MacMadame

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Be sure to check out the Jan. '09 forum ... all people being banded in Jan!

They will consider you in two years? I've heard most places won't consider you at all until you are five years out from bariatric surgery. It's the same with private health insurance. They want you a few out from the surgery before they will give it to you. The way I look at it is that if I hadn't gotten the surgery, I'd have the same experience (and have had the same experience) for being MO. Dh and I were denied when we applied for BCBS privately, for example. But now there is an end in sight because in a few years I won't be MO and I won't be just out from surgery.

I admit I do a lot of skimming. Did you get rid of your other guests? Mine broke my crown!

I don't know if it's a "trend" or not, but all 5 people with leaks that I know about had leak tests. Same with my Aunt (who had the full gastrectomy last year due to stomach cancer). They didn't all go home and eat food too soon either, though I'm sure some of them did. But most people are good about that sort of thing, thank goodness. LapSF was doing leak tests and not finding leaks in the OR but then people would go home and develop leaks. They speculated that the leak test was actually stressing the staple line and causing the leak. (They aren't the only surgeon who believes that, btw.) They stopped doing this test and haven't had a leak in over a year.

I do think the time it takes is part of why the band has the lowest average EWL of all the procedures. Heck, I'm ready for maintenance and I have only been doing this for 3 months (though for 6-7 months before that with no surgery). I also think the trickiness of getting restriction is part of it as well. But even with the other procedures, EWL is lower as your BMI goes over 55. I think it's just really hard for a body to shed that much weight.

It's worth it if you are just beginning an exercise program. If you already go to the gym, then it's not because the routines aren't hard enough. It's designed to be fun to get people started exercising.

Welcome to LapBandTalk and Happy New Year!

Happy New Years to you too!

If it makes you feel better, my surgeon says that has never happened to him. He has placed about a thousand bands.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Here is my advice: find a new surgeon who doesn't scream and get a fill! The band needs fills to work and you need a surgeon to get fills.

Good luck with your seminar! It's well-documented that once you get to a certain weight, your body fights to keep you there. That's why diets fail. "Something" always happens because your body is fighting you. With WLS you get a fighting chance because you feel satisfied on much less food. That's why it works most of the time. Are you going to take your wife to the seminar? It might help with her skepticism.

Hi Ashley- I used to help breastfeeding moms so I can give you some pointers. First, with any surgery, you are going to have pump and dump while in the hospital and until the anesthesia leaves your system. If you are on strong pain killers, you probably want to pump and dump for those too, though a lot of them are not as bad as people assume. Afterwards, since you are getting a band and won't have restriction at first, you should be okay with getting enough calories, but you may have to talk to your NUT about a modified diet. The first couple of weeks on liquids will be the toughest. If they want you on Clear Liquids for a while, there is not much nutrition. But if you can have Protein drinks and you can get them down and get in the calories, it could be workable. Really, that will be the hardest part--the liquid diet. Once you are eating more kinds of food, you should be okay though you will have to eat more calories than they normally recommend. How often does your kid nurse? At 15 months, dd was down to just a few times a day, so continuing to breastfeed her while having and recovering from surgery wouldn't have been too hard. But some kids are still getting a lot of nutrition from breastmilk at that age. It all kind of depends. Do you have a lactation consultant you can work with? Also, with a 15 month old, I am going to guess that you will get lots of advice to just wean already. It's definitely an option, but if you don't want to, then I think you owe it to yourself to work out a plan and give it a try.

Now I'm confused. I guess I haven't got a dirty mind. And thank goodness for that. Dh and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was awesome! I just bought the soundtrack from iTunes. :Yawn:

Actually, LapSF will do a leak test, if you want one. They just don't do them routinely. Someone I know who traveled here from PA asked for a leak test before she went home and they said "sure". They'll also do them if you have certain symptoms in the hospital. I've just seen too many people on OH who had leak tests, went home, and two weeks later the leak showed up, to put a lot of faith in them.

Well, my surgeons do VBG revisions so they can be done, whether to sleeve or bypass, I don't know. But at least one was revised to a sleeve, because she told our LapSF Yahoo! group about it. But this VBG was done with a mesh band around the top, not mesh all over the stomach like WASa is describing. So the rest of the stomach was virgin. It was just top part that had the hole and the mesh band. Dr. J (who did the surgery) took hours, though, because it was such a delicate operation and the first surgeon she contacted said there was nothing that could be done for her so it's not something just anyone can do. But, as I said, she was very close to dying from complications from her VBG, so I think it was worth it to her to take a chance on a leak. This is one reason why people come to the VSG board and say their surgeon is going the sleeve this "new and improved" way where they put a band around the top like a VBG, I say :Yawn: I just can't see why someone would willing do that, given what we know about the VBG and what happens when you push mesh around the stomach.

Oh and I should say that some *surgeons* require you to lose weight and some require you to at least not gain it. So you need to see what your surgeon requires too. For the insurance, I see people denied all the time because their 6 month diet was not documented properly. So be sure each and every visit is documented, they are all 1 month apart with no gaps and that the documentation says you talked about weight AND exercise every single freaking time.

I didn't say I was looking at my feet at the time.

It's the same procedure. People just have different names for it, probably because it's new. My surgeon calls it a veritcal gastrectomy and no sleeve in there at all. These procedures should *always* be done lap, if at all possible. If you find someone who says they "prefer" to do them open, RUN. That means they aren't skilled enough to do them lap. Now, you may have unique things about you that require you to be done open, but the good surgeons always start out lap and only open up if they run into situations that call for it. How many they should have done is more what you feel comfortable with. I went to the guy who had done the most in the US (or at least the West Coast -- it's not like they have an offiical scorekeeper so maybe Gagner, on the East Coast, has done more than him, but probably not). So obviously, experience was very, very important to me. :laugh: Your surgeon should have done AT LEAST 250 bariatric procedures. That's actually been documented -- that there is a big learning curve and it takes about 250 to get the hang of bariatric surgery. If you are going for a sleeve, I would want him to have done 250 sleeves or 250 bypasses or 250 combination of the two, at a minimum. 250 lap-bands would not reassure me. I'd want him to have experience with staple lines and bands don't have staple lines. I also woudn't go to someone who only did bands and is now adding in the sleeve. I want someone who can do something harder than what he's going to do to me and not someone who I'm his hardest patient. If you find someone you love, with good stats, and they have been doing bypass for years, but have just started doing the sleeve, you are going to get a decent operation, most likely. I know plenty of people who have gone to guys like that and been their 3rd or 4th sleeve and they've been happy. OTOH, there are pitfalls. Some things to consider: Do they understand how important it is to use a small boughie or are they going to use the same size as the DSers get? Do they understand how to deal with some of the weirdnesses that pop up? Is their after-care all bypass oriented and they are going to tell you not to eat things bypass patients can't have or not to use NSAIDs or other stuff that doesn't apply for sleeves? Do they get good results with their sleeves? As an example, I know someone who went to a guy local to me who had a good rep as a surgeon (not as a person, but as a surgeon) and that person had some weird scar tissue on the tummy so he made her sleeve shaped like a femur and not a banana. Um, bad idea. Her stomach immediately twisted in on itself. In the end, he told her that he had to revise her to a bypass or she'd die. So now she has a bypass. Is it a coincidence that this doctor doesn't really believe in the sleeve and hadn't done too many of them? I think not. Also, if you go to the surgeon and they tell you they haven't had as good a result with the sleeve as with bypass, that's a sign -- something about their technique or their after-care program doesn't work as well for the sleeve as it should.

You can say that again! This has been the hardest thing for me. But I'm getting better!

Not necessarily. I can touch my toes and have been able to even when quite fat. I'm just flexible that way, I guess. :laugh:

I didn't read it, plain, because it looked stupid. Plus, I lived the dysfunctional, abussive childhood so I have no urge to relive it through someone's version.

So am I the only one who thinks it's all a big hoax.. that BK didn't go to these countries and there are no "Whopper Virgins" only "Whopper Actors"??

Absolutely not. And not really worth discussing IMO since it violates all sorts of basic rights and also because there is no way we'd even agree on what a good parent is and what the qualifications are to be a parent. Now the discussion of what makes a good parent could be interesting, but not the idea that the government should legislate this.

If no one responds here, I recommend trying the CA board. There are lots of people from SoCal there. (Redlands is in SoCal, right?)

I don't have NY goals but I have a running list that I update periodically. Here's the current list: 1) To give my inner "skinny bitch" a body that matches, just like she deserves. 2) To live into my 90s as one of those cantakerous little old ladies with 10x as much energy as the youngsters I run circles around 3) To go swimming with my daughter and stop making excuses every time she asks because I don't want to deal with the bathing suit in public 4) To complete a triathlon 5) To be at least a size 10, maybe smaller, and to shop in regular stores and not just the fat old lady department at Macys 6) To no longer be clinically obese 7) To get down to 135 (re-evaluation goal) 8) To complete my 2007 taxes before the 2008 taxes are due