Gastric-bypass patients' journey marked by success _ and pain.

Byline: Nick Perry

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'I wake up every morning in tears. ... I can't stand it. I wish I could go back in a time travel machine to three months ago and not have the surgery.'

_Jessica Loos in an April Web journal entry

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SEATTLE _ In many ways, Leo and Jessica Loos have experienced stunning success after undergoing gastric-bypass surgery Jan. 23. The Seattle couple each lost about a pound every day for the first four months, an ounce of fat melting away every 90 minutes.

Leo can feel sensation in his thighs for the first time in years because a nerve near his hip is no longer compressed by his excess weight. He has dropped from 387 pounds before surgery to 235 pounds now. Jessica has gone from 323 pounds to 202. The contours of their faces have emerged from a padding of fat.

They continue losing weight at a steady rate. The doctors who stapled and sliced each of their stomachs into a pouch the size of a golf ball expect the couple's weight will stabilize by next January. Already Jessica has been officially upgraded from "morbidly obese" to simply "overweight," and Leo is not far behind.

Yet neither patient had expected the severe complications that Jessica, in particular, would endure. In late March she began dry-heaving and lost her appetite. She was hospitalized three times, the third time for 10 days. On her final visit, doctors discovered she was vitamin deficient, her heart was racing at 153 beats per minute and she was so dehydrated her brain had begun shrinking.

During those dark hours, Jessica faced the prospect of undergoing delicate surgery to remove her staples and reattach the tiny…