Tried to warn this person

[Alexandra 55]

I hope this doesn't get out of hand. We can all agree that people are entitled to their opinions, and we can also agree that generalizations are not helpful. People should share their own experiences, period. There's nothing to be gained at all by criticizing other people's choices. Or signatures.

[La_madam 20]

I would like to ask how many of the those who have erosions also followed the diet to a "T". I was told that you can erode your band by overeating often, drinking too much carbonation, vomiting from illness,

I eroded and I was a model bandster,ask several people here they will verify this for you.... never once did I take any NSAID's, Never once did I drink carbonation in 19 months , I pb'd 5 times in 19 months, never vomited from illness. I ate Protein first, I did not stuff my pouch, I did not ever have a too tight of a fill. I had only 3 fills to lose all of my weight. I exercised, I drank my Water, took my Vitamins..erosion can happen to the perfect bandster or the not so perfect bandster.

[DeLarla 22]

I'll repeat it - my new penpal banded out of Florida has horror stories of an infected port that landed her hospitilized for EIGHT days. When she was finally discharged she was sent home with weeks of in-home IVs 3 times a day. Her US surgeon worse than my Mexican surgeon.

And Donali & Karen were perfect model bandsters like Michelle. Both banded by Lopez in TJ.

When my band eroded, my doctor demanded 100% honesty when he asked me two questions:

1. Did you smoke?

2. Did you take NSAIDs (anti inflammatory meds)

I was able to answer no to both, and I confessed to drinking alcohol. He assured me alcohol isn't a factor, nor is eating the wrong foods. Like Forest Gump says, Erosion Happens.

These generalizations have me fired up, too, but I'm speaking from my own personal experience after having three surgeries in three separate Tijuana facilities. Two of them were clean but still re-used disposable items. I had to ask every single time what IV they were hooking up because nobody ever checked my name, and one time they had the wrong IV (it belonged to the asthmatic down the hall.) I had to ask them to put on gloves. The 2nd center looked worse than my local DMV, and nobody ever asked for ID. The third center was a converted office building - clean, but certainly not suitable for surgery in my opinion.

[SuperDaddy! 1]

La Madam- Thanks for jumping in. That is a perfect example of what Alex said earlier in the thread: erosion can happen for no apprent reason, too. I was talking about how easy it can be to sabatoge diets with human user error, but your case is a great explanation for the other side of that dilema.

Delarla- thanks for sharing your story, too. As I mentioned before: I appreciate hearing personal experience so that I can take that and apply it for me.

Jodie...um, I'm not sure why you were jumped on for your signature...but I spose when people get crabby they say stuff they shouldn't. Something tells me that they were more annoyed about the comment about "good parts or Mexico", so they jumped on the other thing. Personally, I took two years of Spanish in high school and found zero talent for languages...so it sounded just fine to me! Thanks for participating in the thread.

Jon

[youknowit 11]

Thanks to EVERYONE for posting their opinions and I just can't believe how mad some of you are getting for a person posting their OPINION!!!

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I think we're forgetting that the issue here wasn't just over someone "posting" their opinions about Mexico, but rather the personal, one-on-one, unsolicited advice sent via email to someone. I'm sorry, but trying to scare the crap out of someone through targeting them personally is still totally different than posting on the boards.

I agree that EVERYONE's posts are important and valuable in their own way, but I still vehemently disagree that it's in the sender or receivers best interest to send unsolicited, scare-tactic laced emails. (And yes, I know we "signed up to receive private messages, but that's not where I'm going with this... ok).

[NewSho 20]

Well said Clevergrrly.

[Parvathi 2]

I can't believe I've just spent an hour of my life reading this thread lol -such is life.

I was lucky enough to be banded in Australia (I'll say again, I love my doctor!!!). Had I been in the states though, low on cash and at the end of my rope, I can definitely see myself traveling to Mexico (or anywhere else that would have done it within my price range) for the surgery. I don't think anyone walks into surgery without putting some thought into it, but at the end of the day, we do what we have to do to get by. Sometimes it works out good, sometimes not so good.

[vinesqueen 2]

I just wanted to add my bigmouth blabber to the conversation... First off, anyone is welcome to PM me for any reason. You can e-mail me as well, but I probably won't answer for a while, since i rarely check that e-mail account. (Bad VQ! Bad, bad, bad VQ)

At this point in my life I wouln't consider having any surgery in MX, for two basic reasons. First is the distance, I'm in freeking SE ID and going to MX is just logistically unreasonable for me. The second main reason is that I do not speak Spanish, and I would feel very uncomfortable for this reason.

[donali 57]

MHO follows:

If you post on a message board, you are automatically soliciting advice.

If I had something I felt might be unpopular to say to a person, but thought they might find it helpful, I might be moved to send them a respectful PM/email pointing them to more research opportunities, IF they had a PM/email available. IF they had a PM/email available, I would assume that my on topic/respectful PM/email would be accepted.

I would be devastated/embarassed if my good faith message was received in any manner other than I had intended it. I would have either sent an apology message or an apology post, whichever I felt was the most appropriate, and then I would drop the whole thing - at least with that person specifically.

If I still felt as though I needed to make a point, I might make a generic post about my understanding of good message board etiquette. I would not post private conversations, or cross-post those private conversations to another board. I probably would most definitely seek out valued opinions about whether or not what I sent the person was "out of line".

The post on this thread about how the receiver viewed the message is a valuable reminder - it's not what I intended that's important here, but how the RECIPIENT felt. If the recipient was offended, then I am terribly sorry, and would say so, even if I still felt like the info I had to offer was important, valid, and NOT inflammatory or alarmist.

As a side note, I would like to say that it IS very difficult in some groups to post anything but the rosiest of support posts. Continued posts from people with severe problems are almost always discouraged. :lalala:

Even here the serious problem posts invariably spawn "Where are the HAPPY bandsters??" threads, or even a thread that says "I come here for support, and all I find are problems."

Even in this very thread, those here who have eroded have been challenged with the question about whether or not they were "model" bandsters. The smallest nudge that possibly our erosions weren't REALLY a risk of "just" being banded that can't be controlled, but something that we must have brought onto ourselves by our less than "model" behaviour.

Some people just cannot accept that the risks are genuine. :lalala:Even if they may be small or low incident, having them posted makes them seem higher incident, because NO ONE can pretend that the complications just don't really occur - at least not to anyone that YOU know.

And once people have made up their minds, and/or have actually gone through the procedure, they have a hard time accepting that there MAY be some very real negative consequences. They don't want to think about it, :lalala: they don't want to be reminded of it. :lalala: And until something major happens to YOU, you probably would just as soon pretend that complications aren't really THAT possible. However, once YOU are the one with a major complication, those infinitessimal percentages don't seem quite so small, or quite so impossible to collide with.

This is human nature. It is what it is. Another reason why this board is so rare - we have real people who have had just about the worst that can happen to us happen (believe me, erosion is NOT the worst thing that could have happened to us), and we have NOT been chased off this board, and allowing us to stay has NOT sent this board crashing. The reasons for this are, I think, two-fold:

1. We have some very level-headed people here who are able to remind the masses that these severe complications are NOT the norm, without having to dismiss/belittle/blame those of us who have experienced them.

2. The people who have experienced these problems have not condemned the band, and are not actively discouraging people from getting banded.

Thanks again to those strong-voiced, level-headed people who are able to put these complications into perspective without dismissing the fact that the complications occur, and thanks to my fellow eroded bandsters for their level-headed dealings with this devastating reality, and sharing their information without having to condemn this tool which is such a wonderful saviour to so many.

May LBT always be able to share the reality of being banded without losing perspective one way or the other.

[HeatherGurl 0]

Well said Donali!

[Alexandra 55]

Donali, as always, you rock my world. :clap2:

[nanahanna 1]

"Donali, as always, you rock my world. :clap2:"

Mine too! That was very, very well written!

[Marimaru 7]

Wow. That's all I can say.

[cattigerlily 0]

I chose not to go to Ortiz because there seem to be a lot of people here with erosions from him.

I thought there were only 2, Michelle and Francesca. I don't know of any others on this board. I know that these 2 people were banded very close to the same time, but 2 doesn't make a pattern or cluster, as I've heard it referred to. I think that 2 people banded close to the same time by the same doctor both eroding is a coincidence. Also, unless the Lopez patients that eroded were banded before Lopez and Ortiz parted ways- before Feb 2003- then Ortiz didn't have a hand in banding them.

Ortiz was my doc and I know he's done over 2000 surgeries. ANY doc that's done 2000 surgeries has had erosions.

Erosions can come from an infection not promptly or properly treated. I guess that could be considered the fault of the patient if they didn't call their doc at the first sign of trouble. However I don't think that was the case with these 2 Ortiz ladies. The rest of the time, erosions just happen. Not the fault of the patient or the doc.

If there was a problem with the surgical technique or with sterilization procedures of a certain doc, you would see a lot more than a couple of erosions here and there.

I've seen it posted that Kuri and Rumbaut have not had erosions. Rumbaut has done a lot of surgeries and has had erosions. I know 4 Kuri patients that eroded that were diagnosed by another doc, and I've heard there are several others.

Kat :eek:

-121 lbs

[nessa 0]

I am from Venezuela and my grand-father is a doctor there. Had I been able to go home to have the surgery I would have because I trust the doctors and the hospitals. If you haven't been anywhere else why would you just lump every hospital and every doctor together. I think maybe you were trying to be helpful but somewhere along the line you came out sounding like a biggot. If you don't know about something it is best not to give advice. America is not the only country that is civilized.