Pretty Darned Tight, Too Tight?

lruhle · April 25, 2009

HELP - Had the lapband 2 years ago and now see a new surgeon due to insurance changes.

I have had 4 fills and 2 removals within 3 months! The fills were between .5 - 2.cc's. I have a band that is 10cc but only holds 5 cc's total (at least that's what this new surgeon is telling me). My problem is very strange. I asked her to please "start over" since we couldn't get the dosage to a comfortable level. So 5 days ago she put 2.75 cc and I was able to eat way too much. I went today and she did an upper GI in the office and it shows some restriction but she was only able to pull out .5 cc. The upper GI w/dye showed no leak??? So she just put in another 2. cc and the upper GI again showed more of a restriction, but I can still eat a ton of food.

Any idea of what may be happening

regnur617 · April 25, 2009

as long as you're not vomiting, I'd give it a few days. Unless you start getting everything stuck and vomiting it up.

fatchihuahua · October 7, 2009

I have been having many problems with my band lately. I was banded over three years ago and lost over 50 of the 100 lbs that I wanted to lose in the first 15 months. Then I hit a plateau that lasted for several months. I wasn't losing, but I wasn't gaining. I had cut back on the exercise, so I tried to step that up again. I lost about 10 more pounds and began feeling dizzy all the time and extremely tired. I also had very bad acid reflux, but I didn't pay much attention, since I have had acid reflux for years. I cut back on my BP medicine and that seemed to help with the dizziness, so I went to my PCP and told her my BP medicine was too strong. She disagreed and gave me sleep medicine instead to help with tiredness. Of course, this did not help one bit, so I switched PCPs and she switched me to another BP medicine, and now the extreme tiredness and dizziness are gone.

Anyway back to the reflux. I went in for another fill to get me back on track and help me begin losing weight again, since now I was not too dizzy to exercise anymore. I mentioned the reflux and the Physician assistant (PA) said my band was probably too tight and wanted me to have a fluroscopy to see the pouch under X-ray. When this was done, we saw the band had moved into a vertical position, instead of the horizontal position it should have been in, and the pouch had enlarged. The liquid would hardly go down and the steak I had eaten the night before was visible in the pouch (It hadn't gone down yet). He loosened the pouch and told me to drink only liquids for several days to two weeks then SMALL meals for two weeks before another fluroscopy, where he saw the band had repositioned itself and the pouch had shrunk, so he filled it up a little more. He said if the band had not moved back into position he would have to do surgery and replace it.

He said you must ALWAYS get the band loosened when you begin to have severe reflux or are not able to eat regular food, in order to prevent irreversible damage and require surgery. So I would warn the people earlier in this thread that it is very dangerous to keep your band too tight.

Since that time I have had the band filled a few more times to where I felt it had good restriction, only to find out through fluroscopy, that the pouch was too big again and the band had moved out of position again (e.g. - band was too tight). I can no longer sense when the fill is adequate and have gained 25 lbs back over the last year with all these unfill-refills.

I no longer know how to make the band work for me and can't seem to turn the wieght gain around. I want another fill, but am worried that the band will become too tight again. I am always hungry. Has anyone else experienced this problem and found a way to get back into weight loss?

:wink2::confused::redface: