MacMadame

Good luck, Michael! Be sure to check out the Mens Forum too.

Take your pain killers! :cool: You need to feel good enough to be able to move around. Moving around helps with gas and also with preventing blood clots. Oh, and welcome to LapBandTalk!

Welcome to LapBandTalk!

A sleeve is a nickname for the vertical sleeve gastrectomy. It's a restrictive procedure where the fundus and the stretchy part of your stomach is removed leaving a portion that is shaped like a banana (or sleeve). The fundus is where ghrelin is made so removing that takes away your appetite. The stretchy part is what lets you over-eat so taking that away means you can only eat about 4-5 oz at a time and also means it's unlikely that your sleeve will stretch out much over time (which is an issue with bypass and duodenal switch). It's more permanent than a band, obviously, by the long-term complications are close to nil. Mainly you need to take extra calcium and some people need to take extra B12.

If it's been more than 4 weeks since your last fill, go back and get another one! Some docs are really conservative about fills and it sucks.

I know someone who lost 200 lb. with a band. She's got another 100 to go and is getting there slowly. OTOH, she told our support group that she's sorry she didn't get a sleeve like her surgeon recommended. Average EWL is a good stat to compare two surgeries against each other. But it says nothing about what an individual's weight loss will be. If the ELW is 60%, some people lose 100%, some lose 0% and everything in between. So to get an idea of where you'll fall in the continuum, you need to know if the band is going to solve your own food issues or if another surgery will do a better job. This chart gives an intro to all four WLS types recognized by the ASMBS: Weight-Loss Surgeries Compared It's a good starting place for deciding which ones to look into more thoroughly.

Ortiz is very PR savvy so I have trouble believing he would not respond to a news story and ignore a patient. Okay, I just watched the clip. She is trying to get her money back for the first surgery and get him to pay for her second surgery. This is completely different than her calling him to say her band was hurting and them refusing to do anything. Slippage is a known complication from a band and can be caused by patient non-compliance and no US doctor would do what she is asking either.

I wouldn't use him to do a revision from band to sleeve. A very high percentage of his patients who do this come back from Mexico without a sleeve. He tells them that their stomach is too scarred for it, but I think it's more likely that he doesn't feel he has the skill to do it since most other surgeons are able to convert bands to sleeves just fine for 99.9% of their patients. I'm glad he's not like Huacruz and does them anyway and kills people, but I think it would be horrible to spend $5000 to get your band taken out and then not have enough money left to get a second opinion or second surgery. If you want to do a revision, you need to go to a very experienced surgeon. In Mexico, I would recommend Dr. Aceves and Dr. Rumblaut to do this without hesitation. In the US, I'd go with Ganger or Cirangle/Jossart (LapSF). I'm sure there are others in the US, but these are the ones I know enough about to be willing to recommend them without hesitation.

In CA, if you have an HMO, the DMHC will overturn the requirement to do the 6 month diet if you appeal up through them. They agree that there is no data to support this requirement.

Yes. But just a little. And afterwards, blessed relieve from that feeling that a cat is sitting on your chest.

Resistance is futile. Amen! I heard it will be cancelled though. If you have GERD now, the repair will probably make it go away! Well, you can shoot them, but then you go to jail and their food isn't bariatric friendly.

Somebody did show you, a few page back, though. No. :Dancing_sorry:

You will probably get more response if you post in the main forums. This is pretty typical and not a Realize band problem in particular so you can get lots of answer from people with lap bands too. First, as you lose weight, you will often lose restriction. Second, it's possible your band has a leak. Did your doc remove all the Fluid in the band before putting it back with extra? If he did not, you don't know for sure how much is in your band. If he did and you have the right amount, then it's not a leak, which is good.

My mom has Hep C and they told her that she has to keep her weight down so that her liver isn't fatty or she will die sooner. For various reasons, she can't have WLS so you can imagine how hard this is for her. She basically goes on a diet 3 months out of every year just to take off the 10 - 25 lb. that creep up on her in spite of eating healthy and working out. What a horrible way to live, IMO. I'd much rather deal with learning how to eat all over again than deal with that.

Youknowit, the rules are pretty similar to the band but for somewhat different reasons. No drinking with meals. (The reason is there isn't room, not because you can flush the food out.) Chew, chew, chew Take 20-30 min. per meal but no longer I tend to eat my 1-2 oz. in about 10 min. and I know if I slowed down I could eat more, plus I wouldn't get the foamies as much. I'm just having trouble with it.

How long do you guys take to finish your meals and how many oz are they? I have a hard time making my .5 to 1 oz. meals last even 10 min. let alone the 20 min. I was told was the minimum.

And many of us have no problem with that. I think what defines marriage is two consenting adults who want to make a life-long, legal commitment to each other; to me gender is as irrelevant as race. You say this is a "grave" situation but what exactly is so grave about it? How does it hurt you or society to allow people in love to commit to each other legally in a permanent way? I don't think it does hurt society; in fact it make it more stable to have people legally committed to each other rather than living in make-shift situations that could be dissolved tomorrow.

The nurse sounds like a nut case. My surgeon is really strick about carbs when you are losing and I'm still allowed to have up to 40 g a day. He wants us to eat leafy green veggies, too, so we don't even have to count them in our carbs for the day, if we don't want to. They have found that a low carb diet really works better for getting to goal than not watching carbs, but low carbs isn't NO carbs.

If you are throwing up twice a day and aren't losing, you aren't underfilled. Maybe you need a new fill doc.

I don't watch Jon & Kate Plus 8 because it sounds boring.

I missed the part about pattygreen not casting her pearls any more.... This is what I have to say about that: You can't stop doing something you haven't even started doing. In order for your posts to be "pearls", particularly "pearls of wisdom" they need to show some deep thought, not just Bible verse regurgitation.

You should definitely check it out. The surgeons all do things differently so you may find one that doesn't have a program fee but has a really good track record. But in the end, you need to pick the best program, because that's how you have success. LapSF is seeing EWL with the band that is 10-20% better than published averages. That's nothing to sneeze at. If your surgeon gets results like that, it's probably worth the fee. If some other surgeon without a fee gets results like that, then it's worth switching. Bariatric surgery doesn't seem to be a field where "you get what you pay for". Some places charge outlandish fees and haven't got great programs and some places with great programs don't charge much more than average. Definitely do your homework!

They are following the law. Just because the law doesn't conveniently agree with the mob and their mob mentality doesn't make them zealots. I think the people who keep trying to pass these laws that aren't constitutional and won't follow proper procedure to change the constitution are the zealots.

It was smart of Amy to vote like that. There is no way the other 4 blue team members would vote to take her to the final four over their own spouses. They would use her votes until she was in the bottom with one of them and then she'd be gone.

I see politics isn't the only thing plain is misguided about. :thumbup: