GeezerSue

Now that my band is in a baggie in my guest room and I've been revised to the DS and I've lost about 93 pounds in a year...nope...no regrets...except waiting so long to have the band removed. Well...that and I think I've become a clothes whore. Who KNEW I'd ever own $100 jeans?!?

First...where you are now is practically my goal...so, to me, to have that height and weight would be just great. Then...ON AVERAGE...the typical banding patient loses 60% of her excess weight. So, paying ten-to-thirty-grand out of pocket would, ON AVERAGE, help you lose about 30 pounds. (YMMV) Just so you know the likely outcome. I think you need to find out why, with a BMI of 30, you are exhausted all the time. Mine is DOWN TO 33 from a high of over 50 and I feel like the Energizer Bunny. Maybe, it's just that I feel good relative to how I felt before...but exhaustion at your age and your weight may have other causes.

I want to correct what I originally said. The band also kept me from eating SOME things that would have caused me to gain more weight...like bread and potatoes and rice and raisins and anything that absorbs fluids and "grows" once it's in your stomach. So it WILL keep many people from eating CERTAIN things that are not good for them..but it won't keep out the ice cream.

this might help: http://lapbandtalk.com/showthread.php?t=19759&highlight=beads

The band only prevents you from gorging yourself on healthy stuff...like chicken and fish. You could eat cotton candy and wash it down with triple gooey lattes 'til the cows come home. For me, the band was diet and exercise with a LITTLE help to keep me from overeating SOME foods. But you can pour a Wendy's chili and a shake where no salmon will dare to go!!

I think they will put Dubya in the position of having to veto ethics rules, the 9/11 Commission's Recommendations and minimum wage increases...AND put the Republicans in the position of publically not voting to override his vetoes and of showing the American public that they don't want to have ethics rules, they don't want to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and they don't want people to make a whopping $15,080 per year. They will not impeach Bush...but they will have to find a way to pay for this: http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182 So is that raising taxes? Or is it putting our money where Dubya's mouth went? (I'm tellin' ya...Monica's mouth was way cheaper.)

So...you had the taxpayers (that is, the rest of us) pay the $2000 a month difference, so that you could pocket "your inheritance?" You feel okay about that?

:yo:

You don't owe me anything. For me, the whole concept was to DEFEND our right to disagree with each other and those in office. And besides, the VA did my sleep Study and some other stuff. But now I feel guilty about taking appointment times from people who have no other options.

Aha...thanks, Carlene. (Just in time to cut the boomers off at the pass, huh?) I'm VietNam ERA, but not VietNam service. I got my rating 30+ years ago. My husband just got his (weird-ass) rating a couple of years ago. He went in with normal hearing. He came out (infantry) with damaged hearing. The medic at the discharge physical gave him a copy of his hearing test and told him, "Hang onto this...you're going to need it." He was not eligible to be in the guard or reserves. Thirty years later, he flunked a required hearing test at work. Employer said, "Our fault...we'll pay for the hearing aids." And they did. But he finally filed for his VA disability. They told him that his hearing was so bad he could have gone out on a medical discharge thirty years earlier. He has the hearing loss AND the tinnitus. Funny thing. The VA won't rate the hearing loss because they (also) gave him hearing aids and they say that hearing aids are as good as hearing. (But amputees are rated whether they get a prosthesis or not.) But they gave him the tinnitus rating. I ALMOST had to spend time at DIDDY-BOP school at Fort Huachuca. Instead, poor me, they sent me to language school in that hell hole known as Monterey, CA...right next to Pebble Beach and Carmel. Poor, poor pitiful me.

Here's an easier-to-read chart: http://www.va.gov/healtheligibility/eligibility/PriorityGroupsAll.asp (I am fortunate both that I do have medical insurance AND I'm in Category Three. I have friends who have NO insurance and who--like the rest of us--were promidsed medical care but are screwed until they are old enough for MediCare.)

Okay..so apparently you really believe the line of crap you've been fed, but here's the reality. The government promised ALL of us medical care. It does not now provide that care to everyone. Here is the webpage, but it's hard to read. http://www.va.gov/healtheligibility/Library/pubs/VAIncomeThresholds/ (Click on the PDF copy.) It only provides that care to those who have SERVICE-CONNECTED-DISABILITIES. Now, putting your ass on the line isn't enough. Now, you have to be poor enough, too. There are PLENTY of totally disabled veterans who are, because their disabilities are not service-connected--NOT eligible for VA services. I guess I thought you knew how this worked. Everyon should get the kind of service your brother is receiving...but not everyone is. They must now prove that they are poor enough.

If your brother is receiving medical care at a VA facility and does not have a serivce-connected injury, then he has to be low income or he won't get the care. That is NOT what we were promised. We were promised medical care...period. So an older vet who has a wife and an annual income of $33,000 (for two people) is too wealthy to qualify for the care that was promised to him with NO income needs-test. Here's some info from outside the ruling junta... http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/19/dems.radio/ http://veterans.house.gov/democratic/budget/snapshot6-29-05.htm Dubya's people say, "Well, we're spending more than we did LAST year." Yeah...but you have added THOUSANDS of injured people...many of them with traumatic brain injuries and/or overwhelming ortho injuries...who will need care never before imagined or available. So you add a couple of bucks to the budget AND add many thousands of injured vets and you STILL have fewer pennies available per veteran. (Not to mention that his whole family often has to relocate for the length of his rehab, becaue the local centers have been "consolidated" into the larger ones.)

I don't think there's a "behavioral problem" or a psych diagnosis in store for us. I think it's related to dopamine receptors...like these folks do. http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2002-06/dnl-nfl061302.php For me, the "cure" will be a way to regulate dopamine and dopamine receptors...not confessing to a character flaw and putting forth an effort to NOT do what our brains are telling us TO do.

No, I'm quite sure you do NOT understand. My husband and I are patriotic American military veterans who cherish the freedoms we volunteered our time and potentially our lives to protect. My husband had been a legion member for over 35 years...longer than I've known him. And we are outraged by how the American Legion has joined in lockstep with the Moron-in-Chief, putting neo-con poitics above everything else. (BTW, did you notice how the legion snubbed Tammy Duckworth--the double amputee Iraq war veteran pilot, in favor of the non-veteran Republican? Good move, Legion. Real supportive of Veterans.) And we are saddened by how many people are unable to see what is happening around them...who will follow blindly without reading outside the party line...who STILL believe there is some connection (other than Dubya) between 9/11 and Iraq...who don't get that what we have done in the Middle East is just making things worse and will cost more American lives...who (mostly) have never lived outside the US...who (mostly) live in their little homogeneous white-bread neighborhoods and have no idea how we look to the outside world...who (mostly) have never been in a minority of any kind...and who CLAIM that they know what is happening in Iraq. The ignorance is astounding. Oh...and let's all DO attack an organization the purpse of which is to defend the Bill of Rights. Yup...that's a threat we just can't have.

We joined the ACLU this year...and my husband did NOT renew his American Legion membership. And, the ACLU no more promotes NAMBLA than it does Nazis...it just promotes our bill of rights...which says in effect that stupid, weird, hateful people are allowed to exist.

I appreciate anything anyone is doing to DEFEND us. I don't appreciate anyone's blowing up innocent people in my name or with my buck. I didn't say anything about YOUR religion. Did I? I was taliking about EXTREMISTS, Christian or Muslim. I'm not your typical "bleeding heart liberal," as I--like your son--volunteered to serve our country. I'll be q "bleeding heart progressive" if you don't mind. So, the polls that showed that Bush was right about the war were ALSO wrong? Gimme a break...the elections went the way they did because MOST AMERICANS now understand that he lied or--at the very least was BADLY misinformed--and we didn't and don't belong in Iraq. It would really nice if EVERYONE could catch on, but that doesn't usually happen. I understand that it would make more sense to the families of those who are currently serving if the lives of their loved ones were being put on the line for a REASON. Sadly, that isn't the case. Well, there IS a reason...but it isn't the defense of this country. And we will probably pay for years to come...but only because we've gone where we didn't belong and killed thousand and thousands of innocent people.

The Iraqis wanted to be saved from whoever was killing them. They did NOT want to be saved from Islam or from a non-democratic government. All of the survivors will remember who maimed or killed whom...including: http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2008/images/20030425007100503.jpg And here are some more people we helped: http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_page19.htm It isn't the liberals who are running around screaming, scared to death that the nearest brown guy is going to blow up the PigglyWiggly. THAT behavior is coming from people who don't read and don't watch anything but Faux News and who let others tell them what should scare them. I think that most of us know what "polarized" means. But it is no longer a 50/50 deal...it is currently a 31% Approval Rating...and dropping: http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=167794 The "Jihadists" are already here...and they aren't brown and they aren't Muslim. They are white...and they are Christian...and they are blowing up federal buildings and abortion clinics and stalking doctors and murdering them in ther homes...and they are doing God's work. Just ask them. And they are staple gunning "fags" to fences and killing them. And they have killed federal marshalls and bombed gay nightclubs. God's work. There is very little difference between Christian extremist psychos and Muslim suicide bombers...except that the Christian "heroes" run and hide afterward. But, if you are convinced that this issue is what you say it is, I can't imaging your not wanting to enlist and do your part to save all of us. I chose the Army website, because that's the branch I enlisted in...but I'll be glad to hook you up with a USMC recruiter if you'd rather: http://www.goarmy.com/flindex.jsp

Here's what I've read on the topic. MOST surgeons do not place a second band on someone who has experienced erosion with a first band. The logic behind that decision is that the best predictor of how a patient will react in the future is how the patient has reacted in the past.

Faux News isn't news. It's propaganda. No, it didn't start six years ago. It's been going on a long time. I know that all of us are in far more danger since we attacked and killed thousands and thousands of innocent people. THEY have relatives, too. THEIR children will remember the slaughter of their parents. Hell, yeah it's more dangerous since we went into Iraq for no reason.

Mousecrazy...you have a lot of unassociated random facts in here, strung together in a way that implies there is some logic...and there is not. What you neglected ot mention is that NONE of those repeated attacks on Americans were perpetrated by or even funded by Iraq. YES, there were attacks...but we had no right to lash out at just ANY country. And funny which country we chose. We might as well have bombed Manila...more Americans had been killed by Philipine terrorists than by Iraq terrorists. The fact that someone hurt us does not give us the right to just randomly pick a group of other people to hurt. "In some respects," the "ideology of Naziism" (and Hitler DEVELOPED Naziism, not just popularized it) is similar to SOME OF the ideology of the Boy Scouts of America. Get 'em young, train 'em up in the way they should grow, teach them what they need to survive, imbue them with patriotic pledges and songs...and so on. Naziism is a hybrid based on Prussian militarism...BSA provided good training for those who might later enter the US military. There ARE similarities. If you're looking for a group analogous to Islamic Jihadists, you need only look to the more militant Christian groups. THERE'S your analogy. Uh...no. Our response in the Pacific was a response to THE ATTACK ON THE US MILITARY AT PEARL HARBOR and a FORMAL DECLARATION OF WAR by the Japanese. For Roosevelt's actions to be equal to Dubya's, Roosevelt would have had to respond to the Pearl Harbor attack by invading Peru. Great. Keep the National Guard at home. Use our money to protect our harbors and airports and borders. All he has done is invade a country that did nothing to us and convince a lot of people--well, down to 31% this week--that we went there BECAUSE of something that somebody did to us. The only similarity I can find between Roosevelt and Dubya is that they both cavalierly and under the pretext of protecting us, robbed many Americans of their rights. Roosevelt abused Japanese Americans. Bush has abused MOST OF US by chipping away at our freedoms...the one thing that makes our country strong. If Roosevelt had acted in a timely fashion, the six million who died--instead of the few who survived--would have been saved and boats full of Jews would not have been sent back from FLORIDA to certain death. The bully, Mousecrazy, is in the mirror in the oval office. Well...Tuesday, we're going to a funeral...for a young man who died for NOTHING. He meant well, he did as told, he was willing to put his life on the line for all of us...but we will eventually declare this debacle a far bigger loss than Viet Nam and his blood will have been spilled for a hopeless cause. BTW, the book Imperial Hubris explains Jihad to the uninitiated. The defense of the faith is, to Muslims, as much a part of their faith as the mass is to a Catholic. The assertion that "they hate us because we're free" is garbage. They live among us. They do NOT attack the XXX-theater in your town or burn down stores that sell Playboy or plant bombs along the path of the Gay Pride parade. They don't blow-up abortion clinics or go into Amish territory and execute little girls. In other words, they pretty much live-and-let-live. Devout Muslims maintain a belief that they are supposed to live all of life...ALL OF LIFE...as outlined in their holy books. They cannot imagine that any part of life would fall outside of the word of God. What makes a devout Muslim go (in our opinion) over the deep end is that others--outsiders like us--do not want them to live their lives according to the will of Allah AND their plausible perception that what they most treasure--God, Allah, Muslim lands--are under attack by those who do not want them to live in the way that they are absolutely sure God wants them to live. While there are inside power struggles within Muslim lands, what triggers a jihad (a defensive jihad--which any Muslim is duty-bound to participate in) is what WE do to THEM.

NO...neither the giver nor the receiver has to get stark naked for a blow job. Sue :::starting to think that SOME education--although not for children, so I wish the Republicans HADN'T insisted on all that publicity--on the nature of these things MIGHT be in order:::

Kind of a moral conundrum, eh? We are in a tax bracket that is better served by the Republicans...but that damned mirror in the bathroom is easier to look into when the Dems are in office.

Wait a minute. Bush creates a war and then we're not supposed to speak unkindly of him because we're at war? Isn't that like someone killing their parents and then asking for pity because they're an orphan? First, it's not REALLY a war. Congress declares war and they haven't yet. Then, it is IMPOSSIBLE...IM-FREAKIN'-POSSIBLE...to win a "war on crime," "a war on hunger," "a war on disease," or "a war on drugs," "a war on terror," or any other evil thing. Those things...crime, hunger, drugs and terror will never completely go away and therefore no war against them can or will ever be "won." So, Pres NumbNutz attacks the wrong country for the wrong reasons and then declares a purpose that cannot be accomplished in his lifetime, my lifetime, your lifetime...and we're not supposed to speak unkindly of him because we're at war? Sorry, but that's EXACTLY why we have to speak up. That emperor is stark-naked.

First, the only thing that links Osama, Sadam and the suicide bombers is Bush. Then, I was a proud service member AND a military wife and nothing I've said is intended to detract from the jobs our troops are doing. But Bush is binLaden's most valuable asset. He--bin Laden--would not have been able to unite almost all the Muslims on the planet without the staggering incompetence of the Moron-in-Chief. I don't think that in binLaden's very wettest dreams he ever imagined that we'd go into Iraq because of 9/11. (Well...no RATIONAL person would have done it or expected it. That would be like our attacking Canada because we're tired of the illegal immigration coming through Mexico.) But Dubya did it, and now, even the Muslims who WERE friendly now hate us...and for GOOD reason. And...if establishing a democracy in the middle east is so important, why didn't we start with Saudi Arabia...that's a kingdom...not a democracy. Or, if threats to our security were important, why didn't we start with the kooks in Korea or Iran? No, Bush--through his monumental incompetence--is the most dangerous guy on two feet AND he's binLaden's secret weapon. And...here's some Republican double talk in action: •They "support" our troops, right? Been to a stateside VA Hospital lately? Have you noticed who is getting thrown OUT of those facilities? It's an eye-opener. *And, Bush spends TRILLIONS of dollars and then says the Dems are going to raise the taxes? If one of your family members went ape shit on one of your credit cards, wouldn't you have to bite the bullet and start writing checks to pay for the party? Yeah...eventually our taxes will be going up, but not because the Dems spent our money...Dubya and his pussies in Congress did that. (I didn't serve in Germany, but I lived there when DH did...3rd ID, in Kitzingen. We just visited a short while back. It sure has changed.) Sue