bev712

Just pro1ves that you have to be your own advocate in the hospital and make sure you get what you need. You did well to push them. Hope every day you feel better. Go Pats!

The difference between an excuse and an explanation: Things aren't inexcusable if they're explainable! I'm looking forward to having an explanation when I slip up!

My guy and I were trying to figure out what to serve ourselves during the game. I came up with scrambled egg squares on toothpicks, or taking all the meat and skin off chicken wings and sucking on the bones! Really, there's not much to nibble until we can eat real food.

The soup is a liquid. The crackers, veggies and noodles are not. Try clear liquids for a day.

Chinese egg drop soup! Lots of protein, not too much cornstarch for a restricted diet, Yummy on a cool day.

I am 8 days post-op and can feel my port with my fingers, about an inch above the incision and to the right of it. It doesn't actually stick out, but it doesn't hurt. Maybe it depends on how much fat you have in the area.

It's not the port that's hurting, it's the incision, which after 5 days hasn't completely healed yet. It's a lot longer than the other ones, so naturally it's going to hurt more and take longer to heal. Perfectly natural. I am one week out and mine is still quite tender. Very normal.

I think you'll have to sit down with her and talk about it. You can tell her first all the positive things you've been experiencing, and then contrast that with how you feel after she says negative things to you. Don't attack her - she'll just get defensive. She's probably feeling very insecure right now and may even think she'll lose your friendship if you get so much thinner than she is. Stick to how you feel. It seems she doesn't understand how her words are affecting you.

And that's exactly what I asked my friend just a few days ago: what will you turn to when you're stressed out if you don't have food? She understood immediately and realized that she had to work out her addiction problem with her psychiatrist before being able to succeed with the lap band. I don't know how successful she will be. Whenever she's given up one crutch she's turned to another. Now there are none left for her except food. Jean, thank you for writing Bandwagon. It was most helpful in preparing for my surgery.

We were allowed to add protein drinks to the clear liquids regimen the day we got home. My doctor's definition of clear liquids, oddly, included orange juice and tomato juice, and protein drinks. We must have the one of the most liberal doctors in the country. No pre-op diet, one day of truly clear liquids, and soft foods on Day 6. I'm not complaining!

I take a lot of pills, and fortunately most of them are little so I don't have to split them. I do split the bigger ones. I can't take the liquids or the gummies because I'm allergic to them, so I buy the smallest pills available and then split them. I even found a "petite" version of calcium 500 & D3, which I split. I'm only 6 days post surgery and haven't any trouble except for the first day home when I took too many at once, not even with the omega-3 (Super Fisol is the smallest I've found). Don't worry about it. If you really want reassurance, take all your daily pills to your nurse educator and show them to her; she'll tell you which ones need splitting. And of course you don't split the extended release or enteric coated tabs.

My guy had his surgery Monday, and I had mine Wednesday. We had the same surgeon and same OR team, and even ended up staying in the same hospital room, one after the other! Neither of us have had much pain. We both took Percocet the day we came home but not after that. He's doing well on iced coffee, chicken and beef broths, Italian ice and popsicles, and as of yesterday had lost 6 pounds in 5 days. I turn out to be allergic to something in broth, popsicles, and Italian ice, so I've been putting the rice Protein Powder in my coffee and sipping on it all day. This morning I took my pills with apple juice - a slow process, one at a time, took an hour! I'm being careful with the pills now, since last night I took a handful at once and had some nausea, which went away with more Water. I'd gained 2.5 pounds of water weight by the day after surgery because I stopped my diuretic, but I've restarted it and have lost that weight, and I'm now down another 2.5. We both get to eat mushy foods Monday. I don't know why my surgeon said I only have to stay on liquids through the weekend and told my guy a week, but it's fine - we'll both be on the same schedule. We both see the surgeon again February 7th and get the ok for real food. This is cool: I'm learning to distinguish what the doctors call "normal bowel sounds" from what I call "hunger gurgling" by taking my blood sugar when my abdomen gurgles. Just now I thought I had a hunger gurgle, but my blood sugar is 142, which is like an after-meal reading, so I now know it was a bowel gurgle, I'm not actually hungry and I don't have to rush to drink something with sugar in it. Very useful. Today I have to go to CVS and get some smallish Calcium pills, since it turns out I'm allergic to the gummies - bad asthma attack from just one, even the one without soy. I can cut up the usual multi-vitamin into small pieces, but the calcium ones are like horse pills, and actually I can't try cutting them because I gave them away last week with the food. I cleaned out the refrigerator, freezer and pantry closet of all the stuff we can't eat now and ended up throwing away four tall kitchen can trash bags and donating four large grocery bags of nonperishables to a local food pantry. All in all, we're both glad the surgery is over and we're already losing weight without much effort. Wow.

I don't understand. Medicare did not require ANY waiting period for either me or my guy. We just had to enter an approved Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence, and we were automatically approved. We had our first visit with the surgeon on December 8th, and our surgeries are scheduled for next week. Could it be that someone's giving you the wrong information?

The program psychologist tried to get me to consider the sleeve because she thought I'd be anxious about the fills and my stomach would be all tightened up. I just told her that I was going to get the band because that's what I wanted and because Medicare wouldn't pay for the sleeve. I inject myself with insulin five times a day and have no fear of needles. Another instance of someone who doesn't really know you at all trying to decide for you what's right for you.

It's Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by Daniel G. Amen, MD. Amazon has it in both book and Kindle formats. He has others, but this one's the most basic, and it has photos of the brain scans. SPECT scans measure the amount of metabolic activity in the brain. You can see the difference between the normal brain and, for example, the brain of someone with clinical depression, in the brain structure called the deep limbic system, if I remember correctly. I learned that my anxiety disorder is due to a serotonin deficiency in the cingulate gyrus, which is why the SSRI's are helpful. It makes sense, since I've had this all my life, that I was born with it. Did I overeat as a child because chocolate or peanut butter somehow raised my serotonin levels, so I learned to treat my anxiety by eating too much of those things, and now I overeat everything? I don't know, but I do know that as of next Wednesday that lifestyle will be OVER!

We need to remember that everything is controlled by the brain. There's nothng that's just "mental" and not "physical." All those billions of brain cells are the physical basis of emotions and memories, too. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm pretty sure that addiction of whatever type has to do with a lack of serotonin and/or other neurotransmitters, which is why psychotropic medications are prescribed for addiction. You can be born that way, or develop it by experience, which is stored in brain cells, or through brain injury. The behavioral stuff is certainly important, though - you can't scarf down a half-gallon of ice cream at night if you don't bring it into the house. I agree that there are definitely trigger foods. Sugar is one of mine, too, and so are nuts. I really think that these cravings are hard-wired into the brain by evolution. When we were hunter-gatherers, our bodies told us to eat high-calorie foods to put on enough weight to get us through the times when food was scarce. Those who didn't do so often didn't survive, so the genes remain with us to encode the development of areas in the brain that tell us "if you find honey in a tree, better eat it all!" If you're interested in the physical brain basis of emotions, Dr. Daniel Amen, who's on PBS occasionally, has a series of books out that describe the results of SPECT scans of the brain and how different areas of the brain correlate with various psychological diagnoses. Really fascinating, if you're into that kind of stuff.

So who's a food addict and who's not? To me, if you can close up a bag of potato chips without finishing them all, or have some ice cream and leave the rest of it in the freezer, you're not a food addict. I think the idea of trying to fill up the emotional hole inside is a big part of food addiction, which is why I tend to agree with the assessment of many of you that my dear friend may not be a good lap band candidate - she has no addictions left to use to try to fill that hole if she gives up her food addiction. I guess she needs to work on her self-esteem first, which is of course a vicious cycle since her being overweight makes her feel less good about herself. It's such a trap. I feel so bad for her. But I need to concentrate on my guy and me now. He got his pre-op clearance from his internist Monday, and I got mine today. Tomorrow we go to the hospital for our pre-admission visits, and then we go stock up on popsicles, broth, etc., for next week. We both hurt in various places, and I think the surgery is coming just in time for both of us.

In fact, there actually may be no one who only loses 60% of their excess weight. When you add all the weight losses and then divide them buy the total number of weight losses, that's the average, or mean, weight loss. The numbers could be half very high and half very low and still come out somewhere in the middle. So basically it's a useless statistic and we should probably ignore it!

HeatherinCA, the average weight loss with the band is 60% of the amount of weight you are above your ideal weight. For example, of all the poeple who have 100 pounds to lose, the average weight loss is 60 pounds. Since it's an average, there are people who lose a lot less and people who lose a lot more.

Maybe this will make you feel better. My surgeon no longer requires a pre-op diet because NO ONE FOLLOWED IT !!

This is not about me, it's about a close friend of mine who is a true addict. She used to be addicted to pills, wine and food, but she quit the pills and wine years ago and is now a true food addict. She's 63, weighs between 250 and 275, and is in a lot of pain. She knows she's addicted and is on medication, but it doesn't stop her from buying Cookies on sale and eating them all, etc. She's been on all the usual diets and has also been to AA and OA. Her former psychologist told her that because she's an addict she's not a good candidate for the lap band. She sees her psychiatrist regularly but doesn't address her addiction, just her family problems. When I told her about my upcoming surgery, she was, typically, not supportive and tried to tell me all the horror stories she knew. Now she says she'll see how I do, but I'm not an addict, I'm a volume eater, so I don't know if our situations are comparable. Do you think she could succeed with the lap band? Do you think the program psychologists are really helpful to addicts? Are there any medications other than the Lexapro and Wellbutrin types that might be helpful? Thanks.

Try to remember that there is an anesthesiologist with you throughout the surgery not just giving you medication to keep you asleep but also monitoring your heart rate, oxygen level and blood pressure to make sure your'e doing fine while you're asleep. So you can just let go and trust your highly skilled doctors and nurses.

According to my nurse educator, the sleeve and the bypass produce more rapid weight loss than the band at first, but at the three-year mark the results for all three are about the same.

I had the same experience, altho not at the group but right in the psychologist's office. I'm 5'2", am aiming for 128 pounds (my 20's weight, and I still have the photos!), and when she told me I should expect to be only174 pounds - a 30 pound loss - I hit the roof. I told her, you don't know me, Dr. L. doesn't know me, and I can do anything I set my mind to. Many people here told me the same thing. The problem is that the psychologists get hung up on the AVERAGE weight loss, which is 60% of the ideal weight loss. For me, that calculation was incorrect anyway - it should have been 40 pounds and 163, which is still 'way too much for me. So I just keep telling myself that I'm NOT AVERAGE and will be one of those who "beats the spread" and gets down to where I want. And so can you.