Hello all.... I am really confused and am just starting to do research on what this could be, what happened, and what to do about it. I was banded in May of this past year ('09) and as of September had lost about 8 pounds, 16 if you include the preop diet. I was hungry from day one and never seemed to be satisfied and eating a half a cup of food was no where near realistic for me. I laughed at them when they asked me if a half a cup was filling me up and thought that there is no way that anyone really only eats a half a cup of food 3 times a day. I was still eating what ever I wanted with no problems at all. It was as if they told me it was there but it really wasn't. They just kept telling me that I was doing great and that I needed a fill and that I needed to control my eating with will power and the weight would come off. Well, I got up to 7.6 cc's in a 10 cc band and was getting hungrier and hungrier with every fill. I was also having a lot of pain on my left side. Everytime I went in, they would tell me its just from having something foreign in my body and that it would eventually go away. In early October I went in to the clinic because I was in severe pain and figured it had to be my LAP-BAND®. They did a barium swallow and said that everything was fine.... no stretching, no blockage, that everything looked perfect that if I was still in pain to go to the ER. Well, I went to the ER that night which led to my most recent surgery just a few days ago on New Years Eve. In the mean time, in early December I went to the LAP-BAND® clinic wanting a fill because I was so hungry and eating all of the time.... the nurse discussed some things with me and we decided that since I would be having surgery in the next few weeks that it was best to take out a few cc's until after the surgery (she removed 2 cc's). They also asked me a ton of questions and the nurse deemed that my band was fine and there was no slippage, dilation, nothing. She said that I had nothing to worry about that I was doing fine and regardless of the 10 pounds I had gained she was not worried about a thing... she said after the new year we could get on track again. Well, I had laproscopic surgery, through my belly button on the 31st. When my surgeon came out to talk to me when I was done he told us that he looked around and that my LAP-BAND® was just hanging there, that it was not even attached to my stomach, it was just floating around in my abdomen. I was shocked but it seemed to explain a lot of how I've never felt any different with the LAP-BAND® except for the pain on my left side. My surgeon said that he took lots of pictures and wanted the name of my LAP-BAND® surgeon so that he could contact him personally. I have no idea where to even start with this. How did this happen? Could it be something that I did? Could it be a faulty band? Could it be the surgeon? Shouldn't they have seen that during the barium swallow test? I watched the swallow test and you could see the liquid go straight down and then jet out into my stomach.... did not hesitate, did not stop, did not fill up a tiny pouch above the stomach, just went straight through into my stomach. They said that was normal so I believed them. Any advice, answers, insight would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!!