Hello,

Thank you for visiting my blog. It is my hope that sharing my journey with you will help along yours. I have an amazing surgical team, nutritionist, & exercise physiologist, but I would have loved to have a "go to" person to answer any of my questions and address any concerns. I hope to be that person for you.

A little background about myself. I am a married mother of two children. I have been overweight, obese, and morbidly obese for as long as I remember. I was a yo yo dieter, a fad dieter, a "I WILL DO ANYTHING" dieter, and yet here I am still overweight. My weight has gone up from its highest at 264lbs to its lowest at 170lbs. I underwent Lap Band© in November 2008. I had what all the doctors would consider success, I felt successful. I went from 264lbs to about 175lbs through the course of 2 years. I felt amazing, I was exercising and really enjoying life. I had a few fills here and there trying to find that "sweet spot" we hear so much of. All at once, about four years into my band things started to go sour. I had difficulty eating pretty much anything that wasn't a slip food. By slip food I mean something that would go right through my band, with ZERO difficulty. Slip foods are usually horrilbe foods, ice cream, candy...you know the healthy stuff (sarcasm). If I ate regular food, healthy food, pretty much everything at somepoint came back up. I would be in the bathroom throwing up food that didn't pass through the band, or did pass and...well..it was not pleasant and certainly was getting to be too much.

I saw a surgeon after I had my second child because I decided at 33 years old, I couldn't live like this, something had to be done. My surgeon and his staff are AMAZING. After my first visit Dr. said that he would like to do an Upper GI barium swallow in flouroscopy. He saw that I had a hiatal hernia, he then drained my band. That was on Christmas eve. On Feb 10, I had an EGD, it was painless, and quick, I remember pretty much nothing. The dr. did find that my band was so tight he had difficulty passing the camera into the stoma. Yikes! It was empty! No wonder. On the 21st of Feb I had my follow up with the surgeon. We deteremined that I was going to remove the band, and convert to sleeve. After 3 short days insurance approved both procedures at once! I have my pre-op appointment tomorrow at noon. It will last 3 hours. It is there I will learn exactly what will be done, I will be taught how to inject heparin into myself (OMG HELP ME---IM DREADING IT!) my liquid diet etc. I will keep you all posted.

I am excited to enter this new stage of my life. I feel like I am a thin person in hiding, I cant wait to come out! Please feel free to share your thoughts, your feelings etc. If you have been there, done that I would love to hear as well! Stay tuned....