Neauzart

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions so far. I'm checking into the hospitals kagead's listed. I'm still hopeful that maybe someone will see this who also has an out-of-country band and has figured out what to do. Agiudice, I'm sure Day One is great -- there seem to be lots of good surgeons in Chicago -- but they must really not want to deal with out-of-country bands since they would charge me a thousand dollars for every single fill. I find it hard to imagine that anyone has ever taken them up on that offer. Thanks for the tip, though -- I would have loved to work with them since they're in my neighborhood.

Oh, I hope someone can help me! I'm new in Chicago, with a band I had done in India in 2008. My fills will be self-pay. Does anyone have information on a local fill provider that isn't too punitive against bands done outside the US? So far I've tried Northwestern Memorial (no fills unless they did the surgery), Dr. Shayani at Day One Health (fills would be $1000, every time!) and Synchrony ($600 for the first fill, $95 for subsequent, but also very far away from me in downtown with no car. It would be hard to make enough visits to spread out the initial cost.) In a city as big as Chicago, I never dreamed that finding fills would be this difficult! There must be other people with out-of-country bands here -- where do you go?

D'oh! I totally missed the no-crossposting rule -- feel like an idiot. Anyway, yeah, complications are the big worry for sure. I guess what I need to do is ask the folks who've traveled for the surgery how they handled the possibility.

This is my first night to read the forum and I'm so glad I was linked to it -- I've learned a ton in just a few hours already. My situation is ordinary in some ways, unusual in others. My BMI is 43 right now and after looking around I'm pretty convinced the band is the right choice for me. The problem is I live in Japan, have for the last three years, and will for at least six months more. My job is low-stress, I have some vacation time in a few months and if I can get everything together, it seems like a good time to get banded and start settling in with the change. (I'll start law school in the US next fall, so I'd have student-type insurance and MUCH more stress than I do now.) However, there's not much of an obesity problem in Japan (yet) and as far as I've been able to determine there's one main clinic in the country that does bariatric surgery, plus maybe a small handful of hospitals that are experimenting with various techniques. None of this is covered by the national insurance plan, and surgery at this main clinic is about 20 grand, in US dollars. For my part, I would far prefer to travel somewhere to get the op, India, Mexico, or Singapore, and pay much less. The problem is on the fill side -- this main clinic will not provide fills, etc, if they don't do the surgery. I can see that this is a very common issue in the US, too. I'll be in the States at Christmas, three months after the surgery date I'm trying to set up (early October.) I'll be back for good next spring. Assuming I can't find a fill doctor in Japan, would three months post-surgery for the first fill be too long? Would six months be too long for the second follow up? Other than fills, does the fill doctor do anything that a general doctor couldn't do? I'm also posting this question to the doctors thread -- thanks so much for any advice.