WASaBubbleButt

Might want to repost on this section of the forum, you'll get more takers: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f13/

Drinking warm fluids does help some people to open up a bit. Another thought is that stress plays a HUGE role in how tight you are. I have a friend that can't eat with her kids at meal time because they are all boys and happens to be these boys have few table manners. She gets so stressed she can't eat. As Carlene would say, she's tighter than a virgin on prom night. One thought is to make extra sure you are following bandster guidelines. Eat slowly, chew well, don't overeat, etc. Make sure you are eating in a totally stress free environment. Make extra sure you are sitting up very straight and not hunched over. Without great posture it can change the positioning of your band and food just doesn't go down well. I know this is a big issue of mine. I eat while I am typing, talking, etc. and I'm not paying attention to posture. It really can make a huge difference for some folks. Don't eat if you are too tight. If food gets stuck you will cause swelling and the swelling gets worse with each bite until you get to the point that you can't swallow your own saliva. If you get stuck you might want to do liquids for at least six hours. If you PB don't eat or drink anything for six hours and finish the day with liquids. You really don't sound overfilled to me. If you were you wouldn't be able to get solid food down at all. It sounds like you are tight earlier in the day and okay in the evening. Dr. C even discusses patients that he has that he actually fills in the evening. He doesn't care if they can't eat solids during the day as long as they can in the evening. He talks about some patients that open wide up in the evening and they chow down like a trooper. In those folks he fills them so they are tight all day long and around 5PM they can start solids. During the day when you are extra tight try to stick to liquids. Soup, Protein drinks, fruit smoothies, something like that. Once you open up a bit then try solids. But again, if you are too tight DON'T eat solids! You'll cause swelling and make the problem worse.

By any chance, is this also your thread? http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f78/body-may-rejecting-lab-band-39816/ May I ask who your surgeon is?

Something isn't right about what the doctor said. An infection is NOT a symptom of the body rejecting the band. That is from poor surgical technique, poor aftercare, or sometimes sh*t just happens and nobody knows why there is an infection. Theoretically a person can reject the band but as I recall Inamed claims it hasn't happened yet. People talk about it but nobody seems to know anyone that it has happened to. I wouldn't have the band removed, if I were in your shoes I might have the port removed but leave the band. Even with minimal restriction you can still lose weight. The band itself provides some restriction for some people. Down the road after the infection clears up you can reconsider having a port replaced. But once you remove the entire band you are looking at another WLS in the future. Removing the port can be done as an office procedure, removing the band is a full (and expensive) surgical procedure. If you remove the port it will be cheaper, the infection should heal, it can be properly cultured, and you have lots of time to think about how you want to continue in the future. When you have the port removed the surgeon will typically bury the tubing in your peritoneum and your body then has an amazing ability to deal with the bacteria on the tubing. Add antibiotics to that after a culture and that should do the trick. I would suggest the doc do the port removal free of charge. You clearly had an infection before you ever left the hospital. This is not your fault, it's not like you went swimming the day of surgery or anything similar. I can't imagine how heartburn could be related to a potential "band rejection". Do you have any fill at this point? Do you have any restriction? Have you been checked under fluoro to verify the band is in the correct position and you haven't slipped? Are you having heartburn at night while you are in bed? If so, are you eating within 3 hours of going to bed? If so, that could be a PB and not heartburn. Is your doc doing anything about the heartburn? Another thought however this is amazingly unlikely. If you have eroded that can cause a band infection. But due to timing I can't see how that is likely at all. It takes time to erode and you were infected before even leaving the hospital. Did they culture the wound? What kind of bacteria is it? If they did not culture it, why not? That is how they would know what type of antibiotic to use (most of the time, sometimes there is a specific odor or color and that gives a pretty good idea of the bug). Since you haven't been back to the thread after posting the original post I'm going to try to email you or PM you in hopes that might catch your attention.

(emphasis my own) Did you mean it happens 80% of the time if you eat less than 2-3 hours before you go to bed? If so, that isn't necessary reflux, it could well be a PB instead. Maybe try not eating for at least three hours before bedtime and the last thing in your pouch should be Water. Think of it as rinsing out your pouch. Use lots of pillows or do as others have suggested, put boards under the front of your bed so you are not sleeping flat. Most of all, nothing by mouth for three hours before bedtime except for plain water. Not juice, not Crystal Light, but plain water.

Congrats to you!!! Just know, the day you are banded life will change in ways you never imagined! This is GOOD! It will really honestly be the first day of the rest of your life. Good for you, congrats!

If the hospital did not send you home with anything to practice deep breathing, try blowing up balloons. Don't reuse the same balloon as it will stretch out the first time you blow it up. Use a new balloon each time. When you have surgery it can cause some lung problems and to prevent pneumonia they will have you practice deep breathing. So if they didn't send you home with anything, use balloons.

I'm not sure I can agree with this statement. While I agree it certainly needs to be dealt with I don't know that I agree it has to be done before surgery. I mean, if we COULD do it before surgery we wouldn't need bands. I think recognizing it is an issue before surgery is needed, but not resolving it. If that was the case I doubt I would have ever been banded!

You might want to talk to your doc about adding TUMS to your diet. Yep, plain old Calcium Carbonate, two regular strength TUMS twice daily for 10 out of every 30 days. It balances out the acids caused by burning fat/creating keytones. It really does make you feel better.

Not sure if this helps or not but I'll throw it out there: WeightWatchers.com - Weight-Loss Plateaus - Visitor

What size/type band do you have?

DCPrincess... Lots of us know exactly how you feel. Here is a thread on this very topic: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f109/omg-how-crazy-am-i-39650/

FWIW, what you are experiencing is what many (most? all?) of us experience. My suggestion, again... FWIW, is to really start reading. Learn every bloody thing you can about the band, how it works, how it affects various people, the mind games, the head hunger, the works. Read this forum EVERY single day. Also, equally important is to read the science behind weight loss and obesity issues. There are a gazillion studies going on right now and it seems like science is able to identify many issues but they don't quite know what to do to fix those issues. I'm talking the physiology behind obesity, the chemical changes, chemical imbalances, etc. It tends to put a whole new twist to being fat. I'm not saying it is not our fault we are fat, we ARE the ones calling the shots about what we put in our mouth. But I also believe there are biological and chemical issues we deal with that naturally skinny people do not deal with. I think we spend so much time focused on what failures we are and we can't control something as simple as a lousy diet. We tend to hyperfocus on our failures instead of focusing on what we do to fix the problem. We can beat ourselves up and most of us do! But that isn't very productive and doesn't help weight loss issues much. Here is a good starting place for obesity related science issues: Obesity News & Weight Loss News & Fitness News from Medical News Today Something else for you to learn about, get as much info as you can and again... this is a starting point for you: http://www.lapsf.com/weight-loss-surgeries.html You should always know your BMI: Barix Clinics - Is Surgery Right For You - BMI Calculator Read this entire site, it's a fantastic source of info for newbies and old time bandsters: Tracy's FAQ The surgical technique for placing the band: LAP-BAND: Surgery Technique I forget but I think this is a decent enough link... but I'm not positive. Might be worth it to check it out: Calories Per Day Calculator - Basal Metabolic Rate Myth of starvation mode: http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?tabnum=1&art_id=35501&sc=801 Interesting reads: WeightWatchers.com - Weight-Loss Plateaus - Visitor WeightWatchers.com - Calories, Metabolism and Body Weight - Visitor WeightWatchers.com - Increasing Metabolism - Visitor

One thing I have noticed in my case is that if I have the smallest fill, not enough for actual restriction but just to compress that nerve in my stomach, that kills my hunger. At least that's my doc's explanation and it seems to work. If my hunger kicks in again I get a teeny tiny fill. Again, not enough to make a difference for restriction but enough to compress that nerve for a bit I don't get hungry much to begin with. Then I just battle head hunger. But life is sooooo much easier in my case when I'm not battling stomach hunger AND head hunger.

Heh... I just had a thought. Do you think that we need to go from unlearning old myths to learning new myths? HA! Obesity science is like psychiatry. Those are the babies of medicine. They have the shortest amount of time for research and the fewest dollars. That is slowly changing but it's not changing fast enough to please me. :car:

OMG! You are drinking liquid Protein? Where are the ch.... oh, never mind. :car: (sorry folks, private joke here) *I* consider you the guru of weight loss.

Being insulin resistant is not the same as starvation mode. Two very different concepts.

Ohhhh, during TOM all I want is chocolate cake and there is NO eating Chocolate cake during that time. Sometimes Water is a challenge. It's all good, I don't need Chocolate cake and that is the only time I want it anyway. :car:

Wendell... Have you been to the "at or near" goal section of this forum? I'd love to see your thoughts on the topics, "oh wise weight loss guru".

Darr... WOW! Your weight loss so far is great and especially considering the fact that you don't even have a band yet! Congrats to you!

Ahhhhh, Wendell! One of my favorite bandsters!!! A true inspiration.

You know, there is actually a LOT of science behind why we eat the way we do. There is a type of xray that they can use to show brain activity just LOOKING at food. If you take a skinny person and a fat person and put them under a special xray, then you show them both photos of food it is interesting to note the differences in the brain of the skinny person vs. fat person. Both brains will do virtually nothing when shown a photo of a carrot. But if you show both people a photo of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, chocolate cake, etc., the skinny person's brain doesn't do much of anything yet the fat person's brain will go nuts. All kinds of electrical changes happen. Now they are looking to see if that brain activity produces a hormone that causes hunger. Stop and think about it, if you start thinking about food you become hungry. If you are busy and focused on something else you don't feel the hunger in the same way. Just suggesting food to us can do us in. Not so with a naturally skinny person. That is just one of many examples. If we could do it without a band, we would have. We have different issues and different needs, the band fixes much of the physical part. We have to fix the mental part and really, that is the hardest, the mental part. But the band makes it so that we CAN do that. It's something that is hard to explain until you have experienced it.

There is a huge difference with a band. The band kinda sorta creates two stomachs. One little tiny one and the usual stomach. With a band the little stomach is just a few ounces large. Without a band your stomach will hold an amount about the size of a gallon of milk. It is certainly possible to restrict your caloric intake to that of a banded person but you'll be hungry all the time. If you could do that, you would have done it by now and you wouldn't be here with the rest of us. :car: The little stomach that the band creates is where the nerves are that tell your body you are full. Those nerves are at the top of your stomach, so when your little stomach is full, you feel full. The band is amazingly small with restriction, the hole between both stomachs can easily be the size of a pencil lead, or half the diameter of a thermometer. When you eat you fill your little stomach. Let's say you eat 4oz of food. It takes hours to drain into your larger stomach so you stay full for hours. No, metabolism is no different. You just get very full very quickly and stay full for much longer. That is what the band does. Starvation mode is when little children in Africa eat 100 calories every few days. THAT is starvation mode. It does NOT happen with obese people. Starvation mode is a myth, nothing more. Starvation is when you are severely under your normal BMI, you are suffering from malnutrition, and your body makes clear and obvious physical changes. That does noth happen with fat people. One of the hardest parts of losing weight is letting go of all the myths that have been around for eons. Starvation is when you have gone to the point of a severe anorexic and your body pulls Fluid from the arms and legs and stores excess fluid in the gut to protect organs. You are weak, unable to move, prone to disease, malnutrition, etc. It is an absolute extreme. It is NOT the same as a plateau that we all go through at one time or another.

I was in Mexico last Saturday and I was talking to my doc. I was wearing a tight tank top with my usual baggy shirt over it. I thought I was making progress with the tight tank top. My doc was politely suggesting that I wear more "girl" like clothes instead of baggy clothes (let's face it, baggy clothes act as a tent). I had to laugh because it dawned on me the irony of my bariatric surgeon giving me fashion tips. HA! For you it was your collar bone, for me it was when I suddenly realized that my boobs and stomach are no longer a single entity. One big round circle of horror. Now I have boobs and a much smaller stomach, a stomach that will be helped with another 15 pounds and a tummy tuck.

Some thoughts would be: BumbleBee (great stuff) Netrition's Kitchen Table Bakers Prices (great crunchy, carb free, Protein filled, crackers) Syntrax Matrix 5.0 Protein powder (I travel quite a bit and keep it in my car at all times with bottled water) Gift Baskets, Dried Fruits, Nuts (Veggie chips or dried fruit) ready to eat meals, Camping, Hiking, Backpacking, Militaria items on eBay.com (Ready to eat meals)