3rd times a charm

Hi I found Bariatricpal from a list of websites given to me today by the psychologist I had a consultation with for vsg surgery. I currently have a realize band in that is scheduled to be removed in 2 days on Friday 5/8/15. I am now going through the process so that I can get approved for the sleeve revision. My insurance requires 6 nutrition classes, 3 life skills classes, cardiologist consult, pulmonary consult, and a team consult which consists of a nurse practitioner and a psychologist together. As of today i have had all of these consults including the tests that they required such as blood work, ekg, echocardiogram, and a stress test. When I got this band I had to do all of the above plus the pulmonologist ordered a sleep study,and a pulmonary function test. I am seeing the same pulmonary doctor and he doesn't feel I need those two tests. This Realize band was put in 8/2013. It has been nothing but issues. In 10/2013 the doctor had to send me to the hospital to check the port because he was unable to do a fill. The upper GI revealed the port was not attached and he had to go back in and do a port revision to stitch the port to the wall of the muscle. I've had several fills and unfills. To this day I have pain at the port site. Yes 1 year 7 months later still in pain. I have been to the emergency room twice for port pain and once because i could not eat or drink anything so all of the fluid was removed. I had lost my insurance for a period of time and stopped going to the doctors office. Which brings me to my current journey to have a vertical sleeve gastrectomy done. My surgeon does not do the band removal and revision at the same time because it increases the risk of complications such as leak etc. He said the band has to come out 1st in order to allow time for the scar tissue to heal before he does the sleeve. This is my second band. I had a Lap band done in 2005 that was removed in 2008. I only lost 50 lbs with that band and i lost approximately 35-40 lbs with my current Realize band. I chose the second band because i had already been through the process and knew what to expect. It was definately the wrong decision. The 1st band was removed because I relocated and my new insurance did not cover the surgery and so they would not cover the maintenance (fills). It just sat there causing me nausea, vomiting and no weight loss so i had it removed. Its been a rough road but I'm confident that this is it!