Jean McMillan

Frequent regurgitation or vomiting is bad for you and bad for your band. No one should tolerate that for any reason or any length of time.

Symptons of band slippage include the inabiity to drink or eat, chest pain, heartburn, reflux, night cough.

I'm confused about whether you were diagnosed with a band slip or band erosion (the band "severing" your stomach). They're 2 different things and in almost 5 years, I've never heard of them happening at the same time in the same patient. As for legal assistance, you'll have to find a medical malpractice attorney and convince him/her that your complications are the fault of your surgeon or the maker of your band, as well as prove that those complications cost you big bucks and/or destroyed your ability to work and take care of yourself. A claim like that has to represent a big chunk of change before it'll appeal to an attorney. You could also contact the manufacturer of your band. Good luck.

Most surgeons require a lot of pre-op tests and evaluations to make sure you're healthy enough to survive the surgery. In my opinion, that is not at all a waste of time.

Your fills cost $1,000 EACH?! Holy moly! I'd try to convince your surgeon to do a fill without the fluoroscopy. Fluoroscopy does not actually guarantee a "perfect" fill and at $1,000, it's more of a money maker for your surgeon and the radiology facility than a helpful service for you. This is one reason that I tell pre-ops that the band is not a good idea for self-pay patients.

Well, even more sympathy for you on being abandoned by your surgeon. My original surgeon lost his medical license (drug abuse allegations) and it was hard finding another surgeon to take me on. I wish you the best!

You can order by clicking on one of the Bandwagon ads here on LBT (at the bottom of the page), or by going to http:jean-onthebandwagon.blogspot.com and choosing a purchase option (on the left hand side of the page). Thanks for your interest!

Why do you ask? Have you had a complete unfill? Why? Are you worried about some aspect of that? I had a complete unfill to treat a band slip. I had to wait 6 weeks before starting the gradual process of adding back fill. Eventually my fill got back up to it's pre-unfill level.

You might want to make an appointment with your surgeon or nutritionist to get a band refresher course. Basically, go back to the routine you followed as a new post-op. I'm a food tracker and calorie counter, though not slavishly so. Many studies have shown that people who log their food intake lose more weight than those who don't. As for ideas, heck, I could write a book about that. Oh, wait, I did write a book about that!

I'm not answering because I have insurance from Kaiser Permanente, but because no one else has responded. And that's probably because they didn't understand the subject line of your thread. In the future, make the subject line as specific as possible, such as: WLS covered by Kaiser Permanente? The all-purpose answer to your question is that bariatric surgery coverage depends not on the name of the insurance company but on the specific coverage in your policy. Kaiser probably offers hundreds of different medical policies, tailor-made for the needs of their clients. So the best way to answer your question is to call the customer service number for Kaiser, give them your subscriber ID #, and ask if your policy covers bariatric surgery and if so, which procedures and under what circumstances.

I see quite a few people who've responded on this thread with their own frustrations about slow or disappointing weight loss. Have any of you discussed that with your surgeons? It's your surgeon's JOB to help you lose weight! Even if they can't easily solve your problem, they should be giving you suggestions about things to do or other health and fitness professionals to see.

Thanks for the plug, Jim!

I think it's your gall bladder, but I'm not a medical professional. Rapid weight loss often causes gall bladder problems. Talk to your doc!

You don't have anyone to talk to about this? What about your surgeon? It's his/her job to help you lose weight. If your surgeon and/or nutritionist haven't already given you guidelines for eating, etc., make an appointment to see them and ask them what you could be doing differently to get the weight loss going. There isn't a single "right" way to do it, and finding the "right" way that works for you is a challenge, I know.

Eating planned meals or Snacks every 3-4 hours was/is essential for me. You also need to start thinking about whether your hunger is always physical. After you eat one cup of solid food, are you still having hunger pangs, tummy grumbling, etc? Or is it more that you just feel unsatisfied - that you haven't eaten enough and want more? It took me a long time to get used to the idea of a small amount of food being "enough". I had to weigh/measure my food and put it on a small plate (like a salad plate) so it wouldn't look so meager.

I don't think the hard thing under the ribs on your left side is your band. Could be your port, or scar tissue. The band is on the upper part of the stomach, which is in the area of your chest, approximately midway between your breasts but slightly more to the left than the right. I could never feel my band, per se, though I could feel foods and liquids moving through my stoma from time to time. After I lost some weight, I could feel my port by pressing on the abdomen in the area near my biggest incision (on my right side, about at waist level). I could also feel my port sometimes when I bent at the waist, did abdominal exercises, or bumped into to kitchen counter.

At a bariatric surgery conference I attended in July 2011, several surgeons stated that one of the most common reasons for failure to lose weight is the failure to separate liquids and solids....in other words, drinking while you eat. My #1 reason for not drinking while eating: the liquid would come right back up, in a fountain. Do that in public a few times, and no one will ever invite you out to lunch again. For further confusion on this interesting topic, read this article by Australian dietitian Helen Bauzon: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/page/index.html/_/healthy-living/food-nutrition/yes-you-can-drink-and-eat-at-the-same-meal-time-r63

If your surgeon tells you not to swallow pills or capsules whole, don't do it, no matter what anyone else here tells you. Your surgeon presumably has a degree in medicine and experience in bariatric surgery. So far I haven't met any other LBT member who can honestly state that they are an MD. According to every bariatric surgeon I've talked about this with, the consequences of swallowing pills or capsules whole are that the pill/capsule won't go through your stoma, so it sits there in your upper stomach pouch or esophagus slowly dissolving into a possibly corrosive chemical mess that can badly irritate or damage the surrounding tissues. So not only would you be injuring yourself, the medication that you need would not be making its way into whatever part or system in your body that needs it. You might as well flush that pill down the toilet. And throw in the contents of your wallet while you're at it.

It's really very simple. If your doctor tells you not to swallow pills, don't swallow pills. If you feel you absolutely must take a pill, call your doctor's office and discuss it with the doctor or a nurse before you take the pill. Some of the gas you're having is in your abdominal cavity, not your intestines, so swallowing a Gas-X pill isn't going to help it even if the pill manages to get through your stoma. In the meantime, the pill slowly dissolving in your esophagus or stomach pouch can cause a lot of irritation. I speak from experience here, having spent hours in 2 different emergency rooms after swallowing an antibiotic capsule. Do not open capsules or crush pills without asking your doctor or pharmacist first. Some medications, like time-released formulas, must be taken whole (or at least in pieces). You can get an inexpensive pill splitter or crusher at any drugstore.

If "the boys" really NEED potato chips, could they not eat those necessary potato chips somewhere besides your home? If I keep stuff like that in the house, it's way too easy to eat it. But if it's truly essential to have potato chips in the house, go ahead and eat them...but do it this way: 1. Read the nutrition stats on the package. If one serving is 13 chips, count out 13 chips, put them on a small plate or bowl. Then close the bag and put it away where you can't see it. 2. Take the plate or bowl of chips to the dining table. 3. Sit down at the table, all by yourself with the chips. No computer, no TV, no magazine, no radio, no distractions. 4. Eat the chips one at a time, concentrating on their texture and flavor, so you get the maximum enjoyment out of them. 5. When the chips are gone, put the empty plate in the sink or dishwasher. 6. Go back to doing whatever you were doing before the potato chip attack hit you. The point of all that is to put you in control of the food, instead of the food in control of you.

Everyone else has given you good advice. I'll just add a few comments. Getting some psychotherapy (especially if the therapist is experienced with eating disorder and WLS patients) is a great first step. While obesity is caused by a combination of factors, not all of them within our conscious control, it's important to take a multi-disciplinarian approach to treating it, so be sure to talk with your surgeon and dietitian as well. I guarantee you, you will not be the first self-sabotaging patient they've ever had, and they might just have some good suggestions for you. In the meantime, stop calling yourself a failure. Weight loss and management is lifetime project, and it's going to be extremely hard for you to accomplish that at the same time as you're piling shame and disgust on top of yourself. That kind of self-talk has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You've lost 37 pounds and aren't happy with that? That's 9.25 lbs/week, and average weight loss with the band is 1-2 lbs/week. I would suspect that your body is now in a quandary because of the big initial weight loss and trying to readjust your metabolism. It's way too soon to judge your restriction or your band's success. I think you need to work on your band eating skills. Read the article I wrote about that here: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/page/index.html/_/support/post-op-support/how-to-eat-like-a-bandster-r58 ) Also, you need to re-think what "full" means to you. It's not healthy for anyone, especially a bandster, to eat and eat until they feel "full". Eating that way is overeating, and overeating is how we got fat in the first place. And when a bandster overeats, it overloads the stomach and esophagus and can cause esophageal dilation,stomach dilation, and band slips. So, don't go looking for "Thanksgiving dinner Full". Eat only until the physical hunger pangs are gone. You wrote: I'm really think I'm wanting a bypass but, figure that sense I haven't had the band that long that I Probaly won't be able to get it and I supose there got to be something wrong like the cabs slipping before I can get a bypass ? As I said before, it's way too soon to decide your band isn't working. And no, you won't be able to revise to the bypass so soon after your band surgery unless you have a lot of cash and can persuade your surgeon to do it. The bypass isn't going to work like magic either. Weight loss is hard work no matter what surgery you have. I don't know what you mean by "the cabs slipping." What is "cabs"? If you mean that a complication like a band slip could justify revising to the bypass, you're right, but you can't assume that your insurance is going to pay for revision to another procedure because some policies allow only one WLS in the patient's lifetime. So your insurance might pay to remove your band, but not to do the bypass. I was hungry at lot as a new bandster. It will probably take a few more fills for your band to start helping with that. In the meantime, hang in there!

So you cheated a little on your post-op diet. When you were supposed to be on liquids, you had a few spoons of mashed potatoes or a swallow of yogurt, both nice and soft. Maybe you ate a few Cheez Doodles, but what’s the big deal? They’re like eating flavored air, aren’t they? And the McNuggets you tried during the puree phase? You chewed them really well, and you could only eat three instead of your pre-op portion of six – isn’t that great? No, it’s not great that you could only eat three McNuggets. And yes,cheating is a big deal, and I’m going to tell you why. You’re not going to get away with this one. Miss Jean has eyes in the back of her head. She sees the cookie crumbs on your face and the neon orange faux cheese film on your guilty fingers. SOME DEFINITIONS OF CHEATING The word “cheat” has two main connotations. One is cheating in the sense of lying and deceiving. It’s intentional dishonesty. You know what you’re doing is wrong, but you do it anyway. The other connotation of “cheat” is unfaithfulness. Unfaithful to a vow or promise you made to another person or to an organization. When someone cheats you, do you just shrug and say, “Oh well, he was having a bad day”? Let’s say you bought a car that you thought was brand new, and later discovered that the dealer had fiddled with the odometer and charged you full sticker price for a car with 1200 miles on it. Would that be okay with you? And what if your spouse, the person you trust with your life, cheated on you by sleeping with your best friend, would you be able to just shrug that off? If your child got a B+ grade by cheating on a test by copying answers from the student at the next desk, would you be proud of him or her? And what if you found out that a coworker betrayed you by using the great idea you confided to him or her and taking credit for it when it worked out splendidly? Would you still be eating lunch with that coworker? Or what if you donated money to a political candidate who you admired, and he or she spent it on a vacation in the Bahamas instead of on re-election expenses. Would that be okay with you? Would you vote for that candidate ever again? I’ll take a guess at your answers to these questions. In none of the situations I’ve described would you be happy or proud. In fact, you’d be disappointed and angry. So just how can you think it’s no big deal to cheat on your post-op diet? EXCUSES, EXCUSES I can hear grumbling in the room. I think I just heard someone saying, “I had to eat that mashed potato. I was so hungry and miserable and cranky from being on liquids for a week, I couldn’t stand it another minute.” I do understand very well how you felt, but in the big picture of world hunger, where babies die because their mothers eat so little that they don’t produce enough milk for nursing, your and my hungry misery is a big So What. And someone else is whispering, “My best friend’s surgeon let her eat mashed potatoes on her third day post-op, so it must be okay for me to do that too, even though my surgeon told me to wait until my 15th day post-op. It’s not my fault that every surgeon has a different post-op eating protocol.” While it’s true that surgeons’ eating instructions vary widely, you signed on with your surgeon, not your best friend’s. Presumably you chose your surgeon because you and/or your insurance company believe that he or she is well-qualified in laparascopic bariatric surgery. During your psych evaluation, you affirmed that you understand what the surgery involves and that you can and will follow instructions. You nodded when the shrink asked if you’re ready to make all the lifestyle changes needed for success. You nodded when the dietitian asked if you understood your pre- and post-op eating instructions. You scribbled your own name on a sheaf of release papers to indicate that you were informed about the risks involved and despite those risks, gave your surgeon permission to perform surgery on you. In addition to all of that, you spent weeks or months jumping through hoops to prove your need for bariatric surgery. Perhaps you suffered through a six-month pre-op diet. You had lots of medical tests and evaluations, most of them not much fun, because you were so eager to get your weight loss show on the road. You had surgery, suffered some degree of discomfort from your incisions and gas, and finally heaved a sigh of relief because all the struggles are over now. But then you discovered that there are still more struggles to survive because of that stupid post-op liquid diet. Yet despite jumping through all those hoops, in less than 60 seconds you blow it by popping a Cheez Doodle in your mouth, and justify that with the aforementioned misery excuse. And man oh man, that must have been some really serious misery, because evidently it drove out of your mind all the very good reasons for faithfully following that post-op diet progression. You forgot that one of the most common causes of band slips is the patient’s failure to follow the post-op diet. You forgot that food can get stuck in the stoma or esophagus and cause an obstruction or vomiting. You forgot that vomiting can disturb the position of the band, especially when you’re a new post-op and your stomach is still healing from surgery. You forgot that in order to move mashed potatoes or Cheez Doodles through your digestive system, your esophagus and stomach must expand and contract, which can disturb the position of your band and cause it to slip. You forgot all the promises you made to your bariatric team and to yourself about healthy eating and weight loss success, because you were so miserable and just a few little cheat bites are no big deal. I’ll try to give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you thought that being able to eat the Cheez Doodles without having any uncomfortable side effects or complications like a stuck episode, a PB, sliming, chest pain, esophageal dilation or spasms means that it’s okay to eat the Cheez Doodles. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a wrong assumption. Cheating eating can cause problems without you ever knowing it until it’s too late. Cheating eating is just plain foolish. YOU’RE NOT ALONE Now here’s the good news. You’re not alone. Nobody enjoys the post-op diet progression. If any of us were good at following diets, we might not need bariatric surgery in the first place. And only infants enjoy a liquid diet. But in a sense, as a new post-op you’re a bariatric infant who must consume liquids because your body isn’t ready yet to handle anything else. Cheating on your post-op diet is cheating your health in a major way. If you already cheated once or twice or ten times, that’s not a good reason for continuing to cheat, so don’t do it again! I believe we should begin any project as we mean to go on. If you can’t follow your post-op diet, exactly when are you going to begin your healthy post-op lifestyle? Are you going to wait until after your first fill, or your second fill, or at some hazy time in the future? If so, don’t come running to me when your scale stays stuck on a number you hate. NOW is the time to begin your healthy lifestyle. NOW is the time to practice good band eating skills and making good food choices and controlling portion sizes. Doing that may not be easy, but it’s not impossible either. Losing a massive amount of weight is a big, tough project, but if you respect your band, it's going to be easier than any of your past weight loss attempts. Let me clarify that: it's going to be easier if you follow instructions. In addition to that healthy lifestyle, there’s another very good reason to stick to your diet. At some point you’re going to have to face up to your past and acknowledge that food and eating have been a major problem for you. The fact that you’re struggling with your post-op diet is a symptom of that. There’s no shame attached to that struggle. As mentioned above, if we didn’t struggle with eating, we wouldn’t need bariatric surgery at all. So I suggest that you look at the post-op diet (and your pre-op diet too, for that matter) as a rite of passage. During this rite, you’ll be painfully aware of just how many food devils you possess, because without food to shut them up, they’re going to be jumping up and down and screaming for your attention. But their wish is no longer your command. You’re going to send them a clear signal: that you’re not going to submit to their demands any more. From now on, you’re going to follow your surgeon’s and dietitian’s eating instructions no matter how much commotion those devils make. You’re in charge now. As the saying goes, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Do yourself a favor, and make it a day without Cheez Doodles!

One more thing. You need to be extremely careful about what you put in your mouth until you get this resolved. Every bite of food you put in there is probably making things worse, whether your band has slipped or eroded or your esophagus or stomach pouch is dilated. It doesn't matter how much you "can" eat or how hungry you are when you eat it. Your best course of action is to follow a liquid diet and let everything in there rest until a bariatric medical professional and/or gastroenterologist can figure out what's going on and what to do about it.