MacMadame

US docs just Lurve their bypass, don't they? I went to a seminar on Wed. and I was so frustrated and annoyed by the end. People who had done less research than I were convinced by the surgeon that "bypass is really the best, isn't it?" even though his own slides showed that the at 14 years out, the weight loss is almost exactly the same between bypass and band. But his entire attitude and the way they presented the info just screamed "get bypass because it's the best". But it's not. It's the best in some circumstances, but everyone is different and in most of medicine they try to do the least invasive, least dangerous thing *first*. This is why in the rest of the world, bypass is the least popular surgery, not the most popular.

He sounds like my father. That is not a compliment, by the way. The "are you f*cking him too" thing is COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE. He needs help and you need to save yourself.

I want a belly button piercing. And maybe another one on my right ear so one side has more than the other. I need a place to keep those singleton earrings I don't want to through out.

I was added up all my expenses related to my weight and figured out it would take 10 years for my company to break even on my surgery. So I decided not to make the "it's cheaper in the long run" argument.

Well no one did that, so it's all good. But if people put their situations out there for others to comment on ... as BrandyII did ... then people will comment on them. You can't invite people into your problems and your life and then complain when they don't say what you want them to. (Well, you can but it doesn't make you look good.) And your post makes it seem like people who are frustrated aren't welcome either. If we can't put on the happy face and gather around the campfire to sing kumbaya, then we should shut up and/or go away. Well I can. So I guess you've just given me permission to judge. :Angel_anim: My childhood was crappy and disfunctional, the sort that tv movies are made from. I surived and MOVED ON because I refused to wallow in it and define myself as a victim. I was, and to this day, am a survivor and a happy person. That's how I define myself -- even when life it kicking me in the teeth, as it still sometimes does -- and it's a big difference between myself and the rest of my family and it's why I am a big success now with a family of my own and a good job and nice things and they are still struggling. Now one of my sibs has been diagnosed with a mental illness and I recognize that "just be happy" isn't going to cut it for her. But at the same time, adjusting her attitude is an essential part of what she had to do to get better. In that way, it's like being morbidly obese. Telling a morbidly obese person to "just eat less and move more" isn't very helpful and isn't going to cut it. That's why we get WLS. But once we have this tool, we have to eat less and move more or we aren't going to lose the weight. Having WLS gives us a fighting chance, but at some point we had to do the work. Just as, at some point, my sister had to accept her diagnosis and start working with the program instead of fighting it in order to have a chance at a normal life. One of the things I've done in order to be successful is to find role models -- people who are where I want to be. Jachut is a role model to me [and other people on here, too] because she turned her fat around without going to extremes (like puking over the kitchen sink after every meal). Not everything she's done is going to work for me, but when she tells me how she got to where she is, I listen because she was successful at doing something I want to do too. To reject the advice of the successful is just mind-boggling to me. Yet people do it all the time. Instead of saying "here's a blueprint for how to get where I want to go", they do everything in their power to diminish the other person -- to make it seem like they had it easy or they are just stronger somehow or they otherwise are an alien whose advice is obviously worthless because it doesn't apply to mere humans. You can do that if you want to, but it's not the way I roll.

But not as fat as Mississippi or Alabama... at least according to the seminar I went to last night. :Angel_anim:

I think in the end, we're all responsible for our own feelings and what we do with them. You can be reassuring to someone because you love them, but at some point they have to own their feelings and take responsibility for anything stupid they do in the name of those feelings.

It's hiding out with the answers.

Also, if your company has a FSA for medical expenses, take advantage of that. Lots of OTC stuff is deductable and it comes off your wages as pre-tax income.

I have brown hair that is starting to go gray. That's why I went for pink. I thought it would look good with the gray. I'm going to get just a hair cut one more time and the next time I get my hair cut, I'm going blue. The pink is almost gone. Tattoos are too permanent. Get a body piercing isntead. :tt1:

I think so. The obese have up to 10x the ghrelin as normal-weighted people. Ghrelin makes you feel hunger even if you should be satisfied. WLS interferes with ghrelin production for most of us and allows us to move beyond the physical addiciton. But it doesn't nothing for the mental addiction for those that have it. Which is why it doesn't work for everyone.

Legally they can't make you show the register unless it's a membership place. Lots of employees don't know that though and they'll make a big stink if they ask you for your receipt and you say No. But they are in the wrong and you shouldn't let them push you around.

I can't wait for my pink streaks to grow out so I can get blue streaks.

You've updated your picture! You look great!

Thanks... I had a heard time telling from the web site how exactly was involved. They only list the main doc.

My mom used to live in West Virginia. Now she lives in Virginia. But she made a circle around the country to get there.... first upstate NY, then Oregon, then to Virginia. It's pretty funny, really.

That's my birthday! I'll be thinking of you.

I know about Aceves. I want to see how his prices compared to local. If I can stay within 45 min of my home/work, I think that would be awesome. But if I can't...

Hey, that rhymes. It looks like I'm going to be self-pay. Are there any good weight loss surgeons in the SF Bay area with reasonable self-pay prices who do the vertical sleeve?

Who did your surgery? I looked into that group, but they weren't that convenient to me for pre-op appointments and things.

People who follow teenagers around stores because they just know they'll steal suck too. (I've noticed this lately as my kids get older. I really hate the security guard breathing down my neck and following me around the store. Those dudes are seriously creepy.)

It's definitely a function of size IMO. I'm a lot of boards for more than WLS and the bigger ones tend to be like this. With the smaller ones, there probably is a whiner or a troublemaker or two, but everyone knows who they are and doesn't fan the flames. Or the board owner cracks down on them (the troublemakers, anyway) and they go away. But sometimes it's a bit stifling. Big boards, on the other hand, can't be policed like that and if 1% of the members annoy, it's a lot more people in terms of raw posts. But they can be a lot more free-wheeling and that's good in its own way. This is why I'm on both big and little boards. Not everyone has the same sense of humor. I thought it was funny *and* educational because it really shows the flaws in some of the thinking some people have and maybe it might make them see the light in a way that saying "it's really important not to go to solid food too soon" does not.

Smarter than a tootsie pop, huh? Um, that's not really that smart, is it?

Eating food when you aren't hungry is just as much wasting it as throwing it out.

In the US, we use beef instead of lamb but still call it Shepherd's Pie.