MacMadame

Welcome to LapBandTalk and Congrats on your weight loss!

There is special insurance, but I believe you can purchase it here before you go from your regular insurance company. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's optional. At least that's the way it worked when I lived in San Diego.

No, every doctor doesn't have horror stories under their belt. They all have patients with complications, but that isn't the same thing as horror stories. My surgeon, for example, has never lost a patient. Ever. And he's done thousands of surgeries including the complicated DS which he does laparoscopically. Dr. Huacuz has lost at least a handful that I know about and who knows how many more that I haven't heard about. I'm glad you had a good experience with Dr. Huacuz, but that doesn't make him a good doctor. He's a butcher and the only reason he doesn't kill more people is that these surgeries are pretty safe overall. But if I had a choice to go to a doctor with a mortality rate of 1 in 200 or one with a mortality rate of 0%, I'm going to go with the one who has a 0% rate.

Zinc is definitely on the list of minerals that can cause hair loss if you are deficient. But most of us aren't losing hair due to vitamin/mineral deficiencies or protein deficiencies. It's the shock to our system of surgery and anesthesia combined with rapid weight loss.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I self-payed for my surgery too. I was qualified when I started looking into it, but then I lost weight and also I wanted a vertical sleeve gastrectomy and that wasn't covered either. Then I found out my company has an exclusion for weight loss surgery so it was all moot anyway.

A gastric sleeve is when they remove part of your stomach so the remaining part is shaped like a sleeve. They move the part that makes ghrelin, a hormone that gives you a big appetite.

I find that very difficult to believe. He's been pretty adamant that you need to be as small as possible. But I can ask him at this month's support meeting. :tt2:

It's routine when you take out a body part to have it biopsied, at least around here. I think they look for abnormal tissues.

Congrats on your success!

I stayed overnight so about 36 hours. Went back to work at 1.5 weeks but wished I'd stayed out for 2.

The gurgling can be from stomach acid too and also from drinking too fast. Both of these things feel very much like hunger so it's good to treat them. Are you on a PPI and, if so, maybe you need a different one?

Today we went paddle-boating at the lake near work. Man, was that a lot more work than I was expecting!

From what I can tell, self-pay patients actually pay more than the surgeon's get from the insurance companies once the insurance company knocks down the bill. That's why a bunch of them have started charging insurance patients extra fees -- to make up the difference.

Mine says Ford and Chevy. :eek: It's been used for years in the rest of the world (especially Europe) and had to go through the same clinical trials that the Lap-Band went through to get approved in the US. You can find data about it on MedLine Plus if you want to read the studies. Once I decided to go for the sleeve instead of the band, I didn't save my research so I don't have anything handy.

I hit a guy on a cycle once and it was really bad for him but all I got was a bruise on my forehead. I haven't been on one since.

Nope, bigger isn't better in this case. The bigger ones stretch too much over time and weight regain is an issue. My surgeon has been doing this procedure for about eight years now and they used to use a 48 f just like for their DS patients. They saw weight regain with too many patients as early as two years out with that size and now they use the 32 f. There is a study that shows you need to remove at least 500 cc of stomach to have long term success as well. IMO 32 and 34 f are good sizes and anything 48 f and over is too big. In between 34 and 48 (mostly 36, 40, & 42), I think the jury is out on. I eat 1100 calories a day right now and I'm only 7.5 months out. I could easily eat 1500 just by making different food choices. There is no problem eating enough to maintain for the vast majority of people. It's always possible to eat more often or to eat more calorie dense foods. Like with all the different WLS types, many more people don't get to goal or have some regain than have trouble with losing too much.

Actually, it's not. It's some old procedure that insurance still pays for even though it sucks. They put a mesh band around the top of your stomach and they separate out part of your stomach from the rest, but they don't cut the rest off.

Even though my insurance doesn't cover WLS, I was able to get all my pre-op testing and post-op stuff covered. They even paid for my stomach biopsy (which they probably shouldn't have)!

If you don't get an answer in "Introductions", you might want to try "Doctors and Hospitals" and also you can search the site for those doctors by name.

That isn't true. Clinical data shows no statistical significance between the two bands when it comes to weight loss and complications. They perform about the same. The big difference is that Realize has that cool web site that lets you track your progress and communicates it (if you want) to your surgeon.

That's my birthday!

With humidity under 50%! George Mason? My mom works there. I'll have to give her a hard time about not having more online courses since she's the computer mucky-muck there.

I tried to keep up with the big guys today on my group ride. I got dropped pretty badly when they all got through a light and it turned red for me. That stupid light was FIVE MINUTES long and they were long gone before I was able to get going again. But I took a short cut and caught up to some of them.

That's great! We'll have you doing Triathlons before you know it.

Yesterday I swam 1850 yards and today I biked 21.5 miles.