Wheetsin

Hi Spark, and welcome. I'm in the Kansas City area. What specifically are you seeking suggestions for? We're overflowing with information, just unsure what we should share.

Depends on your surgeon, how extensive their program is, and what your personal medical history indicates. And what your insurance company's requirements are, or if you're self pay. My "big picture" looked kind of like this: Go to info seminar Fill out surgeon's paperwork Submit medical records along with paperwork Wait for notice of pre-approval Upon notice of pre-approval, get list of things to do from coordinator: Attend one support group meeting pre-op Psychologist visits (number of visits TBD by psychologist) Lab work Chest x-ray Meet w/ dietician for overview Meet w/ bariatric coordinator for education session Meet w/ surgeon for consultation, which is also when surgery date was selected Numbers 1 - 7 occured in no particular order. I got in when I could get in, and did the things that didn't require much appointment notice in between. I ended up having my admittance work done 3 days before surgery, and my last psychologist visit the day before. If I'd had comorbidities, there might have some additional steps for testing - e.g. sleep study, etc. If my insurance company had required 6 mo medicaly supervised diet, there would have been a step for that. Which is why there is no one "this is how you do it" approach. Best of luck!

Beautiful! Truly! And that's what I said when I made my decision - I'm going to beat the statistics. Because there's no way I'm going to volunteer for my first surgery (*ahem* Wheetsin has a mild needle phobia) and have it be for nothing. Would I WANT to be 160? Umm... maybe. 160 is pretty skinny for me (I'm close to 6 feet tall). I would crap my pants if my scale ever said anything under 200. Which is a good thing, because then - after I changed into clean pants - I would weigh that much less. 230 - 240 is the last time I felt comfortable with myself. I was probably 30 - 40 lbs overweight at that time. (C'mon, I'm almost 6 feet tall here!) I told my psychologist that I'll be thrilled with anything between 190 and 210, but that ideally I'd hit 180. He seemed pleased with that. Also, I may well be wrong here, but I thought that sometime somewhere I read that the lap-band success rates included long-term patients, including those who had their bands removed. But I can't remember where I read that, so consider me a big fat liar.

Lisa - if it were me, I personally would not take them. It pained me greatly to give up my Aleve. :phanvan But ask your surgeon their opinion, or your PCP. I certainly don't want my experience to scare anyone, it's just made me extra cautious. Have you tried the liquid Tylenol? Tylenol never did squat for me, except Tylenol sinus... but I had to take 3 or 4 of them. Since banding I"ve been faithful to liquid Tylenol and for me, it really works. WAY better than the pills ever did. And it's much faster, to boot.

Where is there a 24 hour fitness there? Oh! Is that the one in the corner, kind of between Hy-Vee and Gordman's? Is that a 24 fitness?? Hmm - that's not my gym, but if so, it's great to know there's on there, very close to work.

NSAIDS can "ulcerate" tissues if they have prolonged contact. It's not the taking them that's bad, it's the "just sitting there" that restriction encourages. Can they really cause a problem? Absolutely. Then why did your surgeon prescribe them? Good question. Maybe it's one of those subjective things where some people think it's bad and others don't seem that phased by it. But in my personal life, I lost someone close to me because of complications around the tissue erosion that NSAIDS can cause... so I take all advice around them with extreme interest and seriousness.

Involvement on this thread has nothing to do with being a moderator. As I've said before, it doesn't say anywhere that moderators have to check their opinions and ideas at the door. And this thread is still here, so there's no "moderating" activities being used to censor anything. And I'm over in the other forums helping christians out just about every day of the week. So if you believe that my atheism has somehow jeopardized the integrity of this board or my ability to support its members, please feel free to make a report. I bowed out of the conversation with you a LONG time ago. Having resurfaced to compliment you on seeing something that could be hard to see, and having the cajones to admit to it, which could be a very difficult thing. But it seems like you're still trying to point me out. How exactly is it that bowing out makes me the worst of the lot? Or I'm sorry - among. There have been exactly two moderators involved in this thread. So options are kinda limited. I saw what was going on a long time ago and decided it wasn't for me. I stayed on as an observer to make sure the thread remained civil, as did Alexandra. And rather than contine to do anything, let alone "drive away," I said "ok" and bowed out. How - do tell - is that being "the worst of the lot"? I'm not sure how you draw the conclusions that anyone is trying to "drive away the few christians here." Maybe it's because your familiarity with the board doesn't appear to have reached beyond RnR. We have a LOT of christians on this board, whether they're vocal in RnR or not. A lot of chrisitans who proudly proclaim their beliefs and have "monnikers" of the like. And MOST of the people involved in this thread are also involved in the larger board - helping the board's population, which includes people who relish their Christian title, with their band problems, or surgical concerns, or problems keeping food down, or pre-op nervousness, or general life questions. That's not criteria that, to me personally, counts as trying to "drive them away".

Well, first of all when your surgeon says "50% success rate", how is that meant? a) 50% of the people who have the surgery meet the medical criteria for success. 100% of his patients lost 50% of their excess weight, or numbers that bring in the same average. c) Judging by some criteria he has assigned, some combination of a or b? It's very easy to not lose weight with the band if you're not focused on losing weight. And it's very easy to not focus on losing weight, and use the band as an excuse for that. Think of all the things that make it easy to bypass the band, and you'll see where those numbers might be coming from. E.g. people who never get a fill because they're afraid that would mean they have to give up foods. Or people who use cognitive distortions to get out of good eating habits. Or people who go underfilled and try to "wing it", but then never go after the fill to take off where their willpower left. Hmm, my starting weight was 382 with a goal weight of 180. Right now I'm right around 255, so I've lost about 63% of my excess weight. That's since March 1, so about 11 months, and includes about 5 months of being underfilled and 3 weeks of being almost wide open (to make sure I'm thoroughly healed from an overfill). So I would really question this statement: Pople of ALL BMIs have elected to have the lapband and not been successful, so why would he attribute it to those in the 50 - 60 range? Argh, that irritates me. But regardless - sounds like he's kind of pulling his numbers from nowhere. If you care to, press him and ask him what these numbers really mean. Beyond that, do with what you feel is the right decision for you. :rose:

Then I'd guess you're tight, maybe some sweeling still, and got a little irritation that caused more swelling that caused more irritation... I say, from my own experience - not out of wanting to bully or "or else" you - do call. I got a little too much fill last time, and hit the same vicious circle you're in, only I got swollen so tight that my own saliva wouldn't pass and I had to PB every 5 or 6 minutes, just to empty out my saliva from swallowing. That's a very tiring, painful place you don't want to be.

Lisa - one that gets me is "Flyggande Jakob", or "Flying Jacob". It's a casserole of sorts. It may not SOUND that bad, but sound and taste never did have much in common. The foundation is a blend of rotisserie chicken, skin removed, pulled off the carcass and chunked. Not so bad, right? Add to that bacon... yum. And peanuts. Not everyday, but ok. And sliced bananas, and pineapple chunks, and olives. Eh? Then you make a "sauce" of heavy whipping cream and chili sauce, and rothed/whipped until it makes these rank little pink peaks. Your pour it over top, and garnish with sardines or raw salad shrimp. And unfortunately, DH can't get enough of that stuff. *blech*

Obesityhelp.com has a section for RNY, and always seemed dominated by RNYers when I was there.

How far away is not local? It sounds to me like you need an unfill (if one was placed at surgery), and definitely need to at least let your surgeon know what's going on. If you didn't have a fill placed, it sounds like something irriated you and that irritation jsut progressed to the point of being closed off. That happened to me after my last fill, and it's not fun stuff. Even if it seems like it's subsiding, that really means nothing. Your surgeon may want you to come in, or s/he may want you to go on liquids, or - who knows. Point is, no advice other than your surgeon's advice should be considered credible when it comes to issues of your health and your band -- especially when you're to the point of only maybe being able to keep liquids down. And BTW... using "vomit" and "PB" synonymously is one of my LB pet peeves, especially when it's medical staff that's doing it. I gave that feedback to my surgeon's nurse a week or so ago when I was in. She showed me something that said "Call us right away if you're vomitting!" and wanted to know why I thought people went for weeks, PBing continuously, without calling in - even though they had that paper. I told her, "Because they aren't vomitting, and it says to call if they're vomitting." Umm hello?!

I would ask the surgeon's rate of erosion/slippage/revision. That's something few surgeons I came across was willing to disclose, and that was always a bit of an eyebrow raiser to me. Other than things that are surgeon or program-specific, you can probably find out more information in an hour online than everyone else there will know, put together.

Oh,m yeah - I'll second ditching IE. It *can* be done. And even if you aren't comfortable doing it, it's easy to bypass. I'm a big fan of Firefox. And there are lots of easy tweaks you can make to it to get hellacious performance above and beyond what the standard configuration afford you. I even like Thunderbird, though it's not my favorite. Yeah, I should add, of the computers we have running Windows, only one (my web dev main) has IE on it, and only because I have to test for compatibility with IE. The others run other browsers and mail clients... heck we don't even run messenger on them.

My humble advice - PC. I have both. Macs shine when it comes to processing power, specifically for things like rendering graphics or compiling video. Most things multimedia. If you aren't hardcore or even moderately into that type of processing, then a PC will do just fine. If you're having problems with stability, you need to look at why. Windows might blue screen occasionally, but if it's happening all the time, there's something else going on that could be as simple as a reboot or wipe. Freezing tends to point to memory (if local) or bandwidth (if online). What are you doing when your computer freezes? Care to post your specs, so some of us can review for you? You might just be underpowered for what you're trying to do, and investing $80 or $100 into some RAM could be a lot cheaper solution than buying a new computer. Hubby is a "computer guy" but deals with operating systems other than Windows... but he's very adept at general troubleshooting, can build a computer from scratch with his eyes closed, and knows about all there is to know - even about "Winblows" (as he calls it!) If you want to post what you have, and what you do/want out of a computer, I'll have him take a look.

Sounds like a plan.

I went, and still kind of go through what your friend with RNY described to you. It's not so much that I force myself to eat, but that food has become something I have to interrupt my day to do. Honestly, I've had to put pup-up reminders in my calendar at work for lunch, because otherwise I'd be perfectly content to go through the day with only eating dinner... but my calorie count doesn't like that much. I have a friend with RNY who tells me something similar. My reasoning is because food just doesn't control me, it's no longer at the front of my mind, so it becomes easily forgotten (like cleaning the house!) Her reason is that everything makes her sick, and she's limited to such a small choice of foods, and gets so tired of them, that she'll just not eat. As for your questions: Will I have to wait a long time after insertion to get a fill? I think the average wait is 4 - 6 weeks. My first fill was right at 6 weeks. Or maybe it was 5. Can't remember. How do they know how much to put in? A lot of surgeons seem to follow guidelines that are determined by the size of your band, and influenced by how much you've lost when you go for the fill. My surgeon does between 1 and 2cc in a 4cc band, or 4cc in a 10cc band. Was anyone starving before first fill? Some do, I was lucky. I lost my appetite 2 days before surgery and it never has returned.

Oh now I remember. It happens when I take the day off, and end up having to be on conference calls anyway. Silly Wheetsin.

I had a conference call that actually required 100% of my attention. When does that happen?!? I still have one, fortunately this one only requires about 40%.

Where is it stuck? Is it hurting you, or do you just feel pressure? For sticks, people have claimed good luck with papya enzyme, carbonated drinks, pineapple juice, meat tenderizer, etc. None of it does squat for me. If it's just sitting there, let it be, it may well pass on its own. If it's hurting you, chances are it won't hurt for too much longer before it comes up. If it doesn't come up, and it's hurting, you may need an unfill.

Not a veggie, but I don't eat red meat and have had to find some alternatives. I love tofu! Stirfry it (fantastic with peanut sauce), pan fry it, grill it, sautee it, mmm. I make a really good tofu "egg salad" (IMO!). Boca product of choice, I'm partial to their black bean burgers in particular. Hummus, with or without some crispy bread. Wasa with toppings of choice - priest cheese goes well, as does a little butter, thin cucumber, and a slice or two of tomato. Meatless chili. How about a crab salad on parmesan crackers? Or crab fondue (granted that's not grab and go, but it's good!). There's always tuna and tuna creations... I like to mix white albacore with white Beans, mayo (light), vinegar, cilantro, red onion and a tiny bit of black pepper. Make a container of it and grab a scoop or two when I need to pack a meal.

My ILs are Swedish. Don't even get me started on some of the nasty stuff I've been subjected to (even things worse than the ILs themselves!)

I'll take an honorable mention over the spotlight any old day of the week.

Entering into a dialogue with the intention of sharing ideas, beliefs, hypotheses - one thing. Entering into it with the intention of walking out "right" or having changed someone's mind on something - entirely different outcome. When the conversation is, "Here's what I think" - I'm golden. When the conversation is "You're wrong because here's what I think" - you say OK and walk away. Green is a superstar.

Ame... err... Ramen!