GeezerSue

Hi, Holly! I read about one person who ate on the way home from the surgery. Not usually your best move. And certainly an historical cause of bands moving out of their proper placement into dangerous locations. Anyway, MOST doctors want us on liquids (clear and then full) for about two weeks...sometimes more, sometimes less. If you think you might be starving, it is likely because you aren't getting enough Protein. There are many sources, from powders and canned drinks to Jamba juice (my favorite.) Do you live near any juice places? How about a little soft-boiled egg yolk? Many things can BECOME liquids, courtesy of a blender of food processor and a little juice or Water or milk. (This is a post-op diet, don't stay on these foods after the healing process.) What are you eating now? Sue

Oh, crud! Can someone download this and repost it in jpg or gif for all of us bmp deprived? I'd love to see the new Shelly. I think a haircut is often part of discovering who the person who has been hiding really is. I've noticed the haircut as an ongoing theme in wls patients. Do you suppose that "underneath all that hair" is just one more place to hide? (Of course, I'm from the generation BEFORE the long-straight-hair thing hit mainstream, so I also think it may be a function of age...but I'm just wondering.)

Great description, Bright! One doctor told me that only obese people seem to have a need to be "full." I thought it was an interesting point. So, speaking as someone with 0.00 cc's in the band at this point and who has gained several pounds in the past couple of weeks, I can offer you the following off-the-cuff definitions: 1) full--Pre-banding I ate until I got full. With restriction, I can't do that. I can eat only until I can't comfortably eat any more, but I am not "full" the way I used to be. 2) restriction--This is what keeps me from eating until I'm full. Now I can eat a limited quantity, which is certainly "enough" to sustain me, but is never enough to make me feel full, like I did before banding. 3) hunger, physical--I now wonder how many times in my life I have been physically hungry. I suspect it was just a few times. 4) hunger, emotional (aka "head hunger")--This is what makes me want to eat more, even though my body is experiencing restriction AND I know damn good and well that I don't need another morsel of food to survive. So this is how I know that--in my case, anyway--the fat bone is connected to the crazy bone. Now, before someone complains, I'm not saying y'all are nuts, just that I am. And, I'm also saying that losing weight, in my case, will require a lot of work on the emotional part. So, why the band? Because I would NEVER have been able to discover this part of what makes me work without the band. My current goal is to feed my "head hunger" with something other than food...so I can get "head full" or something. You did have a question, didn't you? I experience restriction as a sensation that triggers the mental awareness that I have consumed sufficient food to fill the upper part of my stomach and that if I eat any more I will probably damage my esophagus. (In my case, I probably experience this a little too late, and I wish I got that sensation a little sooner.) It has nothing to do with "satisfaction." For "satisfaction," I have a husband and...well...he smiles more than he used to. Sue

My surgeon was Roberto Rumbaut Diaz in Monterrey, Mexico. He practices in a state-of-the-art teaching hospital in the third largest city in Mexico. This was important to me, as there are plenty of physicians of various specialites at the location at all times of the day and night, in case of any emergency. (The hospital situation is very different in Mexico. There are the high-rent teaching places, and there are some teeny tiny one or two doctor places. There are places where the wealthy and foreigners go, and there are places where Mexican insurance pays. So there may be four hositals on one corner, all serving different populations. You should be very sure of what you need to feel comfortable and what is being offered before you decide on your doctor.) There is nothing "budget" about Rumbaut's hospital accommodations or care. His prices are around $10,000. There are about four or five patients per nurse after surgery on the wing where you stay in your private room with your private bath. Your hospital room will have a little sofa or extra bed for a family member. It's cultural thing; Mexicans generally accompany family members at the hospital, they don't usually take them and leave them there. Patients stay at the Hampton Inn (not included in the price) in Monterrey. That hotel is the budget end of the Hilton chain. It sits next door to an Applebee's and a great Italian restaurant, and a shopping center with an HEB Market (a Texas chain) is adjacent. Rumbaut has placed around 1900 LapBands, and proctors US and other doctors on a regular basis. I was 55 at the time of my surgery and he was most concerned about me that day (he usually does about five bands per day when her has surgery days), due to age and other health considerations. But the surgery was textbook. Office fills (in other words, the doctor's services) are free, but if the fill is done under flouro, you have to pay the radiology place...about $100. (In the states, it runs much more.) Dr. Rumbaut usually asks his out of town patients to have flouro, so he can check band placement etc. while you are in town. The other well-respected Monterrey surgeon is Dr. Sanchez, I think. He has done even more bands, and does several types. Some people have complained about staffing issues, but no one complains about his work. In Tijuana, I've had fills and unfills...but I'll let those patients have a chance to answer. Where do you live? That would be important. Also, don't exclude Europe. Airfare is cheap, some of those doctors are VERY experienced and you can still get fills in Mexico, or locally if they ever lighten-up. Sue

I was sent (by someone with painted toes) to the other site and I read where you are declaring yourself pretty much a horse's patooty. Well, no such luck, hot shot. Gaining weight between surgery and the first fill is no biggie. Happens all the time. Enjoy your "mini-fill" and all the holiday goodies, in moderation, of course. You'll be looking like Sinatra in the 50's in no time at all. Sue

I always think I sound cool when I'm at the Brenda Vaccaro Stage. My daughter prefers the Lauren Bacall Level. (But my kid's a soprano and I'm not.) Sue

BTW, I got unfilled a couple of weeks ago and, right now, I could eat a woolly (or "wolly," if you prefer) mammoth if I wanted. So glad I'm not quite that insane. Yet.

So glad you're here whining; I hate being the only whiner. Sue

Mel, I hope all goes well...and have someone freeze the eggnog. You can drink it post-op! Sue

Tellie, If you're in Melbourne, Australia, you have doctors who are far more experienced than the US doctors. One thing I have found for sure is that US doctors (some of whom have done a half dozen bands) have made up all kinds of rules and diets which the surgeons who have placed hundreds and even thousands of bands haven't needed. It is bizarre. Here's my take...I think band patients are to the surgeons like driving teenagers are to the parents. Your first kid has to meet all kinds of criteria and keep up his/her grades and get home on time and wash the car and not eat in the car and on and on. Your fourth kid gets his/her license and you throw them the keys and forget to worry until they are two or three days late. That's why, IMHO, US doctors are so cautious. They're new at it and almost know what they're doing. (When in doubt, go to the Inamed book.) Sue

I have heard this theme in many different ways...that essentially, on a scale of 1-10, his skills get a ten and everything else gets teeny, tiny numbers. It would be really nice if he could accept the criticism and make positive changes.

Ginger, The reason that I sometimes sound brutal is that I am dense...and don't "get" subtle messages. So I'm going to--foolishly and without her permission--try to paraphrase Donali, in case anyone else processes information the way I do. When we talk about "cheating" and "being bad," we are inadvertantly admitting that we are playing games instead of dealing with why we are making the choices we are making. I know someone (not me--really!) whose approach to is to "confess" that she's been "a bad little girl," and then her husband actually babytalks and tells her something along the lines of "you had a 'bery' bad day and it's not your fault and maybe we should have some ____ (fill in the blank)." Well, isn't that special? Meanwhile, he still leaves the house at 4:00 a.m. when he could wait until about 7:00 to leave, and he still works every Saturday he isn't golfing (he's management, so he's not making extra money for all of this), and he still works even though he could retire and they would be just fine and she is so lonely she could die...so she's 5'1" and 300+ pounds and killing herself with food and he's telling her it's okay. One of the things I'm working on is making an honest appraisal of why I'm making the choices I'm making. (I don't know even half the time...like I said, I'm working on it.) But I have to omit the concepts of "being bad" or "cheating," because if I use that language, I'm playing a little game instead of getting to the root of the problem. Did I make any sense here? Probably not. But if I did, and you're in the mood, join me! Once in a while, I find myself thinking, "I'm eating like a maniac because I'm going out to lunch with Kathy and her mom (whom I haven't seen in 40+ years) and I'm nervous." Then I get to decide if I really want to eat the junk. (In this particular case, I did. But at least I knew why, and didn't call myself names and berate myself. I just said, "I'm comforting myself with food. Next time I have a lunch date, I think I'll go sit in the hot tub before I go.") Sue *who drinks carbonated Water almost all day*

Have you checked this info with a dietician or Inamed? I ask because I've never heard this and I've been reading about the band for quite a while. Sue

If you haven't had a fill, it is totally normal to have no restriction. A month post-op, no restriction without a fill just means you are healing normally. Good luck! Sue

I didn't, but.... interestingly enough, I think I've read that, for people with GERD and relux pre-band, the band seems to cure the problem for a lot of people. Unfortunately, for those who are fine, GERD and reflux become a possibility. Weird, huh? Sue

What happens after the perfect fill is that a very small amount of saline is lost through osmosis. At the same time, you are losing weight, inside and out. If you lose fat from the internal organs (that's the fat that will kill us first, so we hope to lose that), you will lose a little bit of fat around the stomach. SOOOOO: a little fat gone + a teeny bit of saline gone = loose band.

I don't mean to be diagreeable, but I do disagree with this part. From what I understand, one of the main reasons for no solids is to keep the band healing where it's supposed to be, so that it can take the wear and tear it's going to get later on and doesn't end up moving to where it will be a problem. There is no way to know whether it has already moved from that location or not. HOWEVER, it isn't too late for sarellano to give the band a little more time to heal into place, and to hope for the best. Sarellano, I didn't mean to scare you...and doctors certainly hand out plenty of erroneous info. But I suggest asking "why?" And if the doctor won't tell you, go online and look for the answer in the literature or with patients. Then you'll know which rules are "written in stone" and which are arbitrary. For example, the very most experienced doctors have almost no pre-op diet and some of the least experienced doctors have a pre-op diet of a month on yogurt and Water. See, that rule seems pretty negotiable to me. But the post-op diets--no matter how they vary--all (except for the MIDband) seem to want us on no solids for at least two weeks. After that, they vary in how rapidly we move to solid foods. So, you almost made the two-week rule, so keep it liquid or pureed. About the hunger...get Protein in. That will help. Do you live anywhere near a Jamba juice or someplace that sells yummy drinks with high protein content?

Hey, Tack! My hubby is from your neck of the woods...Perry County. Sue

I think--you DID ask for comments, right?--that you have limited understanding of the band and how it works. The point is not to see how much you can cram in there post-op, the point is to allow the band to heal in the right position. If it heals in the wrong position, you could have plenty of problems later on. The band is a TOOL, not a cure. If you use the tool incorrectly, it may not work the way you thought it would. If your surgeon did not go over these things with you pre-op, you need to read all about it right now. And, we were ALL hungry post-op, and we ALL had trouble during the liquid stage. But we have to change, or die from morbid obesity. Sue

Then, let me put it another way...if we could REALLY lose weight via diuretics, who would need WLS? IMHO, the person who lost 100+plus pounds is doing something right and just hasn't figured out what it is.

Okay, then. This chick is overdosing on salt...betcha. Corned beef (you can find it with canned meats, like the canned roast beef from Argentina or canned chicken) is traditionally beef that is "cured" or preserved in a salt brine. It's not really a regional dish, as much as a pre-freezer way to preserve meat. To make hash you chop up onion and potato into teeny tiny pieces, fry them up and add the already cooked corned beef, also chopped into tiny pieces. So it's fried meat and potatoes. You can find canned corned beef hash, too, but it's really bad. Anyway, one cup of this stuff (according to FitDay) has half of the sodium most people need in a day. (And enough to make me immobile!) So, she sounds like she might even "need" a diuretic, given the high sodium intake she's involved in. (The actual cure is to stop eating so much salt.) The corned beef is why she's "retaining Water." The diuretic simply counteracts the effects of the excessive salt she's eating. Not the best plan. But she is losing weight for some other reason. Because what she is doing is eating a lot of sodium (salt), which causes her to "retain water," and then taking a diuretic to make her kidneys work overtime to dump the water in spite of the sodium. Nothing in that equation causes any long-term weight loss. Before she got to that, she'd end up with severe dehydration. If she 'fesses up to the doctor, she might even find out what she's doing RIGHT!

Shelly, i can't imagine people taking "Water pills" to make a dial on a scale move. The concept escapes me. I take a diuretic (what some people call a "water pill") because of congestive heart failure. My heart cannot keep up with the demands--many of them related to weight and being out of condition--being placed on it. What the heart "gives up doing" (because it can't do everything) is pumping the body fluids back UP the legs and arms. When that happens, I get edema--my feet and ankles are swollen, my knees get so sore they can hardly bend. Also, my fingers are swollen, rings and bracelets don't fit, and I can't hold a pen very well. It has been (before the band) so bad that the excess fluids "wept" through the skin on my legs. The diuretic I take is Demadex; it's a little more powerful than Lasix. And as I have lost weight, I have decreased the amount of Demadex I take. The diuretics have to be taken on a regular basis, but only as needed to assist the heart in doing its job. And caution is crucial. Many diuretics are NOT potassium sparing, that is, they deplete the potassium from your system which can cause immediate cardiac problems. Now, to the "successful" bandsters. I think they are wrong...and possibly not too bright. There is no cumulative weight loss from diuretics. All they do is make the kidney work harder, and nobody's lost weight from that. On a really bad day before I took a diuretic on a regular basis, I found myself puffed up and feeling like I was walking on sponges. I went to the doctor and took a 20mg Demadex. Within eight hours, I "lost ten pounds." But that was not "excess weight." That was about a gallon and a quart of excess water in my body, that almost kept me from moving. Ten pounds of "water." But NOBODY loses 100 pounds on diuretics. It's too bad--on several levels--that those "successful bandsters" believe that they are losing weight from diuretics. One reason it's too bad is that they are doing something right, but have failed to identify it. So they are not likely to rely on a good behavior they cannot identify. Another reason is that diuretics are tough on the kidneys and the heart. You absolutely have to regulate the body's potassium level when taking diuretics. They are not toys. Also, it's a wonderment to me that they have PCP's who would prescribe diuretics to people who don't understand why they are taking them. I'll look for a couple of links. Sue Edited to add: http://www.tmc.edu/thi/diurmeds.html http://www.gwu.edu/~cade/diuretics.html http://www.e-kidneys.net/diuretics.html http://www.healthcentral.com/mhc/top/001840.cfm

Oh, yeah...the BR weight loss. It won't be much. My kid went from a 36 or 38J (yes, Virginia, there IS a D-cup), down to a tidy little 36D and they removed less than four pounds of tissue. BUT...I'd think you'd want the WLS prior to the BR. Otherwise, as you lose weight, the sisters will be heading south all over again. Sue

The pain in the left shoulder has nothing to do with stretching anything. It has to do with the location of the band and the location of a nerve that is connected to the left shoulder area. The pain subsides within a couple of weeks and rarely again rears its ugly head. Sue

1) Your BMI is over 40 and that is more important than your weight. (He's probably used to taller people and, therefore, higher weights. Many companies say "100 pounds overweight," but most say "a BMI of at least 40.") 2) The costs of the two surgeries should--in a perfect world--have no bearing on which is approved and which is not. Don't put yourself in a position of thinking "Well, if I have to choose, the surgery i want is..." If both surgeries are medically indicated, and you want both surgeries, your insurance should pay for both, unless your policy excludes one or the other. Just be prepared to appeal any denials AND--if the situation presents itself--learn how to write an effective appeal. Good luck, Sue