Wheetsin

It happens. Think of it as the body equaling out. I've lost entire sizes with no change on the scale. (Hence my part of my disdain for them). Eventually things will align once again.

Very few things that I know about insurance are "for sure". But I've contracted with the industry many, many times and have seen/read/written/etc. just enough of their materials to know a few things, and have some decent guesses on others. Esp. healthcare providers. Somehow it's an area that virtually no one seems to be familiar with (on this board) so I try to help... even though it's usually not good news. :cursing:

Probably isn't dumping. We don't have the anatomical changes necessary to cause dumping. And I'm guessing this isn't the first time post-op you've had sugar. Dumping happens, period. Not just sometimes. However, there are a few other things. Many people have issues with artifial sweetners, so if there were any in there you don't normally get, that could very well cause your symptoms (especially maltitol and sorbitol). Have you ever had issues with your gallbladder? What you had doesn't sound like it would be a catalyst, but often GB issues are more closely tied to a time of day more so than whatever you just ate (although it can work both ways, and attacks CAN be triggered by things other than the typical fatty foods (happened to me -- that's part of why it took so long to diagnose). Just a few thoughts...

Could be, except for the heavy pain. Is that where your port was paoced, or the site of another incision? In other words, any reason you could share with us as to what might be related to the pain? When you say "figure out which is which" -- which what is what? Do you just mean figure out what the feelings are? It's very common to gurgle post-op, which could be confused for hunger pains but feel nothing like them. If you feel hungry, you're probably feeling hungry (whether you really are or not). Try sipping some Water or if you're there yet, some Protein (fills you up longer) and see what happens.

If it's just water -- hmm. But if what you're choking on is acidy - burns your throat, leaves you with a taste of vomit in your mouth, etc. then you're not choking on water. Do you, in either your band or your stomach, feel particulary full/stuffed before you lay down when this happens? Or do you feel empty/hungry?

It depends. If your insurance paid for your band, complications are most likely covered. If you are self-pay, complications (direct results of the band) as a generalized rule are not.

Every medical insurance company I know of uses something like the BMI to determine eligibility, and if you're into a "morbidly obese" category or higher it's virtually impossible (from what I understand -- not saying that as a for-sure fact). The insurance companies need to think they're making a good investment, and taking on someone who is likely to immediately cost them money isn't a good investment (even if you're "healthy" the average MO person is not). heck, it may even be really hard/expensive at just "obese"... I'm not sure. Maybe call some other providers and ask.

Sometimes I hate being right. BTW, I don't know any skinny people who had the lap-band. A fat person, telling fat (and not so fat) people they need to get off the internet. Love it! What it boils down to is -- keep trying to incite anger with your little "name calling" and you will be off this site, your choice or not. You posted something inflammatory. It's not rational to expect people to not vocalize their own opinions about it. Disagree with those opinions -- great -- but don't be mad because it happens. If you disagree with what people say, argue the point. But surely you can do better than first grade name calling to try and push people's buttons. Come on, use that wit... we like that around here.

Early miscarriages are often the result of chromosomal abnormalities. I've seen no literature to correlate miscarriage to the band.

I typed a bog long response to this, then accidentally clicked "back" on my mouse instead of the button to submit *sigh* Long story short, I involved the school district about 10 seconds after submitting my msg yesterday. On the outside you wouldn't expect our neighborhood to have crime, we're a mid-class subdivision on city outskirts. But the kids here (obvous outside of this incident) are under-parented. And my husband and I in particular have had problems before. Our neighborhood is saturated with patrons of a near-by mega warehouse type church, I need say no more. (see this post for an example of what we deal with). We were the only ones who didn't have a "Bush" sign in our yard... and got comments on that too... and didn't fly a flag after 9.11... got lots of comments on that one... and refused to sign a petition designed to prevent section 8 housing from being put up within 3 miles of our neighborhood... and had repercussions from that too... etc. etc. nuff said. Our neighborhood pretty much hates us already. :thumbup:

See image below. Needle pierces the skin and enters the self-closing port. Saline travels through the tubing and into the band. The band is lined with a "balloon" that can be blown up or deflated with saline, hence adjustable gastric band.

A fill is when saline is inserted through a port into the band, causing it to tighten around the esophagus, hence "fill"ing the band.

Ok, that's insane.

stefgray, I'm taller than you and a range of about 175 - 183 is my goal weight based on the fact that it puts be into a "normal" BMI. Anything more than that and I'm still classified as overweight. if you're happy with where you're at, then stop. But if numbers, sizes, medical classifications, etc. are a concern to you, pick the one you like and go for it.

Thank you for posting this. I posted something similar just the other day, only you can't see it. Common sense goes far. And I realize that one man's common sense is not another's, necessarily, but because we're all still alive there has to be some common thread of it. It's not just thep ressing medical issues, although those certainly are up there. :huh2:

Depends on where you go, what surgeon, etc. Seems to run about 8k in Mexico and about 10k - 12k stateside. Of course there are sums above and below this. I don't know what actual averages are.

Mine doesn't protrude. The ones I have seen just looked like a bump under the skin. If it concerns you, request a low profile port.

Ok I'm confused. You can eat other stuff AND 9oz meat but only 9oz, or the only thing you are allowed to eat period is 9oz of meat?

Hasn't bothered mine one bit. I still go to restaurants, I just order a small meal or sometimes just a drink. Not eating just means I can talk more. I still go to bars and get drinks, but I did give up carbonation when I had my surgery - no biggie, I never ordered a carbonated drink anyway. Family holidays still happen just as they always did, I'm just eating a lot less. There's no reason that a smaller portion would make the holiday any less special with your family/friends.

I had full insurance approval so I can't speak from my personal experience, but I know a few who were self-pay and complications were NOT covered at all. Not for any of them. I don't know if it's lumped into a "pre-existing condition" (and therefore exlcudable) or not, you'd have to ask your insurance company.

Call your surgeon and ask, s/he is the only one who could tell you their reasoning. I've not heard of it.

You might want to ask this in the guy's area. I think many of our guys tend to hang out there and not venture much into Estrogenland.

This is truly just a rant b/c I'm fuming about something. It's my catharsis. Please don't even read unless you're really bored. My graduate program unfortunately involves a lot of group projects. They're not my favorite, but I understand why they do them. So far, they've been tolerable experiences, and a few have been positive (was in a group of self-starters, we could agree on natural work divisions, etc.) This semester is a completely different story. I was put in a group with 3 other people. At first it seemed ok - up until it was too late to request a group change, anyway. We have a project due tomorrow. It's a very large project that required several additional documents, a lot of research, a nice presentation, etc. As of Friday, two of us had submitted work for the project - kind of. I had submitted several paragraphs to paste into a final presentation, and all of the attachments we needed except for one. One other person in the group had submitted a half-assed final project document (the skeleton -- still needed all the text/attachments/etc.) -- based on a template I built and submitted. It had a total of about 6 sentences in it. Of the two other people in the group, one had offered a lot of criticism on the work I had done, but had not offered up anything of her own. The fourth person has not contributed one single piece of anything. She has asked us for clarification on the assignment, and told this week she wouldn't have internet access for one day (that was on Wed). We haven't heard from her since. I'm working to maintain my GPA and this is my last required course so I'm being extra careful. So I took about 10 hours yesterday and built the entire document. Places where I didn't have the data, I just made something up as a placeholder, then highlighted it so it could easily be found when whomever owned that piece decided to get it done. I created about 3 powerpoints, 5 word documents, tons of tables & graphs, etc. I then told the peolpe in my group that since the template was hard to use, please don't make changes to the document directly. If you don't like the template, that's fine -- you're welcomed to redo it. But if you are ok with it, just printscreen or copy what you want to change into a basic word doc and indicate what you think should be changed. Do you think anyone did that? Nope. They made their suggestions right into the document, so not only did I have to line-y-line compare with the original to see what was different, I also had to spend about an hour reformatting everything. Then, they had a lot of criticism on some of my tables. I told them "These are just drafts I created so we would have something there, these will need to be refined for submission." I guess they can't read, because those disclaimers were completely ignored and they kinda jumped on me about how they want to see something more professional (umm... then freaking SUBMIT SOMETHING?!) One girl, while making changes, managed to delete 11 of the 14 pages in the document. When I reverted it back to a version that had all the pages, she became irate that I had "disregarded her feedback." Umm -- no, I just had to get back the content. I figured that was more important than your suggested revisions, which were poor quality and not accurate anyway. I've written the proffessor, emphasizing that I'm not a whiner or tattletale, but trying to elicit her help in getting these people motivated. This project, though it's large, is just a very small piece of an overall semester-long project and I can't solo that one. I did make it clear that the one person had contributed nothing. She hasn't yet responded to me. The rules for grading this are -- everyone shares 95% of the grade, with the last 5% coming from peer evaluations that the rest of the group does on you. That means that if our group gets 100% on the project, everyone is guaranteed a score of 95%. Including the one person who has done zero. And I've been pretty direct wtih them, telling them they need to quit deleting the content, quit messing up the template because it costs me more time, etc. Of course part of the peer evaluation is how well they liked working with you. And Ive butted heads with 2 of these people in prior classes, and two of them are buddy-buddy. If we get 100% and everyone has their 95%, it's within the realm of possiblities that the buddies could give each other good feedback, give me crappy feedback, and they'd walk away with a higher score than me even though I've essentially soloed the entire project, and have to submit it with the group's names. I hate it when dead weight gets free rides. This professor has been very reasonable about some things that have happened in other classes I've taken with her. Hopefully she will be able to do something in this case. If not, I'm one irritated student, and going to have a serious talk with my group about the amount of effort they expect from me toward the larger semester project. Fooking deadbeats.

You really just have to feel it's right for you. There's not a list that any of us can give you where if half + is checked, it means it's the right decision for YOU. All we can do indivudally is know if something is right for US. I think "gut" is a good thing to trust in this case.

momof1 - it doesn't happen that often. In my case I needed an emergency unfill and the on-call surgeon had never done a fill before. He kept thinking he had hit the port, but missing it, so instead of pulling the needle out and repoking, he'd kind of push the needle (in me) one way, and pull my body the other, like he was trying to force it to go a different direction. I've never had a fill experience like that before, and doubt I'll have another.