I fear that once you have started with reflux, you have started a new chapter. It now becomes managing the reflux rather than maintaining weight and eating healthy.
Reflux can be a very quirky thing. I never had it in my life and then about 3 years after being banded I developed it very abruptly. No slip, no change in diet, just awakened by severe relux one morning. I tried everything conventional and unconventional to treat it. Emptied the band for long stretches and refilled gradually with tiny amounts. I stayed on twice daily proton pump inhibitors for years, tried apple cider vinegar, liquid antiacids, accupuncture, novena's, you name it. I was so determined to hang on to that band. This was not garden variety reflux. I had to sleep upright and I would still find gastric contents (that had come out my nose) on my pillow. There was often projectile reflux if you can imagine such a thing, usually just as I was falling asleep. I know this sounds crazy in retrospect that I put up with this for so long (4 years!). I just could not cope with the fact that the band had failed me as I had been such a believer. When the sleep deprivation and sensation of being in a toxic acid bath became too much I threw in the towel and had the band removed. The reflux resolved immediately. I was truly so traumatised, physically and psychologically, any further bariatric surgery was not something I would consider.
Some of the band literature touts it as a remedy for reflux, this was not my experience.
Each of the major bariatric procedures has had patients who developed reflux and others whose reflux resolved.
By all means, do everything you possibly can to treat the reflux. But do not take it as a personal failure if it keeps coming back. Physiology is a complicated thing and frankly there is alot of over simplistic interpretation and advice appearing on many boards.
I suffered so long, not accepting it needed to go, I simply would not accept defeat. I was the the poster girl, expert, high priestess in the band cult. My preparation was a master class in clinical research and analysis (I am a nurse). I was brainwashed by the oversimplistic mantras on the support group boards (Smartbandsters on yahoo in particular) that fuel the notion that any band issues are completely due to the behavior of the recipient.
