Alexandra

Nope, my DH hasn't lost any weight since I've been banded. He actually has more opportunity to eat MORE since I've been eating less, so he has to take care not to gain weight.

Sashimi is one of the great bandster foods: it's pure protein and very soft. It's the rest of the stuff that comes with sushi that's problematic, especially the seaweed. Rice is just filling, if you eat too much you won't be able to eat anything else. But the seaweed wrap or salad can be very difficult to chew well enough, so proceed with caution! My very worst experience was with a bit of seaweed salad. Never again.

I kicked my Afrin habit years ago after about 10 years of use. It's so liberating when you find you no longer need it! I honestly can't remember how it ended, but there's no question it's self-fulfilling. If you can cold-turkey your way off of it, you likely won't need it anymore. If you have allergies that cause nasal swelling, treat the allergies. Good luck with everything!!

Of course everyone "deserves" the care, no question about it, and I nowhere implied that one person is less worthy of surgery itself than another. I was addressing whether insurance carriers are wrong in making such determinations, and I don't believe they are. They have to, absolutely have to draw the lines somewhere. The simple fact is that unless insurance carriers did this sort of triage and line-setting, they would all collapse immediately under the cost of medical care for people who want it. Believe me, I despise our insurance system more than most people, I'm not defending it. I'm just explaining it. Our absurd system just is not set up to provide healthy people with expensive preventive care. There has to be a diagnostic guideline, and the existence of that guideline invites fraud. It's a horrible system in just about every way, but it's what we've got.

I'm happy to announce that WHEETSIN has agreed to be our latest addition to the moderator ranks. Welcome! :clap2: Kelly is moving on, and we want to thank her for her years of help and support to LBT. It's been a pleasure and I hope you won't be a stranger. Thanks, sweetie--you're the best!! :rockon:

Hi gang, Just a heads-up that I'm going to be away for the weekend starting Friday morning. I'm visiting friends at their beach house in Massachusetts, and though I don't expect to get much rest (my girls are coming with me ), the change of scenery will be nice. This'll be a good way to catch my breath after my recent (professional) roller-coaster ride. So I won't be around until Monday or so. Have a great weekend, everyone! Be good!! :biggrin1:

Vines, your spirit and attitude are so refreshing and inspirational, I wanna hug you. :hug: You are a winner in every way, and today I feel better because of you. Thank you.

Dre, whether there is any way around the exclusion depends on your state's laws. But if you work for a very large company typically they write their own policies with the carrier and it's done very deliberately. Unless you think you can persuade your company to change its policies you are likely out of luck.

Anthony, thanks for coming back and sharing your experience! Congratulations on a successful choice and surgery. I'm so glad you're feeling good! Your link is very instructive, too. Cool!

That doesn't make any sense, Gypj. You were looking for a PCP, right? Not a surgeon? What kind of care are you trying to get? In any event, if you live in Hoboken it'd be easier for you to get to the city than to Montville or Madison. You're MILES away from Morris County!!

I agree with your surgeon, but would have explained it a little differently. Restriction is a result of a combination of factors, not just the amount of Fluid in the band. One of those factors is the thickness of the stomach tissue being compressed inside the band, and this is not a static thing. I think some people's stomach tissue reacts to increased pressure by "thinning out," which actually increases the size of the stoma temporarily. When it returns to its usual thickness, the stoma size decreases and voila! More restriction. It's the reaction time that varies from person to person. My fills always have taken 2-3 weeks to make themselves felt, which when I think about it isn't too surprising. I'm a very slow reactor in general, it seems: it takes medication or anaesthesia longer to work and work itself out, both of my children gestated so long I had to be induced, and I'm always the last one in the family to catch a cold or be cured of one. It just seems like a pattern of biological slow-response, and this late restriction thing falls right into it.

Thanks for the motivation, Michelle! I have a bike I love but it really needs an overhaul and I haven't taken it in. I've had it for years but no one ever explained to me how to shift gears, so I'm sure I've destroyed it. My older DD is hell on wheels with her new big-girl bike, and my little one is hot on her heels. All we have to do is get the parents up and running on good bikes, and the whole family will be on the road!! YAY!!!

Well, the news is in, and I guess it's not earth-shattering. In its infinite wisdom the organization has decided to go with someone else. I have no idea who, or what her qualifications are, but I'm told it was the usual "difficult decision." Sigh. Thanks again for your counsel and support through this. I'm deeply disappointed, but very motivated now to find out what I'm really supposed to be doing. Insurance sure isn't it.

Phyllis, I'm so sorry you're having this trouble! Did you have an unfill before or after your endoscopy? I'm only asking because if you're still suffering from reflux it would seem to be the first line of attack. I had a complete unfill about three months ago for similar reasons (reflux, not Barrett's) and it completely resolved the issue. So if that hasn't been done, DO IT! There's no reason to fear an unfill and it beats having the band removed. Good luck!!

Thanks, everyone. In the morning light things look a bit brighter. I mean, it's not like I'm unemployed. Time is on my side and I have the luxury of seeking the right thing on my own time and on my terms. I'm sure this exercise hasn't been in vain, though its purpose may take time to come clear. I really appreciate your words, everyone.

Lisa's right. For studies like this they include ALL sorts of complications. I know I'd be counted in that 20% too, even though I think I've had a very smooth ride. BTW, I contacted the author of the article and he wrote back, thanking me for bringing the error to his attention. The title is being fixed.

We can e-mail the author to tell him that. He may not have titled the article himself, and it is wildly misleading.

I don't understand your title. "Gastric banding weight loss surgery only helps one-fifth of patients maintain 50% loss" sounds terrible, and that's not what the summary of the article says. Why did you phrase it that way?

I've been takling melatonin, and it works wonders. It lets me go to sleep quickly and stay asleep all night, with absolutely NO hangover the next day. And it comes in chewable tablets! Valerian root is another great product, but the capsules I've seen are a bit large for bandsters. Good luck!

Mine was realizing that I was putting my two littls girls' lives in danger by not being able to chase after them. There was a horrifying moment where one of my daughters started running down our little street toward a busy avenue, and I started chugging along after her. But I wasn't catching up to her on her little 2-year-old legs, and my husband came racing down off the front porch to grab her before she got there. I was thunderstruck that I would literally be unable to save my baby were she to try that again when he's not around. That's when I started looking.

I don't think it is based on "safeguarding" the public's health. It's based on risk/benefit analysis, which is why it seems so way off for banding. The years of RNY and other bariatric surgeries are the body of experience they use to calculate such things. It will be several MORE years and MANY more banding patients will have to be studied before any changes are made. IMO, there should be a huge divide between RNY qualifications and those for banding. The current guidelines don't take into account the exponential difference in risk level. Someday, we can hope, they will.

I'd be willing to bet that BCBSCA will cover you, but maybe after a year or two has passed since surgery. And they might want to exclude complications related to surgery. But I agree, your overall health has improved to the extent that you should be insurable. Also, not every state has this type of medical underwriting. New Jersey and New York have guaranteed-issue individual health policies, for which you cannot be turned down. I swear, the range of rules about this sort of thing is horrific, and what makes ANY conversation about "national health insurance" an utter joke. Unless a decision is made in Washington to standardize health insurance rules from state to state, it will never get any better. :angry (Pet peeve of mine, can ya tell?)

Sherri, medical expenses are medical expenses, no matter where the money was spent. The money spent on surgery and even the travel to get there is deductible as such, to the extent that any medical expenses would be deductible. (I think that is to the extent that the amount exceeds 7.5% of your income, or something like that.)

Congratulations!!

Cashley, you're right that the opening post didn't mention insurance. I'm sorry, I just assumed that's what Wheetsin was talking about. Oops!! As far as nudging the "system" to get a band if one isn't MO by AMA's standards, I see it as absolutely no different than any other service that can be purchased. There's nothing "immoral" about having a lot of money and wanting to better oneself surgically, if you can find a doctor who will do it. If one won't, there is always another who will. If you're self-pay and want to lie to your doctor to "qualify," your doctor equally wants to be lied to, believe me. He's not fooled by a couple of rolls of quarters in the pockets, not really. I imagine Inamed and medical oversight boards are the parties to which he'd have to justify a given procedure, if he were asked, and of course there are always liability issues. But in the end it's a judgment call by the doctor, and they're human.