Alexandra

Darcy, believe me when I tell you it is worth anything to be free of cigarettes. I quit in 1987 and was amazed at the change it made in my life. YOU CAN DO IT!!! Free is the word, all right. You will gain money, purse space, your senses of smell and taste will return, and you will no longer BE smelled by other people. GOOD LUCK, AND BE FREE!!! :D

Hi Amy, Welcome! When I was looking for a doctor the first place I went was my insurance carrier. There was no doubt that if insurance didn't cover this for me then I wasn't going to be able to do it, so that decision was easy. Do you have insurance? If so, the place to start is with their network directories. You can cross-reference with the Obesityhelp website, but that will probably be misleading if what you're looking for is band doctors. The best source of current info on who is performing banding surgery is Inamed. Visit their site (inamed.com, I think) and they'll help you find a local doctor. Good luck, and please feel free to ask any questions. Two years ago I was EXACTLY where you are now, mentally. It was hard to make the decision but once I did, I never looked back. Nice to meet you!!

Kathy, welcome!! You really do sound like you have a great perspective and the band is working out very well for you. I'm glad you've come by and hope you stick around!

Cynthia, welcome!! And thank you for sharing your website with us. (Uh-oh...do I owe you royalties for all the times I've said "Welcome to Bandlandia"? I swear I didn't know about you before this!) What a wonderful boost to hear a story from a real long-term bandster. I'm 7 months out and hovering at 45 lbs down, which thrills me and depresses me by turns. But I know I can lose another 45 lbs, and then another, and be at a normal weight for the very first time in my life. I don't care if it takes another year or three, the fact is it's POSSIBLE and that's what matters. Please stick around! :D

And THIS is the crux of the matter, right there. This is what the band is all about, and why it's my chance for success for the very first time in my life. I can get morose about the fact that the scale has not budged in two weeks or more, but I still can't have a huge baked potato. So even if I feel like giving up, throwing in the towel, forgetting the whole damned thing and resigning myself to being fat the rest of my short life (and how many times have I done THAT in the past 40 years?), I STILL have my friend and gatekeeper there to keep me from sabotaging myself until I'm feeling more optimistic. It's the coolest thing ever!! :D Congratulations, by the way! I'm really looking forward to the time when MY last 25 lbs is taking forever to come off. Hell, I'll be thrilled about the last 50 lbs!

Chris, do you have some reason for thinking this is band-related? Maybe it's a muscle spasm from overactivity or something?

Hey Jennye, Just answering for myself, I care more about how I actually *feel* than how long a plateau lasts. And after all, as Leo says your stable weight may be side effect of your exercise--a process of your body shedding fat as it adds muscle. How do you feel when you eat? Do you have to think about chewing and swallowing carefully? Or is it possible to take a big bite and not have any problems? Can you eat a whole pre-band meal? I don't ever want to be so tight that I can only eat a couple of bites before having to stop due to pain. That way lies deprivation and stress, for me. Too loose would mean being able to eat what I consider too much, and still getting hungry shortly afterward. So the answer to your question is, based on what you've said here I wouldn't change a thing.

Hi Jennielynn!! I'm an Abkin/Bertha patient too, banded last August. You're confusing me by saying that your costs will be "after deductibles." You must have insurance, then, right? What carrier and what type of plan? I do know what my insurance paid for the costs, and they were quite hefty. Between the surgeon's fee and the hospital costs it was over $25,000. I am pretty certain it wouldn't be that much for you, since my carrier didn't have any negotiated rates set up for the surgery when they paid for mine. Did you go to the support group/new patient meeting last Thursday in Florham Park? What did you think?

Hey, Al, CONGRATULATIONS!! Welcome to Bandlandia, and all that entails. I hope you're resting, because as I know from personal experience feeling too good after a big ordeal can lead to OVERdoing it. And that's not good. Don't be afraid to do some serious resting for the next several days. Congratulations, again, and be good to yourself! :D

This is only a guess, but I actually met two Inamed reps the other night at a support meeting and they were showing off a new style of the band called the Vanguard. (Van-Guard? VG?) It's larger, wider, and has a segmented reservoir for fluid. They said this new design is intended to alleviate the surgeon's need to surgically remove fat from around the stomach before placing the band.

This thread has been extremely moving, and I applaud your initiative in posting it and deeply appreciate everyone's comments. My parents are both gone and it wasn't my mother who was critical, but my very loving father. We came to a truce in his later years and now, in retrospect, I can understand his fear and concern. But he also ALWAYS had an unrealistic idea of what a woman my height and build should weigh. He grew up in the days when a woman couldn't admit to a weight over 120. My mother, who was just a hair under 6' tall, used to bemoan the fact that she couldn't stay below 150. I watched her waste away through illness and toward the end she was proud of herself for having gotten her weight down to where she wanted it. Yeah, a healthy 140. She looked like you might imagine. The living dead. Her skeleton probably weighed 120 lbs all by itself! You've gotten great advice here and I have nothing to add, except to say that it's clear your rational mind knows that 160 is a good weight for you. I hope your emotional center embraces that truth as well, and that you can simply place aside anyone else's observations about what you "should" weigh. Peace.

Nicki, Cathy is right that a good place to start with this appeal is with Don Mills at Inamed. You can reach him at don.mills@inamed.com. The other thing you should do now is find your plan documents--your insurance plan paperwork, the certificate, the booklet, whatever you want to call it--and find the carrier's appeal procedures. The letter you received probably gives you a thumbnail of how to appeal, but you should also find out the big picture. How many times will they entertain internal appeals? Is there any provision for third-party intervention? If there's any way you can find out, see if you can discover how long after FDA approval other types of procedures have been taken off the "investigational" list. That's the sort of thing that is slow to come, and carriers are under no pressure to move it along. Just because the FDA says it's an accepted procedure, your carrier is not obligated to agree. And their opinion that it's still investigational is going to be a company-wide opinion, so it's very unlikely that any internal review is going to change that. So contact your state's department of insurance. (I'm sure they'll have a website where you can find this information.) See if they offer a review process for HMO decisions. Start researching what that is and how you'd have to proceed there. Here in NJ I had to exhaust my carrier's internal appeals before taking my case to an external review, but your state may be different. The good news is that they did not deny your request saying you do not qualify for WLS. So whether it's via appeal of through the passage of time, eventually they will be paying for your weight-loss surgery, assuming it's still medically necessary. You have to decide whether you're willing to fight and/or wait for the band, or go with their current favorite method, bypass. I was willing to fight AND wait, if necessary. There was no way I'd consider the bypass so all of my correspondence included the fact that for me it was either this surgery or no surgery. I gave reasons. And since everyone agreed that WLS was medically necessary for me--which no one had ever disputed--I was going without medically necessary treatment based on their arbitrary decision. That's not the kind of thing an external review board likes to see.

CONGRATULATIONS!! And welcome to bandlandia, Kathy!! It sounds like your surgery went well and you're well on your way to healing. Now just be good to yourself and take it slow with the eating, and before you know it it will be time for that first fill. You're off and running!!

Hey Darcy, that's great that you're off and running. It's SO important to have your PCP behind you and many people have trouble with that very first part. So you're ahead of the game already!! Good luck!! :D

Hi Nicki, Tee hee! What am I, famous? The first thing to do in planning your appeal is focus on exactly why your petition for authorization was denied. Was it because you don't qualify for WLS? Did they approve you for WLS but just not for the band? What is their reasoning? That's the first all-important step and we can figure out where to go after that. So what did your denial letter say?

Yeeeee-haaaaaa!!! Congratulations, Nancy!! :D

Depending on how busy the practice is, sure, it can take that long to get in to see the doctor. But it doesn't have to be wasted time. See if you can find out now what sorts of bloodwork and other pre-op testing is required by this practice and start getting some of that stuff done. You can probably do your nutritional and psychological testing before then too. Get it all out of the way and when you do see the doctor you'll be that much closer to surgery!

We do hear it said sometimes that "if you don't get a grip on the emotional eating the band won't work for you." I don't buy it. The band's aim is to help you eat less, that's all. The emotional end of it is our job, before and after banding. But if, in the meantime, I can eat LESS, that's what I want. I may not ever be able to completely abolish the reasons for poor nutritional habits, but I can do what I can to change the habits themselves. That's where the band comes in.

Renata, you know what I do when I find myself wondering if this will "work"? I reevaluate what I mean by "work." That usually means tossing out whatever anyone ELSE means by "work" and sticking to my own ideas. For example, the "goal" weight on the various charts for me is about 145-165. Well, I've NEVER weighed under 200 at my adult height (reached at 15) and have mostly been over 300. So I'm not even looking at 145-165. So toss out one public yardstick. For me, the band is working NOW because I'm on the good side of 300. And I'm going to STAY here, for EVER. That's SUCCESS. One huge negative behavior in my life has been eating so fast I'm done with two portions where everyone else is eating one. Well, I can't do that anymore. That's SUCCESS. I'm also quite concerned that I'll start sabotaging myself at some point, since I have never been thin and won't know how to be that way. That's why I want to go very slowly and work with each stage to get and stay comfortable there. When I lost 75 lbs in 12 weeks on Optifast the increased attention from the world was very hard to deal with and there was no time to adjust. So I returned to my old pal, food, and shortly found myself without all that unwanted extra attention. But now it's not about attention for me. It's about health. So that's where my focus is. 45 lbs in 7 months is not fast and many people would be frustrated with that, but hey, my yardsticks are just different. :eek: Stick with it, be persistent and get the care you need. And soon it will be working for you too.

So I saw my doctor today, a follow-up visit a month after my last fill. He was very pleased! Since my last visit in January I've lost 13 lbs, and I could see him watching me closely to see if I expressed any dissatisfaction with that at all. I guess he gets a lot of that! But I'm not dissatisfied, and know that I'm exactly where I need to be. I mean, I've been over 300 lbs my entire adult life (except for a few months in 1990, after Optifast), and I know it's important to take time to make this change. Just the fact that I now weigh 275 and comfortably wear a size 22 is MIND-BLOWING!! If this is where I settle I know I'm MUCH better off than where I came from, and healthier, stronger, more energetic, and, yes, prettier. ( shhhh, I didn't say that, did I?) My doctor shared a great analogy. He said the band behaves sort of like a tollbooth on the parkway. It is a barrier that is open to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes the barrier creates backup, and other times traffic moves smoothly through it. The more traffic, the more likely there is to be a backup. NOW I get it!! On the medical side, it's easy from here. I'm to call in my weight to their offices once a month, and if I hit a long plateau we can talk about another adjustment. But I've already learned that a "plateau" to my body isn't two weeks of no loss--I've had that happen several times. What tells me I need an adjustment is that food isn't being held up at the tollbooth to my stomach. Numbers aren't the whole story, especially since I'm exercising. Tomorrow I'm going to a new support group my doctors' office has organized, and it will be interesting to hear what my doctor hears from other bandsters. People here seem to have a pretty good handle on banded life! :eek: I do love my band. And just as a topper, the weather is getting warmer, finally!! :Bunny :Bunny :Bunny

Wow, Mary, you look fabulous!! :eek: Thanks for sharing. It's so wonderful!!

Hi Becky, I'm sorry you're having pain. Many people who report abdominal pain end up being diagnosed with gall bladder problems of one sort or another. It's not limited to people who are losing weight, although it seems to be more common among this population. From what I hear, gall bladder pains can be sharp, dull, persistent, temporary, intermittent or anything in between. But one thing is sure, it doesn't go away and stay away by itself. So if your pain doesn't go away or departs and then returns, definitely go see your doctor. Good luck, and I hope you're feeling better soon!

This is kind of a weird one, but I realized this morning that I really am getting thinner!! I have a medicine cabinet in the bathroom with three mirrored doors. This morning I found that I can see my entire body in the middle door. I've NEVER been able to do that! And not only can I do it while standing sideways, but also straight on! I also recently discovered a box of last winter's sweaters that was hiding in a back hallway. I was thrilled because I'm getting sick of the same old stuff and winter continues to drag on here (32 degrees this morning!). But they're ALL too big! Even the ones that were too small last winter and were put away for "someday." They're hanging off me!! This is soooo cool!

Hi Tammy, Welcome, and congratulations on doing so well! I agree it is definitely hard sometimes to see a difference in ourselves. But soon you'll start to see some of those NSVs we talk about--your rings will fit differently, a piece of clothing will fall off of you--and you'll realize it really is REAL! Here's to more of the same!!

Mary, congratulations!! It's so encouraging to read that it's possible to do so well without suffering. That's what the band is all about, and you're managing beautifully!! So, when do we get to see pictures?