Momonanomo

I just read this -- Thank you for discussing the binge eating. I'm going to look into getting that book.

Thank you thank you for posting as a 2 year veteran! It means a lot to us newbies to have the long term success stories check in! Congratulations on your success. I appreciate too your straightforward advice about SO's. It is important to realize that 'S' stands for significant, and they should always feel that way in our lives. I can't imagine getting to a point where I need to put ON some weight, but I sure look forward to the possibility! Sounds like you have managed your weight very well, and I applaud you for it!

princesstia, my prayers go with you on your big day. I am so sorry you had to lose your grandma like that. She sounds like a wonderful woman. I have faith that she will be right there with you tomorrow and will keep you safe and strong. best wishes! Keep us posted!

Went to the seminar required by my surgeon this past week. I didn't learn anything I hadn't already heard about in great detail by my own research and by spending a lot of time here on VST The benefit to the seminar, as far as I'm concerned, was taking DH along so he could hear it all. He found it very interesting and informative. Oh! One thing I did learn that I am VERY excited about is that this surgeon does all his sleeves with a single incision through the belly button! That is SO cool!! Wonder if anyone else here on VST has had this? I also found out that my insurance requires a 6 month medically supervised diet. Ugh. Like I haven't already tried aaaaallllllllll the diets out there, supervised or unsupervised. My big thing about this requirements is this: yep I can do the diet, and I will lose weight. I've done it before -- lots. My problem, however, is that I cannot keep the weight off, hence the need for VSG. So what is a 6 month diet going to do except maybe get my BMI down to where insurance might not cover it? I'm sure as we progress and I can speak with a coordinator from my surgeon's office I will figure out more. Maybe there's a loophole or a work-around that we can do. I've been reading a lot of people's entries about insurance qualifications, comorbidities (or lack thereof of as far as the insurance approved list), and employer exclusions. What's frustrating is this: quite a few of us are borderline BMI (39) , have been yo-yo-ing for many years if not decades, do not have comorbidities YET, and therefore may not get insurance approval. My mom said I have a serious case of the "Yets" (I thought she was attempting to speak yiddish there for a minute lol). What she was pointing out is that I don't have high bp -- yet. I don't have diabetes -- yet. I don't have any of the other serious problems that the insurance deems worthy -- yet. But I will soon if I don't do something. My knees and ankles and back already hurt, but I don't see that on the insurance's list. . . actually I may have sleep apnea, but I don't think it's "severe". Will find out when I get my sleep test in a couple of weeks. I just think the insurance companies are being foolish with their requirements in many cases. ANYways. So 6 months. From when I don't know, waiting to hear from the surgeons office to see if the clock has started ticking yet. I think right now they are getting the ball rolling and hitting up my insurance co. Perhaps we can find a loophole or a work-around. I'd like to have this done like, yesterday. I've been regaling DH with stories from the message boards here. You guys are really fun I'm talking specifically about a recent thread entitled: "So, really weird inappropriate question" That was awesome (and informative hehe) Best to all of you out there. Happy holidays!

Thank you SO much for the detailed report -- I try to find & read as many Surgery Day Stories as I can. You are so right to say that knowledge is power -- I agree. I get a little scared sometimes thinking about going under the knife and being under anesthesia. Reading your story was very reassuring. I wish you the best on this new adventure and much success! Keep us posted!

thanks for sharing the stats on movie theater popcorn - yikes! I will be sharing those lil tidbits of info with my mom, who cannot resist the alluring scent of popcorn that they pump through the lobby of the movie theater! Not so alluring when yoou think of how bad it is for you.... Seems like it was a major learning experience for you --- you're back on track already, and I applaud you for it. Onward!

I'll chime in and say I would also go for the second opinion -- this surgeon sounds totally insensitive and not to mention perhaps unsure of her surgical skills? I dunno....maybe she's just trying to limit your complications, but wow the bedside manner seems to be seriously lacking. And for her to turn the conversation around to herself and talk about how she should be the one crying? Wow :/ Not even sure what to say about that remark, because it's disturbing on a lot of different levels. But I gotta say that it really stuck out for me that you said "This isn't gonna stop me from the diet/exercise plan I've been doing" Good for you! THAT is a winning attitude!

Just like Hollyrock100 a couple of days ago, I dreamed last night that I had had my surgery and felt great. In my dream I had been released from the hospital and kept telling myself to not get too frisky even though I felt good. And not hungry! I wonder if maybe the metformin I started yesterday had anything to do with that? Last night I had a long and productive discussion with DH, and he has a greater understanding and is looking forward to meeting my surgeon. I basically spilled everything that I had written in my blog entry yesterday, and joy of joys, he 'gets it'. He even asked about insurance, and I explained about the BMI thing and how I would have to get approval since my BMI is not the 40+ where they give you automatic go-ahead. He actually said that if insurance won't cover it, we will still make it happen. Awesome! My surgeon has a comprehensive program and requires a pre-op program that includes nutritionist, phys-ed and psych, so this won't be an immediate thing. And as a wise sleever here on the boards said, I can call it off any time up until they put me to sleep. DH will have plenty of time to really wrap his head around this, as will I. So DH asks that while this process is developing if I would please help him get used to the idea. Because he still just really doesn't understand why this will be different from all the previous efforts I've made to lose weight, because he's never struggled with his weight, nor did anyone in his family growing up. I also now have an assignment to share with him all the things I'm learning about weight related diseases (as Vicki suggested -- thank you!), the dangers of yo-yo dieting, and all the pro's and cons of WLS. He is open to learning Yay! I also apologized to him for being snippy about his lipo question. I did shed some tears when he asked if my love for him and our life together was not enough to help me to be healthier without having surgery....and that is so sad but just illustrates how powerless I feel to my weight struggles at this point. It is because I love him and our life together that I am ready to take this big step so that I can finally start a diet & exercise regime that I will have a real chance of sticking to. I will still need to do the work, but this time, if I do it, it will be effective. I don't want to waste more of my life not living it to the fullest! Got a call that they've scheduled a consult for a sleep test. Just a consult, don't bring your jammies lol. K that's it for now. aloha!

Congrats on one week That's so exciting! Please do post back on what your surgeon has to say. I am really looking forward to someday soon being able to say "Well today is one week" , so thanks for sharing your story. btw your hair in your profile pic is gorgous, and your profile name cracked me up -- isn't that an error message having to do with network or internal communication? lol! good one!

thanks so much Vicki! hehe, I wrote so much in that blog that I was sure no one would read it all the way through, but I felt I needed to blog to organize my thoughts so thank you for reading & commenting and supporting. What a wonderful thing this website is! Thank you for your suggestion. He has agreed to attend the seminar with me & I hope that helps him understand better. I'm so sorry about your band experience, but I'm SO glad you didn't have long term damage. A friend of mine went through some scary things with hers. And honestly, from what I've learned about grehlin, I think that banding but leaving my tummy in tact to produce hunger hormones...well i think that just sounds like torture! The sleeve seems smart in so many ways. . . . Let's give a round of applause to all the supportive spouses! They rock!

I’ve made my decision. I just got my referral, and I’m signed up for my first seminar with the surgeon in 2 weeks. I’ve been addicted to VST for about a month, and I am a sponge absorbing everyone’s pre and post op stories. God bless the people of VST I’ve had a weight problem all my life it seems, whether real or perceived. I’m tall, and I was always the biggest kid in the class in elementary school. I wasn’t an overweight child really. My older sister had a more petite frame, and I think in some ways just the fact that she was smaller made me identify with being a Big Girl before I ever really was. But when adolescence hit, I did indeed become overweight. I’ve always been hungry. My mom talks about how even as an infant still in the hospital, the nurses would have to bring me in for feeding well ahead of my scheduled feeding time – mom would get a call from the nurse’s station and could hear me shrieking in the back ground. We have discussed recently how interesting it was to have two daughters being raised the same way who had fundamentally different feelings about food. I have a very clear memory of saying to myself at age 15 “If I don’t get control of my weight right now, I never will”. And I never really did, imagine that! I went up and down the next 25+ years! I actually look back at pictures of when I was 15, and think damn I was cute – I don’t look anywhere as big as I felt. I was 5’10” by 8th grade, and I felt that I was huge compared to my classmates. By the time I graduated high school though, I weighed 200 lbs. Still, looking back and comparing to where I am now, I wasn’t so bad off. Through college I went up and down between 170 and maybe 220. I was a SERIOUS yo-yo dieter. By age 24, out in the professional world and having a failed romantic life, I got tired of being 235 lbs and joined Weight Watchers. And man, I was good at it! I got down to 160. But ya know, I was motivated by a failed romance, a situation in which I felt “if only I wasn’t overweight, I would be desirable”. With age comes wisdom, and I now know that the guy was just a total loser ANYways, I attended WW under the guise of adhering to their program, but in reality I just severely restricted my calories for almost a year. I lost weight, but I wasn’t exercising, so no doubt I harmed my metabolism BIG TIME. I was so successful that WW asked me to work for them as a group leader. I wish I hadn’t. It actually is a really good program; it teaches balanced eating habits and a healthy lifestyle in a very livable way. It works for SO many people long term. It just didn’t stick with me long term. The weight came back, and a bunch more. Same old story that so many of us had lived. Then I discovered diet pills! Hoorah! I was able to go from about 250 to 185, and I lost a bit of my sanity as well – because it is essentially speed. Very bad scene for me. And again, no exercise, just severe caloric restriction. So when I stopped, back came the weight. And the beginnings of other health problems. In my early thirties, I moved to Hawaii. Hit 279. Yikes! Desperate, I went back to diet pills. I got down to 206 and met the man who would become my husband. As we got to know each other, I learned that he actually prefers women who are not stick figure skinny. He told me early on that I was his “dream girl” in mind, spirit, and body. How lucky am I?!? He seems attracted to me no matter what. He loves how I am now, loved how I was then, and has expressed appreciation for photos of me when I was 100 lbs smaller. He loves me no matter what! So I dropped the pills (he never knew about), and the weight crept up. Even as I’ve gained weight, he’s still chased me around like that little cartoon skunk on Looney Tunes, and (lucky me!) he tells me how gorgeous and sexy I am every chance he gets even all these years later. He’s fine with the fact that I will never be ‘petite’. He is, however, extremely athletic, and as the years have gone by and my weight has crept back up he misses me going on hikes and paddle boarding with him. He still thinks I’m sexy-as-hell, but he loses an awful lot of sleep because of my snoring. We both wish I had more energy and confidence. I love him dearly, and I love that he loves my voluptuousness, but he also loves me enough to want me to feel good. I tried medi-fast. That one was really was bad for me – maybe I lost about 20 lbs, but then I would go crazy with hunger and undo all the good I’d done. Three years after we met, I got to 282. OMG, it sucked. Tired, sick, sleepy – no way to live a good life. Apnea while awake and just watching TV! I contemplated WLS. I shared this with DH, and he encouraged me to research it and committed his support with whatever I chose. What an angel. Well at that time several years ago – RNY and the band were pretty much it, and I didn’t like either choice. I won’t go into my concerns with those 2 procedures here, but I decided if that’s what WLS was, it wasn’t for me. DH has said many MANY times since then how GLAD he was that I didn’t opt for surgery…. So I joined <national prepackaged meals diet program>. I lost 40 lbs within a few months. It’s another great program that works for a lot of people. A family member of mine in fact has lost 70 lbs and kept it off! But…..it didn’t stick for me. I’m still going all these years later, but in the last year I’ve gained back 20 of the 40 lbs I had lost. Never even got down anywhere close to goal. I’m just SO been-there-done-that. I get too freaking hungry. I cheat the program. I feel like a huge failure. I comfort those feelings with food. More eating leads to even more hunger because of blood sugar swings, and more feelings of failure. I set myself up for failure with the old “Last Supper Syndrome”, you know the one – where you tell yourself you’ll get back on track tomorrow, so you may as well absolutely make the most of it tonight…and then tomorrow never comes. So here I am today: 260, feeling a fool, kinda half-arsed doing <national prepackaged meals diet program>, exhausted, sore and tired of it all. A month ago, I saw a new doctor (because surely this can all be fixed with the right medication, right?) and he – unsolicited- advocated WLS. I was like “No, I don’t want surgery. My husband wouldn’t want me to have surgery.” So the doctor ordered a battery of tests – you know, all the blood work, fasting and then with the sugar drink. Man that day was hard – afterward I was cold and shakey and had to take a 3 hour snap. Apparently I don’t handle a super-dose of carbs very well! What this doctor had brought up interested me. Over the next month, I again researched WLS. This time, I discovered the sleeve. I devoured every bit of info I could find on it. And….everything that was a turn-off for me about the other WLS options was resolved when it comes to the sleeve. I learned about grehlin, the hunger hormone in the lining of the stomach, and realized that’s what has driven me since birth to be so hungry! The thing is, once you become overweight and then obese, the problems just snowball and your body chemistry gets farther away from normal. I do take responsibility for it having gotten out of control. But I feel validated knowing I had this challenge from the beginning whereas people like my sister, and DH, didn’t. I have discussed all this with DH and we have agreed that he just doesn’t understand what it’s like to have a weight problem. …So when I brought up WLS with DH this time, his immediate reaction was “I’m against it.” At that point I had already fully gotten on board with the idea myself, and was so excited and so hopeful for a healthy life, that when DH shut me down like that, I felt almost as though he had signed my death sentence. I know I’m being dramatic, but I also know many of you reading this will understand where I’m coming from. So I went and researched some more. I found VST – awesome! I’m so grateful for VST! More educated, I approached DH again, and was again shut down. He 1) doesn’t believe my weight is that big of a problem and 2) believes if I just eat less and move more I can overcome this. He seems to think It’s a moral and strength-of-character issue. You all know that line of thinking. But, I’m convinced that if he had been along for the ride with me all of the past 30 some-odd years that I've struggled with this, he would understand better. We enjoy a spectacularly healthy relationship and approach life as a team – this is one thing though, that we don’t come at from the same place. So the problem here is twofold – not only is it something we don’t see eye to eye on, but it is so rare that we don’t see eye to eye, that to not to is additionally disturbing! We do have a relationship of equality too – reading the last paragraph one might not think that. Truth is, I can do what I want, but what I ultimately want is for us to be on the same page with it. I need his support. After Thanksgiving at my parents’ house, we came home and DH said out of the blue “See, if you had WLS, you’d never enjoy Thanksgiving again.” And thus opened a long and detailed discussion about WLS and the sleeve in particular—what it is, what it does, how one lives a sleeved life. And by the end of our conversation, you know what? He said he’ll support me. Woo HOO! So I’ve been to the doctor again for the results of the tests, and I’m prediabetic. If I stay this weight and just get older, I will become diabetic. If I gain weight any time soon, I will become diabetic sooner. My BMI is like 38.5. I’m worried because my insurance says approval is for BMI of >40 or 35+ with comorbidities. The rest of my bloodwork is fine. The doctor is sending me for a sleep test for apnea and feels that will suffice for comorbidity. Pretty sure I have it, but what if I don’t? He's also putting me on (can’t remember the name) the medicine that Type II and prediabetics take to help regulate blood sugar, and it does often cause *some* weight loss. DH asked last night (with a tone that was, to me, antagonistic) “What if, while you’re out for surgery, the doctor decides to also perform liposuction?” And I was like WTF are you talking about? that’s as absurd as him giving me a nose job during WLS! Well, I guess I was a little too vehement in my reply, because he got offended. And adheres to the belief that these two surgeries are absolutely along the same lines. He reiterated that he doesn’t want me to have WLS (although he will support me). I can tell by his relating liposuction to WLS that he *still* REALLY doesn’t understand what this surgery is about. Seriously! He’s a really intelligent guy, my DH. Extremely intelligent, actually. But I thought this was pretty ridiculous. Part of me thinks he really needs to be made aware of how vastly different these two surgeries are, not only on a surgical level, but also in motivation, intent and result. Not to mention -- my surgeon wouldn’t do anything I hadn’t signed off on, even if he was trained in cosmetic surgery and had a lipo wand on hand in case the spirit moved him. (Yes, sarcasm) So, is it necessary to try to educate DH more on this? To make sure he knows this is not a cosmetic/vanity surgery (like when his ex a decade ago got breast implants)? Or would it be advantageous to just let him think it is more along the lines of a boob job or lipo, so that he doesn’t grow overly concerned about the seriousness of WLS and go back to saying he absolutely won’t support it? No, I think it better to be straight forward as we have always been with each other. I so whole-heartedly believe that this is the right thing for me, and that I am an excellent candidate. Thanks to all those sharing their stories. Hope I can pay it forward someday. My blog entries should be of more reasonable length in the future

12/12/12 at 12 -- you KNOW that's gotta be a lucky! congratulations!