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Thank you for sharing this story. I can imagine how awful all of that was, just so glad they were able to save you and leave you with some stomach. I had a lapband for 10 years and I think the main misinformation out there is that it is 100% reversible. That implies, you can return back to normal if the whole band thing doesn't work out. While it is removable, it leaves scar tissue and does damage. Your story is the absolute extreme - I have never heard of anything that severe, and I think people need to know about this! The band isn't some harmless "lightweight" weight loss surgery. It has significant risks too, just like the other WLS options.

My gripe is "Why can't my husband WAKE the F*** up" He says to me in public when I have 2 Tablespoons of food on my plate...."wow your being a pig tonight" or "making a gluten out of yourself today"...I came home last night and he had fixed dinner (first time in 10 yrs) Deep Fried Battered shrimp a and chicken and Homemade Fries....really...does he think this is "GOOD HEEALTHY" food? or is it just deliberate sabbatage tactics...? I made a banana strawberry greek yogurt smoothie....was wonderful and chose not to indulge in the mounds of saturated oils...Oh but how the food smelled so wonderful.

I went to my first informational seminar in January at a local hospital. I forged ahead from there and received my surgery date in early May after waiting only two weeks for insurance approval. Looking back, it doesn't seem that the process took a long time. I had my surgery on June 1st at 7:30 a.m. Surgery went fine, but I staying in the hospital for four nights due to nausea and vomiting, which resulted from anesthesia. I was NOT prepared for that. On day four I had a psychological set back because I felt so sick. I had doubts about my decision to have the surgery. There were a few dark hours, but after a decent night's sleep, I felt better. Today is day seven and I feel pretty good. And even have lost 10 pounds since last Thursday. Side note: I'm hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry.

Well... I'm supposed to eat high protein, low carb and no sodas or sugar up until I start my pre-op diet, which is 10 days long. I'm doing well but I had a food funeral. I went to cherry berry and had fat free frozen yogurt with fruit and granola. It wasn't sugar free though. I knew it my diet was gonna be hard and that there is the possibility that I mayslip, but I didn't realize the self-loathing and guilt I'd feel after. I keep thinking how I always tend to self-sabotage myself and wonder if I'm the only person who feels something like this if I veer off the straight and narrow

Flying into San Antonio on the 26th and having surgery with Dr Alvarez on the 28th. Its so reasuring to hear so many wonderful things about him. He even responds to my tweets...answering every question I have. Good luck to everyone . Three week liquid diet is kicking my ass even as I write this. 10 lbs down 3 days into the liquid diet so far.....still got 175 to go though. Thanks for everyone's posts

Not sure where you live, but you can find several doctors in the US that charge 10-11K. I chose to go to Mexico too. I've heard great things about Dr. Garcia on the forum, and I'm sure you'll be very happy.

SISTERS! :sleep: I have three sisters. One is 10 years older than me, one is my twin, and the other is 6 years younger than me. At first, I was hesitant to tell them I wanted to have surgery. My eldest sister is the cute, stylish, and always put together one. My twin is the tiny petite one and my little sis is the young and hip one. My title has always been "the fat one". So I was a little apprehensive about sharing my desire to have weight loss surgery. My thought was they would think I was taking the easy way out. So I did not say anything right away. When I finally got word that insurance would cover the surgery (after being denied first and resubmitting) I new it was time to tell. To my surprise they were all three very supportive and excited for me. :confused: Even in the beginning after surgery they would congratulate me when I told them how much weight I was down or would give me rave reviews about how I looked. This all sounds great doesn't it?????? Times have a changed! I am nearing my goal and have officially gone down a whole size smaller than two of my sisters and I am the same size as one of them. Talk about a complete turn around (there attitudes I mean). I get comments like "What size are those jeans???" it the snottiest of tones. My younger sister even said to me "You are no better than a bulimic, because if you eat too much you get sick." How RUDE!:eek: So I am at a loss for what to do or say. I have gotten to the point where I don't even want to spend time with them. So the question is, Is it better to be "the fat sister"? and still have your sis's or be the "slim sister" and have them green with envy? I wish I could make them realize that none of this ever had anything to do with the way I look, but with the way I feel. They should be able to realize that I am happier and healthier than I have ever been. My hope is that eventually they will get over the jealousy and embrace the fact that how we look is not a competition! I think of the many times my weight made me feel miserable and my sisters new just how to make it worse. I will give one example. We were at our Aunts for our grandmothers birthday. We were all sitting at a table and it was cramped. I ended up sitting in a spot that had a cabinet behind it and I was so squished in it was uncomfortable. I quietly asked my sister to switch spots with me, as there was nothing behind her giving more room. She refused and on top of that she loudly made such a stink about it that my cousin across the room offered me her chair because she could see how embarrassed I was. I was completely humiliated. :thumbup:

SISTERS! :iagree: I have three sisters. One is 10 years older than me, one is my twin, and the other is 6 years younger than me. At first, I was hesitant to tell them I wanted to have surgery. My eldest sister is the cute, stylish, and always put together one. My twin is the tiny petite one and my little sis is the young and hip one. My title has always been "the fat one". So I was a little apprehensive about sharing my desire to have weight loss surgery. My thought was they would think I was taking the easy way out. So I did not say anything right away. When I finally got word that insurance would cover the surgery (after being denied first and resubmitting) I new it was time to tell. To my surprise they were all three very supportive and excited for me. :confused: Even in the beginning after surgery they would congratulate me when I told them how much weight I was down or would give me rave reviews about how I looked. This all sounds great doesn't it?????? Times have a changed! I am nearing my goal and have officially gone down a whole size smaller than two of my sisters and I am the same size as one of them. Talk about a complete turn around (there attitudes I mean). I get comments like "What size are those jeans???" it the snottiest of tones. My younger sister even said to me "You are no better than a bulimic, because if you eat too much you get sick." How RUDE!:biggrin: So I am at a loss for what to do or say. I have gotten to the point where I don't even want to spend time with them. So the question is, Is it better to be "the fat sister"? and still have your sis's or be the "slim sister" and have them green with envy? I wish I could make them realize that none of this ever had anything to do with the way I look, but with the way I feel. They should be able to realize that I am happier and healthier than I have ever been. My hope is that eventually they will get over the jealousy and embrace the fact that how we look is not a competition! I think of the many times my weight made me feel miserable and my sisters new just how to make it worse. I will give one example. We were at our Aunts for our grandmothers birthday. We were all sitting at a table and it was cramped. I ended up sitting in a spot that had a cabinet behind it and I was so squished in it was uncomfortable. I quietly asked my sister to switch spots with me, as there was nothing behind her giving more room. She refused and on top of that she loudly made such a stink about it that my cousin across the room offered me her chair because she could see how embarrassed I was. I was completely humiliated. :grouphug:

Hey Sotex, that's great. I don't have a scale, so I won't find out how much I've lost during my 2-week pre-op diet until I go in for surgery on Wednesday, but it definitely feels like at least 10 lbs. Not much when you weigh in the mid-300s but it does feel good, and I'm getting pretty excited for the 19th - lot of us going in on that day! Let's do this thing!

I am scheduled to be rebanded in 10 days. My original surgery was in 2006. I did very well with my band, but now it has slipped and I have to have it either replaced or removed. I am not a candidate for a sleeve, as my BMI has dropped to 30 with the weight loss from the original banding. Has anyone had any success with a second band, and gone on to further weight loss and/or maintenance? Ive heard too much negative commentary and not enough positive results on second banding. I had little or no problems with the band, and Im hoping that repiositioning the band and starting over again will help me get back on the right path. anyone have any experience with this?

Tia , I would be happy to be your mentor. email me i'll be happy to email , chat. my doc is in San Antonio , i Live in Austin. Im happy to help out anyway i can . I was 250 when i started now im 140 ( I need to get 10 pounds off i gained ) Im a married mom of 2 boys . Im 33 Mindy

Let me tell ya in 10 yrs of being morbidly obese I lost a total of 20 pounds i think. NOTHING worked for me. I also have PCOS . My OB told me " Mindy you WONT lose weight on your own it just wont come off" I had the surgery and expected to lose and that was it ! NO ON In the WORLD was more shocked than ME ( Ok maybe my OB ) that I lost 105 pounds in 10 months ! I am the MOST negative person . The BEST advice i can give you is this . expect NOTHING but to LOSE . AND follow the doctors orders to a T ! If you do those 2 things you WILL do this ! If i can do this band thing anyone can LOL Mindy

I go in tomorrow morning to get the shakes they want me to get. Don't know what else i could have during this 10 day diet. What did you all have? any advice will help!

Honestly, I have not really lost any weight yet.....I feel very little restriction right now. Fingers crossed that my fill tomorrow will help. I have to drive 2 hrs to get it and since I am a full time working single mom it is tough to get there. I am hopeing they will lean on the generous v conservative side on the fill. TBD! PS - My surgery was 8/24 and I quickly lost 10 lbs then gained back 6 so....nothing much happening yet. This site encourages me to be patient which is helpful.

Thanks for sharing!! You gave comfort to my hubby - his date was 6/3/10 and he is at about 66 lbs lost right now. He started at 340 lbs and he has been stalled in the 270's for 5 weeks or so. Sort of a simillar situation. He was happy to see your post. I told him I know from a lot of your posts that you exercise, eat right, do what you gotta do... so it helped him to know he is not alone and he's not doing things wrong Thanks!!

My face within 4 days of surgery and now 19 days post-op everyone is commenting on the drastic change in my face and abdominal area. I can tell because size 42 pants which were snug on me 3 weeks ago fall off of me without a belt to hold them up. I put on a pair of size 36 jeans 4 days ago...albeit they were a TAD tight in the waist.

Here's my story, I've lost 76 lbs this includes weightloss prior to my surgery. Now that I've reached 180 lbs I'm wearing a size 10 which I'm sure this is due to vanity sizing but I don't care I love telling friends I wear a size 10. Since surgery I have not stalled in my weightloss and I was ready to stop lossing weight when I was 185 lbs but I get up this morning and I'm 5lbs lighter. Does anyone know how I can stop lossing? So I can start maintaining my current weight. I welcome any advice anyone can offer. Thanks

Hey Everyone I'm New here and I'm getting my Sleeve on 9/19 I'm a bit nervous , but I have been planning and going to class's, support groups and changing the way I eat, the way I think about food and my exercise routine since February of this year. So far I have lost 25 lbs since Feb, and thats just cutting out sodas, changing my foods and working out. I'm excited to find this site and learn more , make friends and get help if I need it.

I am still here with Dr. Alvarez. /I will get discharged tomorrow. Dr. A was so gentle and caring, help me in no pain what so ever, in fact things were so good with my surgery that i decided to go downstairs to the dentist and have 10 teeth pulled and am still feeling great. no one has a thing to worry about with Dr. Alvarez.

I'm not a Dec. Bandster, but I thought I could help! First of all...do some spring cleaning. Throw it all out. If you have kids or family that still wants them, tell them to put them somewhere you can't find them. If you have to go out and purposefully buy them, you are more likely to have a moment of sanity and put it back. I am going to copy and paste a post that I wrote for someone else. Maybe there is something in there that will help you. Are you ready for some tough love? If you are not ready at this time, that if fine. Put it away in your mind that someone has given you some and come back here when you are ready. By the time I get to post this you will probably have 100 other replies, but I want to take my time and post what I really want to say. Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post! Nope the Cookies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have a "cookie" (will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of cookie shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "cookies". Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have. 1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit. a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life. b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there. c. Write down why you are more powerful than a cookie (this one is tough!) d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your cookies) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym. e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons. f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you cookies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that cookie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it. 2. Another possible tactic. I know that you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish. 3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. (And believe me, I REFUSED to diet in my entire journey, so I use that word loosely) Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person. 4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. Iknow this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my BF, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie! If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy.

Hi, I agree with the others--dont stay fat, there are so many risk factors involved in that--perhaps not now because youth may be on your side--that will not always be the case and those risk factors will definitely be in your future if you dont do something about it NOW! neither procedure is a magic answer--simply a tool--you MUST change your lifestyle if you want to be successful. start with a 10 minute walk, then do 20 min, then 30 you will be surprised how much better you will feel. dont sell yourself short, you are worth it and your teenager needs you around.....whatever decision you make will be the best one for YOU I am sure. Take care and good luck. I am having lap band in less than 2 weeks, i am currently on the liquid diet, as my hubby is scarfing down freshly steamed tamales......but I know what those taste like and nothing tastes as good as feeling good about me!!!

You are not breathing as deep as normal due to the pain it causes. This IS something you need to buck up and do. One major post op complication can be pneumonia (with any kind of abdominal surgery) cause patients tend to shallow breathe not wanting to hurt, then the secretions accumulate in your lungs causing pneumonia. You can prevent this from happening by making yourself take deep breathes....take 10-20 everyhour. Splint your abdomen (hold a small pillow or folded up blanket tight to your abdomen..over you incisions, and breathe deep. You should even try to cough to clear your air passages. Your hospital may of sent you home with an insintive spirometer to help with the deep breathing. Really try to do this even if it hurts. Also you must get up and move even if it hurts, to prevent blood clots from forming. These are basic things to do post op to prevent complications. Take your pain medication and breathe and move. Good luck....the pain gets less everyday and the more you move the faster it gets better.

I never believed I could even lose this much with the band. I always said to my hubby that I would be happy at size 16...ok so now I'm almost out of a size 12...slowly into some 10's. who would ever believe, not me. 2 years this month...it is so do-able but you must take this process or journey in stride. I gave myself a two year goal that I would drop weight and get healthy. There were many plateaus in the past two years some harder than others. The gradual fills helped me lose. It might have been a pound or two than nothing. But it was more than what I could have ever done in the past 15 years of yo-yo fun. Hang in there you will succeed!!!

I've also been told that my band should be with me forever. In 10 or 15 years though if I'm told it has to be replaced, I don't think I'll be crushed. One the one hand, the technology will be better by then, so I'll probably end up happier anyway, and besides, it's possible I could tie the band replacement surgery into getting my tummy tightened a little bit. LOL As for Ms. Sharon... her reasons for removing the band were very surprising to me, however, I do believe it's best if she's still battling heavily with bulimia, which is what I read.

Silry: Mother know's best!, Remember that. LOL. Sharon Osborne is not a model candidate for the Lap Band. She claims that it is all in her head, and she is ready to deal with it; with the help of a shrink! She then can keep the weight off. Lots of Luck. Who's been there and tried to loose weight, but soon, just to put it back on? I would be willing to bet that she has it put back, "in time" or has some other procedure done. I don't think she can afford the people that Oprah has helping her to tryyyy to keep her weight down. To you: youre gonna love this! I no I do. I started my weight loss journey in 10/05, I was banded 10/31/06. Since I started, untill now, I have lost 146 Lbs. 22 of those pounds were with the band, but I'll take it. Check yourself out in about 1 year, maybe less "depends on you!" and I'll bet you are happy with what youre seeing. Shirley