MacMadame

I think I already look like a Pinto Bean with limbs. But it's a VERY BIG pinto bean! :blushing:

I'm half Irish and it didn't stop me from gaining... must be all those potatoes! (I lurve potatoes.)

I have to say that when I started on this journey, I expected it to be much more straightforward -- more like getting your gallbladder out. I would go to my PCP, get a referral to a local surgeon and have it done. End of story. Boy was I naive!! It really bugs me that bariatric surgery is such a big racket for some people. There are all these web sites out there that remind me of people trying to sell timeshares or discount cruises with lots of screaming big letters, flashing prices, specials of the month, amazing -- but not in the least realistic -- success stories, but no mention of the important things -- like what a surgeon's infection rate is or how many lap band procedures they've done. I really hate feeling like people are trying to take advantage of me and I especially hate it that there is a whole industry trying to take advantage of fat people's desperation. I've already been through that with the diet industry. WLS was supposed to save me from all that not introduce me to an entirely new cast of unethical characters. Thank goodness for LBT though. I'd be lost without you guys! :eek:

When I ordered my wedding dress, I was in the middle of a big weight loss and wanted to order a smaller size. The people in the shop said they always order at the size that you are when you come in because you can't predict what size you'll be by the time the wedding happens. Some people lose but some people gain! I continued to lose and when my dress came in, they had to remake it onto my body. I didn't mind though because for the cost of alterations, I ended up with what was essentially a custom-made dress. A few months later I ordered a bridesmaid gown and the sample must have stretched out plus I had lost some more weight due to gallbladder surgery. Well, by the time the dress came in, I was 5 lb. heavier and it didn't fit at all. They let it out as much as they could but I was pretty uncomfortable and ended up never being able to fit into it ever again. So based on both those experiences, I'd say get it the size you are now and let them take in what they need to when the time comes. It's a much better experience to have people exclaiming about how much weight you've lost compared to having them tsk tsk as they try to make something too small fit you.

But if the sleeve doesn't work out for you, it's not reversible like the band is. It's also not as safe as Lap band surgery because it takes longer to do and requires them to cut off part of your stomach. Finally, it's more expensive than Lap band, which is a factor for some people. There is no way I am going to rearrange my insides in any permanent way to lose weight and I'm very concerned with the mortality rate as well. It wasn't until Lap band surgery came along that I've even considered WLS because it's the first WLS that met my criteria on those two counts. I'm still somewhat concerned with how new the surgery is and how many unknowns there are. It seems like TPTB don't 100% understand why the band slips, for example. I worry that I'll have mine put in and two years from now they'll come up with some revolutionary technique that makes slips something that happen less than 1% of the time instead of 3%.

Some insurance companies require a 6 month medically supervised diet and won't accept the 3 month version. Mine let's me chose, thank goodness.

In addition to the twin studies, they have done some recent brain studies and found that overweight people have less brain activity in the left posterior amygdala, which plays a role in appetite. Specifically, many overweight people's "full sensor" isn't as sensitive. That means when they are full, the brian isn't getting the message. I can really related to that one because once I started going through puberty, I never felt full and that's when I stopped being a teeny tiny thing and started being "fluffy".

Yes, men can be very irritating. Ha! Not fast enough.

I just bought arch supports yesterday and already I see a big reduction in pain. I'm also hoping WLS will being the final nail in my plantar fasciitis coffin.

If you've been fighting your weight for 26 years, you've already proven you can't do it on your own. There is no shame in admitting that and trying something that has a higher % chance of working. After all, trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is not logical. OTOH, if you are hesitating because the lapband doesn't make sense for you, then don't let us talk you into it.

Ha, I had one of those moments today! Thought of this thread right away too. Though to be fair, the fatter person pulled out in front of me in a parking lot so I was already in a judging mood. :thumbup:

I'm not in that area, so I don't have any direct experience, but I would say that the important thing is that your surgeon has a lot of experience with the band. There appears to be a steep learning curve so you don't want to be one of his or her first patients. I look at 3 programs. One had great stats, but they were only on 50 lap band surgeries! That wasn't enough for me.

Oops. I played anyway. I guess I'm not a rule follower.

My insurance company requires that you be morbidly obese now but you only have to be obese in the past, not morbidly obese. Have you checked your insurance company's requirements? Are you sure they require 5 years of being morbidly obese? Because that's more than the NIH protocol requires.

It is interesting how our attitudes towards weight change as our circumstances change. I remember being given a hard time about my weight, nagged about every bit of food I put into my body as a child. Yet, I wasn't particularly overweight. I was 110 and 4 ft 11 inches at 13 and most of that was boobs and booty. According to the BMI charts, my BMI would have been around 23 and that is considered a healthy weight. Yet I felt the pressure to go on a diet and did, thus starting a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and taking the first step on my journey towards morbidly obesity. I look back and I remember how dissatisfied I was with my body most of my life. When I was 110, I wanted to be 100. When I was 120, I wanted to be 110. When I was 135, I wanted to be 125. Yet, it wasn't until I hit 135 that my BMI truly qualified me as being overweight and even then only barely. Now, I look back on 135 with envy. My goal weight is only 145, mainly because I have fat stores I know are never going away and I don't think 135 is realistic at 50. Sometimes I wish I could have those years back so that I could enjoy how I looked instead of constantly being critical of myself for not meeting some unrealistic standard. As for the void-of-course moon, all I can say is

If your husband is worried about things like nutritional deficiencies, then he's confusing Lapband surgery with something like Gastric Bypass. So, probably, if you just educate him, he'll come around. The whole idea that getting this surgery is the easy way out comes from the fact that we've been brainwashed as a society to believe that losing weight is "just" a matter of exercising more and eating less. But there are tons and tons of studies showing that more is going on. In particular, dieting -- something we've all done and are being encouraged to do now instead of getting a lab band -- can put your body in a place were it is no longer possible to lose weight and keep it off. Once you are at that place, however you got there, trying something over and over that has been proven not work, is the height of insanity IMO. Only somewhere between 2 and 5 % of all dieters manage to lose weight and *keep* it off for only as little a period of time as 5 years. WLS patients do much better than that. Anywhere from 42 to 75% have managed to lose significant weight -- at least 50% of their excess weight -- and keep it off in those same time periods. But the fact that WLS doesn't have a 100% success rate shows that it is *far* from the easy way out. If you want to be one of the successful ones -- the ones who get a significant amount of weight off and keep it off, but not necessarily even all of the weight you want to lose -- you have to work at it. You have to watch what you eat and change how you think about food. If you want to be one of the extraordinary people -- the ones who get to goal and stay there for the rest of their lives -- you have to work DAMN HARD. People can say "oh, you can do that without the lap band". Yes, you can. But what the lap band does is combat some of the biological realities of being obese. First, it tames the hunger. Instead of getting hungry every 1-2 hours, you will find yourself getting hungry more like a normal-weight person. Second, it controls portion size. However, that second part only works if you follow the rules. Following the rules is HARD. But at least, if you aren't hungry every time you turn around, you have a shot at following the rules. That's all the band is really -- a tool to make it biologically possible to eat properly. It's not a magic wand that you wave and the weight falls off with no effort on your part. It's more of a leveling devise that evens the playing field so you have the same chance of success as a normal-weighted person whose body doesn't fight their efforts to lose weight and keep it off.

How can a pretty balloon barf?

I just found out that my company -- the one with killer benefits that include just about everything including IVF and all sorts of alternative treatments -- excludes WLS from their medical plans. I'm pretty upset about it because, given their generosity on everything else, and their emphasis on people improving their health, I am convinced it's a matter of prejudice and ignorance. Anyway, I'm thinking about writing them a letter. Our Open Enrollment period is in 5+ months so I'm guessing they are working on what the coverage will be right now. If I could convince them to add this coverage, it would help a lot of people. Has anyone been successful in doing this?

According to WLS for Dummies, the gurgling is gas and it's normal. Do you guys think that's true?

Ask for a copy of your plan. Not the plan summary but the full plan with all the details and the exact language.

I didn't write the letter because I found out that there was small print ... it is covered if it's "medically necessary". So I'm going to see how this plays out before I go to HR. I have a call into a surgery group so I should know soon if they are going to just say no right up front.

So after calling Aetna and talking to the CS rep and finding out that the lap-band surgery is excluded from my company's policy, I called our HR reps. The one I talked to said that WLS is excluded unless it's medically necessary. This is sort of what the Aetna rep said but the Aetna rep was coy about it and I got the impression that it was only if I went self-play and later had complications that the complications would be covered, not that I could make a case for the surgery to be covered from the start. However, HR person said straight out that if my doctor can make a case for the surgery, they'll cover it. She said to use terms like "medically necessary" when my doctor calls for the pre-auth. I also got the number for one of our other medical plans. I have a choice of 5 plans through 3 companies and thought maybe one of the others might cover it. But our UHC plan, which is what they call an "affinity" plan appears to be stricter than Aetna. They say they will only cover it in order to treat a second disease -- such as high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes. This annoys me because it means they don't consider obesity a disease. I suspect that my last choice -- Kaiser -- would definitely cover it, but I don't want to change my doctor and I'm not happy with Kaiser here in Northern CA. (I loved them when I lived in San Diego.) Anyway, I'm posting this because I know there are a lot of people who have posted that their company excludes the surgery. If that's happened to you, you may want to push a little harder and see if they have that "unless medically necessary" clause and are just not being forthcoming about it.

I wasn't sure but I think it might be this one: Cousin Biotech... They call it the BioRing but their web site is so horrible it's hard to tell what anything is and if they have an "E" version.

It's a French band. It's popular in Europe. The first one was designed in 1999, but they are already on the second generation. As far as I have been able to tell, Inamed, J&J and MID are the 3 big band manufacturers out of the 7-8 that exist when you look at bands world-wide. But this band isn't FDA approved in the US and it doesn't even appear to be in clinical trials here -- at least as far as I can tell.

I noticed that in your sig. Congrats!