Penni60

I am game. OK My weight this morning is 254 lbs.

Sure no problem

I am getting some pics this Friday before surgery and will post them when I get home. LOL!!! I call him Dr. HUNKY now.

Good Luck Debra. Come back and give us updates. Oh and remember to "Show us the belly."

:) :D :D :banana :banana :banana :banana :banana :banana :Bunny :Bunny :Bunny :Bunny :Bunny :Bunny :banana :banana :banana :banana :banana :banana NUFF said. LOL!!!

Jeanie: I am so sorry for ignoring your initial post. WHOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 lbs lost. That is awesome. I applaud you. Keep it up. Can't wait till I am there.

GOOD LUCK tomorrow Debra. You are in my prayers. Leslie: YOU are NORMAL. I had that bloated feeling for at least a week to two weeks after. I was burping and farting lots in those weeks. IT will pass. Take this time to heal and get better.

OH MY GOD!! That is too funny. I love it. I also love AVENUE stores. I am forever buying way too much stuff in there. I am tempted to get a parttime job just to get the discount. LOL!!!!!

Tasha: I love your cute little chihuahua. I almost got one about a month ago. Mine was gonna be blue and long hair. Wish I had gotten him now. Darn it. Welcome aboard. WOW!!! 72 lbs so far. That is awesome. Keep up the good work.

OUCHY!!! Want me to kiss your boo boo?? THat looks painful. WOW!! I never bruised like that. Well let me knock on wood. I still have a surgery this Friday so I might have to post some pics myself. LOL!!!! Certainly will post a pic of Dr. Billy for sure. LOL!!!! Prizes for the best belly pic, best bra pic, etc. Sounds like a lot of fun to me. LOL!!

Lisa Lee: Congrats on your surgery date. I will keep you in my prayers for a speedy recovery.

NO worries. Either one will work. Water aerobics or just aerobics. Just need to do low impact. Have you tried an elliptical machine at a gym? It sounds like you need to strengthen the muscles around the knees. I had to do this too. I started out walking on my treadmill at home very slowly. That way if it started to hurt I could stop. Get a knee brace from Rite Aid and use them when you do anything stressful on the knees. Use heating pads on the knees too. That feels heavenly to me.

Donali You crack me up. I love it "Casper"

Yes I had one about a week ago. I got a 1cc fill. I have great restriction now almost like I did right after surgery. It has stimulated my weight loss again.

Rica: I just noticed you were banded a week after me and we weighed the same. Small world.

ME TOO leatha. ME TOO

Rica: Have you tried water aerobics? It is low impact and should be better for your knees.

OK this post will be long and involved. SO if you don't wanna read it then skip over it. I sent Dr. HUNKY (BILLY) an email stating that I did not want to do the surgery on Friday before having an Endoscopy (ENDO) done. His reply to my email is listed below. It is long so bear with me. __________________________________________________ We can do the endoscopy at the same time if you want. The surgery we have already discussed, namely the correct positioning of your port has to happen anyway. I think it is very unlikely that you have an erosion. Your symptoms are not as dramatic as the patients I have treated with erosion. Because I don't think an erosion is very likely I was hoping to avoid the endoscopy entirely. My thinking was that if the laparoscopy which we would perform at the same time as your port repositioning was totally normal then there would be very little chance that you have an erosion. Erosions always cause lots of adhesions between the liver and the stomach and the port tubing is always wraped up in lots of fat. It is not a subtle finding and easy to diagnose. If on laparoscopy your have none of these findings then I don't think you need an endoscopy. Your symptoms are not at all very suggestive of an erosion. Erosion is just one of the things on the list of things to consider. If you want us to perform an endoscopy while you are under anesthesia we can do so, it just might not be necessary. I think there is a very low liklihood you have an erosion so I was thinking how to minimize the need to perform an endoscopy. If you want to have an endoscopy we would perform the endoscopy first. If there is an erosion I would either wake you up to discuss the erosion and show you pictures and make a reccomendation to you and then you would be able to participate in the decision as to what to do. If there was no erosion we would proceed with our planned revision of your port site to secure the port and reposition the band tubing. Let me know what your thoughts are. If you want to do the endoscopy fist and then schedule the second procedure at a later date that is fine with me. Another strategy would be to perform the laparoscopy to examine what the surgical site looks like (rule out all the adhesions) If it looks fine then proceed with the port repositioning and tubing repositioning. If it looks like an erosion then proceed with the endoscopy. If there was an erosion I could then stop and discuss the findings with you. I'm sure it is possible to get the endoscopy scheduled for friday. It would be easy if we combined it with the laparoscopy and the information at laparoscopy would be useful anyway. If you just want to have a routine endoscopy in the GI suite then let me know and we will work on getting that approved for friday. If you want us to do the endoscopy simultaneously with the laparoscopy then we can do that on friday because bothe procedures would be done in the main operating room which we already have scheduled. As I said, your symptoms are unusual and don't really fall into the pattern of symptoms I have seen in the erosions I have treated. They really appear more like an allergic reaction at this point. I have one other patient who had a red port site after placement of a lap-band in Mexico. I did the endoscopy first and could not find an erosion. I then replaced her port and found lots of adhesions and lots of Fluid around her port site. Now I have scheduled her for another endoscopy just to be sure I didn't miss a very timy erosion. She has no complaints and has not had any problems but she still ended up with multiple procedues. I think that your situation would be similar. I don't think that I will find an erosion on your endoscopy, If we do the endoscopy first but then when I replace the port I find fluid around the port and adhesions with the laparoscopy I will be concerned that you had an infection at some point around the port. We always worry about erosions and since we are not perfect we always wonder if we missed the erosion at the time of the first endoscopy and often would reccomend a second one to be absolutely sure. I hope this helps. Let me know which way you want to proceed or if you need any more information to help make this decision. In the meantime I will see about getting time to do the endoscopy on friday if that is all you want to do. Again I think the liklihood of you having an erosion is very, very low. Dr. Billy ____________________________________________________ Don't you just love him???? So, I am gonna have the ENDO at the same time as my surgery on Friday. That will put to rest any idea if I have erosion or not. OH!! And Donali see in the email where he states that erosions cause lots of adhesions? You came into my thoughts while I was reading that cause didn't you say Lopez said you had lots of them. He thought you were rejecting the band when in fact it was the erosion causing the adhesions. Anyway, I am feeling so much better now. THanks to all of you great people for listening and letting me vent to you. You are all angels to me. VIVA LAS VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lisa: I hear you. I understand you about the drinking. I went through something like that when I was divorcing my ex along long time ago. I drank to drown the pain and frustration. I became a borderline out of control. Then I woke up a month later and said "Wait a minute. I have 4 kids to support. I can't be doing this to them or myself." So I just stopped the excess drinking. I do still have an occasional drink but usually a glass of wine is my max. My daughter's wedding I had several glasses of champagne. ON trips to Jamaica with my girlfriend I let my hair down. THen when I get home back to the glass of wine maybe every two months, if that. SO go get the appointment with the doc. Get the endo. Give yourself peace of mind.

I love the name "Portia" It is really cute and exotic sounding.

OH OH OH OH we want to see it. Post a pic.

Hey B and welcome aboard: I suggest you get Jessie Ahroni's book "Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding" It is awesome. Amazon.com has it. Here is a link to order it. [ame=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0595311148/102-8263312-9040100?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance]Amazon.com: Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding: Achieving Permanent Weight Loss with Minimally Invasive Surgery: Jessie H. Ahroni Ph.D. A. R. N. P.: Books[/ame] I just got mine in the mail and I already love it. I was banded on April 6, 2004 and have lost 42 lbs. I live in Van Nuys, CA. If you are looking for a good doctor then I can suggest Dr. Helmuth Billy in Ventura, CA. He is awesome. That is my follow up doc. If you want his info I will give it to you. Keep us posted on your developments.

Leatha: Glad to hear you are home. I was beginning to get concerned that we had not heard from you. Morphine does that to patients it is one of it's side effects. Demerol is also a bad drug for causing nausea and the headaches. We typically give an anti nausea med with any sedative drug. But oh well. I am soooooooooooooo happy that you are home and ready to start anew. Keep us posted. Penni Grinning sheepisly and thinking "Wonder if Leatha will let me play connect the scars on her belly?" LOL!!

Alex: You did not offend me at all. It takes more than that to offend this ole southern lady. LOL!!!! I was typing in my latest surgery post the other night and I thought you know for newbies reading this it might seem scary and somewhat off putting to them to continue to visit this website. It seems we do only report the problems, complications, concerns, etc. There are so many successes out there as well. Sometimes it is easier to talk about the bad things. I agree with someone who said let's have a monthly check in thread to see how everyone is doing. Other than my current dilemma I am actually doing GREAT with this new lease on life. I LOVE MY BAND (Betsy, I call her). She is helping me to not only eat less but to make healthier food choices. I am much more conscious of what I take into my body and I am focusing on food as nutrition and not comfort food. That was a huge leap for me. Food was sometimes a crutch to fall back on when I was lonely or bored or fill in the blank. I have almost conquered that crutch. It still creeps in every now and then but I am kicking them away little by little. IT is a never ending struggle to eat right and exercise enough. But you know you gotta want it for it to work. So Thanks Alex for a friendly wake up call regarding all the negative things that can happen while being banded and to remember there are GREAT things that can happen too. LIKE NEW CLOTHES IN A SMALLER SIZE. WHOO HOO!! A comment about you losing weight from a stranger you see almost every day. (I had a restaurant worker ask me if I was losing weight cause she said I was looking good. That made me feel AWESOME). Your shoes are looser!!!!! You can wear your rings again.. You need new undies cause the old ones are falling off you. Your face looks different but you can't quite figure out why. You weigh yourself and realize you haven't weighed that in about 10 years. You can walk across the park and not get out of breath. Your knees don't hurt anymore I could go on and on. Thanks Alex -- you are awesome.

Rica: First I love your name. Second, it sounds like you are trying to rush the solid food stage. Just take it easy and don't try to rush into exercise either. It also sounds like you did that too. I did not exercise for the first 4 weeks after my surgery. And then when I did start I started really slowwwwwww. 5 to 10 min on the treadmill. I too have bad knees. I used to pop Ibuprofen like it was candy. I no longer take them as it isn't good for our pouches. Can irritate the stomach. So be careful taking your anti-inflammatory meds. Don't over do them. If people are starting to see a change then you are doing something right. Not sure what exactly you are scared of. You seem like you are on track and doing really well. Keep up the good work. We are here for you.