snowbird

I would have done it three years ago when I first heard about it, rather than waiting til last October.

dedria, just about every one of your posts is touting the Obesity Goodbye clinic. How much do they pay you? Dr verboonen went to jail for scamming the US insurance companies, making false claims. It was in the news if you are interested in looking it up. I certainly wouldn't start my search for a surgeon with one already proven to be unethical. There are enough good ones out there.

I just bought Lean Cuisines for the bandster hell part of post surgery. Instant, enforced, portion control--of course, I could eat two of them, I suppose, but to me they don't taste good enough to do that. I really didn't keep anything else in the house, certainly nothing that I would want to overeat on. Once in a while I would break down and go to the bakery and get a cookie, but it would be ONE cookie, not a whole package of them. I still do that. I think I need to treat myself to a goodie once in a while or else I feel very deprived. DH and I have learned that we cannot, absolutely cannot, have ice cream in the house, so we don't buy that.

Just make sure the most tempting stuff doesn't make it home from the grocery store. If you are cooking for others, tell them they don't get the treats for a while, because you can't stay away! As you said, things will change when you get a fill or two, but right now, unfortunately, it is a matter of willpower. I think it's easier than trying to diet without a band, because you know it is just for a short period of time. You can do it!

I don't lose any weight if I am at all constipated, and I was constantly constipated during the liquid/mushie diet phase. Nothing solid in, nothing solid out! Someone on here once said that weight loss comes in steps, not in a gradual slope. That's how it usually is for me; a plateau, then a loss of several pounds, then another flat spot, and so on. Also, as said before, the period after surgery and before your first fill is often not a period of weight loss. Don't worry; it will come.

Every insurance company is different, so you will have to see if yours will approve you. The support of your PCP is vital to getting your insurance to approve you if you are borderline. I lost 65 lb on Atkins in 2003-2004, but I had gained back 35 lb by this past summer when I decided I needed the band. My BMI was just 35 but my PCP wrote up every small health problem I had and argued they were all related to obesity, and my insurance reimbursed me for the surgery I had done in Mexico.

Talk to your pcp too. Mine went over my health history with the proverbial fine toothed comb and wrote up my bad knees (which are actually due to a congenital problem with my kneecaps, which makes them hyperextend easily), slightly elevated bp, slightly elevated blood sugar levels, and acid reflux all as co-morbidities to obesity.

I haven't had pancakes, but we did go to a Waffle House and I ate part of a waffle. Didn't feel real good, but I got it down and it stayed there. Of course, I only ate about 1/4 of it.

Some people have the port repositioned or a flatter profile port installed when they near goal. Mine, unfortunately, is still well hidden in my belly.

I would be tempted to eat what they gave me and then PB on their desks.:smile2:

The MMPI has hundreds of questions and takes a long time to fill out. That's probably what most of the appointment will be. We filled out several personality/psych tests that totaled over 1000 questions.

Preschool. I was always the second fattest kid in my class, until #1 successfully dieted in freshman year of high school. After that, I was #1.

Vegemite is actually a real thing, other than a word in a Village People song??? Just to show you how dumb I am, I always thought they were from Australia because of the song "I Come from the Land Down Under."

christine8, I don't know about you, but I have been able to lose large amounts of weight several times over the years (over 50 lb.) My problem is that I can't keep it off, or hit a plateau and can't break through it. For me the band is a safety net that stops me from eating huge amounts even when I want to quit "dieting." For the first time in my life I feel like the weight is gone for good. So for me, it was well worth the pain, aggravation, and expense.

PB is productive burping, when you eat too fast, too much, or the wrong thing and it cannot pass through the stoma, or small opening to your lower stomach that is created by the band. It is sort of "mini-vomiting" as you bring up the excess food and mucus in your upper stomach. Gross, but not as bad as real puking. "Trolls" are people who like to get in a message board and post messages that alarm, offend, or frighten the regular users of the board. You can usually tell them because they make the one post and are never heard of again. They like to spread fear and havoc and then stand back and watch the "fun." They show up here just as they do on a lot of other boards. There are contributors who have truly suffered complications with their band, and I'm not talking about them! The band is surgery, and a small percentage of people do have serious complications with it.

I'm not surprised you are not feeling restriction with 1.8 in a 10 cc band. My husband's first fill was 4 cc in his 10 cc band, and he had no restriction after about 48 hours. Talk to your doctor about the amount of fills. He may be one who is very conservative with them, in which case it may take you a while to get restriction.

Your doctor should be on your side in your quest for a healthier life. He is the one who should be standing up to BCBS for you, if he agrees with banding. Although it is changing slowly, a lot of doctors are iffy on the band simply because they are not familiar enough with it. My daughter and I had to educate our doctor, but now he is an enthusiastic supporter of lapband. My doctor's theory is that part of his job is to see that our insurance helps provide us with what is best for our health, and he has gone to bat for me several times against my insurance (which is, by the way, BCBS). Talk to your doctor and see if he is willing to support your decision to be banded with BCBS.

Liquids should go down just fine . . .

Your doctor said this, but has BCBS? I might also seek a second opinion from another doctor.

An Employer buys insurance from the insurance company, and they work out how much insurance they get for the price they pay. The employer can pick and choose what benefits to pay for to cover their employees. So while an employee of company A may have BCBS coverage for a particular medical service, company B may not have purchased that coverage and their employees would not have that benefit. Just because the same insurance company is providing the coverage does not mean that two separate employers necessarily purchased the same amount of coverage.

My husband has a 10 cc band. He got 4 cc for his first fill, 2 additional for his second, and 1 additional for his third for a total of 7 cc. He can still eat a full restaurant meal, so obviously a more conservative approach would not work with him!

How big is the band? How big are the fills? How much fat did you originally have around your stomach? How fast have you lost weight, and where has it come from? Too many variables. That seems like a gross generalization to me.

From what I have learned from my doctor, you do not "stretch your pouch" like gastric bypass patients do. What you do is move the band further down on your stomach (slippage) which makes the upper part larger. Similar but different occurrences.

Did your doctor tell you no coffee? Mine said I could drink it just fine after surgery. I had the same problem with fuzzy head after surgery. I think it was due to the anaesthesia. I even drove off the road a couple weeks after surgery--just kind of lost it for a second and bam! I was up over the curb and sitting in the middle of a traffic island. Had a hard time explaining that one to DH. It does go away after a while.

Your band does not stretch, as lovestodecorate said. As you lose fat around your stomach, your band becomes looser. The adjustments are what make the band work so well, and you have to keep up with the fills in the band to make it work. I have had two fills, and have lost about 60 lb since I went on my preop diet in August 2007. The fills are no more painful than a blood draw or a shot. Some doctors numb you, but since it takes a shot to numb you and the fill doesn't hurt any more than a shot, why bother? And it has never hurt in the least to have the doctor find my port. My doctor also uses fluoroscopy (like a real time x-ray) to see the port, the band, and the flow of liquids through the band. Lap band surgery can be very effective when you make an effort to work with the band by eating solid foods and getting timely fills. I felt that the surgery has been well worth its cost.