Wheetsin

Unfortunately if your employer excludes, then it's entirely their call whether or not they alter the policy or purchase the rider. Most of the time they won't b/c of cost (which is usually why they implement the exclusion anyway). Something else you could ask while you're at it is, if you have your choice of coverages, are there any which they haven't placed an exclusion with. E.g. we have something like 11 healthcare coverage options, with about 7 different companies. If there was an exclusion on option #1, maybe there wasn't on option #2, and so on. Likely not, but worth asking.

I may have to bail on you guys tonight. Our dog has been really sick since Tuesday night. Took him to the vet yesterday. He got worse through the night and this morning he started vomitting blood. We took him back in to the vet and the vet wanted to keep him for IV fluids, xrays, observation. He's keeping him overnight but I'm a bit of an emotional wreck. The only vet we've found that I trust is an hour north of us where my parents live, so almost 2 hours from SMMC, and I don't know that I trust being that far away until I hear some good news.

If it's not housebroken and you leave it that long, you'll have a much harder time housebreaking it but can get there if you progress from crate training (that's what we did with our current dog). That's not too long once the dog is ready. We leave around 7 and get home around 4ish.

The first week I'd dropped somewhere over 20, 25ish maybe. Around 2 mos out I was around 50, probably. Now about 4.75 months out and down just over 90.

Not sure what you mean by "trouble". MAYBE everyone has trouble of some kind eventually - don't really know since the band has only been in the US for a handful of years. Maybe 50 years from now we'll all have problems. Unlikely, but no one can say for sure. What I asked myself was, "Would it still be worth it?" Answer was yes, so under I went. I don't see any reason why you couldn't work 11 hours a day, once healed from surgery. The band doesn't sap your energy or do anything to make 11 hours difficult to get through.

Funny timing. I went to a computer store the other day and the cashier guy told me I was the "modern day Mona Lisa". Is that even a compliment? Mona Lisa looks like a man. :huggie: At the same store the clerk who was helping me offered to give me his home phone number in case I had any questions about what I was buying, or just wanted to talk. I guess the big ass ring on my big ass finger was somehow overlooked.

I'm not am emotional eater, so I can't provide personal stories/advice there. I've never been taken by surprise with a PB. Always, always can tell it's coming on. It starts off with the "stuck" feeling. If it's going to turn into a PB, I get a bit of referred pain on either side of my belly button. Band area begins to feel even mor emiserable and truly hurt. Pain kicks in my spine between my shoulder blades. Pain increases. Sliming starts. At this point I can usually actively spit out the slime, which makes me gag, which is usually enough to get the PB underway OR, maybe half the time, the wretching does something to clear the PB without food having to come up.

Undoubtedly. Kindof my point. Either surgery takes a change of mental perspective to succeed. You can out eat either solution, if that's what you're determined to do. I know bandsters who now weigh more than their surgery day, and I know RNY patients who weigh more. They weren't willing to do their part -- ultimately, even after all they had gone through, it wasn't worth it to them.

Wow Pnut, isn't it amazing the difference such a small fill amount can make? I felt a world of difference with my last .5 cc fill, and for a while thought I might need a slight unfill. i think you're talking about referred pain, where what you feel is not in the same place as where the actual irritation is. I get that when I'm stuck on something. It will frequently hurt me in my hips and to either side of my bellybutton. The back pain I'm told (by surgeon and nurse) is normal and has to do with the pouch working to get the food through. Did you get stuck on everything, or just some things?

Turkey pepperoni, microwaved until crunchy. Most of the fat cooks out and it has a respectable amount of protein. I like mine dipped in cottage cheese or garden vegetable flavored cream cheese. Or just plain. :tea: I've found that now, when I get hungry, it comes fast. I'll go from nothing to pain before I know what happened. A few times I've had to rely on fast food, and I get the McD's fruit & yogurt parfait. It's low fat yogurt, and I skip the fruit pieces. Less than half fills me up. It's nice to know of a "drive thru" food (because sometimes you really don't have much other choice) that's band friendly and not horrible for you.

Yow. I had my staples out 1 week after surgery. I couldn't have standed them much longer, they were really itching. I hope you're fairing better. :tea:

Has your bipolar disorder been clinically linked to an eating disorder? Do you have a diagnosed eating disorder? Not trying to pry, but they're often diagnosed together.

peharper - many people won't feel any restriction until their fills, and often it takes more than one or two. Resuming normal quantities is not out of the ordinary, especially with liquids that go right through any restriction you might have.

I may have misunderstood. I read that the "normal" surgery/procedure should have taken two hours, not that it was two hours until she was discharged. General guidelines are 45 - 75 minutes for the actual procedure, last I read. There are always exceptions.

Been there, done that, got the stretch marks.

A "bump" is when someone posts to a thread just to bring it back to the top of the forum. The thread that was last added to shows up first in the viewing order (unless it has been made sticky, which means a moderator has set it to always show on top). So if someone wants to make sure something stays highly visible, they will "bump" it (aka post something to it) to make it show first. There are a few threads that explain acronyms and webspeak for band things. "Bump" is generic -- not band/forum specific. I don't know that I've seen a generic "dictionary" pop up here.

Never heard of it, but honestly - I've never heard of a LB surgery taking 2 hours either. *shrug*

Hi Smeeper, I fly all the time. I can buckle my seatbelt everywhere except first class seating. Go figure! You'd think they'd be roomier. Kimber, glad you found the thread. You're within 2# of my starting weight, though I'm a bit taller than you. I too questioned whether or not I'd be able to lose this much weight with a lapband but so far so good, and now I'm almost halfway there! (OMG! I'm almost halfway there!!)

I was just ommenting on my stomach to DH lastnight. I notved that my bellybutton has pretty much disappeared into a big sad face. And in the middle of my stomach, just below my belly button, the skin is all funky looking. I had DH grab my belly lastnight and he was like, "Hmm... it's squishy now." :paranoid When I had just gained weight, about a year into being fat, I lost all the weight and my skin went right back to where it was. Of course I was 21, too. I have no hope for a repeat now. :cry The good news, I guess, is that my insurance company has covered PS for people I know who had RNY, and my mom knows a plastic surgeon who has been pretty agressive with insurance companies and has pushed ins approval through for WLS patients who were initially denied. I just hope he isn't retired by the time I'd be ready. :tired Robyn - sounds like you're just having the BEST time! I know what you mean by ready to be home, but just think - come winter, you might be longing to be back there so enjoy it while it lasts. :confused:

Here's another way to look at it: If you're standing in the back of a truck that's moving down the highway, and you throw a ball into the air (assuming a vaccuum), the ball will come back down in the bed of the truck. The only reason it doesn't come down in the bed of the truck "in the real world" is because while it's in the air, the moving air exerts force on it and slows it down/pushes it, so it ends up outside of the truck bed. In a vaccuum the ball would land in the bed of the truck because it's moving at the same velocity as the truck is, you are, etc. When you throw it up, it still carries the momentum even though it's temporarily "detached" from the truck. If you're driving the truck with the windows rolled up, air conditioning off, etc. and there's a fly in the cabin and you apply the brakes sharply, the fly doesn't go flying into the windshield, it keeps buzzing around your head. Same principle as the elevator. If you think this is hard to wrap your head around, try listening to some of the quantum stuff my husband rambles on about... the physics around black holes, time travel, etc. I can keep up iwth him most of the time, but sometimes all I can do is there and watch his dust as he flies right over my head. His latest kick is string theory - also called The Theory of Everything as it "it attempts to provide a complete, unified, and consistent description of the fundamental structure of our universe." He gets going on that stuff, and I just start flipping the channels. :confused:

EEk, ok -- will do my best to avoid getting deep into it, the lingo, etc. This may cause me to omit scientific detail in favor of getting the "point across", but so be it. :confused: Short answer - Nope, and it is the same thing (metaphorically speaking). When you're in the elevator, your feet are on the elevator floor. When the floor drops, you drop (gravity) because the elevator floor is no longer exerting pressure/resistance on you. The fly is not on the elevator floor, he is just occupying space in the elevator. Just as your hand is not on the elevator floor, it is just occupying space in the elevator. If the fact that your feet are on the ground outside the elevator is tripping you up, then imagine you can float, and you're floating outside the elevator, and stick your hand in the elevator. Your hand still doesn't move. Picture a fly hovering inside of a big glass tube. The fly is still - staying in the same spot, right? So let's assume that's all the fly can do, it can't fly to the left or right, it can only hover (trust me, that will make this MUCH easier to understand). If you grab the tube and shake it vigorously, the fly isn't going to start shaking too, it's going to stay in the same spot, and the tube is going to move around it. HOWEVER, if you have a dead fly that can't over, and is laying on the bottom of the tube, it will start shaking because its movements are no longer independent of the movement of the glass (skip long explanation about why something inside of something else moves when the outside piece is moved). Lots of people get the same principle confused, and think that if they're in a plummeting elevator, all they have to do is jump right before impact and they'll be fine. And now they're dead. They're moving at the same speed as the elevator. The fly is not because it is only occupying space within the elevator, it is not moving with the elevator, it is moving independent of the elevator. Enter relativity. The fly's position will lower when the elevator drops, but only relative to where the elevator was before. If you're outside look inside at the fly, and the elevator goes down 3", the fly will still be in the same place as you look at it. But relative to the people in the elevator, the fly is 3" higher than where it was.

Indirectly, but indirectly only. If it's not already part of your program I would *strongly* recommend that you seek counseling, esp. from someone who specializes in emotional/eating disorders.

Because the fly is not affected by the elevator's movement/intertia. If it's a dumb fly that doesn't realize the roof of the elevator is coming quickly, it will smash. Otherwise it's no different than you standing outside of an elevator, sticking your hand in, and wondering why your hand doesn't drop as the elevator drops. Because there's a cushion of air flowing around the car, that the fly "glides" on - like a Water slide. Unless it's a big ass fly, then has more velocity than the cushion does resistance, and *splat*. Ok, I know you weren't really looking for answers, but I'm bored and a :nerd: who's married to a physics :nerd:.

You have to keep in mind that we're constantly losing Water, constantly, and 2 liters a day may not even be enough to replace what's being lost. Most adults lose between 2.5 and 3 liters of water per day. Urination/defication, sweating, breathing... all remove fluids from your body (jsut breathing causes a loss of about 1 liter per day - add extra for heavier breathing, deep breathing, etc). So if by "where does the weight go" you're asking where the Fluid goes -- it's absorbed. You're roughly 60% water, so you're just replacing -- you.

This is band specific, and addresses a few diets... A short, quick weight gain is probably weight gain but not fat gain. If you think about it, most of us are following low carb diets by virtue of difficulty eating high carb foods. When you break ketosis (long story short) the first thing your body does is suck in all the water it can. I followed the induction phase of Atkins for about a year, and was in ketosis like no one's business. When I would break my diet, it wouldn't be unusal for me to gain 6, 8 (once even 15) pounds overnight. Guess what - I could still wear the same size that I had not been able to wear 15 fat pounds before. Weight loss/gain is a fairly complicated series of body processes. Your body does a lot to keep from losing anything, and can kick in some amazingly strong "survival" modes (Why do you think the most adamant of dieters usually caves in around day 4-ish? has a lot more to do with what your body's doing that your will power). Our bodies want back what was taken from them. :confused: