morelgirl

Hey are you going through PeaceHealth Southwest? I ask because you're describing the exact process I went through and even the WLS coordinator ha the same name! I was banded there by Dr Jan on Feb 1st. He's not very warm and fuzzy (brisk and business-like) but when I told him the band was what I wanted and I wouldn't consider bypass, he didn't try to talk me out of it. If the doctor who did your seminar is difficult, try meeting with Dr Jan instead. I couldn't be happier with my decision! (I was seld pay, btw, so my process was super fast and efficient) Best of luck!!!

Hi Victory, Well, the port isn't where I thought it was and I still can't feel it well even when I look for it. Mine is about an inch or two below my largest scar to the right side of my belly. When the dr got ready to do the fill, he had me lay down on the table and then left up my head as if I were going to do a crush. This firms up the abdominal muscles so that when he presses down on the port area, the port can't sink down into anything cushiony so he can feel it easily. Even when I try to do this to myself, I still can't feel my port. I don't think your being unable to feel yours means it's flipped or moved. The doctors have a lot more practice than we do, so he'll be able to get it!

I had my first fill on 2/29. I'm scheduled for a 2nd fill on 3/23. I do notice a tiny difference from before the fill, but I still don't have restriction. Happy to answer questions if anyone has them!

I don't know if this will help, but I found in the end that the only thing I could do was just grit my teeth and stick it out. My pre-op diet was 2 weeks of nothing but skim milk and calorie-free liquids. The first 2-3 days nearly killed me, but after that, it did get easier as my body adjusted. It's best to keep busy and keep distracted, but in the end all you can really do is keep reminding yourself that it's only 1 week and that the rewards will be well worth it. Sending good thoughts your way!

Congratulations. Remember to breathe and try to relax. It will be over in a snap. Everyone has a different recovery experience, but I had next to no pain. Just remember that your surgeon will give you pain meds and you should TAKE THEM! Uncontrolled pain can slow your recovery so don't let it get very uncomfortable. Medicate when your pain rises above a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale. If the meds aren't working well enough, let your doctor know. You need to be comfortable in order to heal. Best of luck and many good thoughts your way!

Not the healthy kind, mind you, that involve long walks over varied terrain where you can breathe the fresh air and move your muscles all in the embrace of nature's beauty. No, I'm referring to the kind of rambles where I attempt to disguise the fact that I have nothing new to say, but feel the need to vent the same old whining on you poor people yet again. Feel free to ignore me. I ignore me half the time. 1) This has not been a good week, loss wise. Despite getting my first fill a week ago today on 2/29, I do not have restriction. Well, barely any. I am able to eat way too much (though admittedly exponentially less than before the band) and my scale is showing me the un-love by reusing to creep downward. If I'm lucky and my daily spot checks are accurate, I can expect to either stay the same, gain a few ounces, or lose at most 0.2 lb when I officially weight in tonight. I find this very discouraging. 2) I made an appointment to return to my dr for another fill as soon as my three week waiting period is up. 3/23 will be fill number two, and I have my fingers crossed that this will give me at least a little restriction. Well, I should be honest. I think I do have a teensy-tinesy bit of restriction now, because I do notice that I stay full longer after eating than I did before my first fill, but I can still eat a cup or more of food at a time, easily, and that's too much. I also have had no trouble eating anything I've attempted from bread, to pasta, to rice, to chicken breast. It all goes down. I need more help here. 3) I'm struggling really hard to keep all of this in perspective and not have a hissy fit over how much weight I'm not losing at the moment. When I see posts form people who've lost 25 lbs since surgery without even a single fill, it takes me a minute to climb down from the clocktower and stow away my rifle. I know it's not helpful to compare myself to others. Everyone is different. Everyone loses at their own pace. I myself have a whacked out metabolism. I know this, and I get a reminder of it everytime I take a dose of sinus medicine or a sleeping pill, because even if I halve the regular dose, it take at least 36 hours for me to work that stuff out of my system. I also have PCOS, which I know makes weight loss slower for most people. but damn it, I want to be losing! That's why I payed for this dratted surgery and went through the process of being knocked out, cut open, and banded. I want the loss. NOW. *picture me stamping my foot and sticking out my lower lip like a three year old being sent to bed early* 4) Last night was my first social special event since being banded. My housemate's coworkers threw her a wedding shower, to which I was invited. I enjoyed attending, but I did overdo a bit on the food. Not horrible (I only went about 70 calories over my high calorie goal for the day) but I still felt like a bit of a failure. I was able to limit myself to 1/2 a glass of wine and 2 buffalo chicken niblets, but someone had made spinach artichoke dip, and I'm a sucker for that stuff. I mean, it calls to me in the seductive tones of a stubbled, sweaty, banged up hockey player (did I mention I looooooooooove hockey? and hockey players... it's a sickness) whispering in my delicate shell of an ear about love and passion and eternal bliss. I ate about a quarter cup of it with crackers and chips. And a few strawberries. And about a teaspoon of brie. And part of a pinwheel wrap. And three bites of cake. Lord help me. I know I should be keeping in mind that I ate a LOT less than I would have pre-band, but my mind just wants to linger on the things I did wrong instead of the things I did right. I hate that. So anywho, like I said nothing I've said here is new or earth shattering, but I have a little bitty problem with patience. Not standing in line patience, or waiting for a package to come patience, but patience with myself when I think I should be reaching a goal. At the moment, my goal is to get back under 200 before my birthday (4/22) and I'm starting to wonder if I'll make it. Trust me, I'll keep making the old college try, but at the moment, I could use a little encouragement. (Hear that, Mr Scale? Throw me a bone, why don't you????)

To anyone who might be interested, I've started a band blog off of LBT. The link is here: http://themagicminimushroom.blogspot.com/ Posts may or may not overlap here and there (they do not at the moment), but I think I probably have enough rants to be okay with both at the moment.

I have a sad, sad addiction to Saltines. Sad, because they have almost no nutritional value, but they go down just fine. Of course, I am paranoid about chewing everything to the point of it being next to liquid, so that might help. If you're back on solids, then well-chewed crackers eaten in small bites should not be a problem. Bon appetit!

My doctor and nutritionist never said I had to avoid alcohol, just to limit it as I would any other empty calorie food. So I waited until about week 3 (off meds, eating soft solids, and feeling good). Then I caved and had half a glass of white wine. Wow, was that nice!

The thing to remember about statistics is that they lie! lol. Or at least misrepresent. The 40% - 50% number is an average. That means it includes people who have lost NO weight or even regained weight as well as people who have lost 100% of their excess weight. The thing about lap band (which my dr and his staff stressed so often, it was like listening to a broken record) is that the band only works for people who work it. Unlike bypass, you can't rely on the body not absorbing the food to create rapid and dramatic weight loss. You have to follow all the rules and make the right choices in order to succeed with the band. Unfortunately, a lot of drs have just as much fat prejudice as the rest of the world, only their prejudice is in believing that fat people aren't willing or able to make the committment to the band. After all, life with the band is like an assisted diet--not the kind of diet that always failed or made us all miserable, but a healthy diet in the sense of a healthy style of lifelong eating and exercise. Since fat people have "clearly failed" at dieting in the past, many bariatric surgeons want to steer us toward bypass because at least some initial weightloss is more of a "sure thing." Always remember though, that while bypass patients lose more initially, after 3-5 years, the average amount of weight lost between bandsters and bypassers generally equals out. And plenty of people have gained back their bypass weight, too. Go with what feels right to you. If that's the band, get a second or third opinion from a surgeon who DOES do a lot of banding. Don't get bulldozed into a surgery you aren't 100% comfortable with. Good luck!

I didn't sleep in the recliner after surgery (I was okay with my bed) but that is where I sat during the days. I never even attempted to use our sofa because it can be hard to get up from on a good day! It's soft and cushy and great for napping, but to get up from it, you definitely need to use your ab muscles. That's my advice to new bandsters--make sure you sit somewhere that you can get up from easily afterward. Nothing too soft or too low to the ground!

Yay! Congratulations! Hope all goes smooth and easy.

A little over 24 hours since Fill #1, so anything I say here is speculative at best and ridiculous at worst. Good thing ridiculous has never stopped me. My surgeon instructed me to stick to liquids for my first meal after the fill, but said that I could progress to mushies after that and back up to soft solids and then solids as soon as it felt comfortable. I'm assuming I still have some swelling, but no discomfort at all. Having liquids yesterday was touch and go. I felt full quickly at lunch (my liquid 1st meal), but it didn't last more than a couple of hours. I went to mushies for dinner and had no problem getting anything down, but I did notice that the more substantial meal stuck with me a loooong time. I ate at about 4 PM (because I was starving after my liquid lunch) and was still not hungry when I went to bed at 10 PM (yes, I live like an old woman at 36. Sue me ) That was great! Today, I had a poached egg for breakfast and was good for about 4 hours. My lunch was tuna salad and it really filled me up! I ate about the same amount I was eating before the fill (about 1/2 cup) and I can totally notice the difference in satiety. Before the fill, that amount would end my hunger, but the reason I stopped eating was because the food was gone, not because I felt physically full or satisfied. After the fill, I feel full off the same amount of food. Not stuffed or uncomfortable but full, as if I would choose to turn down more food if it were offered (and free of calories!). It's a delightful feeling, because it tells me my band is really there! And it's working! I wouldn't call what I feel "restriction" per se, because I don't feel anything unusual going down, and nothing is having any trouble sliding through, but like I said, I feel full off smaller amounts of food. Maybe that's what restriction is supposed to be? It could be that I've been misunderstanding the term all along. And it could also be that it's not really my band making me full but that residual swelling from the fill. Doesn't really matter to me at the moment, because either way, it's working. If this feeling fades in a couple of days or a couple of weeks as the swelling goes down, I can go back for a second fill in 3 weeks. Yay! I'm on my way, kids, and nothing can stop me now!

Protein is key to cell generation, so it's important to get enough protein so that your body can heal the trauma caused by the surgery (ie, your incisions and all the tissues that got bumped and bruised during the surgery).

I had my first fill on Wednesday and also felt significant hunger within a couple of hours after liquids. You have to remember that liquids don't stay in your pouch but flow right through, so they aren't likely to keep you satisfied for that long. When I moved on to high Protein mushies was when I noticed the difference of having a fill. The more solid textures are really sticking with me now and keeping me full for 4-5 hours (at least). Now, some of that may be swelling and not really restriction, but I expect it to take a week or two for that that make itself clear. If it doesn't last, then I'll go back for another fill. Most drs don't expect anyone to receive restriction on the first fill. usually it takes more than that to reach your sweet spot. If I were you, I'd give it a week and reevaluate once you're back on solids. If you aren't, fill fill fill!

I also have an 11cc Realize band and just had my first fill yesterday of 3cc. I do feel a difference in the length of time I go without hunger, but I don't feel any true restriction yet. My surgeon started me with 3cc because he said most of his patients reach restriction between 3 and 8cc in the 11cc band. Hopefully, you're one of the lucky ones who falls on the low end of that scale. Don't overthink it; just enjoy it!

Yay! I got my first fill this morning! I'm so happy, it's ridiculous. Even if I don't reach restriction from this fill, at least I now know that this journey has really started and is really progressing, and as long as I do the work, I can expect to get results. I can't even describe how that feels. It's euphoric! Even though my surgeon had indicated I would likely have a fill at this appointment (4 weeks post-op), I still had paranoia that it might not happen. I'm just that kind of girl--a worrywort! Well, when the nurse escorted me into the exam room, I saw all the accoutrements of a fill already laid out for the doctor, and that soooo made me happy. Never have the sight of needle, syringe, and alcohol swabs given me such a thrill! When the surgeon came in, he asked me if I was on soft solids yet (which I am) and if I wanted my first fill. I don't think he even got to finish the question before I was shouting my "YES!" It turns out that my surgeon does his fills by feel--no barium swallows or flouroscopy. He had me lay back on the exam table and lift my head in a mini-crunch while he located the port. Then came the needle. Now, I'm on the fence about needles; they don't totally freak me out, but I don't love them, either, so it was a little odd for me when, after the initial stick, he spent maybe 15 seconds wigglnig the thing around to get it in precisely the right spot. I can't say it was totally comfortable, but I can't say it was painful, either. It was just a weird sensation. Once the needle was in place, he started the injection, backed it up to be sure it was correctly entering the system, then completed the fill. The whole appointment was like 5 minutes (with another 40 minutes spent completing my form, waiting, weighing in, and getting my vitals checked). After the fill, he gave me a small cup of water to drink and said I could come in after 3 weeks if I felt I needed more restriction. The fill itself consisted of 3.0 cc of fluid. That made me quite happy, since I dreaded getting only 1 cc at a time. The surgeon claims that most patients feel restriction between 3 cc and 8 cc. Right now, I'm not entirey certain what I feel, since I've been instructed to have my first post-fill meal as liquid, then progress slowly back through the stages until I'm on solid foods. The water at the dr's office went down with no issues, so I felt a little worry that I might not have any restriction at all. When I got home, I had a protein drink for lunch, and it took me 45 minutes to drink the 8 oz. I didn't have any trouble with it at all, but I thought I could feel it going down in a way I hadn't before. Whether that's restriction or just swelling, I guess we'll see, but I'm feeling fairly optimistic. And full off just liquid, which is nice. Hopefully that will continue. Anyway, that's my first fill experience. I'm crossing my fingers that the band kicks in and starts holding up its part of this bargain, since I only lost 3.4 lbs since my last dr's visit.

Glad to hear most of the new bandsters are doing well! Sorry to hear about your pain, Sojourner, and I hope it turns out to be nothing to worry about. So I became a February bandster with my surgery on Feb 1st and now I've closed out the month with my first fill on Feb 29th. I now have 3 cc in my band, am on liquids for the rest of the day and hope to start feeling the restriction when I transition back to mushies and soft solids. Can't wait to get this band working!

I'm not sure if you use My Fitness Pal, but if you do, you can enter any recipe into the program and it will figure out all the nutritional information for you. I find it really helpful!

So tomorrow marks 4 weeks from the day I was banded. I have a morning appointment with my surgeon and, judging by what he said last time I saw him, I will probably get my first fill at that time. Sheesh, I hope that's what happens. I've been going a little crazy the last couple of weeks, and I'm hoping a fill will help to restore my sanity. I realize that I'm unlikely to reach restriction on my first fill. I have an 11 cc band, and the surgeon says most of his patients reach restriction between 3 cc and 8 cc. He didn't mention how much he gives for a first fill, so I'm just praying he won't start with just 1 cc. I need some help here. I've been diligent about counting my calories and staying on target, but it's getting harder and harder. I'm able to eat anything and everything I try with no problems, and I definitely get hungry 2-3 hours after a meal, even one heavy on the protein. As far as I can tell, that should equal a fill, but what can I say? I'm paranoid. In case you hadn't noticed. I'm sure I'll be posting after the appointment, so tune in tomorrow at the same bat time, same bat channel, for an update. FIngers crossed it will be a happy one.

Happy to keep in touch. I've only been banded 4 weeks (as of Wednesday), but if I can answer any questions or anything, I'd be happy to!

Good luck Stephy and Nikki. I found the surgery to be the easy part, and hopefully you will, too. Do you have dates scheduled yet? I'm also a transplant to the area, moved here about 4 years ago and I love the Pacific NW!

Everyone is entitled to those grumpy days! (I have to say that so I won't feel like such a jerk ) But it's true. That's what blogs are for--to get the things off your chest that may or may not be approprate for the forums. Glad to see you're feeling better.

Good luck to everyone being banded this week. I have my 4 week follow-up on Wednesday and if everything checks out, I'll hopefully be getting my first fill! Fingers are soooo crossed. I'm ready to get this party started.

You know, relatively. First off, I feel the need to simultaneously thank and apologize to everyone who read through yesterday's bitter, angry rant. I did need to get that off my chest, but now Logical Me has woken up from the knock out punch she took from Emotional Me and is able to add a sliver of rationality to the discussion. Because there IS more to this than calories in and calories out, and I'm not in this for an overnight weight loss. I'm in this for the long haul. I really do appreciate everyone who took the time to point out all the things Emotional Me didn't want to hear, because I do need to remember all that, things like: we're more than an equation, plateaus happen, the band does work, calm down and just keep chugging along. I did need to hear that. I didn't really want to yesterday, but I needed to. One good thing--one really good thing--did come out of yesterday, though. I had my mad on yesterday, and I was plenty bitter. I had more than my share of "to hell with it" thoughts, and in previous years that would have equalled a cheeseburger at the very least. Instead, I just kept plugging. Yeah, I ate a few more calories than the day before, but I tracked them all and I still stayed below 1200, which in bandster hell is still something of a victory. I kept working, and even if I didn't have a smile on my face the whole time, the work is the important part. So today, I woke up and got back to it. Breakfast was a small protein shake and half a banana, and I already have lunch and dinner planned with lean protein and fresh veggies and the knowledge that I can't control the scale, but I can control my own behavior. Thanks to the band, that is. We just need to keep getting to know each other and figuring out how this all works. I think we can do it.