BlackBerryJuice

For me personally, it's not about thinking that I can't touch "bad" foods again (I've concluded from multiple posts on here that you can still have whatever you want after a few months, just in small quantities). It's more about being able, for the first time in my life, to eat what I want and as much as I want of it without worrying about the consequences and feeling like a failure. I don't have a scale here, but I'm sure I've put on 2-3 lbs in the last 2 weeks, but I just revel in the ability to have a dessert with every dinner, have a peach or strawberry pop without agonizing over the 160 calories, etc. 4 more weeks!

Hey guys, I am starting to look at booking my flight and I'm having trouble with getting my e-mails answered by them, so I decided to just consult other Aceves sleevers. First off, can someone clarify the day/time I will be arriving and leaving? My surgery's on the 9th of August, so I understand I need to arrive on the 8th to get the labwork done, but how early? The earliest arrival time for San Diego that I can find from my city is 11:10 am. Am I going to have to fly in on the 7th and spend the night at the hotel? Also, along the same lines, what day and what time should I schedule my returning flight, if my surgery's on the 9th? Would that be the 12th? Do they want you to leave in the morning or evening? Last but not least, the only e-mail I've got from them so far was a list of what to bring to the hospital. Would someone be so kind as to send me the rest? Please post here if you can, and I'll PM you my e-mail address. Thanks!

I actually won't be able to tell my family doc until after I'm done - I'm out of the province til like 2 days before my surgery, back home for the weekend before, and then gone to Mexico on Sunday! So I'll have to tell her when I return. But I'm a med student and she is very respectful of my opinion and whenever I see her, she basically just lays out the options for me and lets me make the decision. I doubt she'd freak out, she'd probably just assume I did my research. I'll be looking for a referral to a shrink or some sort of support group, though, hopefully she can help me with that. So yeah, not much to say, I just wanted to respond to another Albertan, haha!

Thanks for the post. I'm a month away from my surgery, and always eager to read updates from people who just had the operation - especially those who also used Dr. Aceves.

Ha, I myself am from one of these "dangerous" countries and have almost never felt unsafe either when I lived there or when I go home to visit family. On the contrary, Ive been carjackef and held up at gunpoint when I lived in the "safe" US. I've lived in a city where I was afraid to go our alone at 3 pm - someone was murdered over $10 a few blocks from where I lived in the US! I dont listen to any of these horror stories. My own country has one of these travel advisories against it and it's a total crock. It's much more dangerous on Detroit or Baltimore than there!

As a med student and someone who's risk-averse, I wouldn't go for the procedure if this is all the data they have. It's a very small sample size, they excluded several patients from the results (one of the hallmarks of a poor quality study), and the follow-up is not very long, at 9 months. I might offer this procedure to a patient as an option, but as far as an option for myself, with these data, I would hold out until more information is available.

Cool, I will start corresponding with Nina from now on, until now it was with someone else.

Thanks. I've actually had a lot of issues communicating with them. On average, I have to send 2 or 3 e-mails/voicemails if I want to get any sort of reply. I e-mailed them about the flights a few days ago, waited 2 days for a response - nothing; so I called and left a voicemail; today I had 2 missed calls in the am, so I figured it was from them. I call them and they said they received neither my e-mail NOR my voicemail from yesterday, so the missed calls weren't from them, either. They said they were gonna respond to my e-mail and there's still nothing. This is the 3rd time I've had this problem, it's getting quite frustrating, to say the least. As you can imagine, I don't wanna be in a situation where someone doesn't pick me up at the airport despite my e-mailing and calling like 5 times.

25 and getting sleeved in a little over a month. Hoping to be "overweight" before I turn 26 at the end of the year....

So I want to get sleeved in August in Mexico. My family's on another continent, and my boyfriend is, unfortunately, away to Europe for a vacation the entire month, and he can't cancel since he's going with someone else. He was trying to convince me to do this over Xmas or next summer, but I really want to get the surgery this summer. I'm a little worried about going alone (I've never been to Mexico, either, plus I'm Canadian, so I'll be far away from home). Has anyone gone alone? Did you feel like it was a mistake? I'm considering paying for a plane ticket for a friend to come with me - the place I'm going to is not touristy at all, so it'd be a chore for whoever comes with me. My boyfriend said he'd even pay for my friend's ticket himself, but I feel kind of bad. Do you guys think it's too scary/risky to go alone? I've never been under general anesthesia, so this is completely new to me.

Hey, I've scheduled for Aug. 9, not sure why the tickers in my sig are not showing....gotta look into that. So I think we could cross our paths on the 12th - I'm not sure if I have to leave on the 12th or the 13th given that my surgery is on the 9th. It does, but you have to be over a certain BMI (at 33, I'd never qualify), and the waitlist is 2-3 years long. As far as getting it here as an elective surgery, it's way more expensive. I didn't look into the sleeve here, but a lap band in Canada is $16-18,000 out of pocket.

So I was pretty set on getting the band, but as I called the Dr's office to book the surgery, they really encouraged me to get the sleeve. The sleeve costs more, so there's definitely some financial motivation in it for them. Plus it's a more invasive surgery, so I'm more concerned. I'm gonna list the reasons they gave me to go with the sleeve. Can someone comment on these/discuss their personal experience? Thanks. 1) Less ghrelin = less hunger 2) No post-op maintenance (repeated fills, etc) = no need to find bariatric surgeons (there are none in my immediate area) as you can just be cared for by any general surgeon 3) no leaks, slips, erosions or infections that can take place with the band, etc 4) Apparently, lower odds of regaining weight

I just booked one, too! Aug. 9. Gives me about 3 weeks of recovery time before school starts. Fittingly, the first topic we're going to study is gastroenterology (stomach/intestines/liver) and nutrition.

Just booked Aug. 9 with Dr. Aceves. Please PM me if you are around that date.

Just scheduled for Aug. 9 with Doctor Aceves. If anyone's around that date, please PM me, let's connect.

OMG, in Florida on vacation now - there are all kinds of cute clothes we don't have in Canada. Every time I'm in the mall, it's SO hard to resist buying something cute in a size medium....and I'm resisting buying anything for my current size unless it's stretchy or something like a wrap or cardigan that I could wear even if I was 20 lbs lighter - don't want to waste money on stuff that might fall off of me in 2 months....I'm sure I'm not alone here!

OMG, I can totally relate re: eating everything. I'm not very big, so I don't need to lose weight pre-op or shrink my liver or anything. My only concern is that I haven't been as active as I used to be in the last 2 months, and I'd like to get back in top cardio shape before my surgery. But I have to say, unlike you, I haven't been stressed about this at all. I HAVE been eating everything I want in the last few days, and it's incredibly liberating to have a couple of chocolate truffles or a Chipotle burrito without guilt. Yeah, this will probably add another 5 lbs to my pre-op weight, but this feeling of freedom is very new to me. I can finally live my boyfriend's life - he eats whatever he wants and if he does gain a pound after consuming about 20 McDonald's meals, he just goes for a run and the weight is GONE. It's like I'm getting a glimpse of what it's like to live in another person's body....haha.

I think the people who SHOULD be ashamed are the people who say fat people have no willpower and are generally the scum of the earth. Fat women get the worst of it. If I had a dime for every time I've heard some denigrating statement about an obese woman (or a woman who's THIN with a bit of cellulite, or someone who had kids and now has a bit of a belly, etc etc), I'd have my WLS paid for...The "no willpower" thing is such a crock of $^&^. I used to work full-time and go to school full-time, all while achieving top-notch grades so I could get into medical school. I moved out of my parents' home when I was 16 and went to another country alone...all these things demand a LOT of willpower. I have lots of "willpower" when it comes to other things - whether resisting something or subjecting myself to something. I have a friend who's an MD/PhD and is obese. It's just absurd that society considers her some sort of worthless blob because she's fat. What the hell!?

I'm a pretty open person. I plan to tell anyone who asks. Like someone above me said, if they have an issue with it, it's their issue, not mine. So far, I've told two of my friends (the two who I thought might be interested in getting this as well - both of them aren't ready for it this year, unfortunately), my boyfriend (who's a little worried, but very supportive). I raised the issue with my mom, while trying to see if I could do the surgery back home - she said "I'm not going to assist you with any operations, diet is the only way to go, I'm out of town for the next 3 weeks, cheers!" I was tempted to ask her how that "DIET" is working for her, considering she's 5'3" and has been hovering in the 200s for at least a decade....I decided to just not raise the issue anymore until I'm done the procedure - unless she brings it up herself. The only person I won't tell is my father, for various reasons - we are not close at all AND he was always very abusive towards me about my weight, even when I wore a size 8. If I told him, he'd just call me a cow with no willpower, etc, like he always did. *eyeroll*

Greetings from a wonderful vacation in Florida :thumbup:. I'm going to schedule tomorrow, but I'm a bit concerned about needing psychological support after the surgery. I tend to be an emotional eater and have even suffered from bulimia in the past (it's been almost a decade, tho), so I'm worried about no longer being able to deal with my emotions that way. Has anyone else experienced it? I understand that I could get informal support on this board and through an occasional meeting with other sleevers in my area, but would you suggest getting a counselor or something? If so, should I look for someone who has experience in eating disorders or is any regular counselor ok? My concern is that I'm a medical student and personally know the ED specialists in my city, so I'd rather avoid going to them because of the professional relationship. Thanks for any suggestions.

This will probably be a multiple-post thread from me, I don't even think I'll do it in one night. Read it and feel free to comment if you identify with any of this. I just need to vent. I'm currently at 195 and a BMI of 33. I've struggled with weight since I was 6 - I spent summer at grandma's that fateful year and she overfed me so much that my father claimed he didn't recognize me when he picked me up at the train station after. I lost MOST of that extra weight after going back to my parents', but I was never skinny again. So my mother started me on starvation diets (who puts a 7-yo who's overweight by 3 pounds on the cabbage Soup diet?) which would always end up in "celebrating" with an entire cake shared in between the 2 of us as a "reward." My father was extremely emotionally abusive towards me because of my weight - keep in mind, the heaviest I was while living with them was 165 lbs (I'm 5'5") as a teen. He'd say things like "You are a fat cow, I'm embarrassed to be seen out in public with you, I'm going to put a lock on that fridge," etc. Then he'd make remarks about other women, too - "Unless a woman is attractive, I don't care what she has to say." Not surprisingly, typical teenage self-esteem + emotional abuse + starvation diets led to eating disorder (bulimia). I puked and overexercised myself into a size 8-10 at 145 lbs. Everybody was saying how healthy and radiant I looked! Thankfully, the one day I went to TWO very challenging 1-hour group exercise classes in a row without eating Breakfast and proceeded to almost lose consciousness because of the resulting dangerously low blood sugar, I was surrounded by strangers and just blamed it on feeling a little icky because of my period. Yet everybody kept saying "You look so good now! How did you do it?!" Then I moved to the US from Europe and disaster struck. All of sudden, I'd go to the grocery store and see DOZENS of different types of Cookies, chocolates; fast food joints on every corner; and lots of stress to fuel up my emotional eating. 6 months later, I was over 200 lbs, and no amount of vomiting was able to compensate for my compulsive overeating. I was forced by my school under threat of expulsion (shortly after receiving over $50,000 in scholarships for college) to go into "counselling" with a psychologist. A psychologist THEY chose who had NO experience in eating disorders, whose sessions consisted of him trying to figure out who my friends were and ask them to spy on me to make sure I wasn't vomiting. Thankfully, I picked up magazines that focused on a healthier approach to weightloss ("Oxygen" instead of the starve-yourself "Shape") and connected with some supportive people on eating disorder message boards. I was slowly able to curb my purging to under 2 times a week (before, it could be up to 5 times a day) and just told the counselor I wasn't vomiting anymore, since I was tired of those excruciating sessions. His response? "I'm glad you are not doing that stupid stuff anymore!" "STUPID STUFF!"

Thanks! I'm away on vacation this week, so too busy sight-seeing/going to the beach to write another long post, but I'll definitely continue after a little while.

Re: dehydration in the first few days....shouldn't they be giving you IV fluids to compensate for your inability to drink much over the course of the day? Or did they send you home the next day?

Thanks guys, you've calmed my fears. I feel pretty comfortable with going on my own now. I just hope the flight's not too bad. I'm actually at the airport now, en route to vacation, and our landing for the 1st flight was terrible - I felt so nauseous and kept grabbing onto things because the plane was shaking. I can't imagine how that would've felt if I was 3 days out of surgery! Oh well, if everyone else dealt with the travel just fine, I'm sure I will, too.

By only eating fruit for breakfast, eliminating ALL sweets and junk food, replacing all breads and grains with salads AND 2 hours a day on the elliptical, I was able to get down to about 165 lbs - still a good 30 lbs overweight. Then I moved to college, where I continued to yo-yo between 165 and 185. The only times I was able to hit the low end of that weight range was when I had no stresses in my life and had hours to kill at the gym. As soon as finals rolled around, I'd pack on several pounds a week, steady. Thankfully, I really got into weights as a college student and learned more about nutrition for athletes - rather than starve myself on SlimFast shakes and the like, I at least began to watch my Protein intake and put on a lot of muscle. I could see an outline of a 6-pack at 165, but I just could NOT get below that weight and actually have visible muscles. No matter how hard I worked, eventually either physical hunger/exhaustion or emotional stress would catch up with me and lead to a binge and a feeling of being worthless. And each binge negated a week or two of being hungry all the time and working out for hours. I just couldn't keep it up. My highest weight was 216, the summer after I graduated college and moved to Canada. I went through a series of very unfortunate events, to the point where I walked to the emergency room one day and asked to be sedated because I was having a nervous breakdown. To top it all off, I hurt my back in an accident and couldn't even sit for weeks; I couldn't walk more than 2 blocks without pain for 3 months. Then I stepped it up at the gym and started eating less/healthier and lost a lot of weight. Then stuff happened and I gained weight again, up to about 195. Then I lost it again. Then I gained back, to 208. Then I lost it.... Then gained, lost, gained, lost, gained, lost. Most recently, I've put on 20 lbs in 3 months. One day I was sitting across from my 155-lbs boyfriend at McDonald's, sipping my diet Coke, as he was ripping into his meal of TWO quarter-pounders with cheese, fries, mcnuggets, regular pop, AND apple pie. The night before, we went out and while I just had a main course salad, he had a fried appetizer, main course, AND a dessert that probably ran 1500 calories. And I just said to myself "Screw this, I just don't care anymore." So I ate, and ate, and ate. I stopped the stupid running because I was sick of wasting hours a day on something that was so hard and so unrewarding. I actually CRAVE fruits and lean meats now, after letting myself eat whatever I want - healthy food is no longer a punishment. I'll go for a swim once or twice a week - nothing intense, just half a mile or so. I'll play badminton with my boyfriend once a week, because it's FUN. But I'm never going to be on the elliptical for 1.5 hours a day, 6 days a week to compensate for some cup of chocolate pudding that will otherwise make me pack on a pound a day. I recently read Crystal Renn's "Hungry." While she had a different eating disorder and did not have the weight-related emotional abuse coming from her family, I could relate to her on many levels - especially when she talked about how SICK she was of starving herself and exercising constantly, and how in the end, she just started putting on weight no matter how hard she tried to keep it off. I wish I could be as comfortable at my size as she is; she says she eventually just "settled" into her size. I have NO idea what it's like to MAINTAIN weight without feeling starved, so that's the one thing I CANNOT relate to in her story.