nursenora16

Women can be so cruel. I just found out that my best friend who has been supporting me from the beginning feels that I took the easy way out. (her exact words). She has never struggled with weight but like most women would like to lose a couple pounds so she has been exercising more than I have....but I've been losing the weight. I asked her what exactly has been easy about my journey......the diabetes from being obese?....painful surgery..an iv infiltrate...reaction to pain meds?....learning to re-eat with my band...pb's...being emotionally hungry and not able to feed it?.....Dealing with hers and everyone else's misconceptions about WLS?.......oh and don't forget the 20 thousand dollars I wiped out of savings. No, as we know...there is nothing easy about the bad..it is so true that it jealousy especially in this weight obsessed culture that we live.

Wildflower~ I have the same exact problem! I always think I have no restriction and then I pb. I just had a fill last week and I"m starting to think that I may have gotten too much. I'm unable to drink liquids until the afternoon. I'm waiting it out the weekend though and might call my md on Monday. But I am usually all over the board with restriction.....Nora

That's how I am with anything bread. It took a couple of experiences like yours Susan for me to figure that out and now I just stay away. I think your band is telling you something about chicken. And everyone else is right.....give your body time to rest after a pb. Nora

I have a hard time finding mine...but I had the lower profile port put in.

If I could do it all again I would have brought much bigger underpants....not just for leaving the hospital but for the weeks after as well. I went home commando and sent my mom straight to Target for the biggest granny pants ever....and just the other day I threw them all away!

No, Mexico doesn't have a medical standards govering body. In the US we do...the joint commission (JACHO). They regulate the sterility and safety of all actions in all US facilities. They drop in unannounced quite frequently to audit the conditions of specific areas in the hospital.....and they are tough.. they have the right to pull a nurse aside and quiz her on the safety standards of the unit and the hospital as a whole. It made me feel better that the hospital that i was "opened up" in was held to such high standards. There is a reason that any surgery is more expensive in the United States.......just keep that in mind. Also, yes I feel it would be risky to have surgery at a "clinic" however no clinic (no matter how ghetto) would attempt to manage a critically ill pt. And unless you are in the middle of nowhere...there is always a fully equiped hospital nearby. Anyone can paint a wall, add decorative touches, and clean a hospital until it glows...however when it comes to my life i don't care about the matching chairs in my room...I care that there is proper equipment and proper experience to keep me alive should something go wrong. The surgeon does his part..putting in the band...but sometimes we need the expertise of another doctor...don't forget this when researching. Contact the adult ICU of the mexican hospital and ask to speak to their intensivist. This should be the doctor managing you if things don't go smoothly. Not meaning to make anyone mad...this is just how I feel........Nora

Viactiv- they have a multivitamin and calcium supplement both in soft chocolate chews. I love them! I'm not great at taking vitamins but these are like a treat.

This was an easy decision for me to make.....I had my surgery in the US I am an ICU RN and worked for the past year at a major trauma center in San Diego. We had an unspoken pact with the US - Mexico (TJ) border that if a hospital in TJ had a pt they couldn't care for anymore (A US citizen)...because they were too sick...then they could put them into an ambulance, drive to the border, call 911 and we would send our ambulance to pick them up. The majority of these pts were people who went to mexico for the band, rny, or plastic surgery and had really bad complications. By the time we got a lot of these people they were in pretty bad shape with problems that could have been completely avoided had they been somewhere with a proper ICU and intensivists. Now I know that the surgeons in Mexico have been doing the band longer than US docs. However, it can in some cases turn into more than just the band. There are so many risks to surgery that would need physicians of other specialities to manage...not just a bariatric surgeon. I know most of the time things go smoothly....and that in my profession I see the worst of the worst....I"m just not a gambling soul. Many people on this site claim that the hospitals in mexico were much nicer than the ones here...however its not just asthestics...one thing to find out is if you were to become septic after surgery and your kidneys failed would they have a CVVH machine to filter your blood....most hospitals down there don't and one of the major risks of surgery is sepsis. I just recommend everyone do their research. These are my 2 cents....not meant to freak anyone out. Nora

Hi angie- Did you get your band in CT? I'm a traveling nurse and am moving to CT this July and need a good doc for fills and checkups. I got my band in Arizona so i'm not worried about a doc not taking me under his wing but I would like a good reference. Thanks nora

I don't know...I might believe it. The surgeon she is talking about is most likely the group that gave me my band. I spent over a year researching different docs and i have a great job that lets me live anywhere in the country. Therefore I moved to Arizona just to have my band put in by the docs at Scottsdale Bariatric. They have done surgery on a couple famous people. of course they can't say who. but the "queen of clean", you know the one with all of the books, was in my preop class. but she was having bypass. Anyway, if Oprah was going to get the band then this is where she would get it i bet...it also helps that all of the surgeons are women! No matter what I do think she should do a show about us.

When all was said and done I would say I paid just under 20,000. It would have been much cheaper to go to mexico but it just wasn't worth the risk to me. It was a big dip into the savings...but worth every penny.

Thanks for the tough love Jack. Its true that I would never have lost anything had I not had the band. The two reasons that I got banded however did not have a lot to do with losing numbers. I got my band to hopefully cure my type II diabetes (i;m only 25 and my sugars are out of control) and to kill the feeling that I am constantly starving. I thought the hunger would go away and since it hasn't I've been disappointed. But hopefully all will be better after a fill. Happy St Pats! Nora

Hi everyone! I need to vent! I just got off the phone with my docs office and was told that I would need to reschedule my fill (yet again) because my doc has meetings tomorrow. Unfortunatly they wont be able to schedule me again for a couple weeks and I don't think I can wait. I have been so hungry since my second day post op. There is nothing that I can't eat and I can eat the same amount that I did before surgery. I'm going through the whole what did i do to myself struggle. I was a self pay too so that is making me feel worse. Please tell me that i'm not alone in my starvation and that a fill really helps! Thanks for reading this! Nora