Alexandra

Sorry I'm coming to this late, but GOOD LUCK TOMORROW, JACKIE!! Please don't forget to come back and let us know how things went. You're on your way!! :mad: :banana

I, like many people, was not given any instructions to avoid soda. My doctor said that anything I like and can tolerate is fair game, but I may find that some things don't go down well or don't sit well once they're down. I have tried carbonated drinks a couple of times, and there is a HUGE difference in the way they feel going down now compared to pre-banding. It's strange and I think if I drank more than a sip or two it would get uncomfortable quickly. So I just steer clear, but it's a matter of choice for me, not rules. (I'll also just say in passing that when people ask about soda I always assume they're asking about diet soda. There's no reason to assume that people are thinking about high-calorie drinks when they ask about sodas.)

Welcome and best wishes, DeLarla, for an uneventful trip and surgery! A good friend of mine has sarcoidosis, hmmm, I'll have to mention the aspartame thing to her. She already avoids it, though, since her mom had Alzheimer's. Congratulations on this important decision and big step you're taking toward gaining your health!! :mad:

Hi Dede, I wish you the best of luck with your insurance carrier. My road from decision to surgery was almost a year long, full of insurance battles, but I finally won. Stick to your guns and let us know if you have any questions on the way. Nice to meet you! :mad:

The hardest thing for me was/is learning to eat more slowly. I've gotten over worrying about what other people think and whether we're cooking too much (which we do, all the time). What I have trouble with is the physical fact of trying to eat slowly. Time and time again I find myself with that first big bite of something jammed in my mouth when suddenly it hits me---wham! Don't swallow that!! So I find myself working on that first bite for three minutes. :mad: But that's preferable to the discomfort that results if I do swallow that bite and the next one that inevitably follows. You'd think I'd have learned by now, but it's the one lesson that seems to need repeating, and repeating, and repeating.

Hi Bar, I don't have anything helpful to say about your symptoms, but I did want to say that I moved this thread to a more appropriate section. Good luck with your issue, and I hope there's a medication that can help!

Chantal, you probably have the 11cm band, which is its length measurement in centimeters. I don't know how much Fluid that will hold. As for my band, all I know is that it's whatever is approved in the US, which I *think* is the 10 cm Inamed band. From what I hear, that is designed to hold about 4ccs of fluid, but that can be stretched a little.

I'd be game for trying a chat, but it would pretty much have to be after my kids are in bed. So if 9:30 on a weekday evening is convenient (that's Eastern Daylight Time), I'll give it a whirl.

I had a beer about a week ago. It was practically flat, which probably helped it go down, but it wasn't as good as I remember. I don't miss it, which is a good thing.

Hey Becky, Thank goodness the problem was fixed before you had any serious trouble!! Sounds like that could have been really ugly. And thank heavens it was a simple thing to fix!! Now you get better quick, girl, and get back to business. As far as insurance goes, YES, you should absolutely always submit everything! Even if it's denied (which I don't think it shoudl be, since it was CLEARLY medically necessary), if you have out-of-network benefits it will be applied to your deductible and coinsurance. What kind of plan do you have? I also think it's very much worth trying to get the manufacturer to pick up the cost of the repair surgery as well. At the very least, the cost of the equipment should be picked up. Good luck and please let us know how it's going!

I think there's a typo in your link there, Big Dog. It's probably www.wlssuccess.com (that's wLssuccess, not "wis").

Hi Big Dog, Actually not too long ago I met a couple of Inamed reps, and they talked about band breakage as being a problem that has now been pretty much solved. There was a redesign in the port/band linkup that allows for greater movement and which has really minimized the risk of this problem. I'm sorry your wife had to go through all that. It sure sounds like her band was defective. Did Inamed at least pick up the cost of the replacement band? How is she doing now? Welcome to the site, and good luck with your surgery!

I snack on nuts and seeds. Do you have a Trader Joe's near you? Or try any supermarket that has a natural or "wholesome" section. I love the dry roasted edamame for crunch (that's soy beans) and wasabi peas or peanuts for some real eye-opening flavor. When I'm in need of extra Fiber (ahem), I'll eat a good handful of raisins or dried cranberries. (Trader Joe's also has a faboo selection of dried fruit.) But I don't snack much anymore. Just now when I got home from work, my stomach is growling pre-dinner. I had a very small handful of pistachio nutmeats and now I'm good to go until dinner.

What a terrific milestone! :banana It's the best, isn't it? I know EXACTLY how you feel and am so happy for you!!

Oh, Lioness, how rough. Please know that I'm pulling for your husband to come through OK. What an ordeal this must be. As for you, I don't think you do yourself or him any favors by beating yourself up about your own behavior. You know that it's important to be healthy and strong to help him get through this tough time, but that doesn't mean getting angry at yourself because you seek some comfort in inappropriate foods from time to time. The beauty of the band is that it will still be there when you're able to concentrate on using it once again. In the meantime, someone else in your family needs your attention, and you can give it to him better if you're not getting down on yourself too. Take care of yourself and your husband. You both need lots of pampering during this period. Good luck!! :eek:

Hi Monster, To answer your last question first, the answer is yes, I'm sure lots of people have felt like you feel. I had some thoughts like that in the weeks before my surgery. The very idea of a "foreign object" being implanted was absolutely creeping me out. I thought I was a weakling and a loser, and thought about backing out. But then I changed the way I look at the band. I have a medical problem, and this is an implant to help me live with it. Much like a pacemaker, artificial hip, or fused vertebrae, my band is repairing something in me that did not work--my fullness meter. Now it works! There's no shame in needing a medical device to better one's quality of life. Does anything think twice when someone says they needed a heart valve replaced? I do understand about feeling like you should be able to do this yourself, and if you think you can then perhaps you shouldn't have had WLS at all. But I know I couldn't, and presumably your doctors agreed that it was medically indicated for you as well. I think your mood will pass as you heal and see how normal you really do feel. Please come back and let us know how you're doing.

Kathy, I hope you had fun at Disney! Before your first fill, I don't think it's possible to really say anything meaningful about your restriction. Soon you probably won't have any; what you have now is still a result of post-op swelling and the healing process. In a few more weeks you will likely feel perfectly normal and not be able to tell that you have a band (unless it decides to surprise you sometimes, like with the hot dog incident).

Wow, Darcy, OUCH!! I've fallen down stairs and know how painful that can be. You poor thing! But you know what? This cuts both ways. I recently leapt up out of my chair at work and almost hit the wall because I didn't realize how much force I used. I'm so much lighter now that the same force I used to need just to stand up now shoots me right out of my cubicle! There should be a warning label on the band: Balance and center of gravity may change with weight loss, so use with caution. :eek:

I agree with Sue, I think overeating all by itself can cause some slight irritation or something that takes a day or so to resolve. I find it very helpful, because as we all know it takes only one or two departures from the straight and narrow to make us really discouraged--enough to make me give up altogether in the past. But now I don't have that option! It's the coolest. When I overdo it my band lets me know it, and that's the path back to good behavior.

Hi Terra, When your doctor did the fluoro fill on you, did you do a barium swallow test? Could you feel restriction at that point? Did your doctor make an attempt to show you what restriction felt like? Did you sense a change in restriction at some point after your fill or was it just absent from the start? Has he been able to pull Fluid out from your band or is he just adding and adding each time? Depending on the answers to my questions above, you may have a leak or your doctor might be missing the port altogether when he's trying to fill your band. If he saw the band's position on the x-ray and he said it was OK, that is likely not the problem. This must be frustrating, but Michele here can tell you that it is not hopeless. Just be persistent and keep telling your doctor that whatever he is doing is NOT resulting in restriction. Your band is not working properly until you feel restriction that presents an obstacle to eating too much, so be vocal if you're not getting what you need.

I don't really watch the statistics or science reports on banding, so maybe someone can point you in the direction of some published results. I do know there have been some recently published articles that were more favorable about banding than those that had come out earlier. I'm certain that inamed.com would have links or entire articles that can answer these questions authoritatively.

I buy mine at Trader Joe's where it's cheaper than at my A & P, but any large supermarket probably carries it if they carry Protein supplements at all. If not, a GNC or even a big drugstore like Drug Fair or CVS would probably have it. Good luck tomorrow!!

Hi Ricky, You're right, you do have a lot of questions! I think you'll find a lot of answers if you read through some old threads here and on other bandster boards (SmartBandsters on Yahoo Groups is one of my favorites). To get you started, though: You ask if this will work for you. Only you can decide that. From where I sit, banding is a great idea for people who are morbidly overweight (you probably qualify on that score) and who have been unable to get control of their weight through diet and exercise. It's not a picnic, of course, and you have to be prepared to say goodbye to eating the way you're used to. It's by no means a magic potion and if you try hard enough to get around it you could manage to not lose weight. The band is not "unsafe" for anyone. Indeed, as a diabetic you stand to improve your health a great deal by losing weight. Your condition makes you more of a candidate for the band, not less. You ask if Cigna covers the band. Again, this is specific to your policy, your company, your medical condition, and your state. Cigna, like most carriers, is not making it easy to qualify for major elective surgery, but if you are persistent and meet the medical criteria they do pay for weight-loss surgery. The cost of the procedure varies from place to place. In the U.S. it's probably a minimum of $30,000 when you add in the hospital costs and everything. You can get it done in Mexico or Europe for about a third of that. The place to start is where you are, here. Then visit your primary care physician and make sure you get a diagnosis of Morbid Obesity (the diagnosis code is 278.01 and the sooner that gets into your medical records the more likely insurance will pay for the surgery). Once you get the diagnosis, get a referral from your PCP to a surgeon who performs the procedure. Even if you don't need a referral, get you PCP to put in your file a letter saying he believes weight-loss surgery is indicated for you. This is the first building block in your file of information that you will eventually present to Cigna. Stick around the board and ask questions, you'll find we're all pretty friendly!

I'm just copying something from my answer to Sunnyone on her thread--it was a novel I won't bore you with again. Suffice to say: Surgery was a big decision, but I haven't regretted it for one tiny millisecond. It's safe, adjustable, and reversible, and puts me in control of my body not the other way around. I'm closing in on 50 pounds down, and I don't kid myself--I couldn't have done that alone in a million years. If the next 50 takes a year or two, so be it. The process is educational, rewarding, mostly painless, and the most important thing I've ever done for myself. It sounds like you're wresting with deciding between surgery and no surgery, not between the surgeries, am I right? All I can say is that it is a tactic of last resort. Most of us had reached a place where we learned/decided/accepted/discovered that we could never gain control over this condition/disease/character flaw/weakness. For me it was very much worth the negligible pain of surgery and occasional discomfort of overeating to get where I am today, no longer on the bad end of a raw biological deal.

Hi Sunnyone, I'm not yet a success story either, if the way you define success is having reached "goal" with no problems. I don't believe there is any such person--this process is too life-changing to be utterly without bumps. How could it be? Yet MY personal goal was to get control over my LIFELONG battle with food and my own metabolism. And that is being accomplished each and every day. I think I'm very much like you and your daughter. I am the only person in my immediate family who ever had a weight problem, thanks to Grandma's efficient metabolism gene that cropped up in me. I'm not imagining this: Recently my brother told me about a conversation he had with his wife (she thinks the band is unnecessary, all one has to do is "eat less.") My brother told her that all of our lives he never saw me eat MORE, it was just that no matter what I ate I couldn't burn it off like he could. (I love my bro! ) So slow metabolisms are not myth, and they are evident to other people. I've had the same experience you have had on diets of one sort or another...they just don't work for me. The one time I ever lost any significant weight was on a medical fast of 800 calories a day. That is not only unhealthy but absolutely unsustainable. Who was I kidding? Even during a college summer when I walked several miles each day and lived on sliced turkey, diet soda, and celery, I lost 20 lbs which came back on within three weeks of going back to school. Now, for the very first time in my life, I am not alone in my battle to eat only the little tiny bit that is evidently necessary to sustain my life. And, amazingly, that is ENOUGH for me, most of the time. It's a miracle that I can sit down at an IHOP, order one of their three-egg omelets, eat one-quarter of it and be done AND SATISFIED. (Now, when am I going to learn to order less? That's another question.) The quick fix does not interest me--that way lies trouble. I learned that doing the fast, which resulted in 75 lbs lost and 105 regained. I believe the slow steady learning curve of the band is the only way to PERMANENT conquest of my weight issues. And if you're comparing the band to the RNY, don't kid yourself about the problems. The problems we have are TINY compared to those bypass patients can face. I wouldn't go there for all the tea in China. I'd rather diet. But with the band I don't have to diet, I just have to think...and I'm learning how to do that, without "failing" when I have trouble. With regard to getting to "goal" -- I think placing too much importance on this is a source of trouble for all WLS patients. For example, I've seen people crying that they got within 6 lbs of goal before starting to gain again, as though this made everything meaningless. Before surgery I measured my extra weight in triple digits. I'm sure as hell not going to be ungrateful or beat myself up because I can't reach some imaginary number on a scale. My goal is to be healthy and energetic, and not feeling like every day is a marathon of deprivation. I'm already there, having reached a number and size I have never maintained as an adult. And I don't fear food, parties, cooking, or shopping. My life has changed for the better, and my future looks infinitely brighter (and longer) than it did pre-surgery. Surgery was a big decision, but I haven't regretted it for one tiny millisecond. It's safe, adjustable, and reversible, and puts me in control of my body not the other way around. I'm closing in on 50 pounds down, and I don't kid myself--I couldn't have done that alone in a million years. If the next 50 takes a year or two, so be it. The process is educational, rewarding, mostly painless, and the most important thing I've ever done for myself. :eek: