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March 10th, 2012 Yesterday they scheduled my endoscopy for Thursday, March 15th because they have to check for potential ulcers. I have been on NSAIDS (Advil) for a very long time in my life and take Omeprazole to prevent damage to my stomach. They want to make sure before we go ahead with surgery that everything looks okay inside. A bleeding ulcer would be contraindicated obviously. The last thing you want is to be bleeding after surgery. For this procedure and the surgery I have to stop all my intake of Advil indefinitely. As you may have read in previous entries, I have been running around on cloud nine the past few days. Well I have bad knees, ankles, hips, and shoulders. I woke up this morning with the worst joint pain I have had in years. I looked like a stiff mummy trying to come down my stairs this morning. I cannot take the Advil for it, only Tylenol. The Tylenol helps a little with the pain, but not the swelling. I assume once the weight starts to come off, the stress on the joints should reduce, hence the pain will hopefully reduce as well. I just have to be patient and endure this for a little while and hope for the best. My body is telling me to chill out a little bit today and stop trying to conquer the world in just one day. I'm going to listen to it.

I can officially say I"m in the 170"s. I weigh between 178 & 179. I offically lost 70lbs. My 2 year anniv is 3/25/12. I'm happy.

My name is Holly, I am 34 years young. I have three beautiful children (1 son, and twin daughters). I have been married to the love of my life for 11.5 years, and live in Orlando, FL. However, I grew up in Michigan, where most of my side of the family still resides. In November of 2006 I had the lap-band placed. I weighed right around 290 lbs (my highest weight ever), and I am 5'6" tall. I did well in the beginning I lost a little over 60 lbs. In retrospect I do not actually think the band played the largest roll in that loss. Right after having the band placed that year was a hard year in terms of illness for our family. My children were very young at the time and during a 6 month period we had several different stomach/intestinal bugs, that I was lucky enough to keep on catching. It seemed as though every other week I was down and out and couldn't keep anything down for days. For that reason I believe that having been sick caused a lot of my 60lb weight loss. I did manage to keep the weight off for quite some time. Over the past 6 years I have gone from under 230lbs to today weighing 261lbs. I now have serious and severe issues with the band. I have developed GERD, which has also caused several cases of reoccurring pneumonia over the past 2.5 years, which recently has caused 2 hospital stays. Just a little over a week ago I had an EGD done, which showed that my esophagus is not pushing food down properly. Having fasted for well over 13 hrs, I still had food in my esophagus that was discovered during the procedure. STUPID band! My GI doc as has recommended that I have the band removed, which I have wanted to do! My insurance will cover bariatric surgery (Praise The Lord!). After much, much research I have decided that I will have revision to VSG. I have two family members who had RNY, and though they did well at first and for quite some time afterwards, they did gain their weight back. But, my biggest concern is all the other serious side effects that comes with RNY. I do not want to deal with dumping, nor being able to absorb vitamins. I also need to be able to continue to take NSAIDs, which both family members were not allowed to do for some years following RNY Sx. I say this because I do have arthritis. Plus, RNY just seems too invasive for my taste, my main reason for having the lap-band placed. Though I am not happy with the lap-band I am happy that it is reversible, and can be removed Next Friday I meet back with my GI doc to go over all the results for the EGD, and he said he will make a referral to a local bariatric surgeon. My current goals are to meet with the bariatric surgeon before March is over, hopefully. And I am hoping that by April 2012 I will be able to have the removal of the band and then revised to VSG.

So very much has happened since my last blog in November. I suppose I got rather frustrated at times which is probably a normal way to feel when one is trying to get something so life changing scheduled. When I realized that being sleeved by the end of the year wasn't going to happen, I relaxed a bit and just decided to enjoy the wait as much as possible. To make a long story short, my insurance did not cover my surgery so I ended up being self pay. That's ok. I don't care. I had my sleeve done on Monday, March 5, 2012. I barely one week out, so I still have a lot to learn. I am so very happy tho. I don't care how fast or slow my weight comes off. It's coming off. That's enough for me!!

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place." ~ Unknown