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I had my revision on December 27, 2011. So far I've lost 88 pounds. (130 with band and sleeve). GREAT idea!!!

Yes AussieGirl81This is because the band and small pouch is actually under pressure. The air pressure from flying increases tge airpressure in the band and creates quite a dangerous situation. You should always have fill removed for long flights. You can easily see what i mean next time you fly. Put and elastic band just lightly around your wrist or ankle before you take off. ..see how tight it is when you get to the other end. ....scary stuff! Im in aus too. Just revised my band to bypass after 7 years with lgb. Sent from my GT-I9505 using the BariatricPal App

ND I had revision surgery because I've been suffering with Reflux for about 1-1.5 years. I had a feeling something was wrong but, my doc would do unfills and it would go away. After gaining back some weight, I wanted to try a fill again but, with the promise from my doc that tests would be done this time if the reflux came back. The day before Thanksgiving I had a fill and BINGO that night reflux a little bit and then the full blown thing the next night and every night since. I had to sleep in an upright position for more than a week until I was finally able to see him again. I went in the next Tuesday, had an upper GI and the radiologist told my doc the band slipped. I was told to come back in on Wed for a complete unfill and we booked surgery for the 18th of dec. I went into surgery not knowing if I'd wake up with another band because it would depend on what he saw when he was in there. Turns out the slip was worse than they thought so they took out the band and fortunately they were able to put another on in, in a slightly higher position and this time around they tacked it a bit more torwards the back of my stomach to make sure it didn't move. I'm feeling great except I'm still on liquids. Man liquids are TOUGH especially the 2nd/3rd time around. I can't eat mushies until I see my doc again on 1/7. Then I praying I can get something with more bulk down that will keep me feeling full longer. Liquids do not keep you satisfied for long when there is no fill in the band, that's for sure! I can't give you a typical daily diet because of all I've gone through. I won't know what it's even like for another 4-5 weeks. I do know that I used to eat my Protein first, then fruits & veggies and carbs last if there was any room at all left. I couldn't eat bread or anything that would take a long time to digest like Pasta because it bunches back up in my stomach and doesn't want to digest so I skip those things. I'm looking forward to being able to have solid Proteins again though, that's for sure! Hope you're feeling better. The 2nd time around wasn't as sore as the first because they didn't have to replace my port. They used the same one I already had so this time I only had 4 incisions instead of 6. I'm still pretty bruised and I have some scarring but, doing ok. Some jeans are too uncomfy yet to wear still because the waistline lands on the incisions. Sweatpants are my favorites right now lol

@Marinerman sorry the balloon didn't work for you😞 are you going to have a revision to another WLS? good luck kathy

Well i am 1 day post op and i feel pretty darn good. I didnt ask for pain meds a second ago for the pain but i asked for pain meds for my headache. Lol Here is my surgery story. I had the lapband in 2007 and did great with it at first. Then the last two years most everythi ng i would eat or drink would start coming up. Started having severe pain in my esophagus and started throwing up blood. An endoscopy revealed that i had a class c esophageal erosion. The band had to come out Met with surgeon and determined the bnd would come out and he would revise to sleeve!!!! Scheduled my op for july 26 yesterday. Had to be at the hospital at 5 am for an 8 am surgery. Prep for surger i got a patch for nausea to help with any nausea from meds. Then they gave me a shot in my tummy To help with possible clots. Met with sirgeon and andsthesiologist to discuss surgery. Then they gave me versed before wheeling me back to surg. Best "margarita" ever. Then i was totally worry free. I was still awake in or. They hooked me up with all the electrodes and the anesthesiologist said ok its nap time im putting u to sleep. I said just please make sure i wake up. Then make sure i wake up sleeved!!!!! I was so worried there would b such a mess in my body that wiuld have to hold off on the sleeve. Next thing i knew theybwere waking me up. Zero pain. I just said yayy im alive and ong was i sleeved??? They said u sire were. Then my main concern was going to peepee. I had to go really bad. Surgery took an hour and a half and i was in my own room by 11. They immediately got me to the pot. Was sore but not bad pain. No gas pains yet either. I wone up with a binder on which feels great. Especially when i get up to walk or go to the bathroom. Ive probabky walked about 6 laps. Blood pressure has been a little low but they said its expcted because of the pain meds No fever. Nurses are amazing. Getting woken up so often is for the birds tho. Other than that ive been sleeping a lot. Sleep with my binder on and the pumps on my legs to prohibit clots. I had a popsicle and some sips of broth and sips of Water. Did not hurt when first going down but i was apprehensive at first. I did take a swig too large and it was uncomfortable but not painful. Have only drank half bottle of water. But staying hydrated thru iv for now They did my barium swallow this mirning to check for leaks and NO LEAKS. Yayyyyyyy. I feel so so much better without the band in i can already tell a big difference. I have 6 incisions. Some are rather large but im ok with that. Ill attach a pic which shows three i think. Three large incisions mid tummy and the other smaller ones are up under breasts. It was all a success and very pleasant. So happy to be on the loser bench. Fyi BIOTINE mouth rinse helps so so much with dry mouth. So get that for sure. Hope everyone is doing well!!!!!! Here is a pic of my incisions. So excited to begin my healthier happy life!!!!!!! Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

A must read. This guy nails it: here is the transcript of the speech, courtesy of the Senator Whitehouse official website Mr. President, we have watched with horror the unfolding disaster in the Gulf. We have seen precious lives lost; hard-earned livelihoods hammered; treasured ways of life imperiled. We have seen the largest deployment of resources ever against an environmental disaster. We have seen astonishing corporate negligence. But we have seen something else too-something that ought to be a lasting lesson from this catastrophe: we have seen the revolting specter of an agency of government subservient to - captive to - the industry it is supposed to regulate. From the Minerals Management Service, supposed to regulate deep sea oil drilling, here's what we have seen: From the 2008 Inspector General's report on MMS's Royalty in Kind program based in Colorado: • Senior executives steering lucrative contracts to an outside company created by the executives; • Staff failing to collect millions of dollars in royalties owed to the American people and allowing oil and gas companies to revise their own multi-million-dollar bids; • Staff accepting gifts and money from oil and gas companies with whom the office was conducting official business; and • Staff participating in social events with industry representatives that included illegal drug use and sex. From the IG report, the Inspector's General's report, released last month on the MMS office in Lake Charles, Louisiana: • The District Manager telling investigators: "obviously we're all oil industry." • Employees accepting numerous gifts from companies doing business with the MMS, including a trip to the 2005 Peach Bowl on a private airplane, skeet shooting contests, hunting and fishing trips, and golf tournaments. • An MMS inspector conducting four inspections of oil drilling platforms while negotiating a job for himself with the company that owned those platforms, and finding (guess what?) no violations during those inspections. And a 2007 Inspector General Report into the MMS' Minerals Revenue Management office cited, and I quote: • "Significant issues worthy of separate investigation, including ethical lapses, program mismanagement, and process failures." As my hometown Providence Journal wrote in a recent editorial, "The Deepwater Horizon accident has made it painfully clear that, in its current form, MMS is a pathetic public guardian. Neither it nor BP was prepared for a disaster of this magnitude, and MMS' cozy relationship with industry is a big reason why." I agree with the Providence Journal. The scope, the extent, the insidious nature of corporate influence in regulatory agencies of government - this question of regulatory capture - is something we should attend to here. It is the lesson. And it raises the question, beyond the Minerals Management Service, how far does this corporate influence reach into our agencies of government? The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion dollars. That's a 23 with twelve zeros behind it-in just one quarter. The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and a hundred years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections. Put it to scale; consider $23 billion of pure profit, just in one quarter, by Big Oil. And compare: the Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math: for 5% of one quarter's profits, Big Oil could outspend both American presidential campaigns. That may be some politicians' idea of a happy day, because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and needs to be stopped. But think: if that's what corporate influence could do in a national election, think of what those vast powerful tentacles of corporate influence can do to a little government agency like the Minerals Management Service: • Revolving doors to lucrative jobs in the industry so you're set for life; • Sports tickets, gifts, drugs; • Constant, relentless lobby pressure and threats of litigation; • Steadily inserting industry operatives into regulatory positions. Inch by inch, the tentacles of industry reach further and further into the regulator, until it silently and invisibly comes under industry control, and becomes the industry's puppet; until it is serving the special interests, and not the public interest. This is no new phenomenon. Marver Bernstein wrote about regulatory capture 55 years ago. He explained that a regulator tends over time to "become more concerned with the general health of the industry and tries to prevent changes which will adversely affect it," to become "passive toward the public interest." This, he said, "is a problem of ethics and morality as well as administrative method," and he called it "a blow to democratic government and responsible political institutions." Ultimately, this leads to what he called "surrender:" "the commission finally becomes a captive of the regulated groups." If you don't want to go back half a century for a discussion of regulatory capture, look to last week's Wall Street Journal editorial page, where a senior fellow at the Cato Institute writes, "By all accounts, MMS operated as a rubber stamp for BP. It is a striking example of regulatory capture: Agencies tasked with protecting the public interest come to identify with the regulated industry and protect its interests against that of the public. The result: Government fails to protect the public." There is plenty of evidence that the oil and gas industry had captured MMS. And when you have a captured agency, you get what we've seen: • Altering, deleting, or ignoring warnings and recommendations from government scientists. A draft environmental analysis for drilling in the Gulf from May of 2000 included the haunting prediction that "the oil industry's experience base in deep-water well control is limited" and a massive oil spill "could easily turn out to be a potential showstopper for the [outer continental shelf] program if the industry and MMS do not come together as a whole to prevent such an incident." This unwelcome observation was deleted from the final analysis published. • Oil and gas company employees filled out official inspection forms in pencil, for the MMS inspectors to trace over in pen. • Nearly 400 categorical exclusions, shielded even deepwater drilling from thorough environmental review. • Cut-and-paste Environmental Assessments were provided by oil and gas companies. BP's Environmental Assessment listed walruses as a species of concern in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. President, there are not, and never have been, in the memory of man, walruses in the Gulf of Mexico. When they are writing about walruses in the Gulf of Mexico, you know 1) they are cutting and pasting out of documents in Alaska, 2) they are paying no attention to what they write because they know it doesn't matter, and 3) they know perfectly well that MMS will never catch the fact that they've cut and pasted, because they're not looking at it either. • MMS adopted wholesale for its oil and gas drilling "best practices" proposals of the American Petroleum Institute, and then they made most of those best practices only suggestions. • There's been virtually no enforcement: According to the MMS website, between 2000 and 2009, civil penalties averaged less than $130 per well per year on our Outer Continental Shelf; and only three criminal referrals were made to the Department since 1990 in the last twenty years. Add it all up, and there is no real question MMS was a captive regulator. So the question is, after all those years of corporate control of government in the Bush years, how far-reaching is the insinuation of corporate influence? We know big Pharma wrote the Bush pharmacy benefit legislation. We know big oil and big coal sat down in secret with Dick Cheney to write their energy policy. But down below the decks, down in the guts of the administration's agencies, how far were the tentacles of corporate influence allowed to reach? How many industry plants are stealthily embedded in the government, there to serve the industry, not the administration or the public. Well, how is it looking, Mr. President? Well, it is not looking good. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, gave up its watchdog role years ago and became the lap dog of the big Wall Street financiers: raising leverage limits; refusing to investigate Bernie Madoff; and helping to precipitate the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. 29 miners were killed in a West Virginia mine with a safety record that President Obama called troubled." The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been described as a "revolving door" with industry, staffed by people with mining companies' interests at heart, even at the expense of worker safety. The Bush head of MSHA, for instance, oversaw the rewriting of regulations in 2004 that allowed conveyor belt tunnels to double as ventilation shafts, a practice that contributed to a fatal 2006 Massey mine disaster. Who knows how far it leads? Think of the timber rights the taxpayer gives up every year, the grazing rights, the multi-billion dollar contracts to big government contractors, the oil and coal leases on land, the carnival of public wealth at which these big corporations feed. The vital question is this: are these assets of our nation still in the hands of servants of the nation? Or have the servants of the nation quietly and insidiously become the servants of the big private corporations who want to profit from that public wealth-corporations for whom every dollar of a sweet deal, every avoided expense allowed by a cozy regulator, every corner cut in safety or environmental protection, goes straight to their bottom line and right into their pockets? The big, multi-billion dollar corporations - Is this who we want safeguarding our national assets? Is this who we want controlling agencies of the United States government? Mr. President, Winston Churchill once said, in a phrase that I like, that history turns on sharp agate points. What is the sharp agate point on which the history of this Gulf catastrophe should turn? What lesson of history, if left unlearned after this disaster, are we condemned to repeat? I hope that the lesson we learn is this one: that we can never, never, never again let agencies of the government of the United States of America fall so far under the influence of the corporations they are supposed to regulate. This government of ours, founded in a Revolution pledging the lives, fortunes and sacred honor of those early patriots; This government of ours, which has raised for more than two centuries the promise of freedom in human hearts; This government that lifts its lamp aloft to brighten the darkness of chaos and despair in far distant corners of the globe; This government, whose finely tuned balance, crafted by those Founders, has seen us through civil war and world war, through westward expansion and great depression, through the light bulb and the Model T and the Boeing 747 and the iPod. This government, of ours, formed by Washington and Madison, Jefferson and Adams, and led by each of them; and later led by Abraham Lincoln, and by Harry Truman, and by Theodore Roosevelt and by Franklin Roosevelt and by John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This American government of ours should never, never be on its knees before corporate power, no matter how strong. It should never be in the thrall of corporate wealth no matter how vast. This American government of ours should never give the American citizen reason to question whose interests are being served. Never. In this complex world of ours, Mr. President, government must protect us in remote and specialized precincts in the economy. In those remote precincts, few people are watching, but big money is made. We must be able to trust our government, both in plain view in front of us, and in corners far from sight, to be serving always the public interest, not doing the secret bidding of special interests; of corporate interests, because that's where the big money is at stake. Have we now learned, have we now finally learned, from the financial melt-down and the Gulf disaster, the price, the terrible price, of all those quietly cut corners? Have we now learned what price must be paid when the stealthy tentacles of corporate influence are allowed to reach into and capture our agencies of government? I pray, let us have learned this; let us have learned that lesson. I sincerely pray we have learned our lesson, and that this will never happen again. But let's not just pray. In this troubled world God works through our human hands; grows a more perfect union through our human hearts; creates his beloved community through our human thoughts and ideas. So it is not enough to pray. We must act. We must act in defense of the integrity of this great government of ours, which has brought such light to the world, such freedom and equality to our country. We cannot allow this government - that is a model around the world, that inspires people to risk their lives and fortunes to come to our shores - we cannot allow any element of this government to become the tool of corporate power, the avenue of corporate influence, the puppet of corporate tentacles. I propose a simple device, in this country of laws not men - of rule of law - and that is to allow our top national law officer, the Attorney General of the United States, to step in and clean house whenever an agency or element of government is no longer credibly independent of the industry and businesses it is intended to regulate. When a component of government is deemed no longer credibly independent of the corporations or industry it is supposed to regulate, I suggest the Attorney General be allowed to come in and clean up: - To hire and fire and take personnel actions, to assure the integrity of the personnel; - To establish interim regulations and procedures, to assure the integrity of the process; - To audit permits and contracts and assure they were not affected by improper corporate influence; and, if they were, - To rescind them where they are not in the public interest due to that improper corporate influence; - To establish an integrity plan for that component of government; - All subject to appropriate judicial review where private rights are affected; - And then the Attorney General can get back out, with his or her job done: sort of like an ethics trusteeship or receivership. Mr. President, I'll conclude by saying that the damage to America from the corporate takeover of the Securities and Exchange Commission was nothing short of catastrophic - just in my home state, just in Rhode Island, 70,000 Rhode Islanders are unemployed, and many have lost homes, retirement, health insurance. The toll is devastating. The damage from the corporate takeover of the Minerals Management Service has also been catastrophic; and who knows what potentially catastrophic damage lurks in whatever other agencies of government have silently succumbed to corporate takeover, but just have not exploded in disaster? If the financial catastrophe and the Gulf catastrophe, and whatever other catastrophes lurk, if they have any meaning at all, it is that business as usual is no longer enough to stem the tide of corporate influence, insidious, secret corporate influence in agencies of the United States government. It is an institutional problem: relentless, remorseless, constantly grasping and insinuating corporate influence; it will never go away; it will only worsen as corporations get bigger and richer and more global; and there has to be an institutional mechanism in place to resist it, so that it no longer takes a catastrophe to call the failure of governance of an American regulator to proper attention. I think this is the right way. If a colleague has a better idea, I'm more than willing to listen. But, one thing I know: after our economic catastrophe and this environmental catastrophe, this much, at least, is clear: we can no longer wait for catastrophes to root out improper corporate influence in our government, in this government of our United States. We have to at long last address the problem of insidious regulatory capture, of agencies of our government captive to the industries they are suppose to regulate. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor. America did not revolt against the power of the King of England just to kneel to the power of British Petroleum over 2 centuries later. Or the Banks Or the Military Industrial Complex Or to any Corporate power And amidst all of the shrieking conservatives who shout "Get the guvmint outta my life" while driving on public roads and depending on our tax payer funded military for protection, we have in reality been experiencing the corporate takeover of the US Government. Of course, government has always been dominated by the wealthy and big business interests, but since the passage of NAFTA, The Gramm/Leech/Bliley Act and the Bush/Cheney Administration, the power of Big Business has run amok, and our political process has been enslaved to the whims and campaign financing of the tentacles of Corporate power. This must end. It is legalized bribery. Senator Whitehouse knocked this one out of the park, in a way that I can only discribe as EXPLOSIVE, and not because Senator Whitehouse was as bombastic as Alan Grayson or as witty as Al Franken, but because amidst all the corporate spin, propaganda and PR, such truth as was spoken by the Senator from Rhode Island truly is explosive. Let us hope that the citizens of America are starting to understand the role that Big Business has in the slow motion overthrow of our Democracy to an elitist economic ideology that is unveilied in the words of Joe Barton, Rand Paul and other conservatives who truly think that it is okay to kneel to corporate power. Tentacles indeed. dailykos Regulate, baby, regulate

It's not that I don't love to cook and take care of my family. When I was working as a nurse working horrendous hours, I would still come home and cook for them. Actually my family has been pushing me for a couple years now to open my own restaurant. I don't cook by recipes or anything like that. I just get an idea in my head and put it together and I know when it is right by the way it smells. That is one of my problems. I don't want to smell food right now. I think it may be because of all the problems I had after my sleeve surgery in September with the constant GERD and aspirating the gastric acid every night. I had gotten so scared to eat or drink anything during that time from September to December I mainly ate plain flour tortillas plain cream of wheat and water. Since the RNY revision on December 10th I have not had any more problems with that but I am still a little scared. I am old school too when it comes to taking care of my family. I know when I would tell my coworkers things that I would do for my family, they said that I was nuts and stuck in a different era. I said no that is actually how it should be but with everyone having to have two incomes to survive these days, it's the little things like that that have been forgotten. I resigned my nursing position in June because of all of my other medical issues. I was a walking time bomb. My health had gotten so bad I could barely make it through the day. So I am trying to tell myself to buck up girlie. Yes you have had three major surgeries since September and it takes time for your body to bounce back. Especially my body because as far as bouncing back it's already half flat because of my other medical issues. I am trying. I have just fell into this hole and I am trying to claw my way out. As I am reading other people's posts I see that I am not the only one. It is definitely a good thing to have this site. It does help a lot. Things you can say to other people besides your family that don't necessarily understand and you don't want to burden them with these things.

As always, this board is an amazing source of inspiration! I always get so excited looking through the new photos. I'm currently past my goal and in the process of firming up and maybe losing just a few more. Also preparing for a port revision, as my flat-ish tummy now makes my port look like a large golfball growing under my skin. Not so pretty. On a side note, I can't believe how few photos I have at my heaviest... Ahh, the world of digital photography; I look fat in that photo? DELETE! lol So I have some slim pickings from my preop weight. I haven't seemed to lose my love of black tank tops though, hmm...

Hello all. I am a December gastric bypass post op. I originally had the gastric sleeve surgery on September 2nd 2013. I was having horrible acid reflux that was resulting to me aspirating gastric acid almost every night. So, I just had a revision surgery to the gastric bypass on December 10th 2013.

I am a veteran bandster and newbie revision, band to sleeve. I just ate 15 chickens, 2 hams, 4 potatoes, a steak and some taffy. Did I mess up my staple line? ;o) (okay, I had to do this. It was a dare.)

I'm in inner NE (laurelhurst)...had band to sleeve revision on 12/29 at OHSU where i work. Dr Deveney was wonderful. Everyone was great. He told me to expect 2 days in the hospital but I went home the next day. I was banded at good Sam 6 years ago...my surgeon then is no longer in the practice but I had a lot of follow up with Emma Patterson. She is wonderful and I would have gone back to her but our insurance wouldn't cover it. My experience at OHSU was great, even though I was nervous about having this kind of surgery as staff.

My sister originally went in with the idea of getting banded but then received the information on all 3 WLS and wanted the best bang for her buck. I went in knowing I wanted the RNY because the percentage of weight loss is the highest with the RNY. I figured if I was going to do this I'm going for the RNY. I see so many people on this site that have been banded and went for the revision to RNY. You need go with what is best for YOU.

I was banded for four years and then revised to the sleeve. I loved my band the first two years, but then had problems. I had it slip several times, my port flipped twice, I had erosion and even with an empty band, I couldn't keep anything but ice cream down. So, I had to revise to something that worked better with my body.

Best of luck to you honey. In the US...not many Dr.'s are even doing them anymore. More and more revisions are being done because of complications.

Well, if you have a lap band, you can always have revision surgery in the future, IF needed. 80% of the failed lap bands are due to folks not following correct eating habits, or not doing follow up visits. I personally know two folks who had revisions because they were not losing weight, and they are still failing after having a sleeve. I work hard to ensure my band works like the tool it was intended to be. At my age, the doctor felt the band was the best solution for me. And, they have be go back for follow ups at least once every six months to make sure there are no problems. If you don't have insurance, that can be costly. Few doctors want to deal with past patients, and that is another reason they avoid the band. I'd opt for a sleeve today, but I am happy with the band.

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOUR POST! Have you checked into revision yet? Will you have two different surgeries? Lap band removal then bypass?

My LapBand was nothing but problems from the very beginning - Everything I was supposed to eat got stuck and everything I should have stayed away from went down just fine. The fill in my band was unpredictable. Some days water would gurgle, others I could mindlessly eat a huge chunk of chicken or pasta and slip on through no problem. It would change depending on the time of month and there was no "sweet spot fill" everyone talks about. To make matters worse, if you ever get the flu or food poisoning it is an EMERGENT issue. (No one ever told me this was a "thing.") If your doctor is only a few minutes away and available after hours, no biggie. (Until you have to move years later or he does.) Mine was a 3 hour drive away. Imagine me heaving for hours upon hours in the backseat of the car after eating bad sashimi - My stomach was in obscene amounts of pain..I could physically feel it trying to come up, only to get stuck under the band. My ordeal started at 4am and didn't make it to the doctor until almost 12hrs later - I'm surprised that much wretching didn't cause a slip. This whole situation scared me so much, it wasn't until over a year later I went back to re-fill. There are a lot more issues people talk about above I don't have to mention again here and I know it works for some people - But it never did for me. I'm being revised to a sleeve next month and I couldn't be more excited. I want this thing OUT before it causes more damage. My doctor already mentioned he more often than not sees damage from these bands when being removed...It scars the esophagus over time, regardless of complications. My advice, do what's right for you...It is your choice and your body! I, on the other hand, would still never recommend this surgery to anyone!

If you have your heart set on the sleeve and your surgeon will do a sleeve with your diagnosis of Barret's you must also see if your insurance would allow for a sleeve to bypass revision in case reflux gets to bad. Most insurances will only cover 1 procedure per lifetime check the fine print. My surgeon wouldn't do a sleeve on me because of my diagnosis of Barret's so I had the bypass on the 15th of June. Hope this helps. Best of Luck.

Great post, thank you. I finished all the tests and the last thing I need to do is the pre-op testing which includes, blood work, urine test (for nicotine), chest xray and ekg. Now I'm wondering if I'll be going through an anesthesia evaluation as well as I was determined to have mild sleep apnea (no cpap yet). Thanks again, I'll give the nurse a call. For those who haven't started their hoops... I had to go though ekg stress test with a bicycle, as well as the nuclear stress test with imaging, echo,respiratory testing/pulmonary function, cardiac clearance appointment, sleep apnea test, two nutrition classes, and the dreaded endoscopy. All of them were alright, nothing too painful but some were annoying. The hardest were the stress test on the bicycle lol, and the endoscopy left my throat feeling sore (and a week or so of acid relux which I didn't have before). The nuclear stress test was a breeze. I prefer that over the bike/treadmill stress test. P.S. Having a band to sleeve revision, after years of the band.

So happy for you. I have my band to sleeve revision next Tuesday. What were your issues with the band? Did they do the revision all in one surgery or did theybremove your band previously? Im hoping it all gets done in one surgery. He said he can but you never know once they get in there. NERVOUS!!!! Glad you arent in pain! Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Maybe we can have a meeting somewhere in Brooklyn at some point. It seems that at least myself, BloomingLotus and Sleeve_Sistah85 are all from Brooklyn, and there may be even more of us. Just a thought.... My best to everyone, especially to the two of us who will be sleeved this month, but also to those who are still completing their 6-months of testing, etc. and to those who have already been banded, sleeved or whatever. I really appreciated the August meeting, and I look forward to our next gathering. BTW, I've updated my user name from bandeee to sleeveee to reflect my upcoming revision surgery, but it's still me!

On the other hand, you can try sleeve, which as you say, is less invasive and has fewer malabsorption risks longterm....and see how it works. If it's not working, you can do a revision to DS. The majority of patients have very good luck with sleeve. it's a personal judgement call.

I'm having the revision from the sleeve to the bypass due to serious reflux and a hiatal hernia. I had the sleeve 3 years ago and I still have restrictions on how much I can eat so it's still working very well but the bypass does help you lose a little more weight so if I lose another 20 pounds I'll be happy. My surgery date is on Oct 15th. Sent from my SM-J337P using BariatricPal mobile app

First, 54 lbs in a year sounds good to me! When was your last fill? Have you had a fill since Oct? How many fills have you had? Have you called the dr's office? If so, what did they say? Do you have the Realize band? Are you exercising? I notice that you didn't mention anything about exercise in your post. My first fill was going to be 5 cc's. I say 'was' b/c (incase you missed it in the previous postings) I have a flipped port and they are doing a port revision this week. However, I know that they are going to put 5cc's in during the revision.

I experienced the weight stall and constipation. However, the weight that I have lost took a big load off my back, and I’m not in as much pain from that. I actually ended up in the ER because I was so constipated. I had tried to get it out the natural way, but it got stuck, and I was in so much pain and didn’t know what to do (this was the first time I had ever been constipated), so I called 911. Now it’s something I have to watch out for. I have Miralax and Lactulose on hand if it gets really bad. Try the Miralax first. Get incontinence pads, like Tena, and place them in pairs in the usual place and behind those (you’re going to leak). Also get disposable incontinence Chuks for wherever you sleep, because you’ll leak there, too. Have disposable gloves on hand and be prepared to glove up and get it out manually when it gets stuck, and you can’t push it out without feeling like you’re going to split in half. I know it’s gross, but I lost 6 pounds in about 5 days. I spoke with my surgeon, and she told me that stalls and constipation are to be expected with revision surgery. Talk to your surgeon about your concerns, and ask if there are other options that you can do. I learned that the Argon Coagulation surgery I had was only the first of several to expect.