♥Amy♥

I was so afraid I wasn't going to be a March Bandster. I finished my work-ups last week and I was so sure I would have to do the 6-month diet. My surgeon's medical assistant told me yesterday that she was submitting my paperwork first thing this morning and that I should hear something by the end of this week/beginning of next week. She called me an hour ago to tell me I was approved and I'm having surgery March 24th!!!!!!!!!! Holy moly I can't believe how quickly this happened!!! :scared2: I'm so excited!

Ok this is probably a strange question but it's something I've been wondering... Do you "feel" shorter now that you've lost a lot of weight? I was sitting in a chair at work yesterday that I don't normally sit in. We were all in a training class away from our cubicles. The chair was a typical desk chair with arms and when I bent my arms to rest them on the arm rests the arm rests were too low for my arms! And I thought "Maybe it's the chair." Then I looked around at the "normal" sized ppl and they were resting their arms comfortably on their arm rests. And I checked to see if the arm rest height was adjustable and it wasn't. So I was thinking...does all the extra padding on my butt make me "taller" when I'm sitting down? And I notice that table tops seem lower than they should be when I'm sitting down in front of them and I'm not a tall girl at all. I'm 5'5". Is it just me? Or do I have getting "shorter" to look forward to?

Phew! Thanks! I hope my shoe size goes down, too. I am so excited to start seeing the changes my body will be going through!

I'm so glad I'm getting responses! I was so afraid you'd all think I was crazy and ignore this thread! I'm lovin' the answers! Keep 'em comin'!!!

Haha!! That's awesome! Thanks for answering!

As far as retraining your brain, as long as you eat slow and chew chew chew you'll be good. Even that is easier said than done but you'll get it. Just start practicing now Good luck!

I have HIP and I haven't had any problems yet, either. Getting referrals is a pain in the though. But other than that I haven't had any problems. I may have to do a 6 month phys supervised diet but they're not sure yet. They said HIP changed their guidelines to require one but they said those guidelines were in place in 2008 but they still approved ppl without the 6 months so we'll see. This is so new so I don't have anyone to go on and from reading other ppl's experiences with calling HIP for information on surgery I don't know if I even want to waste my time. I don't get why they're so hush hush about it. As far as dealing with them, my surgeon's office is awesome! They even deal with my primary physician and call and request referrals from her so I don't have to do it. I love them! So, wish me luck that HIP lets me slide in under the radar soon and I can have my surgery in March.

Hey! I'm hoping to get my surgery done in March, also but I won't know if I have to do the 6 month diet until my surgeon submits my paperwork and HIP comes back with an answer. I'm hoping to be done with everything by the end of next month, as far as all the tests go. What insurance do you have?

Wow, really? I had no idea! My friend has lap band surgery in April and I'm pretty sure he uses one when we all go out to eat but I could be wrong. I'll have to remember this for when my time comes!

Aside from the part about your children, the rest is all me...but I'm still that fat woman. I see now that that has been my life thus far. I lash out at my poor hubby, I act like a bitch to other people and then blame everything that happens to me on my weight. I never want to go anywhere. I make excuses as to why I can't go places. I feel like everyone is judging me on my weight and when people don't seem to like me I blame it on my weight. I'm sure it is my weight in a way but most likely some people don't always enjoy being around me because of how I act because of my weight. Well, I'm going to do something about it! :thumbup: Congrats on your success thus far and I hope to be where you are soon!

Hey! The consult went well. For me it was just a formality since I've been through this part of it with another surgeon. I've also researched this to death! lol The only bad part was that Laurie informed me that HIP came out with new guidelines and now I may have to do a 6 month physician supervised diet. I was hoping to get everything done within the next few months. To be on the safe side we're starting the supervised diet now and when I get all my workups done they're going to submit everything for approval. If HIP comes back and says I need the 6 month diet then I will have completed at least 2 months by then so it won't be so bad. Ahhh...just my luck! Hey! :sad: I actually don't live in Holtsville anymore. Gotta change my profile My husband and I moved to Yaphank in August. The support group sessions are every second Thursday of the month. I can't remember what time, though. I'll look at my schedule when I get home and let you know

My consult is tomorrow, too! All of you are such an inspiration. I love reading everyone's blogs. Good or bad it all helps me.

I'm so glad to hear it! Thanks for replying :tt2: I will be attending the support groups once I get the ball rolling. My consult with her is tomorrow so after that I'll be there! :thumbup:

Hi everyone! I'm Amy and I'm hoping to get banded by Dr. Paayal Mehta in Riverhead before this coming winter ends. I have Aetna and she doesn't take Aetna unless the policy covers out of network and mine doesn't. Sooo...I'm switching to HIP in December and heading straight to her office to get everything started! :thumbup: I was originally supposed to be banded by Dr. Holover but I wasn't happy with the level of service I was getting from his office. It was pretty much zero. I felt like I was bothering the girls in the office everytime I called, which was only 3 times. A friend of mine was banded by Dr. Mehta and he said he couldn't be happier with how much she and everyone else in her office did for him. They take care of EVERYTHING except the cardiology in their office. And the only thing you have to pay for all the visits is a copay. Including the dietician and Psychiatrist. With Dr. Holover I had to pay around 400 for the Psych and something like 2 or 300 for the nutritionist. Anyway, I can't wait to get going with all of this. The hardest part for me will be waiting to start. I did most of my presurgery testing for Dr. Holover and everything came back fine then so I know I will be good to go this time around. :sad:

Hi Everyone! I know it's been a while since I posted. You guys probably don't even remember me!:wink2: I just wanted to check and let you all know I'm still working on getting approved for surgery. So far I've seen the pulmonologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, and nutritionist. I still need to have my psych eval, gall bladder sono and endoscopy. All my tests and exams came out fine from the docs I have seen so far so pending anything else I should be getting surgery in Mid to late March *fingerscrossed* I have Aetna so I have to do the 6 month weight loss thing. Only thing is I have been gaining every month. My doctor seems to think that because of that I should have no problem being approved but I don't know. I'm kind of nervous. I just hope I'm doing all of this correctly. I would hate to have to wait another 6 months to have the surgery! :sleep: I have lots of weddings in 2009. One is in New Orleans, another one my husband and I are in and one I am officiating (just for my friends. I'm not a minister or anything :crying:) and another one we just have to attend but I would like to be smaller than I am now, even if it is just 20 or 30 lbs. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. My husband bought me a treadmill for Christmas so hopefully that will help me keep the pounds from creeping (read: flying) on. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and if I don't speak to you, Happy Holidays!

Awesome!! You look amazing! Congrats on all of your success! :tt1:

I'm sorry to hear that :tt1: Which band did you have?

Hey Sal! That sounds like a tough one. I guess you need to decide what is more important. You having the surgery asap and not having your mom or fiancee there or waiting till the summer and being able to have someone with you. Would it be possible for your mom and fiancee to maybe take less time off? If you have the surgery in Nov can one of them spend a week or week and a half with you and then go home and the other one comes in their place? I dunno. How close are you with your fiancee's family? Close enough that maybe they can spend some time helping you out so your mom and fiancee can take even less time off of work? Where in NY are you having surgery and who is your surgeon, BTW? I'm in NY too. Long Island.

Has anyone who has had Optifast prescribed by a doctor have it covered by their insurance? Just curious. I know Optifast is an approved physician supervised weight loss program by Aetna but I'm not sure if they cover it. It's tough getting a straight answer from them. Thanks in advance!

So yeah, for the first time last night I talked to her about me wanting to have Lap-Band surgery. She works in a hospital in medical records so she thinks she's a doctor by proxy. :teeth_smile: She says to me "You mentioned this a long time ago and I wasn't too thrilled with it. So I informed her that she was right about me talking about WLS but it wasn't LBS it was GBS. And she said "Noooo it wasn't! It was LBS you were considering!" Yeah ok...anyway. So she says "You go on Weight Watchers and you lose weight just fine." So I said "Yeah, that's why I'm still 120 lbs overweight." So she says "Well that's because you don't stick with it!" :redface: Now this is coming from a woman who is also over weight. Sure, she lost about 40 lbs and has kept it off but she's still a size 18 (she is 5'3") and has diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. If anyone should be doing this it's her. This is also someone who called me a "fat pig" when I was about 6 or 7 years old and if you saw pics of me from then you would know I was the opposite. I could have stood to gain weight. So then she proceeds to tell me "I don't know anyone who hasn't had this surgery that hasn't gained the weight back in 5 years." She knows one person and she had GBS and that's just one person and I've never seen this person before so I don't even know for sure that she gained the weight back. My step mother been known to bend the truth or lie when it suits her needs. So I told her that I know it isn't a magic bullet and that I'm going to have to change my eating habits for the rest of my life but the band is a tool that will help me do something that I haven't been able to do on my own. And I told her that I have given this a lot of thought. A lot of serious thought and I've done quite a bit of research on the surgery so I'm not going in to this blindly. I know all the pros but I also know most, if not all, of the cons. I lost about 75 lbs on weight watchers when I was 17-18 but...I worked for my parents and being that they wanted me to lose weight I could leave whenever I wanted to go to the gym and I lived at home so my step mother did all the grocery shopping. I lost the weight and then I thought "Cool! I'm done!" Yeah...:wink_smile: Obviously I wasn't. I know now that I won't ever be done. This is something I will have to work at for the rest of my life. So she says to me "You're going to have to go on a diet for the rest of your life if you do this. Why can't you do it without having surgery?" ARGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :smile2: Sorry this was so long. I just needed to vent. Thanks for "listening" :biggrin: :rant:

On its own. Just curious.