donali

Maybe it was progressing slowly so a person WOULD HAVE TIME TO GET TO THE DOCTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/GraduateBandsters/ How about "Lola"? Means bad girl in Spanish, I believe...

I believe the Inamed literature says 6 weeks, but I wouldn't swear to that...

I think it is common to get bitten and not notice - probably while you were sleeping. Every once in a while I'll wake up with a rash of bites, but they're just itchy. Please go to the doc - if it's nothing, you can blame wasting their time on me. I would take it as a personal favor.

Alexandra, GET TO THE DOCTOR!!! I will send you the $20 - honest. A guy on my team had his arm WRAPPED and in a sling from a spider bite - it had already been wrapped for over a week when I saw him. Depending on the type of spider, this could be a very big deal. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE go have this taken care of!! Promise?

I know the San Diego bandsters meet on the 2nd Sunday of the month, and the OSCB's meet on the 3rd Sunday of the month, so it might be good to not pick one of those days to increase your participation pool. At lot of the OSCB people are meeting junkies, and a couple have even driven down to SD to attend our meeting if they've missed theirs and need a fix. A couple of the SD'ers drive up to the OSCB meeting each month as well. The more meetings the merrier! I think there are a LOT of people in your area, so you may want to mention it on smartbandsters, bandsters, and gradbandsters as well.

Wow! Kerri, that's fabulous! You may have set a new record!!!

Uh... This is wrong???? Sheeezzzzz... I thought that was the whole point of going out in public - to look at other women and say, "If I had a figure like that, I'd NEVER wear that!" or "I may be fat, but at least I have better fashion sense than THAT!" or "Even if I had a figure like that, I'd never wear THAT!" or "I hope she cuts her own hair, because I would have never paid for THAT!" or "OMG!!!!! Did you just see THAT????" or... well, maybe you get the idea. lol So, that's wrong?

Penni, what is your alter ego's name? You're not allowed to have one unless you name it. lol I agree with what everyone else says. And yeah, get your co-pay back!!!

Since alcohol is a dehydrator, it is feasible that one might sense less restriction. Of course, after enough alcohol, one might sense less of a lot of stuff...

Teresa - My heart breaks for you and your family, and the sorrows you all have suffered. Losing my band is nothing compared to stuff like that. I am so grateful... ***hugs***

Teresa, that's so sad that you had to sell your horse. :D I've wanted one ever since I was about 7.

Good luck Kathy, and congrats!!! Take slip on shoes, chapstick, and a cough pillow (a pillow to hold against you when you cough, sneeze, or go over a bump in the car - it really helps). Let us know how everything goes!!

Carmen, the golfball/stuck feeling is not the same as feeling food going down. Hard to describe, but once you feel it you'll understand.

You mean skinny girls are people too?!?!?!?! Really, Lisa, I'm sure all the skinny girls out there accept your apology. The ones that matter, anyway. One of my dearest friends is skinny. She is a recovering alcoholic. She is like a soulmate, and totally understands my food addiction. I can always turn to her with my weight despairs, because she's been through all the same things with alcohol. So you're right, Lisa. Skinny girls ARE people too... Teresa, you ARE graceful and lovely.

3-4 hours for me. Someone else mentioned that it's harder for them to drink now than to eat. I noticed that too with my last fill. My theory is that food compacts with the stomach's churning action to push it through the band, and liquids disperse. I have no idea if that's it, but the only reason I could think of that made sense. My gallon of Water a day dropped to half a gallon. I just can't seem to get more in than that without concentrating every moment on drinking. So I get a quart in on the 20 minute drive to work, and quart in on the 20 minute drive home. At work I drink lots of hot tea.

Normal weight people are just not very observant, I've found...

OMG!!!!! Alexandra, NOW LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!!!!! DeLarla, go untie Lisa THIS MINUTE. You can NOT afford to live on champagne. Don't MAKE me come over there.... :rambo :dead :speechles

Penni said: ROTFLMAO!!!! That's what I've always loved best about dead food... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!!!!!!

As a child I fantasized that someone would lock me in a room with everything I needed and shove only the amount of food I should eat under the door three times a day.

Teresa, I wasn't offended. I'm sorry if my reply seemed curt. What you describe for yourself is the beauty of the band - everything becomes easier. It's hard to pinpoint why, exactly, because I think a lot of our eating pre-band was done subconsciously, without a lot of analysing why. We thought to eat, and we did. If there was no physical reason to stop, like we were so full we could not eat another bite, or ran out of the food we were eating, we just kept eating. I don't know why I'm saying "we" - just substitute "I" in there so I don't have to go back and retype it. For me I feel like eating healthier was easier because I didn't seem as obsessed with food. Plus, there were some things that were just too much trouble to eat, or didn't taste as good chewed a billion times. I honestly THINK that my actual hunger switch got nudged off. It would come back on at appropriate times, but then would get turned off again. Pre-banding, it seemed as though the switch only got turned off if I was so full I felt sick, or if I was very angry. Then there is the phenomenon even post-banding where I knew that I couldn't fit another bite in, but my mind was screaming to eat. I knew I wasn't physically hungry, and it didn't seem like psychological hunger. I think that was the compulsive part. A compulsion is not necessarily driven by an event. So for me, I think my morbid obesity problem had the following factors: 1. Satiety defect (physical dysfunction of the "full" feeling) 2. Emotional hunger (eating in response to uncomfortable feelings, usually seeking some sort of sedation affect, or for entertainment) 3. Compulsion (the drive to eat in spite of the absence of hunger, like people who have to wash their hands multiple times a day, or who have to check that they really locked the door 10 times before they can leave the house) 4. The genuine enjoyment of the taste of food and the eating process, including the pleasureable social situations that tend to revolve around food. I associated food with pleasure, love, family, a sense of well being and safety. 5. Fear of not having enough, fear of going hungry (this fear seems to affect other aspects of my life, like my packrat tendencies. On some level I would think my fear of not having enough food, or enough money, or enough things is on par with hoarding syndrome) Somehow the band made it a lot less complicated. I am hoping that once it's gone the factors somehow remain toned down. I have different habits now, but they are enforced every day by the band. Not in a harsh way - my journey has been extremely comfortable. I don't feel like I really had to try to lose this weight. I felt similarly in control the year I was on Meridia - so I do think that #1 on my list is the major culprit, and 2-5 were opportunistic behaviours. Alexandra, I'm not sure why I felt like I was not going to get enough. We never had to go hungry as kids - if what Mom made for dinner got eaten all up and we were still hungry, there was always Peanut Butter and bread, or Cereal, or something. I think the fear started when Mom started to try to lose weight (about 2nd/3rd grade for me?), and she made comments that if we kept eating the way we did we would get so big we wouldn't be able to fit through the bathroom door. I truly think that is when I started sneaking food. I was a little chubby as a child and through Jr High, but not horribly so. My mentor in Jr High was over 300 pounds, and that's when I started dieting with her, and becoming obsessed over my weight. That's also when I started eating fast food, and other less nutritious choices - I started eating like she did. That's when my weight really started to tumble out of control. Add to the mix that it became an extremely complicated emotional situation, and suffice it to say I had no one and nothing to turn to for help but food. I genuinely believe my path to morbid obesity began then, at the age of 13. Now, 30 years later, I am hoping to have turned the corner on some of these things. Once I am unbanded I will have a better idea on how much physical help I will still need. I do thank everyone for their encouragement, and their suggestions.

Thanks, Kim. From what I've read, the port infection occurs because at the point of the stomach where the erosion has created an opening, the gastric juices seep out and follow the tube to the port, and cause the infection.

Do you think you could if you were unbanded today? What is different for you now than before banding? The absence of hunger. Without your band, that hunger will return. Do you really think that without your band would would still get that nice full feeling off the amounts of food you are eating now?

Thanks, Topsy. Since I am selfpay, I am not planning on being rebanded at this time - I kindof shot my wad on the first time around. Plus, so far it seems as though once you've experienced erosion, the chances that you would erode a second time increase (even though Dr. Carmen said that was not true, other literature states that it is.) As far as WHY? That is a question that does not have a definitive answer. Some patient behaviours are thought to increase the likelihood of erosion, like consuming stomach irritants, vomiting, and overeating. Also, if there was a surgical injury to the stomach at the time of banding that could increase the chances of erosion. However, after doing a small search on erosion of implantable devices in general, it appears that regardless of the type of implant, erosion of the surrounding tissue is always a possible complication. The lapband is reported as having erosion as a possible complication in 1%-3% of cases.