MacMadame

I have to keep it for now. But we'll trade it for something else as soon as we can. OTOH, if I put the money into it, it might last for another eight years so who knows... So her x-ray vision doesn't blind regular humans. Gee, don't you know anything?!

If you had typed in "Betancourt" into the search engine here, you would have found TONS of negative posts from many people. Here are just a few of them: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f26/dr-betancourt-molding-clinic-tj-mexico-26987/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/experience-dr-huacuz-molding-clinic-tijuana-4106/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/any-one-use-dr-daniel-huacuz-tijuana-8481/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f131/pregnant-w-raging-infection-dont-go-mexico-33029/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/betancourt-medical-group-anybody-25209/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f78/mexican-mess-24007/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f78/do-not-go-betencourt-medical-33409/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f78/complications-18965/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f18/banding-betencourt-34406/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/betancourt-good-bad-37925/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f31/still-looking-local-dr-accept-mx-surg-63908/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/anyone-heard-dr-liza-maria-pompa-gonzalez-out-mexico-76948/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/anyone-know-where-andres-betancourt-went-65420/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/thought-everybody-would-need-see-78497/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/doctor-mexico-dr-francisco-contreras-47495/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/dr-pompa-betancourt-dr-ortiz-54986/ http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f11/liza-pompa-gonzales-52458/ And that was just from typing Betancourt. If you had also typed in Molding (the name of his first clinic) and Emmanuel, you would have gotten even more. Note: these are in the order I found them, not in a nice chronological order.

Hey, I got my car back from the shop. It cost me over $2200 and not everything is fixed. I still have a broken oxygen sensor and a leak in my transmission pan. But I don't want to put more money into the car at this point. It's only worth about $3500.

Thanks for the links, guys! Even though I don't watch the show and hate it, I can't stop reading about it or talking about it. Oh and I think of my surgery as the thing that's going to help me maintain too. I feel like I lost the weight due to my own actions -- what I put in my mouth and moving my body -- but I'll keep it off because this time I'm not starving.

I don't think it makes enough difference to matter. It doesn't take a lot of calories to process Water and drinking any water is good for weight loss. So if drinking cold water works a few extra calories, but you hate cold water, so don't drink enough, those extra calories will be balanced out by the lack of overall consumption. Okay, after I typed that, I went out and checked. I found two articles, one that said an 8 oz glass of cold water takes about 8 calories to warm up and one that says it takes 17 calories. If you like room temperature water, I don't think that's enough calories to worry about. Besides it's ridiculous to say that, if you drink cold water, you won't lose weight. If I eat 800 calories a day*, I'm going to lose weight no matter what the temperature of my water is. That's just common sense. *or whatever you are currently eating as long as it puts you at a calorie deficit.

Mini-Mac said: But does she do triathlons? Luckily she doesn't. But Jennifer Lopez has done one! Good for her. For me, it's a few things. First, I have muscle separation from having kids and it's really bad. That flap of skin is not going away as I lose weight and will only go away with PS. Then we have the panus. That's mostly from having c-sections. So neither is totally from being overweight and neither is going away by themselves. Add in a killer surgery scar from open cholecystectomy and no bikinis for me! Here's the page Phylicia: http://www.jennycraig.com/successstories/blog/phylicia/ But Valerie is still on there too: The Official Weight Loss Blog for Valerie Bertinelli I think they take new ones on because they always want someone who is losing. Valerie has been in maintenance mode for a year now. So she's old news. :thumbup: I've only had one and only plan to have one -- the sleeve. Don't forget, this is a lapband board so a lot of people here getting sleeves had a lapband first and then are revising to a sleeve because of problems with their band. It's always better to get the right surgery the first time, of course, but the sleeve wasn't as well known when these guys were getting their bands and insurance often still doesn't pay for it. Plus we are learning more about the long-term complication rates of the band. When I started looking into WLS a year ago, a lot of the studies on long-term complications weren't available. They started coming out right about the time I started thinking the band wasn't going to work for me. For me, it worked out to a series of issues: -the band only works if you find your sweet spot. Not everyone can, no matter how well they follow the rules. I did not want to have surgery and then have to white-knuckle diet after all. I could white-knuckle diet without surgery. -long-term complication rate of the band was MUCH higher than I was comfortable with. The sleeve has a higher short-term compliation rate, but once you get passed the 1-3 month mark, that's it. -the band cost almost as much as the sleeve in the short-term and, once you factor in fills, it could easily cost as much -the sleeve removes the part of the stomach that make ghrelin, the hormone that gives you your appetite. Since my appetite was my big problem, the sleeve addresses it directly. The band only addresses it indirectly. -at first, the fact the band has the worst average excess weight loss stats of all the surgeries didn't bother me. I knew I could lose my weight with any surgery. But eventually it started to bug me and give me less confidence in my choice. For one thing, in some studies, it was as little as 40%.

I'm 51 so I don't think it's age. It was probably something in your medical history or else your doc is just a sadist.

Maybe I could take out all my competitors one by one?

Mini-Mac and I just got back from biking to the local park and then around the lake. We're going to make a regular thing of it.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I'm surprised about Aetna since their revision policy is pretty generous. Did you have a WLS exclusion?

Speaking of a bikini, I was at the grocery store dressed in my bike outfit -- i.e., lycra, tight short -- and feeling like "ooh I'm pretty hot for a 51 year old mom of two". Then I see Valerie Bertinelli, only 3 years younger than me, also with two kids, on the cover of some magazine in a bikini. I hate her. :thumbup:

I agree about the sleeve. I'd also avoid TJ and Juarez as the violence there seems to escalate every day. There are plenty of good surgeons in other parts of Mexcio. When I was researching, I ended up Dr. Rumblaut and Dr. Aceves on my short list, for example. Great reputations for both of them. I ended up staying in CA though. I paid $17,000 for my sleeve (my program charges about 14000-15000 for the band) and it was worth it to me to get the most experienced sleeve surgeon in the US and to stay local to myself.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! A good place to find out what life will be like for you immediately post-op is the Post-Op Support section. You can read and ask questions there.

There is a section on the boards for every state. Check it out! I'm sure you'll find someone who has used your program there.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! If you go to to the Insurance section, you can find a bunch of threads on Cigna or start a new one. I don't know as I had Aetna and a WLS exclusion so I was self-pay.

I haven't heard of the blood gas test. What is it?

Well, you have a band, so that puts you in a different category. This is the big problem I have with the show. Without WLS, depending on how long-term the study is, the people who keep 50% of their excess weight off is in the single digits. Anywhere from less than 1% to a whopping 5%. That's essentially no one. The BL people may do a bit better than average because they are in the spotlight and that gives them extra motivation. But the odds are just completely against them. There is some lady who managed to lose over 100 pounds and keep it off for more than 5 years and she runs around telling other people how to do it. Well, first off, she only lost something like 10-25 lb. a year! No one wants to do it that way so not many follow her program. :thumbup: But science says that's the way to do it. You have to lose less than whatever weight your body decides there is a famine. Once it decides there is a famine, all the self-survival systems kick into play and fight the weight loss. But, in our case, our surgery allows us to be happy on a lot less food. So we aren't in the same bucket as someone who loses 100 lb. in 7 months (or so) and is hungry all the time and so can't keep it off. That's the bucket the BL people fall into. I feel so sorry for them, because I've been there. I've lost enormous quantities of weight and got to goal several times. But hunger kept me from staying there and I just gained it all back. It's horrible to be in that position -- to know what you need to do to keep off the weight and not be able to do it because you are starving all the time. As most of us know from experience. This is why my surgeon does this work, btw. He says if being fat was just a matter of us gluttons eating too much chocolate ice cream because we have no self-control, he wouldn't bother.

I spent the first 13 years of my life in the other armpit.

I didn't think verboonen did the VSG? I thought he was a band-only doctor? Neither of them is very experienced with it though. Leon just started doing them. And, if Verboonen is doing them now, he's just started too. You really want someone who has done a couple hundred of them (or at least a couple hundred bypass) because of the chance of leaks.

I'm getting excited just watching you! :thumbup:

We did running drills today so I got in some time for the challenges. But now that I'm only running 2x a week, it's hard to keep up with you guys!

It's important not to eat during the time your doctor wants you on liquids because your stomach is healing and scar tissue is forming around the band. It's that scar tissue that holds in place and helps prevent slippage. Obviously, you can't do anything about it now, but please don't do it again just because nothing horrible happened right away. You don't want to have slippage 2-3 years from now... Oh and you guys are in "Bandster Hell" which is when you aren't supposed to be eating but you haven't got restriction yet. It's tough, but post in the Post-Op Support section and I'm sure you'll get lots of ideas for how to get through it.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! You don't put them on anything when you are on the soft food diet.

No, you can drink if you want. But it's a choice that you may not want to make, particularly when you are losing. You may not want to spend the calories on it, for example. Really you can eat or drink anything you can tolerate with the band. There is nothing about it that makes a particular food dangerous. OTOH, not everyone can tolerate everything. You'll just have to see when you get one what you can tolerate.

If your BMI is 40 or more, then you are a candidate under most insurance plans. No co-morbidities are required.