kimmr

Hi everyone, I'm in the same boat....got banded about 21 months ago, and now it keeps slipping every time I get a fill, so it cannot be properly adjusted. Therefore, I have a useless band. I'm looking at revising to a sleeve. Seems to me that the band might be going extinct in a few years. If only I had known....

Thanks everyone, good to know. I'll see if I can track down any more people who fit this criteria. Did you do well with the band before it failed, and then has VSG at a relatively low BMI to either lose the last few or just maintain?

Bionic, can you explain your insurance coverage? The would cover a revision but not a virgin sleeve?

So thank you, Pat, for your honest words. I don't know why I beat myself up about this. I know you're right. I've got something in my genes that makes us fat. My mom died of a cancer that was very hard to detect because she was significantly overweight. She's been gone 19 years now, she died when I was 12. Her mom has had breast cancer, but survived. My dad's mom has diabetes. All of my (literally, all of them) aunts and uncles on my dads side are obese. They get new knees like normal people get new cars. My dad is the smallest at maybe 5'5", 225 lbs. I did the band because I didn't want to leave my own girls without a mom. I did something 'once and for all.' Now I come to find out that I made a mistake, or what seems like a mistake, and I just don't want to be doing this again in 5 years. What's funny is that my husband has been saying the exact same thing...."It's not your fault, there's nothing you can do about your genes, we can figure out how to pay for it, we want you to be healthy..." but for some reason, it's totally different coming from a person that has been in my shoes. He understands my pain, but he's never lived it, so it's just not quite the same. I also know I'm being unreasonable about this because we've had all sorts of tragedies in our lives over the last year. This just adds to it, and makes me feel like I'll never again get to a happy point in my life. I hate living like this, truly. This is why I'm going back to counseling.

This makes me cry, I read it in the bathroom on my cell phone! I'll respond from home where I can cry openly.

Ms Broad....I applaud you. I wish I could be so confident. I know I'm scared because my band failed, and I don't want to do another failure. I think it would also make a difference if I was back up at my higher weight - I was banded at 241, now I'm at 173 or so, but that's up 20 lbs from my lowest with the band. I would be more willing to make what I feel is a very drastic decision. But at the same time, why should I wait until I've gained (cause I know it's going to happen...)? Isn't that what everyone says - that they wished they had done it sooner? Why can't I be normal and not need WLS in the first place? I'm setting up some counseling next week. I'm having a really hard time dealing with these feelings of, "I hate being me." Such feelings are totally new to me....I have a beautiful family who supports me 100%, even considering this revision. I don't know, this band failure thing has really changed me into a person I don't recognize. Can you feel my pain?

Keke...did the band work for you? Did you gain everything back (assuming you had lost)?

You're totally right, UX, I know you are. It's just that I never get to 'talk' to someone with a VSG that's 10 years old. I don't know how to find those people. And clearly, they won't be poking around on a WLS website, because they wouldn't have had that surgery for weight loss. I don't know, I'm just so gun shy. I research and thought about it and finally committed to lap band to be done with my weight problem once and for all, and now here I am dealing with it again. I'm self pay, too, so that doesn't help matters. I don't want to screw over my kids' college funds. But man, I'm terrified of gaining everything back. I lost 90 with the band, but have gained back 20, and I'm definitely not slowing down. I know the rest is on it's way back. My poor psyche is so freakin' fragile. As I explained to my husband, I've never loved myself more than I did when I was moving along smoothly with the band. And now.....it's all back to the same old feelings of crappiness.

I'm a bandster with a slip and I'm considering the sleeve. Are there any old sleevers out there? I know the procedure itself isn't much more than 5 or 6 year old, but where are those people? How did you make the decision to go to a sleeve, not knowing what it's like in 15 or 30 years? I'll point out the obvious....I basically went with the band not knowing what it's like in 15 or 30 years (cause those people don't exist, either), but I did it under the guise of being 'reversible.' Of course, now I've come to find out that the band can do all sorts of damage and has a massive failure rate. How do you know that the sleeve isn't going to stretch and you won't gain everything back in 10 years?

Huh..."refuse to live in fear." How does one get to that point? I'm a long ways from that!

Thanks for all your replies, ladies (I think, guess I don't know). I figured I wouldn't see much until after Christmas, as I wasn't looking here much myself. I'm absolutely terrified of gaining it all back. Truly scared to death of it all. But, I feel like as I'm considering the sleeve now, I need to make end-of-life decissions. I feel like I'm making a permanent decision, so I need to think...gee, in 30 years when my stomach is shot to hell cause so much stuff has been cut off and rearranged and whatnot, am I going to be happy that I made this decision now at age 31? Does that make sense? And the, along the lines of Cowgirl, I'm sort of pissed to find out that the band does cause permanent changes. I thought I picked an option that WAS totally benign, and then I come to find out that it's not. I just feel like I made a mistake with the band, and now I'm uber senstitive to making another mistake by going with the sleeve.

Thanks Ateam, I'm glad to hear from someone. Currently, my BMI is about a 29, but I'm steadily climbing, so I'm positive I'll be above 30 shortly. What was your band story? Were you a higher BMI at banding? Did you lose with the band?

I'm brand new to sleeve talk, and I just found out within the past month that my band is slipped beyond use. It's a long story, but not atypical, as I have come to realize after reading and reading and reading. Some day I'll explain, but I have what seems like a more pressing issue. I did well with my band, lost 90 of the 100 lbs that I wanted to lose. Over the last three months, with my band slipping, unfills, trying to refill, another slip, another unfill...now totally empty, I've gained back about 20 lbs. So, as I type this, I weigh about 172 lbs. I'm terrified of committing to what seems like such a drastic surgery, but I'm equally terrified of gaining back up to the 240 lbs I was banded at. Like many of you, I have a lifetime history of losing and gaining, over and over and over and over again. So it is completely ridiculous of me to go in for major weight loss surgery when, in reality, I am only about 30 lbs overweight? For those of you that were sleeved after being banded, did you tell yourself that you could keep the weight off, fail at it, and then go for a sleeve? Or, did you do the sleeve when you were relatively small? Or, is it that everyone that went from band to sleeve seems to belong to that group that never really lost with the band, THEN went to sleeve? Are the people out there that did great with the band weight-loss-wise, but had to go to the sleeve for some mechanical problem, like the slip that I keep having? Thanks in advance. I'll have lots more questions.