onikenbai

Holland Landing... pretty.:crying: I always love driving the 400 through the farms. It's probably the only part of the 400 I like.

Talk to whoever does your taxes. OHIP does not cover this but you can claim a portion of the surgery and the aftercare on your federal taxes as a health care claim. The amount you can claim depends on your income but I will be claiming about $3000 this and next year, which is a nice chunk of change into the overall cost. You will have to look at your current tax return to see if you put in for a medical expense last year because that will determine the time period you can submit next year. It's stupidly complicated.:crying: The clinic you go to should be fairly accommodating in splitting up the receipts so that you can claim as much as possible on your taxes. Go to H&R Block. It will be worth the effort.

Pretty much everybody in my office knows... the other office maybe only one or two people. I had to tell the health & safety person so that I don't get put on a rotation of field work out in the sun for 12hrs a day when I'm doing my pre-op diet. I might as well come clean now and stave off the rumours that I'm dying of cancer and that's why I'm losing weight. The rumour mill must have anwers and, in the absence thereof, will make up whatever sounds good. I've told my friends who I see on a regular basis. I figure for the people who I don't see very often I will get to have the fun of watching them fumble over their words trying to find out what happened. I am sick and twisted and will enjoy it emmensely.

My people want me on at least 3 weeks of pre-op diet of shakes, if not more. How long can a person reasonably go before it starts to get ridiculous? I didn't see a big list of vitamins on those pre-op shakes and I'm a tad concerned about nutritional deficiency.

She definitely hasn't done 700 bandings at CIBO but she also has something going on at Mac, plus she used to practise in California. I do believe that's where most of her work was done. I'm betting that she's including all the patients she only assisted on, not was the main surgeon.

You CIBO people out there... do you have any updates on how things are going in terms of the quality of services you've received? I met with Dr. Misra today and she says she has done 700 lap band surgeries in addition to the thousand or so general laproscopic abdominal surgeries she's done. Lordie I hope she's older than she looks, which is about 12 years old.

If he's planning to take off less than 5 days after your surgery, I would say wait until he gets back. After about 5 days you should be ok as long as you have stocked the pantry before he took off because grocery shopping will be pretty low on the list of things you're going to want to do. See what your surgeon says as maybe your procedure may be a bit different than mine was. I personally have two 12 inch scars across my chest as I had the inverted T pattern done. Maybe yours will be smaller or have a different pattern. Mine was done a number of years ago now and techniques change.

I have experience of having a reduction without having a band in at all, and I still lost weight. I went from a 36FF to a small 36 C (which is about 5lbs of boob that I was happy to never see again). After surgery you really aren't that hungry. I don't know if it's the drugs or what, but the munchies just aren't there. When all else fails, stay away from the TV and its endless food commercials! I recommend you stockpile all the pillows you have in your house on your bed. Sitting up will become a 10 minute process for at least a week and not lying down completely flat will make it a whole lot easier to get up again. Cancel all trips to pilates class for at least a month. Maybe you will fare better than I as you don't seem to be having quite as much taken away as I did, but you will be stiff for a bit. Somebody else on the board was complaining that they weren't pleased with their PS surgery just a few weeks after the fact. Don't worry too much if things are a tad uneven or lumpy at first as it takes months for all the swelling to go down and to settle into the nice plump, round shape you want. Now, if one of them is square, maybe be a bit concerned

I have been told you should wait at least two years after you hit your goal weight before you consider plastic surgery to rid yourself of extra skin to give the skin a chance to catch up. That being said, after I finish paying off the surgery I'll be saving to get rid of my bat wings. I have wings before the surgery so I can't really hope they will magically disappear after. Maybe I can sacrifice twinkies to the god of shrinkage and hope for the best?

You have to be Amercican or is it international?

I'm set to go October 26th. I could go earlier but I'm an environmental consultant and I have to wait until field season is over. I need all my stomach muscles to sample groundwater and it would be a career limiting move to take myself out of the running for almost 2 months in high season. Groundwater sampling is roughly the same as a good pilates workout and you don't want to do that anytime after you've had abdominal surgery. It's my choice to wait, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

12lbs isn't bad considering you're probably not getting all that much exercise in the first month while you're healing. I get a lot of exercise at work. I'm an environmental worker and some days I'm on my feet all day carrying equipment. I also am a fan of yoga which, if you've never done it, is a lot harder than it looks. I have to figure out how to get more non-employment related exercise too. Take up dog walking? Make money and get exercise?

I schedulled my surgery at the end of October so that my 3 week liquid diet falls right over Thanksgiving. How dumb am I? Pizza, chips and cookies I care nothing about but I am a sucker for stuffing.

For me raw carrots are ok, but cooked are a no-go. Peas are also a no go . I hate peas. Last time I checked, potatoes weren't veggies so they're out too. What's the word on tomatoes? I'm not allowed to have any fruit on my pre-op diet because of the sugar. Tomatoes are fairly high in sugar and are, technically, a fruit.

Interesting choice. I was always under the impression that Boost was a product used for putting weight ON a person. I was specifically told not to get it for that reason.

No lettauce for you? That is one harsh pre-op diet. I get to keep lettauce, chicken, fish and a few other veggies as long as I keep it under 450 calories a day. How I'm going to make anything worth eating out of lettauce, chicken, fish and a few other veggies is another question. I feel I will be exploring the subtleties of pepper...

I saw a strawberry kiwi shake yesterday that actually looked almost tempting... almost. Maybe you can do some experimenting with shake and crystal light to see if you can come up with a wonder shake?

I feel your pain. I just learned I have to do three weeks of the bunny and beverage diet, and I have some serious reservations. If I just sat in my cube all nice and quiet at work it wouldn't be so bad, but I can work 12-14 hr days doing field work and I have visions of me flaking on the floor. Not good for client relations to drop on their floor is it? I'm going CIBO instead of SWLC (they're closer) and they didn't specify exactly which shake we had to go with, but they gave a short list of recommended. You get told exactly what to take? What happens if that particular shake doesn't do it for you?

Won't be free unitl July? Bustling life eh? I told my boss this week that I would be taking two weeks off. He nearly choked on his coffee. It was kind of fun to watch his eyes bulge out. Fair warning though, as it's for the end of October/early November. I haven't quite broken it to him yet that I may not be good to go for field work for a while after I get back, but he knows I'm having surgery so hopefully he can put two and two together.

So almost one week later... how's it going?

Honestly? Any bigger and you'd probably start to look ridiculous. As a person who was a 34FF, they tend to get in the way sometimes once they reach a certain size and carrying stuff becomes hard! I wouldn't go any bigger. With your arms down they do look very even.

We have to do it in Canada too. They are looking for a few key things. After all, it would be very bad form to band a bulemic or a person with budding anorexia. They need to make sure that banding you isn't feeding the proverbial beast. There is also a small portion of the population that are surgery junkies... weird but true. I don't think general depression is going to be a problem. After all, if you were blissfully happy with your life you wouldn't be getting banded would you? It's pretty much to be expected that we're all going to have some level of depression. Dangerously unstable and suicidal is a different story. Never trust anybody who comes out as absolutely 100% normal on those tests: they're often the serial killers.

If you look in the fine print of your GWL policy you may be able to get them to cover some of the "other" stuff such as nutritional counselling, physio, psycological therapy etc. Let me know if you ever got anything out of them because I'm about to try to them to pony up $2000 toward the cost and it would be nice to know that somebody managed to get something out of them before!

I'm in Toronto too! More specifically, North York I'm not schedulled to be banded until October through... I have a physical job and it's field season so I need those (cough cough flabby) stomach muscles without any holes. I'm going with CIBO as they're close to my house. I've been trying to find somebody who is not on CIBO's payroll to tell me what they liked and didn't like about their program. I considered SWLC in Mississauga but then I figured that with the travel time and time off work for appointments, I was better off at CIBO even if they are more expensive. One day we'll have to sit down and compare notes on the two places.