GeezerSue

Thank you all. Back to the packing...ARGGGHH.

1--Sue DOESN'T SAY she is praying. Ever. 2--I didn't realize we non-believers had a recruitment program. I'm not trying to convert anyone and nobody converted me. (Do you think I missed out on a toaster oven or something?) 3--I don't "boast" of being an atheist any more than the Christians here are "boasting" about their beliefs, which would be a remarkably un-Christian thing to do. We all believe whatever we believe...it's a part of what makes each of us who we are. 4--Sorry you are "a little sick of hearing" of my beliefs. Do you suppose we should ban ALL references to what we believe in, or just those that don't line up with what you believe?

This issue has fascinated me...since I probably had PCOS before they had a name for it. I had several of the symptoms and so does our daughter. I will warn you that the carb-no carbs thing is still up to the individual, banded or not. In fact, as I was able to tolerate less wholesome food, I ended up with meringue Cookies and things that dissove at body temp. I gained a few there! Good info, though.

So...we're done with Wynonna and it's my turn? I don't need anyone to approve of my beliefs...especially those who are the self-appointed judges of everyone else. I didn't mention anyone by name...it's one of those shoe fits things.

I don't even begrudge prayers on my behalf! I think the SENDER gets to choose. But thanks for whatever you choose to send!

Well what I think is that--since we are all privvy to the intimate details of her life and since she has asked for our input--we should be judgemental and talk about why SHE is obese and how SHE should go about resolving HER problem. At least it might save us from talking about why WE are obese. Sue :::your friendly neighborhood atheist, who doesn't have time to judge/discuss Wynonna's shortcomings and who intends to lose weight in spite of her atheism:::

The band doesn't cure anything...except overeating large quantities of solid food at one sitting.

The numbers from here just are not scientific. They are anecdotal...and certainly not without merit...but they are not scientific. (Fro example...optimists say the people who disappear are happy, healthy banded people leading productive lives. Pessimists say that the people who disppear have given up and gone on to other surgeries or are eating around the band. They are probably both right.) The FDA stats are the official ones. Those are at the Inamed site: www.lapband.com And the FDA collects data (when it is submitted) for postmarket studies...when the FDA does what it is supposed to do. Beyond that, there is the peer reviewed literature. You can find that at PubMed. A lot of reading. A lot.

A couple of things from someone else who is about to have her band removed. *This is an unusually supportive board. At least one other place I post has one or two people who insist that most people with problems aren't "working their tool"...or some other "blame the victim" kind of BS. (Interestingly enough, that position is usually spouted by people who were 400 pounds and are now happy to be 250 or so...and those people actually believe that we all want to have their level of success...and they don't get that an awful lot of banded people don't WANT to weigh 250 and that's why they are getting the band. But I digress.) **It's a damned shame that Michelle has to go through this. On the other hand (sorry, Michelle), her problems are enlightening many. Michelle has been such a success story, that is is hard for some people to believe (at least that's what they have written) that THIS could happen to HER. Deal is, it can happen to anyone, NO MATTER HOW WELL THEY ARE FOLLOWING RULES! So, don't say, "Well I'm a good patient and so I won't have to deal with that." Follow the rules, listen to your body, but then get the lousy endoscopy and upper GI anyway! ***Get rid of doctors who ignore your problems. I recently had a LapBand doctor try to convince me that the sensation I had--of food bouncing up and down in my esophagus--was a normal part of the banding experience. And that I should attend some support group meetings to learn from more "successful" patients...all of whom had been banded for far less time than I have. ****Know the complications and decide which ones you are willing to take AND what "payoff" you require. I'm not willing to live with RnY risk for the RnY payoff, but I'll accept the DS risk--which, for the surgery itself is greater--for the DS payoff. I thought about it, especially when I learned that the band had to come out, but RnY problems are not for me. Also, I should not have been willing to live SO LONG with band complications. But the band is new here and the doctors don't know what to listen to. If YOU have complications, MAKE someone deal with them. That's MY wisdom, three-and-a-half days before my revision. Sue

I hope she is able to post here soon. (Unless she already did and I missed it. But I'm doing the pre-op crazies right now, so...)

Reports of band erosion on PubMed are from the US, France, Belgium, Italy, Iceland...all over.

The pain is in your left shoulder, correct? If so, it's pretty typical immediately after banding. The bad news is that it can last for a while....but the good news is that it happens less and less often and to a lesser degree. Eventually, one day it will hurt and you'll realize that it's the first time it's happened in a month. The band is on your left side, sitting outside your stomach. Your other "parts," specifically a nerve that sends sensory signals to the left shoulder, lives in the same neighborhood. It will go away...but I'm over three years out and, if I eat something that gives me real gas issues, I can occasionally have pain in the left shoulder.

~~~~~~ Jack, I think that 12% is right--for some of the best and most experienced surgeons inthe country. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16235124&query_hl=1 But, someone is always doing his or her first band surgery, and--in one fairly local case I've been following--when he did his first three proctored cases, at least one of those patients ended up readmitted, which means HIS current complication rate is at least 33%. In this case, the patient KNEW she was going to be the first band patient and chose to take that risk. (Somebody had to be first for every doctor.) But as insurance covers more procedures, more doctors are giving the band a try, and there are more and more who have done three or five or twenty. They probably account for higher complication rates. That study above is from a VERY talentd group of physicians, one of whom--George Fielding--had been doing LapBand placements in Australia for many years before he moved to New York. His vast experience has to have factored into the low complication rate in that practice.

You know, I don't want this to sound like an attack on YOU...but it IS challenging to maintain that stance. So let me mention this...when people want to convince themselves that THEY would NEVER find themselves in a position they don't want to be in, they often blame a victim who DOES find him or herself in an unwanted position. Someone else is making mistakes that they would NEVER make. And since THEY would never be THAT stupid, THEY don't ever have to worry about that bad thing happening to them. So...the house was burglarized because the residents left the window unlocked; and the parents of the 13-year-old weren't watching closely enough so THAT'S why he was having sex with his friend's mom; and the new moms who suffer from post-partum psychosis (not depression) and hurt their kids are just BAD moms (not SICK and not receiving medical care); and so on. Lovecats, the people who have been having problems have been banded ten or fifteen times as long as you have. You surely have the best of intentions, and I wish you all the luck in the world. But until you have a little more experience with the band, blaming other people--without scientific evidence that they did something wrong--is a real disservice. It's kinda like someone returning from their honeymoon and telling all the people who have been married ten or tweny years what they are all doing wrong. And the critical issue in slippage cases was the early placement technique, which was changed--about three years ago--to the pars flaccida technique. It had ZIP, ZERO, NADA to do with soft drinks. And the vomiting that causes some of the current slippage problems can be due to too much saline in the band, but can just as easily be caused by vomiting due to other reasons...morning sickness, stomach flu, esophageal damage.

A few things... 1--you can get insurance for anything...but the more a policy covers, the more it costs. People have BC/BS policies that pay and other people have policies that don't. You need to get a copy of YOUR policy and see what YOUR policy covers. It can be very different from the BC/BS policy the person next door has. And you'll seldom get the same answer twice from the people who work there. (Some just read better than others.) 2--a lot of what gets covered and what doesn't is in how you phrase it. My insurance is NOT in the mood to pay for a breast lift. But if WILL pay for a breast reduction and, if what is left of my breasts turns out to be lifted....well, oh my. If you ask for wls, you probably won't get it. If you ask for weight loss surgery because you're overweight, you probably won't get it. BUT, if you ask for weight loss surgery as treatment for morbid obesity, then you're at least in the ballpark. 3--your BMI is close. Most insurers want a BMI of 40. So if you are 5'9" and 265, your BMI is 39.1 and you are NOT MO. But if you are 5'8" and 265, your BMI is 40.3 and you ARE MO. So wear your heaviest jeans and several layers of clothes and, if they measure your height, have them do it while your shoes are off. Also, some insurers accept a BMI of 35 WITH comorbidities. Do you have any health problems related to your weight. (Do you snore? Have you had a sleep study?) Then, I'm going to kind of give you a hard time here: You need to read more. My answers might be right or they might be way out in left field. When you pop into an internet bulletin board and ask a question, your answers could be coming from two drunks and an inmate with nothing better to do. Get information from several sources, and don't trust any ONE source to be 100% accurate all of the time. Good luck, Sue

She had more scar tissue than expected, so it took longer...but the surgery is done and she is now in recovery. Sue

Hey folks, She probably won't be here for a few days, but Rachele is having a LapBand-to-DS Revison today. She did great with the band at first, but then had complications. She tried to make it all work, but decided that enough was enough and that it was time to move on. For those who are not aware, the DS is the most extensive of the usually performed weight loss surgeries, but has much greater success rates than the others. (Yin and Yang and all that.) The surgery itself requires a much more experienced surgeon and there are not really many DS surgeons in the country. When she is finished with the surgery, there is a long recovery period, with rapid initial weight loss...about 30% of excess weight is gone in the first couple of months, and by six months post-op, it's closer to 50% of excess weight loss. There are lifelong malabsorption issues and routine labs must be done and Vitamins and supplements MUST be taken religiously. The payoff is about a 75-80% excess weight loss, maintained over five to ten years post-op (maybe longer) and a 99% cure rate for type II diabetes. More info is available here: http://duodenalswitch.com/ Anyway, you can see Rachele's before and after LapBand photos in her profile and, if you are so inclined, I think you can send a PM or something through there as well. Sue

This is long, but I have taken the liberty of taking it off of a DS support board...I hope Melanie, the author, doesn't mind; I "bolded" the prt that most impacted me.

Paula, A partial x-post from OH... Nutshell version of things that matter to me: RnY--your stomach is (immediately post-op) two teaspoons; you can take bites that are actually bigger than your entire stomach; the MAIN mechanism which causes weight loss is just very little food; two years out, when the stomach has stretched, you are mostly on your own. Mortality rate is about 1/200; average excess weight loss is about 60%. DS--your stomach is (immediately post-op) about 4-6 ounces; you can eat normal size bites of food; the main mechanism that causes weigh loss is malabsorption; two years out when the stomach has stretched, the malabsorption continues. Mortality rate is about 1/100 (but the majority of DS patients are Super MO or VERY Super MO and they are high risk at ANY procedure); average excess weight loss is about 75%. There are more reasons, but these are what attracted me. I hang out--in 3-D--with people who have had RnY and DS. At one gathering, some outsider/guest asked, "Well, how can I tell who had the DS?" I heard my mouthy self saying, "Easy...they're all those skinny b!tches." Lightbulb moment. And when we go out to eat, the DS'ers order what they want and the RnY people wait and TASTE what the DS'ers ordered to see if it's too sweet. (Some DS'ers might pay later on with bathroom issues, but the ones I know have few/no problems in that venue.)

I knew the stats that were available at the time and made the same decision. One of the important points for me was that the band could be removed. I don't want to go over all my problems again...but here's a link to that discussion: http://lapbandtalk.com/showthread.php?t=10829&highlight=pending

Interesting approach. But I kind of understand it. When I was three months out, I was absolutely convinced that the band was the ONLY way to go. Now that I am three years out...I guess I'm just not as well-informed about the band as I once was. AGAIN, I have already said that all of the surgeries had problems...and, I gave you my sources for the stats I quoted. I was just asking you for your source on all that 60% weight loss thing you kept referencing. I guess it wasn't available.

Good point...if the DS had only a 60% average ewl rate, I wouldn't be going through surgery again. I realize that I MAY have only a 60% ewl...it happens. But the average is about 85% with a rebound to about 75%. (I'm still not sure where you are getting the 60%...I have not seen that number in relation to DS.)

Citing sources would be helpful. The actual number is closer to 75% after many years. http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/gastric.htm The band has its own malnutrition issues...but for different reasons. DS'ers eat and still have nutritional deficits...Banded people can't always eat enough. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12527349&query_hl=16 ... Since I got that information from the manufacturer of the band, Inamed, www.lapband.com it's probably fairly accurate. Of course there are practices with FAR better results, but this is apparently the best Inamed can tell us right now. There is no single source for the DS surgery mortality rate...but it is generally accepted to be around 2%. The RnY is around 1% and the band is about .01%, last I checked. My point--and I really wanted this to be about Rachele, but I'm always up for citing sources...that damned college debate team I guess--was that even though this is a band support site, some of us who were banded--a long time ago--have done our best and have decided it is time to move on. We can just disappear, so as not to burst anyone's bubble...or show some courage in continuing to OPENLY fight the demon we all share. Many of us got the band because we did not want RnY. If/when the band fails, it is nice to know that there are other options. Remember, one of the selling points of the band is that it can be removed. Do we want people to slink off and do that silently...or are we up to hearing how that works out? I'm not telling anyone not to get a band. But I want to tell the truth about what life is like when it doesn't work.

Does that mean someone is taking this "lively debate" personally? I know what the purpose of the board is...I was there online the day Alex offered to furnish us with the board. But thanks for your input.

You have the right to disagree. But if you have a surgery that is supposed to correct a problem and it doesn't and you die from the uncorrected problem...