WASaBubbleButt

Don't forget, on your list of things to do you were going to bake me a home made cheesecake. Remember? You DO remember that, right? HAHA I know how excited you are about getting the band out, life will improve drastically!

What your doctor told you is absolutely, 100%, flat out, not true about hernia repairs. I'd venture a guess that most of us have hiatal hernias and they are repaired at the time of surgery. ALL the better surgeons will repair it at the time of banding. Without hiatal hernia repair you are likely to suffer reflux and a few other symptoms. You know what my gut tells me? Your surgeon missed the hiatal heria and instead of explaining why he didn't repair it he is giving you a load. You can belch, vomit, ... heck, you can burp the alphabet if you want with a hiatal hernia repair. It is not wise to have a hiatal hernia, that in itself causes many problems. The repair is fixing something that is wrong, not making a problem worse. Fixing a hiatal hernia via lap is a lot trickier than many realize. There are very fragile blood vessels in that area and it does require advanced lap training to do a lap hiatal hernia repair. Perhaps your surgeon doesn't have the advanced lap training and that's why he didn't want to tackle it??

??? Where is Golden Valley? Northern AZ?

Did you know that the Vitamin D Council is suggesting levels be between 50-80? They keep raising the levels, it used to be that 32 was normal, now it's been raised to 50-80. Vitamin D Council | Understanding Vitamin D Cholecalciferol The Vit D Council considers lab values of 20 and below to be critically low. The problem with those of us that are very low is that as soon as we stop taking the mega supplements it drops again. So this is something we all need to really keep an eye on.

M... You are my hero.

According to doctors... a lifetime. According to stats... 5 years or more According to the FDA... 10 years. It is a man made object, it does have a plastic diaphragm, the plastic isn't going to last forever. The silicone will. If the correct needle is used for fills the port can be injected 50,000 times before it fails.

This is where I ordered my own Vit D test kit. You can do it at home, you mail it in and they give you the results on line and via snail mail. ZRT - ZRT Products Most US MDs don't test for the right Vit D, this place does.

10 months to a normal BMI, I forget exactly how long until I got from a 24.9BMI to a 20BMI. A few months. After I got to a normal BMI I kept it up for the most part but would give myself days where I increased calories. Now I am sleeved (revision at goal) and today I have to eat 4 meals a day to maintain. I like to eat so it's not a problem. ;o) My doc was not supportive of 600 calories a day, he wanted 800. *I* wanted the fat chapter closed quickly. Thank you.

Nahh... don't do it. Eat it today, wear it tomorrow. It's not worth it. This is a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix. Find something else to do.

I can see why FillCentersUSA might not want to get a bunch of people trained, it would be their competition. But Inamed and J&J have their own training classes. I was invited to the Inamed certification class by Bart Bandy, the previous Sr. VP of Inamed. It was one of those "knowing someone in the right position" kinda things but I never followed through. I should have, not that I want to do fills I do not. There were political reasons why I would have liked going to the class. The actual procedure of doing fills is a no brainer, sterile technique, etc. But fills aren't quite as easy as you might think. It's really more of an art than a skill. The procedure is easy, technique is harder. It's one of those skills that after you have done 1000 of them you learn the art.

Can I ask what dose you are on? I got phone call that my Vit D was "critically low", about 1/5 of what it should be. A standard dose of Vit D is about 1,000IU to 5,000IU, I'm taking 50,000IU a day. I'm not liking it either. I can tell you that a Vit D deficiency can cause sugar cravings. Since I've been on Vit D my sweet craving (gummy bears and gummy worms) is almost gone.

Tell him that you stand a MUCH greater chance of risk from obesity than you will surgery. He can't be totally dead set against it if he said he will support you. It's really a matter if you are ready or not. Perhaps he feels you are not ready to totally change your eating habits and such?

I kept it at 600 calories daily and 1-2 hours of hard cardio daily. It did the trick.

I have no idea how many fills and unfills I had, I never had a sweet spot.

What most do not realize is that it is not all of Mexico that is a problem. It's just specific cities. OregonDaisy, Elisabeth, and Susan aren't going to the dangerous sections, they are going to a safe city. I disagree with your doctor about revisions. A revision from band to sleeve is not an easy surgery. It's not the end of the world but it was harder than banding. Newbie sleeves seem to do pretty well just like banded folks but revision from band to sleeve is harder. I tell my doc that the one thing that keeps me on the straight and narrow is that I don't want another revision surgery, ever. ;o) But the biggest reason I disagree with your doctor is that we don't get surgery half banking on a revision. Revision from band to sleeve carries triple the leak risk of sleeving a virgin stomach. It's a 2nd sugery when you could have just one. That's not sound medical practice to tell someone that isn't that high risk to get a band and probably revise to a sleeve later. If a sleeve is right the first time it needs to be done the first time. A sleeve is what is done for mega obese people that want bypass or a DS but are too high risk. They sleeve them and then wait for them to lose weight to a safer BMI and then they go back and bypass if that is what they want. That's really the only time you plan on a two part procedure. Unless you are 2' tall and 300# there is no solid reason why you couldn't do a sleeve vs. a band barring other medical issues.

I know how you feel, it affects every single aspect of your life. There is not a part of your world that isn't affected. Social, employment, personal, health, the works. I think there is a certain amount of value in keeping the band, you get closure.

Who is that weirdo guy that writes text books for fundie fanatics to home school? I can't remember his name, I always think of him as Rev. BillyBob. I'm drawing a blank. Those books are nothing short of frightening... not to mention wrong.

I still have mine, too. On another sleeve board all the band to sleeve people were posting ideas on how we could kill our bands so they could not spread their evil to others. We talked about running them over with trucks, electrocuting them, etc. However, the best suggestion was to use it as a refrigerator lock. If it works the same as on a person nothing will go in and nothing will come out. ;o) I still think it would be fun to get a whole bunch of us together (Sadly, there are many) and have a "Kill the Band," party.

I figure it's transfer addiction. Food to religion. :thumbup:

But does SHE know? Hmmmmm.....

HA! Glad you took that in the spirit intended! ;o)

You have a bad feeling about what? The band or sleeve?

That isn't what I wrote. I wrote that they are not encouraged to read it. A very dear friend of mine is a Catholic priest. We've been friends for about 30 years. I can ask him the hard questions and he isn't afraid to answer and he doesn't hand me a bible and tell me his opinions are there like the one I have blocked. ;o) I asked him why all those years of going to church I was never encouraged by any priest to read the bible and he said it's because it isn't necessary. The goal of the priest is to cover the bible in sermons and it takes about three years to do so. After I read the bible myself I realized that listening to that stuff every bloody week they went over the bible 6 times throughout my first 18 years... they missed a lot of the bible. Most of it. We were spoon fed what they wanted us to know and with their own personal twist added for good measure. I wish the same for you. ;o)

Consider this: If this God knows everything that is going to happen before it happens then he creates people knowing full well they will lack belief in him. He demands faith and if you can't honestly muster up some faith then you go to hell for not believing. He knows this before he ever creates you, yet he creates you so that he can send you to hell. Then prayer... what's the true value of prayer? This God already knows what he's going to do before the event happens. So someone prays... for what? If a parent prays to spare the life of their child but God already knows he won't spare the life of the child, where is the value in this prayer? By asking for something in prayer... world peace, let my kid win the football game, save the world, whatever... aren't people really asking their God to go against his own ultimate plan in favor of what they want?

Very true and atheists have their share of extreme fundies as well. They are every bit as annoying as the Christian version. Yep, sure is. I read the bible and how impossible it is, how primitive it is, how blood thirsty this God is, and I realized that it's just simply impossible. I started doing some research of the history behind Christianity and then I realized, it's merely another myth. I've read three versions of the bible cover to cover. Most atheists have. That's why they are atheist. ;o) I don't believe you are understanding the point here. I did not say Christians have no facts in life, they have no solid facts regarding their God. If they did, they wouldn't need faith.