Linda, Please listen to my advice carefully:
I was almost exact height and weight of you. I have been having my Hernia for 15 years now. I have been living on Prevacid and Nixum since then. I had my lap band on 4/19/2011. After the 3rd fill , I started to get chocked easily eating any meat, so I thought that I am at the right fill. Unfortunately, I never felt full and did not lose any weight since my surgery. At the beginning, I thought that something wrong with me, my band is good but I just cannot feel full. I can eat 2 big bowls of soup w/o feeling full. Finally my kids convinced me to go back and see my doctor because there is something wrong for sure. He wanted me to do two tests, upper GI and upper EGD. To my surprise, I found out that I have no restriction at all from my band. Now I am waiting to do my EGD. So, what is causing food getting stuck when I eat meat if my band is not even full enough?? Now I am sure it has something to do with my Hernia since the food I eat goes directly to the band and get stuck there. I am very disappointed with my doctor even he is one of the top in my area. When I asked him why he did not fix my hernia, he said it was not big enough. This does not make any sense because if I miss only one pill of Prevacid, I will have the worst heartburn in the world. I was even scheduled to do the Hernia surgery 13 years ago but it was canceled due to pregnancy.
My final advice: Tell your doctor that you have Hernia and make sure he fixes it for you before you go through the pain that I am going through now.
Best of luck
