Alexandra

She would only be entitled to benefits under COBRA if there were a divorce. Simply being taken off a spouse's policy gives her no rights at all.

My ex-husband used to behave exactly the same way. Sweetie, there's a name for this. It's emotional abuse. You don't deserve this kind of treatment, and IMO he's sending you a strong, clear message that he doesn't really want to be married. I hope you find some peace, before this situation goes on too much longer. No one deserves this sort of situation at home. Life doesn't have to be so negative.

Kids get so many vaccinations and mine have never asked me what they're for. Even at age 10 or 12 it'll probably be just another shot to them. But if they do ask, I'll tell them it's like any other vaccine, to protect them and others from an infectious disease.

Congratulations to you and your family!

Yep, this is me. I was never a good dieter, but when I was able to do nothing else but think about every item that passed my lips, I was able to ... maybe ... not gain as fast. But when I hit 40 and had two small children relying on me, I knew that was not going to be possible ever again. I needed something REAL. My "last stand" was ephedra, on which I lost 30 lbs in the year before surgery. I went from 340 to 310, but as soon as I stopped taking this dangerous drug the weight came right back on. Banding is the first thing ever that's worked to let me live my life, not think constantly about what I'm eating, and be close to normal for the very first time.

Hey Penni! How are you? Nice to see you! Unless your new job is self-insured, and has exclusions, I can tell you that Aetna covers WLS if you're medically qualified. They have the six-month medically supervised diet, and of course call for nutritional and psychological evaluations, but bariatric surgery is one of their standard protocols in treatment for morbid obesity. So, what do you have up your sleeve? Are you thinking of being re-banded or are you going for something else?

Well, that depends on the doctor. In most cases it's an insurance requirement, but it's not impossible that a doctor might impose a pre-op diet regimen to weed out noncompliant candidates. But you're right, with self-pay it's much less likely to be needed.

Congratulations, Curvy, and welcome to LBT!! :rockon:

Greetings! I won't kid you, living with the band is difficult at times. But for those of us who have come to the conclusion that in a fight against food, food wins every time, it's a life-saving tool in our arsenal. It sounds like you're a champion dieter but you've seen how hard it is to keep the weight OFF once it's gone. That's really the holy grail of any diet, IMO. For me, now that I'm over the learning curve and into the live-with-it-forever phase, it's still hard sometimes. Once in a while I'll actually have a dream about wolfing down a huge cheeseburger, but when I wake up I realized that I've been delivered from the evil such behavior used to bring upon me. It's possible to eat too much of the wrong things, but as a banded person those occasions are much rarer than they used to be. I'm DONE with a meal a lot faster, and fewer calories in means less weight on. Are you ready to give up that binging behavior? It's not easy, and you really have to be sure that the alternative is what you want more than the food. Being lighter--even if you just get down to 230--will give you a new lease on life and this time, with the band, YOU WILL STAY THERE. There are no foods that I consciously avoid completely, but the huge-bite-gulp-swallow behavior is indeed gone forever. Do I miss it? Sometimes. But I don't miss being 340 lbs and I don't miss hating myself every time I eat something I "shouldn't." If you think you can lose it and keep it off with dieting, then surgery is not for you. If you're past that point and know you need help in this fight, then maybe you are a candidate. I'm in NJ and you'll see my doc in my signature. Feel free to ask away!

TOM, I hope your family recovers soon from the losses and illness they're suffering now. Please give your wife our best wishes. :hug:

Wow, do I agree with this. People really do grow up later these days, and so many people in their 20s are just not equipped to be good parents. I'm really glad I waited until my late 30s to have kids, even though being an "older" parent is challenging sometimes. But I'd much rather be an older, better parent than a younger, trapped one. (Which is what I could easily have been if I'd had a child with my first husband--trapped.)

Sigh.... men can be so childish, can't they? Of course Wheetsin's right (as always!). I didn't want to give the impression that I thought you should end the marriage over this. Just that, from an insurance perspective, spouses have no rights while ex-spouses do.

Phatty, congratulations on the pregnancy! I don't think your band has slipped, but things may very well be rearranging inside due to the fluctuating fluid levels associated with pregnancy. Get an unfill as soon as you can and everything should be just fine!

I was just chatting with a colleague here about this, and it seems that in fact Janiee is on the wrong end of this stick. There wouldn't be any grounds to sue the husband or the employer; they are NOT required to maintain insurance on a spouse if the employee signs a document terminating the spouse. But that's not to say the employer still wouldn't try to discourage the employee from doing it if they knew the spouse wasn't amenable. The consensus here, Janiee, is that you'd be much better off divorced (from an insurance perspective). That way the employer MUST offer you the chance to continue your coverage for up to 36 months, and that removes your husband from the picture altogether. Good luck!!

Janiee, he can delete a dependent; no reason is needed. But you should call his employer to explicitly state that this would be against your will, and the employer AND the husband could end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. If your employer knows that it's unlikely they'd let your husband play games this way. I'm with Wheetsin (as usual)--this is a power play pure and simple. It would be insane for him to take you off the insurance policy because any medical bills you have would end up costing HIM plenty. He's a manipulative jerk who can't see past the end of his own nose. I'm sorry you're dealing with this.

I'm another one mystified by a system of marriage wherein one person is always the one to "allow" the other to have the last word. In my marriage, certainly there are situations where one or the other of us will permit the other to make a decision, but it's an always-changing dynamic depending on the situation. Over the years we've discovered areas of expertise that are mine, and those that are his. There is no third party dictating which of us is the "head" and which is not. That concept is utterly foreign to me. It's not analogous to a business or army unit, because in those situations there is indeed one person at the helm and everyone goes in with that understanding. A marriage is a partnership, not a unit with one person at the head.

Depending on the severity of the problem, l think most doctors would just take the saline out completely and instruct the patient to be very careful not to overeat for several weeks. Once that's done they can take another look at the pouch and see if it's returned to a normal size.

Wheetsin, wow, that brought tears to my eyes. I'm going to hug my kids a little tighter tonight. :hug:

Well, the way it works at my surgeon's seminars is that there are people sitting right there ready to make your appointments for you. My surgeon's practice requires nutritional, psychological and physical evaluations, and if a patient hasn't already taken care of that they will make appointments for all of those things as well. Of course a patient who is self-pay will be able to move ahead much faster than one who has to wait for insurance to come through, but no matter what you'll have to do all the medical stuff just the same as everyone else. So, depending on how efficiently you and your doctors move things along, I'd say it's going to be a minimum of two or three weeks before surgery. And it could be much longer if it's a very busy practice with lots of scheduling issues.

The seminars I'm familiar with start out with a nurse describing the various bariatric surgeries performed by the practice (RNY, banding, whatever). This is a general description of the way the surgeries work and an overview of the aftercare and what makes a good candidte for which procedure. Then there's a discussion of insurance issues, followed by testimonials from post-operative patients. At the end the surgeons get up and answer loads of questions from the audience. Your seminar may be different, but it's probably aimed at the same goal: to make sure that the patients have a good grounding in the information they need BEFORE they get into a room with the doctor, and waste his very expensive time asking about the basics. If you already know which surgery you want to have, this seminar may feel like a waste of time to you. But it's a great time to get a better feel for the surgical practice, get to know the people and see how they treat patients. Meet some postops in person and ask them what their experience has been like. You'll think of loads of questions as you listen to the seminar, and in the end you'll be glad you went.

I also have hypothyroidism, well-controlled by meds. No one ever said anything to me about difficulty in surgery, but my docs did require that my levels be stable and controlled before scheduling surgery. It's important that it be managed, because if your levels aren't responding to meds there may be something else wrong. Get it checked, don't be sorry that you didn't take the extra step to make sure you're as healthy as you can be before having surgery. Good luck!

Personally, I wouldn't send something like that unless I had some indication that it was going to be needed. It sounds defensive, and might get the relationship off on the wrong foot. Do you have any reason to think they'll be anything less than cooperative?

Wow, Angel, that sounds PAINFUL! I hope the lancing helped and it's all healing up now. It is true that an infection at the port site is often the first indication of an erosion, but the two are not inextricably linked. Obviously you need to have more testing done to set your mind at ease; nothing we say can alleviate your worry. Stress can increase restriction all by itself, so worrying about what's wrong with your band could be what's increasing your tightness. But there's only one way to be sure. Have you had a fluoroscopy done recently? What about an endoscopy? These are tests your doctor should prescribe to find out what's going on with your band. What's your next step?

This is just a payment-processing service, nothing more. Any doctor willing to make this payment arrangement with a patient would be willing and able to do it with the patient directly. I'd say save the service fee and work out the payments with the doctor.

I'm another one who never had maternal urges, at all. I truly didn't understand the allure of children or how I'd ever come around to wanting any. That was fine with me. But when I met and married my "real" husband (after a brief, unhappy marriage in my 20s), things changed. As time went on the idea of completing our family became real to me, and it was a big surprise to find myself actively wanting to have a baby. But like Wheetsin, I'd resigned myself to the possibility that it might never happen--and I was fine with that, too. After 18 months of trying I finally got pregnant, and had my first baby at 36. I'm still TOTALLY non-maternal. I feel like these two girls have been plopped into my life and I'm just borrowing them for a brief time. My job is to keep them safe, clothed, fed, and let them grow and explore. It's not always fun, but it's added a dimension to my life that I truly never imagined could be there. So I'm just going to be an old biddy and tell Laurend to keep an open mind. You have a long life ahead of you and hey, you never know what might happen. :biggrin1: