates was just over 400 pounds at the time of her surgery. Cates remembers how scared she was the night before her surgery. Everyone had went home and she laid there alone and frightened. She called every member of her family wanting just one person to tell her that she was okay the way she was and that she did not have to have the surgery.

"I just wanted one person to say, 'I will come and get you', but each of them did what they thought was best and encouraged me and told me that God was going to take me through it -- but what I heard was, 'Doing this is better than staying the way you are, even if you die trying.' I know they did the best they knew to do at the time. They didn't realize that I was scared to death that I was going to die on the operating table."

Cates lost 100 pounds from her WLS over a period of nine months. "After a year I began to be able to eat just a bit more and I started gaining small amounts of weight," she said.


She went back to her doctor and he admonished her to eat smaller portions -- in other words, DIET!

Cates remembers that many times after her surgery, food would get stuck in her esophagus on the way down and either her husband or one her children would have to beat on her back to make the food move down.

Cates, who is now just over 500 pounds, says she has been approached by doctors to have the surgery again, claiming that it has been improved and that the risks are less.

"One doctor told me that he would help me get down to 400 pounds and then perform the surgery. Why would I have the surgery if I could loose 100 pounds in the first place?" ask Cates.

On the way to an interview with Entertainment Tonight (ET), Cates said she and the New York weight loss surgeon the show had hired happened to be in the elevator together. She explained to him that she was healthy.

"I told him that I felt like I would be testing God if I were to have the surgery again," Cates said. "To me, it would be the same as going out and standing in front of a bus and saying, 'God if you are there, save me.' And I don't feel like I have ask God to prove himself in that manner. I have had the surgery once and I made it through it. I won't put myself through it again."

After talking to Cates, the surgeon told her that she seemed healthy and had a great attitude and he would not recommend that she have the surgery. Cates remembers, "This was not what the producers of ET were looking for, or what they wanted the doctor to tell her."

Cates, 57, said she has had two very close friends die of complications from WLS.

"One friend's body could no longer handle potassium and calcium, plus she didn't loose much weight from the surgery. She died of liver failure." She continues, "My other friend never left the hospital, he died of staple infection. He was on 47, left a wife and two children."

Cates is concerned that there are no long-term studies on WLS. She says that one of the reasons there are no studies is because they are continually improving the surgeries, and are no longer concerned about the people who have had the older type of surgeries.

Cates says she is now experiencing digestive problems she believes are due to her WLS, she also has two intestinal hernias for which she needs to have upper GI tests performed but has been told that there are no tables in the Dallas area that will hold her 525 pounds. The weight limit on the table is 500 pounds.

Cates continues to help in the fight for self-esteem at every size.