Alexandra

It seems that my surgeon's office has confidence that if I were to change insurance carriers there'd be an excellent chance of approval for a new band to replace the one removed in April. So I'm going to change effective July 1 (assuming I can talk my bosses into it, which I think I can). I was thinking about doing it anyway, since my docs are dropping out of my current network in August and with an HMO I have no out-of-network benefits. So today I'm going to be talking with my bosses about making the switch. (Turns out there is one very good thing about being an insurance broker!! I believe in karma, and though I don't love this career I took on in 2000, if I'd done anything else I'm 100% sure I'd still be morbidly obese. In 2003 I was able to take the appeal process to the end because of my inside knowledge of the system, and since then this will be the second time I've changed carriers to follow my doctors.) Thanks for all your support, and I'll definitely keep y'all updated!! :clap2:

It's probably muscular just like it would be after any strenuous exercise. It's nothing to worry about, but depending on how recently your surgery was you might want to take it easy. My doctor's advice has always been "if it doesn't hurt, go for it" with regard to post-surgery activity. So it follows that if it hurts or is uncomfortable, wait a little longer.

Yep, that's what that is. The usual prescription is an unfill, because something is going on inside that pevents material from exiting the pouch completely before you lie down. The condition itself can cause inflammation which can make it worse, to try to be extra careful for a few days. A medication such as Prilosec can help, and avoid trigger foods like coffee and acidic things. Take special care to NOT eat or drink anything for several hours before bed, and see your doctor if it doesn't go away. Good luck!!

Missy, you need to be thinking about taking care of yourself so that you can help take care of your family. You might seriously just want to stick to Protein shakes or bars, whatever's easy, so that you won't get malnourished or dehydrated during this time. There is certainly no downside to delaying your start with solid food, and if you don't have time to devote to chewing and eating carefully you might really want to just wait until things settle down. Take care of yourself!! Remember to drink, and don't worry about eating. Protein Shakes and bars have plenty to sustain you. Good luck with everything and don't forget to sleep!!

:myscared: This'll be hard--just now I was talking with someone about a client that has the word "landscape" in its name, and I said "lapband" instead. This is going to be a loooooong day.

I just need a few hours or days to process this, and once I get the denial letter in the mail I will have a better handle on my next move. I've appealed insurance denials in the past and prevailed, so I am inclined to give that one more try. The last time I did that I was a trailblazer, and I know my experience helped others in this state have their bands covered. So perhaps that's my path again, to fight this and win in order to help carriers see it as a treatment for a chronic condition, not a "cure" that can be abandoned once a certain goal is reached. Mark, you are of course absolutely right. And I will also be exploring the costs. If they truly would be limited to $10,000 that's doable, but I live in Northern New Jersey where hospital costs are astronomical. (Mexico is just not something I'd consider, since I have such good physicians so close at hand.) But I know my doctors will work with me and it is indeed possible that the cash cost would be manageable. So there's that. Right now I'm very disappointed and trying not to show it. Most of my work colleagues know nothing about this rollercoaster, and I'd like to keep it that way. I'll spill all over you, my REAL support system.

Not medically necessary. My BMI is in the very low 30s now, so I'm not morbidly obese. Evidently they don't care that it was a replacement. I'm going to proceed with a second appeal, and find out what my expenses would be if I paid myself. But I'm also going to have to face the possibility of facing life unbanded. Crap.

You're all wonderful, but I just got the call to tell me it was denied again. :myscared: :girl_hug: No surgery for me today. :(

Oh my god, thank you!! I had a wild dream last night that I went to the hospital and everything, only to be offered a MEAL by one of the nurses in pre-op. I was totally confused until my doctor came out and it turned out to be a total miscommunication--I had been summoned to the hospital for a dinner, not lapband surgery! This is going to be a very weird morning. I'm already hungry... Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone!! I'll let you know as soon as I get...the call.

...and I've already seen my first 2008 presidential campaign bumpersticker. This is going to be a looooooong election. :faint:

We thought about that, too. But the trampoline in question is the neighbor's (we don't own one), and as it is the kids are only allowed to use it on weekends. We figured four weekends wasn't really enough, because with school ending and camp starting it would go by in a flash. Adding in the first couple of weekends in July made it something they'd really notice.

This is what we were afraid of, that S wouldn't want to come back! But she knows our daughters well, which is one of the reasons she didn't suspect for a while that they might actually have gone elsewhere. We have a large house with lots of hiding places, so S and my tenant spent a good time just searching in the house, thinking the girls were hiding. They were listening for giggling. I know this is true, but in our lives it just hasn't come up very much (thank goodness!). We have rules that--until yesterday--the girls follow quite well. I guess there's a first time for everything. And Tricia, WOW, you look amazing! :biggrin1:

Last night DH and I went out for our anniversary date, leaving the girls--Gillian, almost 9, and Catie, just turned 6--with a familiar babysitter (S). We got home before bedtime, and entered the house to find both girls sitting sheepishly at the kitchen table and S saying "the girls have something to tell you" in a very stern voice. Uh oh. Turns out that after S had told Catie not to play outside because it was about to rain, the girls disappeared upstairs to sulk. Or so S thought. When S went to find them a few minutes later, she couldn't locate them. I can only imagine her mounting panic as she looked around the house, in the front and back yards, and asking our tenant to help search. FINALLY, after about 30 minutes of growing fear, S found the girls bouncing on a neighbor's trampoline where they had gone without so much as a by-your-leave. :angry When she got them home they were extremely contrite (perhaps because they'd never seen S so angry), and came up themselves with the idea of a) writing a thank-you note to the tenant for helping search, and :star: reporting the incident themselves to us when we got home. That was the reason for the assembly in the kitchen. (As it unfolded, though, S did most of the talking because Gillian was in tears--quiet, utterly guilty tears--the whole time, and Catie just looked at her lap.) This is a HUGE infraction, obviously. S didn't even know the trampoline existed, which is our fault, but on the other hand the girls KNOW they aren't allowed to leave the premises without permission. S didn't realize there was an attraction just two houses away where she might think to look for her errant charges, so the episode went on a bit longer than it would have otherwise. Needless to say, we were very, very unhappy about this. The punishments we considered were: 1) Grounding the girls for some period of time. This would mean missing a birthday party and play date scheduled for today, but probably wouldn't have had much other effect going forward. 2) No sleepovers for 2 months. 3) No trampoline for 2 months. We decided on the last because it cuts directly to the quick of their infraction. They had been going over to the neighbor's to play on their tramp on weekends provided 1) they told us where they were going and 2) they asked permission of the neighbors. They might have done 2 last night but they didn't do 1, so this particular privilege is being taken away. Does this punishment seem too lenient? I am moved by the way the girls were honest about it and didn't wait for S to report their infraction, and also moved by Gillian's obvious repentence. She is overall a VERY responsible girl and this is a real departure for her. The trampoline is one of their favorite things to do and they'll really feel its loss. (They're being prohibited from playing not only on this particular trampoline, but ANY trampoline they might come across, and there are a couple at friends' houses.)

Hi Terry, This site has a chat function, though it's rarely used. Why not schedule a time and say you'll be hosting an online meeting here? Just make an announcement about the date and time (make sure you say which time zone you're in), and at the appointed time go to the chat area. Hopefully some other people will come in and join you, and voila! An online support group meeting. Decide what would be a good time for you and we can make a couple of announcements about it.

Oh my god, I'm so embarrassed! Which one are you? Where were you sitting in relation to Linda?

Victoriana's right, it could be lots of things. One that immediately springs to mind is a vitamin deficiency--are you taking a good multivitamin? An extra B-complex could be a good idea, too. But definitely talk it over with your doctor!

I don't actually think the argument about choice is about what is a human life and what isn't. That question presumes that if something meets a definition of human life it automatically earns the protection afforded to all other human lives. And that's just not the case. The questions related to reproductive choice are about whether a developing fetus' own interests--to the extent that it can be said to have any at all, which is completely arguable--OUTWEIGH those of its mother. And THAT is a question that goes far beyond any dictionary definition of "human life." Painful as the truth may be, human lives DO have relative value; always have, always will. (We'll have to wrestle with this fact more and more as we learn how much it costs to sustain near-vegetative people in their "lives." But that's another discussion.) The modern, civilized state steps in to make sure that society treats its citizens fairly, and as we've seen the definitions of "citizen," "person," and "adult" are Fluid and can change over time. Though the concept of "human rights" is a fairly recent one, now we say every human has them--even to the extent of adding minority groups to a growing list of those worthy of protection. Pro-lifers might say sure, and the list will grow to include the unborn as well, just wait. But preserving one group's rights by destroying those of another is not the way this process works, and it's women whose rights matter more in this discussion. Yes, MORE than those of the unborn. Why? Because only when we are separated from the women who incubated us can our human rights can take their place as equally important to those of our mothers. Before that our "rights" are relatively nonexistent, because they can't be exercised without profoundly affecting those of someone else. The way any decision related to an unborn baby affects its mother makes it a very different being than any other entity in the rights discussion. Now, before anyone jumps on this as a defense of abortion in the late third trimester, I'd argue to leave that to medical ethics to control rather than laws. Once a fetus reaches a point of reliable viability, a doctor who is approached to terminate the pregnancy should indeed counsel towards delivery and adoption (or whatever). I am fully in favor of education and enforcement of medical ethics rules in this direction. Women and doctors who are determined to break the law or rules of ethics will do so no matter what happens. But laws don't allow for special situations in the same way that codes of ethics do, so many women and doctors who shouldn't be there will end up on the wrong side of the law. And that's why passing laws about this is the wrong way to go. We might all find that gadgetlady's list of milestones reached by developing fetuses could make us think twice about having an abortion ourselves past a certain point. It's important information for all potential parents to have. But where that point would be for each of us hinges a great deal on the mother's personal situation. Just because abortion may be emotionally wrenching to onlookers doesn't mean that anyone has the right to force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.

Seppi, were you at the meeting last night? I forgot you said you were planning to be there! Are you one of the people who was there and whom I have met fifty times? Or did you not make it? :confused:

My DH can't post (or type, for that matter :confused: ) but I will definitely let y'all know if I'm going under the knife on Monday. I'm not worried one tiny iota about the surgery itself--which is kind of funny, because the first time that was ALL I was worried about. Funny how things change. :ermm

I know I was conscious of it for the first few months after surgery, but it never got in the way and it never bothered my husband.

I just got a message from my doctor's office that even though they STILL haven't gotten the results of the expedited appeal, they think it's prudent to proceed as though an approval is coming. So I'm still on the schedule for Monday afternoon, and they promise to let me know by noon if it's a go. How will my nerves survive?? I have to fast all day until the phone call comes. This is NOT going to be fun! But hey, it's not a no. :biggrin1:

If the life in question, fetus or illegal alien alike, is living INSIDE another human being, then I say the "host" gets to decide.

Interestingly, my mother faced the very same situation that I faced when I chose to have an abortion at 22. She got pregnant with a man she was very involved with but not engaged to, while living in a town she knew she didn't want to stay in. You know the story, big-city girl spends postgrad year at small-town job, falls in love and gets pregnant, feels trapped, scared, pressured from every direction...how does it end? In my mother's case it ended with an illegal abortion secretly obtained. When her job and the relationship ended she moved back to the city, and a few months later met my father. I am the product of a planned and very much wanted pregnancy and I'm glad my mother had the time to make her decisions the way SHE wanted to make them. I'm just sorry she had to break the law to retain control of her life. When I first learned about her early relationship I used to fantasize about how my life might have been different had I been the baby from those parents instead of the ones I had. That's a fun mind exercise but utterly pointless, because -- of course -- I wouldn't have been ME. And never once did I question my existence or worth because of my mother's decision made a decade and a half before I was born. My older daughter has recently been asking about my first marriage and why we didn't have any children. She asked if we'd ever gotten pregnant (she's a thinker, that one!) I told her the truth, that my ex had been a terrible choice for a husband and would have made a terrible father, and in any case I wasn't ready to BE a mother until I met the man who became HER father. I told her that I did get pregnant by mistake, but I had a medical procedure to make the baby stop developing so it wouldn't be born. I waited for her reaction, not sure what her 8 y.o. mind would make of this news. She smiled wonderfully and told me how glad she is that she has the parents she has. And I was glad for the chance to start our discussion about how my daughter can have a family when SHE wants and is ready to have one, and not one second sooner.

The original bands, measuring 10cm and 9.75 cm in circumference, did indeed have a 4cc max capacity for fluid. Maybe they're not marketing those anymore, since there are newer and presumably better ones now available.

Thanks, Leatha. And it sounds like you're in a great place to get support at home with regard to your diet! I hope your friend is also interested in being an exercise buddy. That's what I need, but my schedule doesn't really allow for that. :confused: It's after 12:00 noon now and there's been no response from Oxford (so much for an expedited appeal, ha ha), so I'm off the surgery schedule for Monday. I'm OK with that, because no news still means there might be good news. And in fact, a later date would have worked out better for me work-wise. Another good thing is that I found out that my doctors are staying in the Oxford network until August 1, so even if the answer is no this time we'll have time for yet another appeal. And lord knows I'm good at that. I've lost 6 lbs of the 20 I'd packed on, so I'm feeling physically a lot better. I'm scared of the weekend, but at least it's not a holiday with lots of barbecuing!!