ReduceReuseRecycle-Me!

No sugar in the Atkins shakes.

Also, I'd like to add...let yourself occasionally "forget" and take things for granted. Life SHOULD be good enough for us all to take for granted and by that I mean we should never have such terrible things happen to us. Now, you are well enough to actually be able to forget, you are healing emotionally. You don't have a constant reminder of your torment and that is reason for celebration. Thanks for your story.

This is probably your new "regular". Regular is whatever is regular for each person. It can change and doesn't have to be everyday.

I have concerns over this as well. My patient advocate said that you can write a letter to cover the missing weigh-ins. Obviously, we didn't fan this weight overnight and the insurance should see that, too.

EAT SMALL...LIVE BIG!

Spiteful is right. Jerk is right. And I don't think he can do that. If he gets away with it, I hate to say it but state aid will cover it. My sister-in-law had the surgery AND PLASTIC SURGERY! all on the state welfare system. You don't need him, Crysky!

So, the fizakeyatrist (any I Love Lucy fans...?) went well. Gave him our questionnaire and he asked a few other questions and said he will put me down for post-op follow-up. Meanwhile, in this corner, we also did a resting metabolic rate test, which I failed. The results said I should be burning around 2900 calories a day. Huh?! Then we did the H-pylori test. That was negative. Tomorrow we have the lovely upper GI portion of the show...stay tuned for highlights, folks

Faith Matters. What an awesome name for an evangelist! If she shows up on TV, I get some of her earnings for penning the name!

Thanks to everyone for responding. Your stories are scary and heartening at the same time! I am not scheduled yet though we think it will be in December. I have hypertension and extreme shortness of breath that has not been diagnosed to my satisfaction yet. I wanted to see what other comorbidities are out there. Good Luck and continued success to us all!

Religion and politics...very bad topics. I agree with Iggychic and the power of positive thought. I have come to realize that todays' religions are just yesterdays' mythologies. Long before Jesus, the Romans and Greeks believed their gods came down and transformed themselves to mate with humans. Isn't that what the christian god did? The only good change in the christian mythologies is that they preached goodness and light, instead of running amok, like the old gods and their followers. The Romans and Greeks (and others) blamed their gods for natural disasters, too. They said they were mad at humans, or they were mad at each other, so they hurled lightning bolts, stirred the seas, shook the earth. When these things happen, we say "God" works in mysterious ways. Where is the difference? All that said, my faith is in my surgeon and his staff and me. Good can still exist without a "god" being the source.

I don't think there is a chance of "making a mistake" unless you mean that giving up eating crazy is the mistake. As long as surgery goes well and we recover well by following our doctors' orders, where is the mistake? We can only win by losing and that's what we want, right? There is a family somewhere here in the US that did something radical a few years ago. I'll have to Google it and see where they are. Their family suffered from a terrible history of stomach cancer and it was an inherited form of cancer. They all decided to HAVE THEIR STOMACHS REMOVED to prevent getting the cancer. They ended up with prosthetic stomachs and one of the good side effects was weight loss. What I am saying is, they knew they had this possibility of dying from this cancer that killed quite a few in their family over the years. They made the decision to live by doing this radical thing. Like us. We also know that we could die from this, call it disease or addiction or what have you. We have been fighting it for years, too. We have been hoping it doesn't kill us. So we are taking what may be, for some of us, a radical step...but, what may hopefully be for us all...the right step to our healthy futures.

My psych eval is tomorrow, but my patient advocate at the surgeon's office sent me home with a questionnaire with 567 true false questions. It took a while to fill it out. I have been to psychiatrists in the past for my panic disorder so I figure the visit should be pretty basic tomorrow. I will report.

Wow, what happened at that appointment that set you off. Or was it just that you wanted to slap her for her attitude? My surgeon put that whole 500 cals/day thing in perspective for me. We can't do it as we are now with our normal (or abnormal) stomachs, but the "tool" they are giving us is the tiny stomach that will only want the tiny calories, for a little while, anyway. I had trouble with that starvation level thing as well.

High hopes for everyone on this thread. Good luck to all.

You go, Gabby! Good luck.

Good for you LM. You will be great!

Bertha, hope you have a great recovery.

When did you have or when are you having surgery? I am tentatively set for December.

We had our consultation with our surgeon last Wednesday and right after that we met with the patient advocate who set up all of our other appointments needed to get to surgery. For us, I think the hardest part is going to be getting our PCP to write the approval letter and also getting our weight stats for the last five years. We moved from CT to NV and we were never bigtime doctor goers. I've had to order our files from the doctors in CT and I am waiting on their mercy. We are lucky in that our healthcare plan does not carry any crazy demands like 3, 6 or 12 month supervised doctor visits or dieting.

I know there are patients on here who have asthma, but what about other issues like heart disease, etc? SORRY I POSTED IT TWICE!

I know there are patients on here who have asthma, but what about other issues like heart disease, etc?

Good luck, hope it's eeezy peeezy!