Llyra

So much for not starting a philosophical debate.:scared2:

Are other elective surgeries covered by your insurance before three years are up? If so, you may have an ADA claim. If not, you may still have a claim or you may be sunk, but talk to your rep. My husband has worked for a regional medical center for 20+ years. When he started, antidepressants, anxiety meds, bipolar meds, biofeedback, counseling, and all other mental health measures were not covered by insurance. Now they are, but it took a bunch of people complaining about discrimination and looking at legal action to get it changed. Even with our hospital's relatively liberal outlook on bariatric surgery, the insurance company dragged its feet for so long on approving my surgery that I'd nearly given up, as had the bariatric nurse in charge of the program. But they came through and I hope yours will, too. Enlist the aid of your primary care physician- if she recommends the surgery to improve secondary weight-related problems, it might help. My doctor really went to bat for me on this, god bless her. You aren't a monster. You are cute as a litter of kittens. Your nephew is a monster, however much you love him. I put up with "funny fat girl jokes" from my family for far too long to ever be patient with this kind of "teasing" again. He's either being deliberately cruel, in which case he needs to be told to shut up once and for all, or he's very young and/or dense and should be taught not to make personal remarks. My sympathy to you.

Welcome to the BIAA's new website! This is a website for the Brain Injury Association of America. There are local chapters all over the country, even in places as relatively small as my hometown. Hope your job search yields results soon, Laura. Unemployment is no fun, but barely graduating high school is no more of a guarentee of an $80,000 a year job than two degrees in education. (For the record, I have one degree, grad work, and a professional certification. I can also operate heavy equipment and thoroughly appreciate the trades.)

It is 2:20 a.m. amd I should be on my way to bed. I would be on my way to bed except I am a confirmed night owl and occasionally an insomniac besides. Reports abound claiming that too little sleep leads to too much bodily padding- I reckon I could be a posterchild for that theory. I view myself as a lifelong fatty until I look at pictures taken of me in childhood, much of adolescence, and even part of adulthood. If anything, I was a thin child, but my mother's cry of "hold in your stomach!" translated in my ears as "fat." Later on, she used the f word a lot in conjuction with me. If I reached for a cookie after school, she chanted "fat, fat, fat!" Once when she took me to the doctor for an emergency visit due to an inexplicable swelling of my mouth, he told me, "Tall girls are pretty. Fat girls aren't." I was approximately 5'6" tall and weighed about 145 pounds- a real ugly fat girl, for sure. To this day I wonder what it was about the late 1960s and the 1970s that made people believe anyone over a hundred and twenty pounds was fat? Well, it's a cop out to blame it all on good old mom- heaven knows she had help from television and fashion magazines. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had embraced the horrible truth of my largeness, my hugeness, my all encompassing fatness. I was 5'1" and weighed 103 pounds back then. Occasionally I wonder what my life would've been like had I not developed physically two or three years earlier than my peers. Oh, well, what the heck. That was a long time ago and now is now. I have always been able to lose weight, though as I passed forty it got harder to recover from the yoyo syndrome. Alas, I couldn't maintain the weight loss for more than a couple of years and sometimes far less than that. I ate too much, I ate the wrong things, I ate because food comforted me through depression, anxiety, anger, sorrow, and any other negative emotion that crossed my path. It's hard to argue with success and food was a very successful comforter. Alas again- the side effects eventually became unmanageable and to make a long story a little shorter, it one day became apparent to me that desperate measures were called for. I knew if I lost weight, all those pounds would eventually come back and bring friends to stay as well. People may think that is a defeatist attitude, but doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different outcome is insane, and I had been repeating this scenario since junior high school. I decided to try to reconcile myself to living the rest of my life buried in more too, too solid flesh than my knees needed to be carrying around. It couldn't be any worse than losing seventy pounds and gaining back eighty over and over again. I never considered bariatric surgery though I knew several people who had done very well with it and one who had regained the weight lost. Then back in August of 2009, I went to the doctor for my annual check up and asked casually what she thought of bariatric surgery. She promptly replied, "I think you are an excellent candidate for it and I will write any letters and sign any papers you need in order to have it." Oooo-kay. So I started to consider it seriously. Okay, so I decided I wanted it done ASAP and PDQ as well. But there were interviews to be done, tests to be run, the dietician to see, the psychiatric evaluation to be done. That last totally cracked me up. The world is filled with all sorts of anti-social and/or violent people running loose on the streets and my insurance company spent $600 to make sure I was sane enough to have weight loss surgery. Actually, it was one of the more interesting parts of the preliminaries. A reasonably intelligent person with half a brain and a desperate need to have that surgery no matter what could dissemble with a clear conscience on those tests. Most people are not as oblivious as the Highly Educated Care Providers like to believe. When I did the oral part of the exam, on more than one question I told the doctor, "I know this is the answer you are looking for, but this is what I really think." When I went to see her to review the results, I cheerfully asked if I was psychotic. She answered, "No, but you are unconventional." That was good news, though not completely unexpected, and she passed me for surgery, which was even better news. I didn't lose as much weight prior to the pre-surgery diet as the Powers That Be would've liked, but the surgery went forward. And I didn't lose as much during the post-surgical period as I would've liked, but a two week trip out of town put my first fill back and post surgery, I could eat whatever I pleased, though I tried to keep it under control. The first fill helped, the second fill was better, and I skipped a third fill for the time being. My banding was done March 3, 2010 and as of last Monday, I had lost thirty pounds despite not managing to change all my bad habits. I don;t lose every week and that gets me down at times, but thirty pounds is thirty pounds and I'm not going to waste time whining because it isn't forty or fifty pounds. I've spent a lot of time out of town eating meals that aren't healthy or wise, and I still struggle with sweets, specifically ice cream, which goes down beautifully and doesn't require chewing to mush. Sometimes I get sidetracked while I'm eating and take too big a bite and/or don't chew it properly. Ouch. Carbonated beverages have crept back into my life, though I limit them. I don't know why I drink them, especially if I've had something to eat. It hurts. I never thought of myself as a masochist, but sooner or later I get sloppy and... ouch. Drinking while eating is another struggle, though I don't seem to get hungry any faster when I drink water or tea with meals than when I drink nothing. I can't wait two hours after meals as suggested by the dietician, but maybe I can manage the thirty minutes expounded by some doctors. Anyway, it's time to make the next solid effort to change a bad habit. If I ever actually manage to get to bed tonight, I have to weigh when I wake up and on Tuesday I go back to see Dr. Beckstedt. I know he's not the enemy who will sit in judgement on me if I haven't lost enough weight, but it does make me a tad nervous, the lingering fear of doctors who told me if I didn't lose at least two pounds a week they'd wash their hands of me and leave me to welter in my disgusting fat alone. I really have to wonder what those guys were thinking: tough love or reluctance to have anything less than outstanding success on their watch. I suspect the latter, but forty-five years of weight watching may have made me cynical. And so, dear reader, should I actually have one, we arrive at the present where Llyra is 55 years old, weighs 210.5 pounds as of last Monday, and is ready to see what she can do about going down another ten by Labor Day. Blessings on us all and may we triumph over biology, training, and our desire for chocolate ice cream cones with diet Pepsi chasers. Llyra

I'd be happy to correspond with you both- is that Kosher? I am 55, have had my band since March 3, 2010. I'm down thirty pounds, but struggle with drinking liquids while eating, carbonated beverages, and too frequent forays into the world of ice cream and fast food, though I have cut way, way down on both. I do my weekly weigh-in on Mondays and stand on the scale with my teeth gritted until the numbers quit moving. So far no gains, but occasionally no loss either. I tell myself slowly but surely and that I don't have to conquer all my bad habits at once- but I'd sure like to eliminate at least one of them soon! And there's my current story. Too much information?

Second thoughts are not such a bad thing. Let yourself re-evaluate the situation, weigh the pros and cons of your decision, and decide whether or not this is for you. Personally, I am happy with the results. I didn't lose a lot pre-op or directly post-op (maybe about ten pounds) but since I had my last fill, my weight has steadily dropped. Each person is different, so it is risky to try and foresee your own future by peering into someone else's crystal ball. Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

Could also have been a scar tissue adhesion tearing. I've had that happened a couple of times after various surgeries. Hurts like the very dickens for a few seconds.

My bites are definitely bigger than an eraser but not nearly as big as I used to consider bite size. If I take too big a bite, I pay for it. eggs got me, too. I think I was eating them too early in the morning. I'm not a morning person and I don't have a morning stomach. When I ate eggs for dinner one night, I did fine.

Honey, a lot of us have been there. Don't give another thought to being a "fatty/loser". You can do this. :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

I'll sign up for the mini-challenge since the Xmas goal is a long way off. 12 pounds will drop me to Onederland. I weigh 210.5 right now, down from 240.:thumbup:

It is not time to panic yet! Nine pounds is a pretty decent weight loss in just a couple of weeks.

In the 30+ years that I've known my husband, my weight has varied from a low of 135 to a high of 240. He's loved me along the whole spectrum- says it has been like having a whole series of different lovers all with the same girl inside.

They are all nice names. I immediately thought of Fifth Element when I read Korben- would probably not use it myself since every time I heard the name I'd imagine that scene in the movie where several people claim to be Koeben Dallas. I love the Fifth Element- have lost count of the times I've watched it. :thumbup:

I also had surgery that required removing and reconstructing my belly button. My lap banding was done via laparocoscopy and nothing else was ever suggested.

I have a lifelong history of clinical depression and was on antidepressants at the time of the exam. I don't know if they discriminate between controlled and uncontrolled depression. I do think if a person is currently suffering severe clinical depression it might make the whole lap band journey more difficult since depression makes everything else in life more difficult. I signed an agreement to not reveal details of the psych test so I can't help you there- sorry.

Ditto. If your family told you that using insulin for diabetes was the easy way out and you should just try to maintain decent blood sugar levels with no tools except willpower, would you feel guilty?

Actually, I think water aerobics would be great fun. I teach at the local rec center and can take an hour of classes for every hour I teach. Hadn't thought about water aerobics! Thanks for the suggestion, Chica!

Exercise is more difficult than it used to be. I teach belly dance, walk, and take care of horses, but can't go at any of thos activities like I used to because of deteriorating knees. Weight loss helps, but the problem is hereditary. Of course, the suggested solution is to swim. but of all the boring activities on earth, swimming laps is right up there with watching paint peel. At some point I would simply drown myself to get out of it. You hang in there, Fenton, and listen to what Chica says.

My insurance covered the psych eval even if the surgery was ultimately denied. The insurance company required the eval to be done by a psychiatrist and supplied me with several names to chose from. I believe the cost was around $600 for the test, the evaluation, and the visit to go over the results.

I'm delighted to meet you all! (Link arms and sway back and forth, singing "We are the champions.")

It's no big secret, but I wasn't interested in a bunch of unsolicited comment and advice from either well-meaning or demeaning acquaintances so I kept information about my plans for surgery private. I don't share my medical issues with everyone I know and this surgery is a medical issue. Post surgery I've been more open about discussing it with friends who are considering the same surgery, but that's all.

Ardelia is absolutely right. If you drink too much and can't quit, you are addicted and that is the end of the line as far as Lap Band surgery is concerned. So- how bad do you want the surgery? Enough to quit drinking? I have 13 years clean in NA. Getting clean was a piece of cake compared to losing weight and maintaining the weight loss- and compared to anything else, getting clean was a monumental struggle. I know what you're up against and I know the best way to deal with it is to quit looking for a way around it. Good luck. I sincerely hope this time next year, you will have a different and much happier story to share with us.