Marimaru

I don't know how common this is, but I have heard of it before, as a surgical requirement, Lap-band or otherwise. I've never needed one, so I don't know much about why it's needed or how it's decided that a person should have it... but I'm sure that if you ask your doctor, he'll tell you why he feels you need to have one.

I will start out by saying that I am a gamer, and my husband is a gamer. When we "get into" a game, it takes up a lot of our time, but we don't have kids yet, or anything really going on outside of work, and we live in a different state than our families (though we visit often, and while we might chat about the game, we aren't freaking out that we can't play it or anything). I think that telling him the truth when he asks you if it's okay for him to play, will make a big difference. I get what you are saying about him being man enough to know the answer, but it's not really fair to say "no, go ahead" and then get mad at him for doing what you said. I think he most definitely needs to look at his priorities and come up with some kind of compromise. I find it... odd... to see people blame the game for the addictions, just because if it wasn't one game, it'd be another. DH and I played WoW for a good long time, but wound it down because there was other things we wanted to do, but we've been just as into other games, or whatever. I guess since I haven't experienced this first hand I don't have a lot of suggestions... I think the raid schedules need to be compromised, 4 nights a week if you have family obligations sounds like a lot to me. "Just playing" is one thing, because you can stop at any time, but people seem to get way serious about the raids, even though it's just a game. I 'kind of' get how it happens but the "personal responsibility" is pointed in the wrong direction. No one should feel more responsibility toward people they only know as sprites on a screen than their own family (and you might tell your husbands exactly that).

Ivyrose, we were born on the same day! :biggrin: Gloucester, I am glad you are getting the fill. My comment was going to be that you weren't probably going to be fully filled right away anyway...

If it were me, and I were to accept one of her calls, I would probably say something to the effect that I'm very hurt, and very shocked to find out that someone who I thought was my best friend, was essentially my friend only because my shortcomings made her feel better about herself. I haven't had anyone actually say anything to me. But someone who was my best friend in high school has cancer, and I had to find out about it on her blog.

One year I got my teachers some neat bottles and filled them with their favorite flavor of jelly beans. Something like that but a little more personalized might be good, and just as easy. I bet your daughter knows what her teacher likes.

I wouldn't say there's anything "wrong" with you. The lab band is around your stomach and controls the quantity of solids you eat... that doesn't do anything for the head issues, so unfortunately the hard part is still up to us. I struggle with it as well, but at least when I lose it the band keeps me from going way too far...

I don't know anything about what you are going through, but I wanted to mention that estrogen is stored in your fat cells and released when you lose weight... so by your gyn's logic, it sounds like it would get worse before it got better....

I was telling my mom about this thread earlier. My husband and I work for her consulting agency, and our agency works for a larger corporate company, and basically, the older folks 'get it' but the younger folks being hired don't. My husband reminded me of an article that we read a while back about companies spending tons of money to train their staff on proper communication/email etiquette. Personally, I think it's ridiculous. If I had a problem like this with people I was managing, I would simply put in a process that stated that I expected communications to be professional, and that not doing so was an offense one could be written up and fired for. I'd tell them to let me know if they needed an example, but I wouldn't waste time and money training someone on something like that. I'm 26 years old, and I don't have any kind of degree yet and I can do it, so these people that I work with who are in school/recently graduated should be able to do it at least as well as I. Of course, I've always done professional type work from my mom, at least since I was a young teenager, so I guess I do have kind of an edge, but still. It's not that hard to find an example of a proper letter, which is exactly what an email should look like.

You need to find a hobby to occupy your hands. I draw, or crochet, something like that. Unfortunately, we have to have a certain amount of our own control (something I'm struggling with lately myself), so a distraction is what I find works best for me. If you play video games, something like that might help too. If I'm entranced in a challenging game, time passes quickly in the evenings and it's time for bed before I've eaten too much.

If I got a message like that from a 'friend' who'd just admitted getting together with other 'friends' to talk about how sick I am and how they aren't going to talk to me until I'm "better" (read: fat again), I don't know how I'd react. The nice person in me says I would ignore her, the vindictive tiny part of me (that almost never gets to act out, it only gets to tell me what I "should have done"), says I would respond and ask her something like why she would talk about what an eating disorder I have, and then turn around and ask me to help her get the same eating disorder. I can kind of see how someone would think of the band as force bulimia, IF you are PBing all the time and should probably be seeing your doctor anyway, but as a normal way of life? It's a hell of a lot healthier than not doing anything at all. I went through a lot of drama stuff with my last set of friends, and after that point I never really put forth the effort to make any more. I have TONS of online friends that I talk to every day, but I don't have anyone that I hang out with in real life, and to be frank, I don't miss having friends very often.

The food you eat will begin to move through the band immediately, the idea being that you should fill up faster than the top portion of your stomach empties. Whenever that feeling happens to me, I evaluate how much I've had... if it's only been a bite or two, then I need to consider the size of the bites I'm taking, or how fast I'm chewing... if I'm further into my meal, I start considering whether it's time to just stop altogether.

My doc said nothing strenuous for 2 weeks, so that's how long we waited.

I'll start by saying I don't have kids, but my sisters both have 1 year olds, so this subject has been kicking around the family a lot lately. Based on everything we've been able to find to read, the vaccines seems to set off an autism that the child already had the pre-disposition for, and make the symptoms much worse than they might have been. The culprit is the metals (like mercury) in the vaccines, and it seems that they don't cause those same issues if you spread out the vaccines instead of getting them all at once. That's basically what we've all agreed makes the most sense based on the studies we've read.

"I honestly believe it's one of the reasons I have this sense of entitlement--now that I'm an adult, says my subconscious, no one can say NO and I can indulge at will. My inner deprived child comes out sometimes, I guess." that is EXACTLY my issue as well. Even now, my husband will ask me if I'm counting calories (he's trying to be supportive), and I just get so angry. It's not his fault, but my inner child feels like he's saying "no". I don't blame him, I gained about 20 lbs in the 6 months after our wedding, and then buckled down in January and lost it, and now I'm almost back to where I was in the beginning of January after being unfilled for 6 weeks. I told myself I wasn't going to go nuts, and I didn't go too crazy but I did have too many things that had previously made me stuck. Thank goodness I have a new fill, hopefully that will help me buckle down again..

It sounds like you might do well to have a slight unfill. You might feel better if you can eat things like chicken, and other solid protein.

I would say you need to stick with liquids at least a few days, but I also think that if you are going for a fill, you need to eat solid foods before hand so you know how tight you are before you go and get tighter. Hope that makes sense.

When I have something that sucks me in too much, I feel ill after a while. I use them to smooth me out to look better under things.

In addition to the hormones being released from your weight loss, anesthesia in general can mess with your cycle.

From what I've heard, even if you've stretched your pouch, they'll just empty the band and put you on liquids, or just put you on liquids to give it time to settle down.

I really think it depends on the kid, and their parents. A teenagers maturity is only going to get them so far if they don't have parents who can also be responsible and supportive.

When I fly, I am tighter. When I retain Water for any reason, I am tighter. Hell, if the weather is weird, I can get tighter. Mm... stress too. I think it has more to do with water retention than anything. They say to drink an extra glass of water for every hour you are in the air, or something like that.

My port is right under my biggest incision. It's in line with my belly button on the left side.

Hm. "Not as nice" or... "refusing to be a doormat"? For the first time in my life I was having actual fights with my mom because I wasn't taking crap from her I used to take, or I'd actually tell her that I didn't want to do something and she'd take it personally. My sisters too. I was getting really angry over the whole thing, because it happened quite often for a while, but then it died down. Not too long ago it came up in conversation and my mom said that it's good that I don't let people walk on me anymore, but it's hard to take it when I lash back since they aren't used to it. It's MUCH easier with people who didn't know you were a person that at one time they could have walked all over you. With my family, I think there will always be some of it there, tension because I'm arguing back, or me being irritated because I've agreed to do something I didn't REALLY want to do, etc.

Email address gets my attention too. I had a friend who worked for a lady and they did all of their email correspondence with @aol.com email addresses. With how cheap and easy it is to set up your own domain (even with just email and no site), I was pretty appalled that people would use that or @yahoo or @hotmail for a business.

I do graphics for a living, web designs, and banners/buttons like you mentioned. Let me know what you're looking for and I'll see what I can do.