TheGh0st

Congratulations Jena! I nearly went to Mexico myself. I know there are plenty of reputable surgeons there, I just couldn't get my family on board and also had trouble finding a local doc to agree to take me on for fills if I didn't use them.

Just wanted to drop a quick congrats. Hope you are feeling well after surgery.

My surgery was long enough ago the prices wouldn't mean much now. But one word of "wisdom?" I have absolutely nothing wrong with going abroad for surgery there is no reason why doctors outside the US should be considered sub-standard. However, you do need to make sure before you chose a doctor outside of where you live (even within the US) that you can find a doctor closer to home to provide the necessary follow up care you will need with fills and so on. Many band docs unfortunately will not fill anyone that they did not personally band.

Some docs use the omnipaque fluid you are refering to but I believe the majority do use saline. Still, personally I would never do a self fill unless I was a well trained nurse with prior experience accessing ports and preferrably experienced in giving fills to other patients. Even then I think I'd be reluctant unless perhaps I had access to a flouroscope that I could use on myself while doing my own fill.

Hi there Andi, Welcome aboard! I didn't find this board until months after I was banded. It's been a lifesaver for me as well. And shame on you for mentioning the Milky Way. :thumbup: At least you didn't say anything about a Snickers Icecream Bar.

What kind of problems are you having swallowing?

I haven't had this happen but I know that my doc says he doesn't trust the barium swallow to show there are no problems. He will use it but with symptoms you are describing I'm fairly confident that if the barium swallow didn't show anything he would have suggested moving to more definitive tests to make sure. Maybe my bumping this thread will help you get a response from someone else that might know better.

Sorry, I can't give you any good advice but I wanted you to know I will be keeping you in my thoughts. Please keep us updated and thankyou for sharing such a personal issue with us.

Try not to panic. Unfortunately this is completely NORMAL! It is what some refer to as "bandster hell". During the surgery they are only placing the band and port, they do not fill it. So after the initial swelling from surgery goes down most of us feel practicall if not totally no restriction. Depending on the size of your band and the amount of fat pad around the stomach it can take several fills before you start to feel good restriction. Until then all you can do is try your best to rely on that good ole' will-power demon we have all been able to battle for short periods of time in the past. But you really do need to try hard right now as even though the swelling is going down and you are getting more hungry, you are still healig and you don't want the stomach doing any more work than necessary while your body adjusts to the band. Good Luck and welcome to the banded side of life!

Congratulations!!! and welcome to Lapbandtalk

Karey - just try to breathe. Take one last long bubble bath with some nice smelly candles and drink some tea (preferrably spiked) and try to relax. The pain really isn't anything you can't cope with. What is it they say? No pain, no gain. Probably not what they meant but still well worth it in the end. We can't wait to see your results.

Sorry I've been AWOL here. Guess I've been too embarrassed with the scale not moving in the right direction and all. My rotator cuff is definitely torn and they are wanting to operate but now that the docs have finally got off their proverbial rear ends my shoulder doesn't even hurt anymore. So I've been checking out gyms again. My DH is a member at 24 hour fitness so I thought I'd check it out last weekend thinking I could add on to his membership for around $10/month. Instead I was told it would be closer to $30 extra per month and was given a VERY hard sale by the guy to sign up for a $1500!!! membership. If I wasn't broke and knew I'd keep going to the gym for the next 5 years or more it was a pretty interesting deal but there is no way we can afford it after my TT. The $1500 included: 3 year paid membership (approx $1000 value) an annual renewal fee of $29/yr for the rest of your life. (approx. $300/yr savings) 20 - 1-hour personal fitness trainer sessions (approx. $1200 value) AND A FREE BODY-BUG ($300 VALUE) Like I said if I had the $$ and could afford the trainer or body bug this pays for itself. Though if you want to save enough on the membership alone to have considered the PT and body bug as free you would have to attend for closer to 5 years. But my DH and our bank said H#!! NO! when I mentioned it over the weekend. Still I am absolutely determined to get something started by the week of March 17th. This week I've got nightly commitments scheduled all but tonight and this weekend is my 15th anniversary. Next week I have only one evening commitment so that's when I'm going to try to nail this down. I've pussyfooted on this issue for way too long!

Kingfish - Thankyou so much for your post. Not many people with complications take the time to update boards like these on how they are doing. I know it would be painful for me to return to these boards if I were to lose my band. But I feel it is just as importantant if not even MORE important for us to be informed of possible complications and its aftermath. Thank you again. And please keep us updated on what happens with your claim for a new surgery. I wish you nothing but the best wether it is a new band, a different surgery or none.

I admire the initiative you are taking to understand what your gf is going through. Not many men, even husbands take such an active role. As far as shortgal's response I agree completely. It doesn't really sound like she needs a fill from what you are saying but we are not medical staff. Another tool I've seen bandsters use to help their doctors better decide if they are ready for a fill is to take quick photos of their meals with their cell phone. It's faster than logging and gives the doc a visual image that is sometimes easier to understand. On your second point about whether she is losing weight due to the band or from diet and exercise she could be doing without the band. That is a bit harder to answer. Again I don't know your girlfriend to know what her starting weight or BMI were or what co-morbidities she may have had due to the excess weight to even begin to address the idea that she "didn't need surgery". What I can say is that the band is strictly a TOOL not a solution or easy fix. It helps both control the individual portions we can eat in any one sitting and when properly adjusted will help us not feel the terrible hunger pains between meals. These two benifits of the band have been shown to help bandster not regain the weight as so many of us had afer previous successfull diet & exercise regimes. My last paragraph brings up two additional questions you might have. One - What is a proper fill and why can't/didn't she get it on the first fill? The answer to that would be that the band is not placed strictly around the stomach muscle but also has varying amounts of fatty tissue inside it depending on the patient. Therefore as your GF loses weight that tissue inside the band will shrink and cause the band to feel looser and need to be tightened some more. Also, especially at the beginning the doctors are purposely cautious with their fills. Some patients need to be tightened slowly so they can have time to adjust to new eating habits (especially the chewing) and some patients stomachs are more sensitive to being squeezed by the band and can swell for a couple days after the band is adjusted. The docs don't want to risk filling someone too agressively and having the stomach actually close off so that even Water won't go through. Second question I would have if I were you is back to why can't she just lose the weight with a similar diet/excersize program and learn to keep it off without the band? There have been a couple of studies that have found that over 90% of people who have gotten over a certain BMI threshold (I think it is 40 but can't remember) then lost most of their excess weight through diet and exercise alone regained all (and usually more) of their wieght back within 3 years. At least one of these studies included strictly patients that were closely monitored and guided by doctors and fitness trainers and yet the long term failure rate was still OVER 90%. But with the Lapband they have found nearly the opposite to be true where the vast majority are able to keep the weight off over the long term. Finally, this is not a gastric bypass surgery. She will not and should not be losing the weight quickly. Most doctors won't even give someone a fill if they are losing over 3 pounds per week on a consistent basis. Again Kudos to you for taking the time to look for answers to your questions. I wish the two of you all the best.

Whether it was by will-power or band-power it sounds like you did pretty good over all. Keep up the good work. As far as the restriction goes, you need to give it some time and most likely some more fills before you really start to feel restricted. Each person is different ofcourse. There are those rare few that hit a "sweet-spot" after just one or two fills and then there are those rare people like myself that had 14 fills my first year. I spent nearly the entire year convinced the band wasn't working for me despite losing over 70% of my excess weight in that same time.

Hey there you two. Congratulations on the surgery dates. How exciting! I Did a little digging out of curiosity myself and found the following thread that might interest you. There is another one I saw before that showed pics of both. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f17/realize-vs-inamed-50722/ - Realize's port possibly smaller than Allergan's - Realize's port attaches differently some sort of hook device vs stitching in place. Maker claims will reduce risk of port flipping but only time will tell. - Realize band appears to lock a bit differently. I'm no doc but my first opinion is I'm not sure I like how it locks. Allergans port tubing threads through the locking device and locks a bit like a zip-tie. Realize's doesn't thread through but has a similar hook like thing that locks it in place. - Allergan's band has these waffle like compartments that the saline fills up inside the band where Realize doesn't. Some claim the waffles reduce chance of slippage. - Some have said Realize has a wider band which is supposedly to help reduce chance of slippage and pb'ing (productive burp - a bit like throwing up but not the same) - Realize also claims to have a better interactive site to support bandsters after their surgery although I have heard that Allergan is also doing a major revamp of their website so that difference may become mute soon. Again, I don't know the validity of many of these comments or how much of the claimed benefits are unproven hype or just flat misinformed comments by other bandsters. I hope this helps. Personally I suppose I'd tell him to use whichever band he is most comfortable with. I know he has more experiece with the Allergan band but not sure if that matters either. Actually the band that interests me the most out there is a new hydraulic band they are marketing in Europe. It has NO PORT at all and the doc adjusts it using a radio controlled device. Sadly it isn't available in the US yet and even if it was its not like I'm going to ask them to go in and replace the one I have already. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" Good luck to the two of you.

I also have some found Abbott & Costello type "who's on first" memories from my college days when I kid you not my dorm had some asian students with the names pronounced You, Now & Soon. Yu was my roommate and her name caused many a confusion in conversation. Phone rings, I pick up and say "Hello?" caller "May I speak to Yu?" me "Speaking" caller "No not you, Yu." or talking to a friend telling them about my weekend. me "Yu & I went out to eat last night" friend "No we didn't." Then there was the time I was running late and my friend waiting in the hallway asked if I was coming I shouted "Soon!" and as he happened to be walking by he asked "What?" Then my friend getting impatient shouted back "Hurry up we need to leave, NOW!" and the poor girl who also happened to be just coming out of her own room down the hall looked like someone had just slapped her thinking my friend was yelling her name. I swear there were a couple more with names like that in the dorm that year but I can't remember them right now. Actually for misunderstanding conversations I think the hands down winner was the foreign exchange student from France. I was eating Breakfast with him and some other friends in the cafeteria one morning. When someone else joined the table and asked "What's up". He responded a perfectly adequate "Nothing." but after a couple minutes finally broke down and asked us why everyone kep asking him what was up? He said he could never see anything "up" out of the normal to know what in the world they were referring to.

This is so off topic but funny. My mother ran a preschool for years and between there and my actual school here are a few names I've run across as well. Richard Naylor Richard Wonderlick Rosie Rumph Harry Rumph Harry & Rosie are brother and sister, thier last name is pronounced Rump and to make an already terrible situation worse their parents owned a local plumbing company. But I still can't decide who had it worse them or the two Richards during roll calls that called out their last name first. At least Rosie was able to get a new last name through marriage.

The puddings I make are low carb at least by my definition. It has a bit more than twice the grams of Protein compared to the grams of carbs which makes it better than all the Protein Bars I've seen on the market. I just didn't want to be responsible for turning this thread into a thread where we were telling each other what to do about our head issues, even if I was only pointing out how I wasn't following my own past advice. I think it is good for us to have a thread where we can do a little self bashing without fear of someone giving us a tough love comeback on how what we are doing to ourselves is wrong. We already know what we are saying is wrong or we wouldn't be posting it here in the first place.

Good Luck to you on this journey what ever decision you make.

Wether you drink or don't drink during meals the MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember is DO NOT DRINK ANYTHING when you think you are getting stuck. By the time you feel stuck its too late for the water to help in most if not all cases.

I went ahead and created a thread on it today in the recipe forum here is the link for anyone interested. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f9/protein-pudding-recipes-53707/#post736533

TommyO - :Dancing_biggrin:Welcome Back!!!:woot: I for one missed your presence on LBT. Things have been a bit dull :Yawn: around here since you left. Coincidence perhaps but true never the less. I nearly shed a tear :sad2: when I realized I missed saying goodbye in time on your "Goodbye before a break from LBT" thread.:cryin: Oh and I hope my last post wasn't too passive-aggressive for you.

OK I'm jumping in something I shouldn't here. Although I understand and basically agree with what you seem to be trying to say I can't help but point out the Dr she quoted did not try to claim that Global Warming didn't exist. His dispute was with the over-emphasis of the human "cause" behind it. You should have rephrased your comment to say "...doesn't disprove the effect of humans on the current rate of global warming..." My own personal belief is that GW is occurring but due to a combination of causes both human-related and geologically-related. Unfortunately instead of debating the percentages of contributing factors both camps tend to argue that the other side has no impact at all which is hardly likely.

Drinking with meals In my "humble" experience. I've found there to be two possible effects of drinking with a meal. One is where you take constant sips from before you begin to eat all the way through the meal. This type of drinking during a meal tends to dilute the food and make it pass through faster. The problem with this is first off I end up eating more food than I normally could before I feel full then I experience what I call the "Chinese Food Syndrome". In other words even though I do get that full feeling I'm starving again in just 1 to 2 hours (if not sooner). The other version of drinking with a meal is where you start off not drinking but then part way through the meal you decide to take a "small sip". This is probably the worst one as you already have food setting in your pouch then you take a drink and it just sits on top of the food. In most cases it really doesn't help dilute the food at all and you are liable to end up feeling very uncomfortable or even PB-ing. And it's never good to PB anymore than necessary for risk of a possible band slip. Picture a funnel that you are trying to put pureed baby food through. If you alternate adding small amounts of food and Water to the funnel it is going to slide right through. However, if you fill the funnel up with enough baby food that the top is over half full waiting to go through the funnel then add water to the top the water is not going to magically dilute the food underneath and help it slip through faster. OK the stomach is a living moving organ and the funnel is not but the principle is very similar. Not trying to be on a soapbox here as I'm often guilty of steadily sipping on a drink through my meal. But my weightloss definitely slowed in response so I am not advocating anyone follow my example. How does the old addage go??? "Do as I say not as I do."