PatientEleventyBillion

No need. I'd just take some viagra before surgery and go in with a huge boner for him to stare at the entire time.

At my peak of 361 I could actually wear loose fitting 48 jeans. That was with a 60 inch waist (my fat went mostly all to the gut). Waist is down to like 48 now so those pants are actually likely too big now. I won't be buying anything new until my post-op plateau which will likely be late this year or beyond. I wouldn't have any expectations beyond maybe what you were wearing before your weight gain, assuming it was some time in the recent past. In my case I expect to get back to my weight only 5 years ago of 180.. but because of my dietary changes and the fact that I will keep it this way for the foreseeable future I might go below 180 as well, which I'm ok with. Whatever pants size it is, it is. It's the lifestyle I think people should be more tuned into than the size of clothes. Still, have my old jeans and armani dress pants which were 32x30s, rarely ever wore them anyways being more of a casual dresser. Will see if they get the heave-ho or not.

I'd suggest maybe X-Rays/MRIs or something. I had fractured in my L5/S1, some pretty mild arthritis but extremely severe pain that's had me getting facet joint injections every 3 months, and about to do a procedure to see if I can do an ablation instead to burn the nerve root every so and such amount of months. Getting the X-Ray done was the start of figuring out there was severe problems needing to be treated. I imagine for people in the 60s likely a higher chance of arthritis which doesn't go away.

I'd be slightly uncomfortable with someone like that digging through my guts -- great or not.

I'm actually surprised this is expected of surgeons back in the US. In Canada you're assigned a case manager and RD (registered dietitian) who take care of that. All the surgeon does here is say what he feels is a comfortable length of pre-op diet given the patient's weight, medical history, etc. In my case I even got two second opinions, and the surgeon was the one who even suggested them just to verify for making up my mind whether I wanted to do VSG or RNY. I must be a rare case. Dr. Richdeep Gill has been an awesome surgeon thus far. I've only had 3 appointments and an endoscopy with him, and OR date for him to slice and dice me up is April 20th, but the guy is very clinical with his work, explains everything well, has a very positive attitude, and moreover attuned toward patient concerns. Granted, he also seems like he's in his early/mid 30s like me.. one of the surgeons I had a second opinion with, I'm actually glad I didn't have him as my actual surgeon. Had the attitude of an old vet who's tired of everyone's crap. I also sort of told him I'm deviating from the RD's stupid pre-op liquid diet requirements, and given my results have been fantastic (I'm sure if they weren't he'd be scolding me), he's actually praised my efforts and research.

Tell him you'll take a sip of his drink if he'll get a good whiff of a used tampon. (lets hope he has a sense of smell otherwise this backfires)

Personally I do get cold feet. But then I Just shut the window or put some socks on. But seriously, what is concerning is your worry about "may never just be able to binge eat and watch Netflix". Weigh the importance of this, and if it weighs high enough.. don't have the surgery.

That was flat out a terrible decision. Awful. Everyone knows cheetos cheese puffs are better. What were you thinking? But in all seriousness, just stop. Nobody is gonna control you better than you. Buy the kids healthier snacks, particularly stuff they might like but you might hate. Saying no to stuff like that is one of the biggest ways of ensuring pre-op and post-op success. I wouldn't go see a psychologist or anything for one relapse, but I would take measures to 1) not buy any, 2) keep as much food as far away from where you sit/veg as possible. No one cured bad habits overnight, it's all WIP.

Why buy a book for success story and the challenge of the journey when you can read it here for free?

If you come up with some journals talking about how people who declare they're emotionally and physically prepared should expedite their surgery with decent success I'd be glad to buy into this argument. Otherwise, the failure/regression rate from the attitude displayed by impatient people speaks for itself. Anecdotal stories and arguments made from emotion has no relevance to what objectively works and does not.

Might be a reflex.. insurers are adept at saying "no"/"denied".

Yep, my suggestion is, lie to her. But if you do, at least follow the premise of the diet.. if they poke you with the laparoscopic tools and see your liver hasn't shrunk or is too fatty they will close you up and postpone your surgery. Dr. Gill is thrilled with my progress, so is my family doctor, hepatologist, and the internist I see, Dr. Scott. This dietitian btw, when hearing my diet was for 12 weeks (3 months) said she would have a chat with Dr. Gill and get back to me what my real diet will be -- it remained 12 weeks so we know who won that convo. To be honest I don't think very highly of these RD's.

I'll pm you about my name.. it's funny because I see him again early April. He's my surgeon and OR date is April 20. 3 month liquid diet.

I gotta start writing all these tips down.. Hope the surgeries went well.. can't wait until I am done with the surgery and at home myself.

Hello fellow Calgary poster. What you described is exactly the diet I was given, except replace Ensure with Glucerna. This is the standard AHCIP recommendations. No dietitian in the WM program will deviate. They face serious consequences advising anything else like losing their license and effectively making RD education (4-6 year degrees) worthless. A lot of people here don't understand why such a long diet and to be honest it confuses me as well. I'm sure it will confuse them even moreso when I explain my situation too. I dunno if Glucerna is even available in the US.. I lived there for 27'ish years before moving to Canada and never even bothered with diet shakes/meal replacements. Nonetheless, it's been the most disgusting thing ever. I am supposed to be on 5-6 Glucerna a day. I had a really hard time even swallowing any kind of it, I'd just regurgitate it while trying to drink. I can manage the chocolate but it has to touch the back of my tongue first and go down -- cannot touch the front of my tongue or else I'll throw the stuff back up. My wife even jokingly suggested a feeding tube. I had a hard adjustment, having only 1-2 Glucerna a day, my dietitian freaked out after Day 2 when we talked and verbally threatened to derail the surgery if I didn't comply with her diet. I told her I'd just wind up lying to her then if I can't be honest without her going crazy. Being fed up with this I did a ton of research on the diet, shrinking liver, and others who had it done with staged fibrosis of the liver plus type 2 diabetes. I noted wildly differing opinions, but there were consistencies with meat. So, within a week, I was eating 2 string cheeses a day (0 carbs), 1-2 Glucerna (as I could keep down), broth drained from regular chicken noodle soup, and now my wife has made me home made lean ground beef meatballs, substituting bread crumbs with almond meal.. no carbs. I only eat a couple maybe once or twice a day, but it's more than enough. Then I mix Beneprotein into the broth to make sure I'm exceeding my protein goals. A month into this diet I've had my hBA1c done, vast improvements to my blood sugar (maxed at 7.9 a year ago, 5.7 now and will likely be well under that with my next done in June), just had a fibroscan and liver function tests last week during hepatologist appointment all showing great improvements to liver function, down to normal, inflammation gone.. liver softened 50% since the diet started. I've lost over 60 pounds since starting the pre-op (most of that in the first 3 weeks), shrunk my liver, improved diabetes, etc.. all while ignoring the dietitian. Saw my surgeon who said I was doing fantastic, seeing him again in 2 weeks..just a few weeks before surgery, have no doubts he will be thrilled with my progress again not knowing I've done my own thing. It's not something I recommend, but if you truly understand the premise of this diet, I think it's not absurd to. 3 months liquid diet is what's absurd. Here's the kicker too.. yes, it uses that shoddy sugar substitute, yet 26 grams of carbs in every bottle of Glucerna. This is supposed to be for people who are diabetic? 6 a day? That's over 150g of carbs a day. Why??? 3 months of misery for something that doesn't even make sense. I think in essence it's punishing people who don't lose enough weight in the program before meeting the surgeon. I will make sure post-op they know how stupid that is. The fact that you can't even talk sense to them is ridiculous. Still, this is, much like the real world, a race to see how much you can bend the system to give you what you want, with the irrational goals of others having competing interest with whats best for you. Forcing me into Glucerna 6 times a day wouldn't have worked, and would have just caused me to be malnourished going into surgery because I'd still not be able to drink more than 1 or 2 in a day. All this lady would do is try and derail/postpone my surgery until I complied with the nonsensical diet. Yet I'm dumping weight and shrinking my liver while having far less carbs than they wanted, plus less calories. Because I have so much more energy I'm also on a proactive vitamin schedule, meaning going into surgery in fantastic shape.. meaning easier recovery post-op and easier job ahead of helping myself be malnourished. Now, post-op I will again listen to what my dietitian wants and will adjust things accordingly again. At least they aren't so anal at that stage. Being forced into this diet inadvertently helped me understand more about portion control too. I'd much rather have portion control and be shrinking my liver and dumping weight this way than be forced on that god awful Glucerna crap a half dozen times a day. Not to mention it's near $10 per case of 6 bottles, so $10 a day for 78 days.

I've heard of this.. hope these two links help: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21929552 https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/prurigo-pigmentosa

- Put hosts back to block on googletagservices.com - (no bug), page changed fine - Turned on VPN - (no bug), page changed fine - Tested both within topics and within subforums, within topic changed page fine, no loading screen.. within subforums page changed as before but "loading"+foreground got out of the way so it was normal So far so good I think. Just need feedback from others.. hope it's positive.

I'm thinking ear infection but I also don't think this is the right place to play doctor. I think if the OP has their ears plugged like they have water in their ears when taking a shower, should get their ears checked. Personally, I've only ever had this sort of issue twice: First time: - Visited England at 16, got sick, had my first ever migraines, was walking along a sidewalk crossing the street and this one migraine brought me to my knees in the middle of crossing the road - Finished trip, got a plane back home being sick - Ears might have popped going up - Didn't pop going down - While descending back to California my ears felt an enormous amount of pressure, excruciating pain for a good 5-10 mins, then an extremely loud and painful POP, loud ringing for a few hours.. semi-deaf for around 4 weeks, couldn't hear people talking but could hear the vibration of people's voices, could even hear my own breathing and heart beating, had that water-in-ears sound, doing PE in school was very nerve wracking Second time: - Have upper respiratory infection at around 27 or so - Spreads to ears, get middle then inner ear infection, sort of spreads to throat too - Ears get semi-clogged, feeling very sore inside, feels kinda like water is in there - About a week later, vertigo, stand up, get dizzy, sit down, room spins, lie down/close eyes, spins faster - Drives me nuts and makes me want to throw up - Given super strong antibiotics - Goes away after a few weeks but remnants of vertigo remains for a few years to where I'd get dizzy or get that sick feeling going on an elevator or roller coaster (never once got that feeling and I was a regular visitor to Six Flags/Great America thrill rides) /storytime

So to reiterate.. for me the loading issue seems to target: - Chrome (not counting other experiences that suggest diff OS and browsers) - googletagservices.com - Pagination (pagination within subforums, pagination within threads) Exceptions: - Firefox worked fine for me - IE worked fine for me - Loading bug did not occur when viewing a subforum and clicking on a specific topic's pages (eg browsing subforum list -> click topic "blah blah" page 6).. it directed to that page fine I hope this is helpful and not even more confusing.

So I disabled my VPN (PIA), removed it from hosts, and it worked again. Seems my VPN is blocking it too. That also includes the subforum issue. Definitely a googletagservices issue. I'm thinking googletagservices isn't very popular. After doing a quick skim about the cross-site tracking and privacy issues, I can see why it might be unpopular. Edit: For both tablet and phone using Chrome for Android the hosts file also was blocking it, so too was VPN. Edit2: Now that I think about it, doesn't explain why it worked fine via Firefox and IE regardless of my hosts/VPN.

So two more things: 1) When I tried clicking on Page 5 from Page 4 it gave me that error @orionburnmentioned earlier. (I get these anywhere between 5-15 times a day, might be something completely unrelated) 2) When browsing a subforum, and trying to change pages to list older threads in that subforum, it does the same permanent "loading" thing, except in the background I can see it actually changing the page, i.e. showing relevant threads, who posted, what day, etc.. For some reason it seems like a foreground script is wanting to stick around. (I'm not a programmer so trying my best to explain in laymans terms )

Yep, and when I removed it from hosts it's now doing the same thing.

Ok put it back in and it's doing the same thing with threads not loading.

So my Android hosts as well were blocking googletagservices. I removed them on both and both are fine. Removed it from hosts and now it works normal. rather googletagservices.com.. for some reason it affects the loading of thread pages when clicking on them within a topic Of all the things..

Going through it one by one I'm suspecting it's googletagservices