Wheetsin

1) Is anyone having success with the band restrictions only, meaning no real excercise regime. I have time to walk a couple of times a day, but no time to go to a gym. I had some success up front without exercise, but this has become much less. Lately if I don't exercise, I don't lose - no ifs, ands, or buts. The gyn isn't the only thing that's exercise. Walking counts, and it's better if you can do it at a brisk pace or incline. 2) How soon did you go back to work? Do you think you could have gone back to work sooner? To a desk job? I had surgery on Wednesday and went back to work Monday. I did work from home Monday - Tuesday, only because my staples hit right where all of my pants fell on my abdomen. I could have gone back to work Monday if it weren't for the clothes issue, but since I can work from home I did. 3) Has anyone regreted this surgery? How many reversals are you aware of? I'm sure someone somewhere has regretted it, but I can't speak for them. I can only say that I have not. There have been some removals (is that what you mean by reversals?)... I personally know of one person who had a removal and one person who should have a removal but isn't going to. If you look here under life after lap-band, I think it is, you will find more stories.

I should add (because I can't just edit and tack it on) - the tensioner really does work to keep the ring upright, too. My fingers are tapered and comparatively thin, so I usually end up with my rings on backwards and constantly have to fidget with them to keep them upright. Especially with my wedding band - it has a large stone, and two heavy channel set bands. It likes to sit sideways, and jabs DH if he holds my hand. :girl_hug: I never even thought of using one of those things to keep the ring upright, but that has been an added bonus -- it really works!

I have a large wedding ring (I like thick bands so it's three separate rings soldered together) and a small anniversary ring. But I haven't gotten them sized yet because gold can only take so many sizings... trying to just go with one or two. Both of them will freely fall off if I shake my hands around. The other day at a self-checkout one fell off and went under the register. Damn skippy I made them get some burly guys and move the whole cabinet. Anyway - for the wedding band, I had them put a "sizer" inside. That's what she called it but I'm not sure that's the real name. It's kind of like a spring loaded tensioner. It's great at taking up the slack. For the smaller ring (a regular 3 stone anniversary ring) I just bought a companion band, plain gold, in the size that fit and I wear it above the one with the stones. Since it fits, and the other one can't fit over it, it keeps it nicely in place. Just found this link for you. It explains the tensioner thing I was talking about. There are a few other options here too.

I am not the best money saving shopper, it's one of my addictions and I enjoy indulging in it, but here are a few things I did to get more wear out of the sizes. Summer - skirts. Esp. elastic waist or drawstring. If you have a problem with your legs rubbing together, just wear a pair of spandex shorts underneath. Sure, they aren't flattering, but who cares - no one will see them. Or even thin tight cotton shorts, like workout shorts. Or use (can't remember the brand) the powder lotion. Goes on just like a regular lotion, but when it dries, it makes your skin silky like powder, and stays on. That will help "lubricate" and keep the friction away. Last summer I pretty much lived in an assortment of 5 skirts, 6 shirts, and a pile of camis in different colors. Get basic pieces that are interchangeable. Oh, and a pair of denim capris and a pair of khaki capris. Because I was wearing camis underneath, I could buy the shirts a size or two smaller than I needed, and wear them open, then a size down I would button the mid chest button and wear it open (think one tie cardigans), then wear it buttoned. Knit gauchos also helped a LOT, because one they're too big, you can just roll the waistband once and they fit just fine all over again. But they're only good for one roll, anything more and they'll go up your butt! :girl_hug: Winter - this winter I also lived on a few basics. A good pair of jeans. I don't buy cheap jeans because... well, that's one area where you get what you pay for. Invest in a good pair of jeans, even just one per size that you're in, and just wear them all the time. Good ones can take the washings. Jeans paired with a blazer (I bought several in corduroy (beige, rust orange, dark brown, etc.) a few in velvet, and one denim) and the infamous cami. I buy the camis at LB and they're under $20. Buy the one that's snug. Since you're wearing it under something it doesn't matter, and you'll get two or three sizes out of it. And they're stretchy so they'll hold their shape, even after you wear them snug. Anyway, pairing the different blazers with the different camis and a different necklace gave me a TON of outfits from maybe 10 or 12 basic pieces. A few pairs of heeled pant boots and I was set. Find other bandsters. There are a few girls I traded clothes with and that REALLY helped. And a girlfriend of mine had RNY and saved some of her clothes for me. Your styles probably won't be exact, but if you're only wearing it for a few weeks (which is what, one or two wearings? Maybe three?) then who cares. I need to meet back up with them b/c I've gone down a few more sizes since our last trade. If you go to a support group, ask there -- the one thing you can be certain of is that everyone else there is going to change a size eventually.

I'm in MO, NW part - close to KS. Banded in KS. In fact we looked at a house in Prairie Village yesterday... still debating the hop to the other state though, not completely sure it's the right move. :girl_hug:

Oh, I forgot a few places. For work clothes I also shopped at J. Jill (in most stores they'll carry up to 2x, and online you can get up to 4x) and Dillard's/Macy's. It sometimes took some looking to find something more my age than older, but I could always find something.

When I was in a larger size I shopped pretty exclusively at Avenue, Catherine's (ugh - few things for ppl my age, hardly anything cute - ever - but when you're buying "what fits" over "what I like", you take it), Fashion Bug, LB (on the off-hand chance that their largest size would fit me) and online stores like Roaman's and Silhouettes. Now I shop mostly at Old Navy (ours carries up to 22), Fashion Bug, Dress Barn, Target (really cute wrap dresses, ladies!), and Penny's. Penny's has some awesome sales on summer dresses right now. I picked up a $180 halter dress for $32... paired with the $20 shrug from Target, it will be a great outfit for summer night dinners, and it was cheap to boot! I shop at these places because their prices are cheap and I don't plan to wear the clothes for very long. Fashion Bug & Dress Barn have some really cute dresses now that don't make me gag, and that's saying something. I also buy some stuff at Avenue still. Depending on the piece I'm either their 14/16 or 18/20 (tops) and 20 or 22 in pants. Most of their customers are bigger sizes than that. Know what that means? Lots of leftovers! (aka SCORE in the clearance racks, because they ALWAYS have those sizes left over)

Look at all the typos Wheetsin makes when she can't edit. :girl_hug:

I SOOOO want to take a floral arranging class. Our community college is offering one that's four Saturdays -- of ourse Saturdays that I'm not free! Do you think you could epxlain the process for folding a fitted sheet? Mine goes kind of like this: Grab one corner, grab the opposite corner. Because that's how "they" say to start. Put corner A into corner B. Realize this is getting me no where and proceed to wrap around my forearms like a length of rope, then shove into the linen closet. If I could find a >400 ct sheet that I loved, I'd be all over it. But my finger tests (shoving my fingers into the package and findling the fabric) has never given me a good vibe.

I Loooooove my 400 ct sheets, but I can't stand anything higher. Too stiff for me. (did I really just say that???) I like my sheets to feel like "clouds", and I just don't get that feeling from anything sateen or above 400. I probably prefer Pima, but Egyptian will do in a pinch. Few things in life are better than a hot shower, and crawling into a bed with freshly laundered sheets. Heaven, I tell you. (Better things exist, but usually occur between the sheets (or on the stairs, or the dining room chair, or in the lake, or in the backyard, or...) so you're still crawling into the freshly made bed).

A fill is what tightens the band. It's "filling" it with saline. This is what causes restriction (the band tightening around the esophagus). The band somewhat rigid, but has an inflatable piece of "tubing" on the inside. Filling that tubing with saline causes the band to fit more tightly. Imagine a wristwatch that had a balloon taped to the inside. When you blew air into the balloon, the watch would get tighter on your wrist. Fills accomplish the same thing with the band, only instead of air, they're injecting saline. The saline is injected via a needle into the port. The port gives access to the "balloon" on the inside of the band. My fills were free for the first year, with a $20 copay per fill (office visit) afterward, but insurance covered my band. I believe my surgeon charges $150 for those who do not have insurance coverage. Cost will depend on what the surgeon (or whomever does the fills) charges, how they are done (fluoro or "blind"), whether or not you have insurance coverage, etc.

Hi Paula78, we have state-specific forums. When you're looking for people from a specific area, you'll probably have the best luck by posting there. Not that you won't get responses here, but they will be "concentrated" there. Link to KS forum: http://lapbandtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37

I intended to include this in my prior post, but forget - and can't edit.

The "quiverfull" reference was to a specific movement that stemmed from conservative protestantism, not to people with lots of kids, and it has nothing to do with reliance on or independence from government assistance. It's an attempt at raising an army for god, and to try and stave off what they call "race suicide" - the result of integrating non-white/European races into society. Overpopulation is part of their "goal", so to speak, (although they don't see it that way, they believe their god will provide for its people) because overpopulation with white people means statistically higher white:non-white ratios.

And what statement was that, exactly? I asked a hypothetical question. Please share what 'statement" you are referring to, so I can respond. And if you're referring to the hypothetical question I asked, what you say doesn't even make sense. I asked if the rate of abortions would decrease, or is just the rate of safe abrtions would decrease (paraphrasing). How is that, in any way, related to tax revenue from drug addicts???

I didn't even mention the times when you're in a meeting across the table from someome with halitosis, or someone who doesn't observe the 3 foot rule wants to say something breathy. Oh, geez. There have been times when I've gotten a whiff of someone's breath, and literally had to turn my head so they didn't see me gag.

I have said stuff to people about it, because I will just bite my tongue about a lot of things I'd really rather address... but having to smell someone else is not one of those things. I've said thing to people (a few times I've had to, many years ago I was a manager in a call center, and had to send people home on a near daily basis for hygience and dress code reasons.) I just won't do it. If I can't walk away, I will ask them to step back. Ugh, I was on a flight the other week with a man who took his shoes off, and it was horrible. People six rows back were talking about smelling someone's feet. I told him he really needed to put his shoes back on. He refused, said he had athlete's foot and needed to air his feet out. There is no "just be nice" when it means you have to smell someone else. Uh uh, sorry.

My arms are gross. When your skin is significantly stretched for any length of time, lifting weights will only help in so far as the muscle mass is able to fill in the loose skin. It won't do anything to tighten the skin, but it can definitely help things look better. Unfortunately no amount of muscle mass is going to help me. If I started bodybuilding, I'd look like this guy:

(I'm still up. I went past that breaking point where you stop being tired). I will see if I can snag a pic tomorrow before everyone digs in. That sucker has a full cup of butter in it - 6 tbl in the sugary topping, and the rest mixed into the wet ingredients. It smells divine. Folding in the egg whites gave it a really interesting texture. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a texture in a cake before.

So why are we up so late on a Friday anyway? Tomorrow is DH's birthday. I'm surprising him by making a from scratch, pineapple upside down cake (with fresh pineapple). I couldn't get started until he went to bed. Call me ambitious, or masochistic. I just finished folding in 4 egg whites "beaten stiff but not dry". ???. Whatever, keep your fingers crossed. Maybe I'll take a pic if it comes out pretty.

I IM constantly at work. I will do "brb" or "lmk", n/p and j/k. Mainly because I can be on a conference call and still talk with people or answer questions. (Thank goodness for conference calls where you're just a name on the list). I can't think of too many others I use. I wouldn't IM, except that I can probably type more "wpm" () than I can speak. On boards I will use the standard IMO, AFAIK, etc.. In all honesty, I literally cannot understand some of the things that I see others typing to each other. I've never texted. Text is now a verb, apparently - kind of like google. And freak. My cousins were texting and wanted me to come look. I had no freaking clue what their messages said. It's like some kind of generational secret code, only instead of decoder rings the translation is via T-Mobile. I saw a commercial today where a daughter was talking to her mother in - I guess you would call it textese. Pretty damn accurate. Oh, and on the education note, when I started in my master's program, I was _anal_ about my writing. To an extreme. I just kind of figured - it would go with the territory. I mean, the program had some pretty tight admission requirements, they must really be looking for the "T". Boy, was I wrong. My program is a campus-based program, that offers online sections. The online courses are condecuted using a Lotus DB. In many classes there's a required number of postings and interactions, questions, etc. you have to have with the other students. There are LITERALLY times when, in order to respond to someone, I have to ask them what they mean. No matter how hard I try, I truly cannot figure out what the words on the screen mean. My first class into my program was a real reality check. The good news - making the grade became a lot less stressful once I was able to identify "par".

I'm the same way. But - even though I'm in the field and I see it every single day - it still never ceases to amaze me how uninformed and generally ignorant people are about things that are basic (one man's common sense truly is another's "a-ha!"), or are impacting their lives. You learn quickly to never assume anything, because it invariably bites you in the ass. In my field, it's a continous struggle to cater to the lowest common denominator.

(maybe you can tell I work in the adult education field and am just a tiny bit of a learning and education advocate) Laurend, didn't you mention earlier more aggressive sex ed programs? If you did (I really don't remember), what if part of sex ed was birth control including abortion, and including the pros and cons of all types of birth control? Ya know - off topic for a sec - that made me remember when I took sex ed. It was between 6th & 9th grade, but I don't remember when exactly. (And in elementary school we had a girls only ed class about menstruation where they gave us all tampons and pads). Holy crap what a waste. What I remember most is the elder lady who taught the class telling us, "Every girl has a little pink button, like a clam has a pearl. And sometimes when you're having sex with a man, his penis will run against the button, and it makes you moan!" I hope there have been major advances in sex ed programs since then.

I agree. But I don't think it's a reality. You'd think adults looking at the lapband would educate themselves about it, but we get a _lot_ of posts from people who have already been banded, and don't know the first thing about what they're doing. In the case of the lapband, I think a lot of people don't know where to go for education. It isn't terribly prolific outside of the internet yet. A lot of that belief stems from the number of people I know who now see me as their personal library, because I can answer their questions about it. You'd think it would be as easy as a google search, and for many here that's the case, but that isn't the case for many, maybe even most, out there. Based on my personal experiences, I think that most people who get the band are uneducated about it. And I think that's unfortunate, because I also believe it's a HUGE contributor to the "what the fuck did I just do to myself" reactions. I spent more than 5 years researching, debating, self-prpearing, etc. Most people I know who are banded made their decision within the span of a few weeks, and most have, at some point, regretted their decision. I didn't - never have. That's nothing about "me"... it's about "prepared and informed" vs. " spontaneous or uneducated". The education class I had to take to get my band was really a waste to me, because I knew everything she was telling me, and could even tell her some things. But even if you just look at the questions we get here... if everyone's surgeon had that same requirement, people would start off on much better feet. In the case of abortion, I think you have to consider a few different issues. One is that, usually, they aren't dont with a lot of planning. It's an "oh crap" knee-jerk reaction. Not terribly conducive to research. And it's also hitting (not entirely, perhaps not even mostly, but undoubtedly) a demographic that, for a few reasons, isn't going to be the best researcher. While I am extraordinarily pro-choice, I am also pro-informed-choice. I would not necessarily be opposed to having a mandatory education session before an abortion could be performed, if it could be done in a factual and unbiased way. To go back to the parallel -- seriously, I had to go to a 2 hour "class" about the band, how the place it, what life is like afterwards, what kinds of complications might arise, etc.

I sooo wasn't going to go here. Dammit! It's not true in DH's case. But probably not in the way you're thinking. He's - well, he's a viking. And built like you'd expect a viking to be built. Very nicely endowed. But he has relatively tiny feet. He's about 6'5, 260 (YES! I weigh less than my husband! Haven't been able to say that since we were newlyweds!), broad shoulders, thick thighs, and these tiny sz 10 feet.