ShelterDog64

I used Mio drops (the blackberry something ones, check the labels because only a few are sucralose-free) that are sweetened with stevia...they're pretty good if you only use about half as much as they recommend. You can also get lemon and lime powder, then sweeten to your taste. Atkins Lift Protein Water is nice, but pricey.

Ha! Get this:

**We found more than a dozen patients who have complained of knicked spleens, holes in their stomachs, or severe health complications. And they all have one thing in common. They all used weightlossagents.com (an online booking company based in Florida outside of Miami) and had surgery in Tijuana with Dr. Almanza.**

Are you taking a PPI like Protonix or something of that sort? Stomach acid production can give you that 'hunger' feeling, but it's also likely to be in part 'head hunger' which you just have to power through.

Keep doing what you're doing...as you move to more solid food, you'll start to feel the restriction of your sleeve.

Are you taking a PPI like Protonix or something of that sort? Stomach acid production can give you that 'hunger' feeling, but it's also likely to be in part 'head hunger' which you just have to power through.

Keep doing what you're doing...as you move to more solid food, you'll start to feel the restriction of your sleeve.

I forgot and gulped a huge glass of Water when I was about 2 weeks out....it was awful. It also kept me from EVER doing it again!

Are you taking a PPI like Protonix or something of that sort? Stomach acid production can give you that 'hunger' feeling, but it's also likely to be in part 'head hunger' which you just have to power through.

Keep doing what you're doing...as you move to more solid food, you'll start to feel the restriction of your sleeve.

What are you talking about? None of the surgeons from the facility where I had my surgery done can work anywhere but at a military treatment facility in the US. My point was that there are MANY MANY WL surgeons who do a high volume of surgeries with no mortality on their record.

Is it possible for you to answer the question about a recent patient death at ALM? An unqualified "NO" would do, but all this prevarication clearly points to "YES". It looks shady as hell.

My god, I can name 4 doctors at our facility alone. Sandy, has there been a recent patient death at ALM? You haven't answered that question yet, unless I missed it.

@OutsideMatchInside pretty much hit all facts for me. As I said in my post, correctly formed sleeve, fundus removed, no stretch. Healed sleeve is more pliable than a fresh scar tissue sleeve.
Add to that surgeons speaking lay terms to people and it perpetuates a myth. Honestly, it means nothing to me what anyone else believes or does. If someone wants to believe they can stretch their sleeve back out into a normal sized stomach, it affects me not at all. However; I only notice the people who are failing at post op life talking about stretched sleeves/pouches.

A calorie is not a calorie. There is so much science that dispute this. There are different metabolic responses to different foods, that is just pure science that can't be disputed.

Well honestly a properly formed sleeve won't stretch from carbonation from soda. Just even thinking about that in a scientific context sounds ridiculous and like an old wives tale. So telling people that soda will stretch their sleeve is idiotic in my opinion. I gave up soda years before having surgery and I think it is terrible and pox on society but I don't think it will stretch a sleeve, science and logic just don't support it.
You would be more likely to stretch your sleeve with steak than with soda. liquids don't even stay in your stomach long enough to stretch it, they immediately pass through and anyone that has had a live swallow test pop-op can confirm this. Steak and any other dense Protein takes a very long time to pass through your sleeve and a long time for your stomach to digest. Just by the sheer amount of time that dense protein is in your stomach, it would stretch your stomach, except with a properly formed sleeve and restriction, you can't eat enough steak to stretch your sleeve.
The reasons people shouldn't drink soda is because soda is trash, especially diet soda. It is a gateway to other stuff, and if people are drinking soda they are probably doing worse.
Sleeve stretching is a myth perpetuated by WLS failures and medical malpractice. It just doesn't happen with a properly formed sleeve and people need to stop using it a s crutch to support their bad habits and failed food plan.

Don't really care about the rest of the rant, but this needed to be addressed (yet again).
Depending on the surgery, the stretchy part of of the stomach (the fundus) is removed (sleeve) or bypassed (bypass). Therefore it is not possible to stretch the stomach again.
However! Once the scar tissue has fully healed, the stomach that remains does regain some pliability. I would liken it to a garden hose in the winter versus the same hose in the summer. On a properly performed surgery, when people say that their stomach has stretched, most likely what has happened is that the pylorus (for sleeves) or the created opening to the intestine (bypass) has been weakened and/or stretched and food can move from the stomach or pouch into the intestine quicker allowing for more food to be consumed.
To make the myth worse is the fact that doctors/surgeons will put the above into "laymans terms" for their patients. Thus perpetuating the belief that you can stretch your sleeve by eating poorly or too much or drinking carbonated beverages.

Are you taking a PPI like Protonix or something of that sort? Stomach acid production can give you that 'hunger' feeling, but it's also likely to be in part 'head hunger' which you just have to power through.

Keep doing what you're doing...as you move to more solid food, you'll start to feel the restriction of your sleeve.

Some things are vanity sizing and some aren't. For example I had some jeans from college I was able to wear after losing weight even though at the time was 30 pounds heavier than when I was in college. Being morbidly obese changes your body (you have more muscle).
I honestly don't find a ton of variation in sizing. I stick to pretty much the same department stores and I shop by measurements when shopping online.
Also in saving money I buy a lot of clothes from Europe and Asia and the sizing is anything but generous. I find the sizes to be pretty standard.
The only thing I find really arbitrary right now is medium and large. Some stores a medium is a 6-8 and some please it is an 8-10. Larges are either 8-10 or 10-12. I can wear the 8/10 but not the others so I have to check the size chart.
And with designer clothes and higher end designer clothes, the sizing is pretty standard. It is well you get into that random mall stuff that it can mean anything.

My husband is a physician at a top-ranked Los Angeles hospital, and it's not uncommon for their patients to decide to make the short trek down to Mexico for a myriad of treatments, because of the extreme difference in costs for comparable care. Even with top-of-the-line insurance the costs can be astronomical. Medical tourism has become so common that several US insurance companies now provide coverage for it. The Canadian government has reimbursed some of the costs affiliated with bariatric surgery for their citizens who have it in Mexico, mainly to avoid the lengthy wait periods (in some areas it can be a decade's wait). It's not just WLS, but cancer treatment, orthopedic surgeries, and a whole host of other medical issues that people seek treatments for, and so long as the facility and doctors they chose are reputable, the outcome can be comparable. It's why it's imperative to do due diligence when researching and considering any type of surgery, in the US, Mexico, or anywhere else.
I personally went to Mexico for the VSG because my BMI was under 35, and even if I gained weight I still would not have met my insurance's eligibility requirements because my conditions (PCOS and hypothyroidism) did not qualify. My endocrinologist had recommended the VSG to me to boost fertility, and said that other women my age and size had successful outcomes with the surgery. I first consulted with local surgeons, and the quotes given were $29,000 to $35,000. I would have had to pay this entirely out of pocket. I then asked my doctor if she ever had any patients who went to Mexico for surgery, and she said she did. She'd apparently made a wildly inaccurate assumption about how much money I have, which is why she hadn't mentioned that option to me at first and instead had recommended the local surgeons I saw. She agreed to provide me with all follow-up care for having the VSG in Tijuana. The total cost of my surgery was $4200, which included two nights at the Marriott. I had no complications, and a very positive experience. That was 18 months ago. I've been maintaining at a size 2-4 for about six months. Many of my issues with PCOS have been alleviated.
Just the other day I was reading on here about someone's surgery costing $70,000. $70,000 vs. $4200. Surgical complications and deaths can occur at any facility. At the hospital where my husband works patients died due to medical equipment that hadn't been properly cleaned (the fault mainly lying with the manufacturer of the equipment for providing inaccurate directions on how to clean it) and caused massive infections. Healthy young people have died during routine surgeries right here in the US. Teenagers have died having their wisdom teeth removed, most often from an underlying medical condition unknown at the time. People have died from blood clots after very routine procedures. Joan Rivers died in NY from an unexpected complication to a minor surgery.
I'm not at all surprised that a patient died after / during bariatric surgery. What needs to happen is for the surgeon's office and the coordinators working with him to be transparent about what happened. That's what other reputable facilities / surgeons have done after a death - provide the factual information about what happened. What looks shady is obfuscation.

Because there are some very good and experienced surgeons down there who perform the same surgery for a fraction of the price.
Not everyone in the US has medical insurance, and many insurance companies eliminate coverage for bariatric procedures because they can get away with it.
Medical Tourism, just like domestic medical, involves doing your homework about the organization and surgeon and making sure you're scrupulous about aftercare. And just like domestic surgery, there will be some great businesses, some who give the bare minimum, and some who need to be shut down.
There's really no reason to come on the SURGERY IN MEXICO forum just to say you, personally, don't believe in medical tourism at all.
Why would anyone completely change their plan because one random person on the internet has the opinion that an entire country's population is substandard?

It's not at all uncommon...we store estrogen in our body fat, and as we start to mobilize and use that fat for fuel, the estrogen is released. It was bad enough for me that I resumed having periods after menopause. As my weight loss slowed, I'm amenorrheic again.
Two menopauses for the price of one

I take Lexapro for a generalized anxiety disorder, and I didn't have to skip any doses. Took my normal at night the night before surgery and took it again the next night. I had a PharmD check my meds to ensure that they were appropriate for post-op use (I have allergies, so I take Zyrtec and Singulair, and I was also on a med for fibromyalgia and one for hypertension that I didn't need at all after my surgery).

At your stage, all I concerned myself with was meeting my protein goal and my Water goal. IME, if you get the protein where your program wants it, the rest will follow in the first 6-9 months.

I'm a big dairy consumer, plain greek yogurt is a must in my diet. Before I was able to consume slightly larger amounts, I always mixed unflavored protein powder into my foods....into the yogurt, into refried Beans (another lifesaver in the first 6 months for me), and I still put a scoop in my coffee every morning. I made the ricotta bake from Eggface's website and added protein powder after I cooked it.
I try to eat pretty clean, don't use Protein Shakes or bars any longer...beef Jerky is the one over-processed food I still eat. It really satisfies me, and it travels well in my purse/car.
If you can eat meats already and tolerate them well, tuna is great...those pouches are so easy to rip open, squirt a bit of mayo or a spoon of plain yogurt in and you've got lunch or dinner. I also eat salmon or steelhead at least once a week and another fish once a week, usually cod or whatever is fresh at the fish market. Pork and beef are hard for me, even at 10 months, but chicken sits pretty well. Grilled chicken thigh with ras el hanout seasoning is my new obsession, with some kale or chard alongside.

It's not at all uncommon...we store estrogen in our body fat, and as we start to mobilize and use that fat for fuel, the estrogen is released. It was bad enough for me that I resumed having periods after menopause. As my weight loss slowed, I'm amenorrheic again.
Two menopauses for the price of one

Ha! Get this:

**We found more than a dozen patients who have complained of knicked spleens, holes in their stomachs, or severe health complications. And they all have one thing in common. They all used weightlossagents.com (an online booking company based in Florida outside of Miami) and had surgery in Tijuana with Dr. Almanza.**

I had a period every 2 weeks for about a year, so yeah I could write a book about it.
It is pretty horrible. I ended up slowing my weight loss down some because I just couldn't take it anymore. I was becoming so emotionally unbalanced it was becoming too stressful.

I'm going to chime in with pretty much the same as you've gotten so far. Your husband is against elective surgery, and that's his opinion to have. He's said he'll be supportive, but now it almost seems like you're setting up ways for him to fail you in that support. My sense, from the other things you've posted about him, is that he's doing the best he can in a situation where there's no 'win' for him. Give him a little space and don't place a lot of expectations on HIM...this is YOUR choice, not his.
Look around your WLS support group, your close friends and/or your extended family, and try to find people there who can be the things your husband can't. But a word of caution...going into this thing requiring help/support/affirmation from others is not a great idea. You need to be comfortable enough with your own decision and strong enough to get through it on your own before you have the surgery.

I've been using vitamin patches from PatchMD because my stomach cannot handle Vitamins yet. I get so nauseated. I haven't done my 3 month blood work so I can't tell you the results of them yet- but I feel pretty good so far.

That makes sense. It makes me feel better that others are experiencing the same thing. I feel bad for my hubby!