WASaBubbleButt

Eloquently???? It took me over 24 hours before I could respond to that post without all 4 letter words! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I don't believe I understand. That statement could be taken a few different ways. Would you mind explaining in detail? Thx.

The worst will be the ex-port pain. A port hurts, removing a port hurts more. It will feel like a bon fire going on in there. It lasts about 2 weeks. I had my band removed and 85% of my stomach cut out all at the same time. Without a doubt, the port removal was the worst of all of it. Just what you wanted to hear, right? ;o) It IS temporary and will go away. Just plan on two weeks of annoying. I learned something towards the end of the two weeks. When you can't sit up in bed in the morning, pull your knee up to your chest, grab your knee and THEN sit up. Makes it a breeze! Get a sleeve, it's soooo much easier. No getting stuck, no sliming, no PBing, eat what you want but perfect restriction from surgery to the rest of your life. It feels exactly like before you ever had WLS, you just get full REALLY fast.

And a prime example of what I refer to. I knew the potential problems, what I did not know is that Inamed hasn't updated their stats in years. I did not know that they are doing research and studies annually but the opt not to post them. They still have stats from several years ago. Let me ask you a question. Why so you suppose they haven't updated their stats in years regardless of the current stats they have? Why do YOU suppose they still have stats from a small study group years ago instead of current large studies? When I was banded the revision rate was not sky high. The board I was posting on was the largest lap band board of the time. EVERYONE without exception was happy. What I didn't realize is that people with problems were chased away exactly like DSers on OH with problems are chased away today. There is currently a lawsuit against OH for this very behavior. Inamed is a major advertiser for OH. Anyone with problems during the worst of the worst in OH history was chased away. OH is being sued for having employees pose as patients and chase away anyone that said anything negative about the band or anyone else that was a major advertiser. The lawsuit was one of OH's own lawyers. He died in the middle of all this mess, if his family can continue the lawsuit... I don't know. I was researching two years ago. It's just been in the last year that revisions for band to anything else has skyrocketed. Information on banding is at an all time high... today. Two years ago it was much different. Each year the information doubles, triples. I'm totally cool with accepting consequences for the band. I knew when I was banded there was not a lot of information out. A friend was trying to talk me out of the band and I kept telling her, there isn't a huge amount of information but there is enough. I'm satisfied that the data that is out shows that the complications that do happen are not typically life threatening. If it didn't work I'd remove the band. I thought it was my last shot at weight loss, a sleeve turns out to be my last shot at weight maintenance. Point being I most certainly DO accept consequences for band problems, I have little choice even if I wasn't willing. There are two types of failed banded people. People that are unwilling/unable to change their eating habits (I don't want to diet, I don't want to change my eating habits, I don't want to move my ass, I want to sit on the couch and I want the band to absorb the ice cream I continue to eat) and people that have true band problems. I lost 100% of my excess weight before the problems were bad by keeping calories at 600 daily and 1-2 hours of hard cardio daily. Don't you DARE suggest who is blowing smoke up the butt of another. I lost over 100% of my excess weight after the problems were bad. I looked like a crack whore, not pretty. But that is what the band can potentially do. Usually band problems result in no/little weight loss. For a small minority of us band problems border on dangerous. That is something you will have to accept or not, it does not change facts regardless of what you choose to believe. You know what? I have come to believe that the band will not be "forever" in most people. Look at the revision boards on OH. Two years ago it was rare for anyone to get a revision from band to something else. Today they make up the 2nd largest group of people getting revisions yet there are probably 5 RNYers to every banded person walking around the US today. There are a ton of mesh banded people posting, they were getting banded in the 80s and 90s. There are many, yet adjustable band folks make up the 2nd largest number of revisions on the biggest revision board on the internet. Annually the number of bands at least doubles. It was one heck of a lot less when I was banded. Insurance rarely covered banding two years ago, most of us were going to Mexico to get a band because it was $20K for a band just two years ago. If you don't like that, tough. Go see for yourself. Tell all the banded folks getting revisions that they aren't following the rules or some other such nonsense. I double dawg dare you! I'll get popcorn and sit back and watch that one. Newbies are infamous for scoffing at those with problems. When were you banded? Just curious. Yes, you are correct. Ignorance is bliss. It is bliss indeed, isn't it?

Honestly, it sounds like good marketing to me. ;o)

Nope, they taste the same to me. I'm such an idiot.

I'm not going to start a whole new thread for this so I'm just going to post it here. Since we are talking about doing stupid things, it's appropriate. I did a really stupid thing. ;o) I have been craving gummy bears lately, strange since I don't even like them usually. I keep them in a baggy in the frig. So yesterday I was chomping away on my gummy bears, eating a LOT of them and it dawned on me that these were different colors and shapes than my baggy of grape gummy bears. Oye veh... they were my Flinstones gummy bears Vitamins. I'm such an idiot. I do believe I got plenty of vitamins in yesterday. ;o)

No crystal ball needed. I know the OP from OH. She's for real and she's not trying to start anything. That is why I explained what led her to come here to begin with.

Kat... I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on that one. There was a lot on the thread I'm thinking of. There were many hard feelings by a great many people because of Sandy on OH. We could never discuss anything or talk it out because Amy Williams at OH was so heavy handed in her moderation that she deleted posts and banned members at a whim. Nobody knew why the other side was so upset and we could never tell the other side why we were angry, annoyed, whatever. When it was brought over here we were permitted to finally tell what was going on, why we were upset, what we were frustrated over, etc. We also did some fighting, bickering and finally many of us are no longer angry with one another. A great many thought I was making up stories when I wrote that Sandy had her RN license revoked. I was never permitted to post public links showing the revocation on OH and Sandy continued lying about it. People were following her questionable advice based on her claims of being a nurse. When we brought it over here I posted links and proved my case and the truth came out. We worked out many issues, I no longer think some of the OH oldtimers are assholes and buttwipes, they are kinda nice and I like them. Amazingly, there was a great deal of healing on that thread over time. Do you know that the Board of Nursing sent Sandy a cease and desist order last December telling her to refrain from claiming she is a nurse? Do you know that when she refused to refrain from claiming she is a nurse on the boards and her website they brought her before the board and fined her $2500 in April referring to her as a nurse imposter? As long as she makes these claims people are going to continue to question the information. The reason this is a legit issue today is because there are a lot of newbies that thought Sandy was a paid employee of OH and a licensed RN. This was as of a couple of weeks ago. They thought she was in the same ranks as DrC. She isn't! But the way she signs off as a "band educator" and has her little disclaimer below her sig she does make newbies think she is working for OH. Her advice is sometimes good and sometimes it is pretty darn bad. She takes legit studies, alters them and posts them claiming they are posted as originally written when in fact, she changes them to support her wild claims. If a newbie wants to come over here and get an idea of what is real and what isn't by someone they think is a trusted professional, I WANT them to do that. Making them feel like a troublemaker and unwelcome isn't acceptable however, I realize you probably don't know what brought this one on. The OP wasn't trying to do anything wrong, she's a potential banded newbie that is looking for balance and she didn't really get that. This is what prompted the Sandy saga again, Sandy was posing as a newbie banded person and slamming people she doesn't like, pushing her CDs, and supporting her own bizarre opinions by using these fake IDs. She forgot which account she was posting on and while using one of her fake accounts she posted as Sandy (IOW, BUSTED!): Please LISTEN to your DOCTORS FIRST AND FOREMOST... The very first post is a copy/paste of her post where she was writing as Sandy but under her fake ID. She was posting as "elizabeth" but writing as Sandy. I believe it is this thread where some newbies are shocked, they thought Sandy was an OH employee: Forum Login I believe this is why newbies are questioning what is going on with Sandy and I am glad they are asking questions. I hope they continue to do so.

GROSS! You know, everyone slam dunks Paul (OP of that thread) but truth is, while he does tend to yank a few chains he is probably the ONLY honest person there about DS. He starts these threads on purpose, to yank chains and to tell the truth about what the procedure can cause.

If you are only looking to read the positives of banding then I would avoid all band boards. You are not looking for a balanced view of banding and that is not safe research. If someone's truth kills your dreams then you may not have researched enough before surgery. You know, when I was doing my own research I was posting on a different band board, I hadn't heard of LBT yet. I read only happy, peppy, perky people who just looooved their bands! What I did not know is that anyone who was having problems or didn't like their band, they were all but chased away from the boards. It's something newbies do a great deal, they are so afraid that they made a wrong decision (holds true with ALL WLS types, not just banding) that they often times scoff at anyone having problems. If someone is barfing all the time "band intolerance" couldn't possibly be the problem. Oh no, the person isn't following some set of magical rules. If someone slips then clearly they were too tight. If someone erodes the obviously they went to a crappy surgeon and should be ashamed. Truth is, band problems are common. Sometimes it is the person not able to chew well, take small bites, etc., and other times it is truly the band causing problems. I'm very sorry for you that your dreams are killed from reading someone's truth but you know what? Had I been able to read something a little more balanced I am not fully sure I would have opted for a band. So I am all about everyone posting their experiences both good and bad. Give people a lot of experiences to read about and let them make a fully balanced decision. But blowing air up their back side is not fair to newbies who want to read all sides of the issue. That was done to me and I think *that* is unforgivable.

You might be surprised at how many bad apples there are out there. Alex installed new software that catches multiple accounts under the same IP address and that cut down the problems a great deal. Patient coordinators posing as happy patients are one reason I wrote the thread in my sig link. At least it gives people a way to research and verify information they are told for themselves. They don't have to depend on anyone posting on a message board for information.

At least you are honest about it, you put it right there in your sig. The scummy low lifes that pose as patients and don't tell others that they are making a commission off of unsuspecting people are the folks that annoy me. Those that come up with multiple IDs to pose as lots and lots of happy patients, they make people think the doctor has more patients than he really does. We've caught people doing that lots of times. There is one doctor that used to pose as a patient and tell everyone how great and good looking he is. He just kept forgetting which ID he was posting under. On a Yahoo group he forgot he was posing as a patient and was speaking as himself. That was pretty funny, they are still making fun of him for that. I don't have a problem with coordinators, I have a problem with the liars that send people to crappy doctors just to make a buck.

Sometimes when the cost is less for surgery it is more when you get home and have to fix the problems. Personally, I would not go to that clinic. As Innertube writes above, cheap is cheap for a reason.

You had surgery less than a week ago and you are on solids already? That's pretty fast. Feeling faint is no excuse for cheating on the post op diet. You can have liquids that will do the same thing. I'd stick with liquids and see if that doesn't make the pain better.

If you are losing well, have a drink or two. If you are not losing, don't drink. It's wasted calories.

Sort of... kinda. ;o) My insurance would have covered a revision but I was too sick at the time to jump through ins hoops and I didn't care for any of the docs that my ins listed for revisions. So I decided to self pay in MX. I could get it done quickly and it was by the surgeon of my choice that I trusted. Point being, I had a BMI of 20-22? Somewhere around there? No comorbids at all, never did have any even with my original band. You have to have a history of MO with my ins. The standard of care in the US and MX is a history of MO for a revision being done all at once. Meaning one surgery to remove a band and revise to a new procedure. Less surgical risk, less anesthesia risk, etc. But it can't always be done in one surgery safely. If there is a great deal of pouch swelling, slip, erosion, etc., it may not be able to be done in a single procedure. Sometimes you have to have the band removed, heal, and then go back for a 2nd procedure. I decided to fight weight loss vs. weight regain by having two procedures. I could have had my band removed on an emergency basis and waited to jump through hoops for a revision. But I would have gained and I felt that was more potentially dangerous (and I didn't want to lose all that again) than fighting weight loss. If you do have the band removed and they won't revise now, you aren't that far away from a BMI of 40 so you may qualify soon. I know I wouldn't have kept it off without a revision. The sleeve is fantastic, I LOVE it! Soooooo much easier than the band. I am still amazed at how much I just got used to with banding and it became a way of life. Today I have WLS without the crap banding brings. Life is good with a sleeve.

And use my sig link and avoid Betancourt, Emmanual, ThebariatricTeam, Patti Lissberger, and Huacuz. ;o)

Ahhhh, I get it now. I'm slow. ;o)))))

There is a link in my sig that is for researching Mexican surgeons but it really applies to US surgeons as well. It gives you a LONG list of questions to ask, what to look for, how to verify info you have been told. It's pretty comprehensive.

LOL! 43 pages and still going!

This lawsuit was emailed to me by Amy Williams, previously an employee of OH. An OH member who is an attorney is verifying that it was filed in the court and that it hasn't been changed. So far, it appears to be legit. There are certainly some problems with the wording, etc. Nobody really knows yet if it has been altered or if perhaps the medical problems Gary was experiencing before his untimely death caused some of the questionable statements. Lack of Oxygenation throughout his body? Many times people know their ticket is due to be stamped, they know on some level they will be dying. Maybe he was trying to put together a large sum of money for his family? Maybe he was just plain correct, we may never know. But much of what is in there is true, some of it...not sure yet. We'll find out. The family will be unlikely to follow through with the lawsuit according to the type of lawsuit and the laws in that particular state. Amy was able to confirm some of the policies in the lawsuit, slamming members and attacking members (by staff posing as members) if they said anything negative about OH, the heavy handed behaviors of OH, etc. The flip side to that coin is that life on OH changed drastically when Amy left. The over moderation, the quick bannings, deleted posts when they disagreed with Amy, much if it came to a dead stop when Amy left. Amy claims it was OH telling her to do these things, yet as soon as Amy left these behaviors came to a dead stop. Gary was a good guy that did a great deal of positives for many fatties. He was able to push insurance issues so people COULD have WLS. Not many "lawyers" can make similar claims about improving the quality of the lives of a bunch of us fellow fatties. I think he deserves a little more respect than what has been shown in this thread. He was a good guy that did good things for the fat community. He's one of the few that cared enough about folks like us to do so.

No white carbs and tons of exercise!

You will stand a greater risk of a slip in your future. You aren't permitting the scarring and adhesions to form and that is what holds your band in place long term. This is not wise. There is no excuse, none. You knew the post op diet and you choose not to do it.

Nonono... he does not work out of a clinic. Only a hospital. No clinic. ;o) His website is: Alberto Aceves, MD-FACS Certified Bariatric Surgeon