Marimaru

I was an overeater/grazer. Grazing is what gets me now, but I can't eat much at once, which helps. Mostly I just love the taste of food. Something sounds good, so I'll have some, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether I'm hungry.

I've started keeping iced tea in the fridge, and I at least make myself drink a glass of that if I know I'm not really hungry but I am looking for food. that usually distracts my attention for a while at least. I've been making egg salad a lot lately, 3 egg whites, one whole egg, lite mayo, and mustard... it's quite filling, and pretty low cal. Alternately I'll just snack on boiled egg whites too. Good Protein, way low cal, filling (not to mention work, because I don't keep them boiled ready to go).

That's not even all that far away, congrats!

I think the only way for your insurance to cover the removal is if it was an emergency surgery. In that case it would be billed as emergency surgery vs WLS... at least that is my understanding...

I think it would be uncomfortable for a little while to wear a girdle right after surgery. You should talk to your doctor, he's probably got a time frame for you for that. If I had to guess, I'd say 2 weeks.

You might have your gall bladder checked out also

I'm all empty. Dr. Kelly said it's possible that it's just stress, but I'm not so sure. She gave me an order that I can take to an imaging center to get a barium swallow with flouro, and then I can take the films back to her to review. If I don't find a surgeon in my area soon, I'll go that route.

I started aspirating Saturday night, and I'm getting completely unfilled today until I can find a surgeon who can look into it (the fill doctor I am going to doesn't have flouro). My self diagnosis is that it's slipped.

I'm nervous about losing restriction. Between June and December, I totally let myself go and crept up about 20 lbs. All of that is gone now, and I don't want it to come back. My intention is to keep counting calories even when the band is empty, to keep losing weight despite that, but I don't know how strong I'll be able to be. I know that often for a slip someone will be unfilled for a month or 6 weeks to see if it'll slip back into place, so I'm resigned to at least that much time without it. If I need surgery to fix it, it'll be from now until I get surgery, and then 6 weeks after that, before I start getting fills again, and who knows how long it'll take to get good restriction? And that assumes I'm not told that I have to have it removed, and then wait for six months before I can have another one or something.

Mostly I'm just venting off nervous energy...

Congratulations! I hope to be hitting that soon too!

"If you don't want to fix my problem because you don't want to have to admit my slip in your statistics as a surgeon, don't worry, because if I have to get this fixed elsewhere, the entire band community will know how 'helpful' you are".

Honestly I don't know what else to tell you. If my BAND surgeon told me to try and lose weight by dieting because there was something wrong with my band, I would probably just stare blankly at them for a few minutes, and then ask them why the hell they became a band surgeon if that was the advice they were going to give people. And then I'd find a different doctor, and then I'd be sure to post here and anywhere else I could think of to make sure people were aware that if you have complications, she's just going to tell you to go on a diet.

I think it's that a Doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

Kat, your SIL is unbelievable... wow... that just seems so dangerous to me. Also, I think the port is really only 'self healing' for so many sticks... she's gonna end up with a leak too if she's not careful.

Interesting. Yesterday the website still said "coming soon" for Salem in one place.

Thanks Dx Mom, that helps :biggrin:. I'll be seeing her in a few hours. I'll let you know what I think :smile2:

Another thing that I thought was interesting, is that he posted comments to his own video with copies of the polls from THIS website as reference as well, although I didn't find the poll results to be that disheartening...

Congratulations! He's a cutie!!

I believe that many RNs are trained for this, but I wouldn't know how they'd go about requesting that training or whatever...

I've been having the non-acid reflux this week too. I'm having an unfill tomorrow. I'm quite surprised with myself, because even though I haven't seen the doctor yet, I've kind of decided that it's a slip, and I'm really calm about it. If I need surgery to get it fixed, I'll be glad to get a newer band. If they tell me it has to be removed without replacement, well, I'll freak out when they tell me that and decide what to do then.. heh

I started aspirating on Saturday night, and I'm getting a full unfill tomorrow. I recently moved to Oregon and I'm trying to find a surgeon to help me diagnose whether it's a slip or something else, but I was fortunately to find a fill doctor for the unfill at least.

If it's a slip, hopefully it'll self correct, but if it wont and I need surgery, I wont be too disappointed to get a new model.

As for momentum, you just have to quit "waiting for it to come back". I gained some weight after my wedding in June, and in January I said "enough" and started counting calories that day and I'm almost back to my pre-wedding weight. Then I can start getting back toward my main goal.

My husband is pretty understanding when I become an emotional wreck for a while, especially when I'm aware of it and apologize for it before he mentions it.

I have head hunger still to this day. It's rough one to break. I try to keep my hands busy. Doing something that I don't want to get dirty with food, like crochet, or (being a geek) computers games and the like (involved games, not popcap puzzle type games). I also try to keep iced tea brewed in the house so that I can make myself drink a glass of that before getting a snack. Often by the time I'm done with it, I've moved on and forgotten I wanted a snack.

Reading some of the comments below the video, I'm not sure why people consider a slipped band a 'failure'... all it is is a complication that has to be fixed.

I dunno. I've recently started having reflux issues, which is likely a sign of having a slipped band, and I still don't regret having to get it done. If it needs to be surgically fixed, I'll probably asked to have a newer band, just because the technology gets better as time goes on.

I think my first NSV was about getting into a certain size, but I honestly can't remember. Some examples though, seeing your bones (feet bones, wrist bones, ribs, collar bones), being able to breath while you paint your toenails or tie your shoes, things like that. I actually have some definition to my cheekbones now, which is nice. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a whole bunch of veins in my arms... I'm not sure that's an NSV or "holy crap you need a tan!". hehe.

Very cool :biggrin:

I don't have any articles to give you, but one thing that helped my DH with his understanding is when we were talking about his drinking of beer (which is his vice). He thought I didn't understand how it calmed him down to toss back couple after work. I said something to the effect of "you use beer, I use a pint of ice cream, that's the only difference". He sat silent for a good 10 minutes after that.

Does your DH have anything like that you could use as a comparison? I think that type of comparison only works if the person you are talking to has something like that. Telling someone that our eating is like an alcoholics taking a drink doesn't mean anything to anyone who's not an alcoholic, you know? They still don't get it.

There's a HILARIOUS South Park episode on this very subject. Jared comes to town, I think to do a motivational speech or whatever, and it's found out that his has aids that help him stay on track. The jist of the episode is that he starts and Aids for Everyone campaign, and all the adults think he means AIDS not aids... Either way, I imagine he lost the weight by himself, and gave them his story, but he's probably got free subs for life now, and I imagine that being in their commercials is a good motivator. I was pretty happy for him when I recently saw the commercial that said he'd kept the weight off for 10 years. Subway diet or no, I hope I can say that 10 years from now.

A couple of things, firstly there are a number of people on the board here who very rarely, if ever PB (throw up), so it's not a "for sure" that you will with the band if you're careful. The other thing is that for many people the first fill isn't enough for optimum restriction. But you have to go up slowly because many people swell up after a fill, and you don't want to be too tight while you are swollen.

Thanks Jack. Dr. Patterson's office wont take patients who were banded in Mexico for the most part. I've left a message for Dr. Fitzpatrick. I figure she can at least give me an unfill while I search for a doctor with flouro and whatnot. A "fill center" is supposedly opening in Salem, but when I lived in Cali there was one "coming soon" in Torrance for almost 3 years, so I'm not holding my breath.