Nursebarbie

You are right and I bow down to you. Infact let's fire all the doctors too since most cardiologists have never had a hear attack so what do they know? And those male ob gyns too! Imagine them knowing how to deal with being pregnant! When I go back to work in a week I will be sure to tell all the other nurses and doctors that we are idiots who cannot advise anyone of health issues unless we have the same medical problems. And we better find shrinks who are crazy too right? After it takes one to know one right?
You deserve the blue ribbon for this line of thought. Thanks for a laugh.

Google karma sutra and have fun!

This will be the final nail in the lapband coffin. Saw that commercial and thought wow now they are really grasping at straws here.

Google karma sutra and have fun!

If there was to be a Class Action lawsuit against lap band and related companies, would you join it? My surgeon really believes its going to be yanked off for the market because as a medical device its failure rate is extremly high with high rate of complications that are way outside the margin of accepted standards for the FDA. I'm not sure I would though. I'm not the suing type.

An Angel in the book of life wrote down my baby's birth. And whispered as she closed the book "too beautiful for earth."

I really think that if that worked, it would be all over this forum - losing slow is not the end of the world - you're losing and keeping it off. This is supposed to be a Marathon, not a Sprint

I think your mind is made up so don't let anyone here sway you other than your team of medical professionals. My only concern is it being out of the country and trying to find follow up. I don't agree with you letting her wait another 5 or 10 years until she is really fat and has diabetes and other conditions. Its not like she's 20 pounds overweight. Once you reach 100 pounds overweight the rate for diet modification longterm success is about 2 percent. Listen to your mothers instinct. You will know what to do.

Yep hated my crapband. Horrible medical device.

Down 58 pounds total
24 pounds post op cw 200
Before
At 4 weeks post op
[ATTACH]16168[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]16169[/ATTACH]

Hw 258
Sw 223
Cw 200
199 if I stand on one foot!

You can be modified from a sleeve to a bypass. My Dr. at Kaiser Fremont mentioned this is done if GERD is very bad post-op.
I wouldn't say many people revise to DS, but some do. There is a DS board on Obesity Help so you could get more info about DS there. There are many more side effects with DS, but for some it is a life saver if they can't take the weight off another way.
The restriction alone has been enough to get me to goal. My program uses a 40 bougie to size the stomach. I have started a blog on this site and discuss bougie size there:
http://www.verticals...-and-then-some/
For North Carolina references, check the Gastric Sleeve Surgery Support Groups → Local Gastric Sleeve Surgery (VSG) Support Groups → USA Local VSG Support and then search for North Carolina. I found three threads for that state.
Best wishes on your journey!
Lynda

nursebarbie, try and ignore those with negative posts. there are so many others that have positive things to say. Im, still post op and get much more info from others can any support I can give, but I do see how some people are just abrasive in how they say things without any consideration to how others may feel. I find it disheartening that people have to write "please don't judge me," or "Go easy on me" on their posts when asking for support. After all, this is a support forum. I personally have enjoyed reading your posts.

Google karma sutra and have fun!

Nursebarbie, I am sorry you have had negative experiences here. Hang in there. You will become Internet friends with folks here over time and it will really make your journey feel as though you have company.

Maybe I am the only one who gets my feelings hurt on these forums. Maybe its the hormones out of wack since surgery. Or maybe its the fact that I haven't been off work for 6 weeks and I feel so isolated, so alone. And this site made me feel so comforted. Like I had this big group of friends in the same boat as me. Tonight I guess some of the hostility is getting to me. It seems if you go against someone who's been here longer or sleeved longer than watch out. I may be newly sleeved but I am not an idiot. My opinions can have value too. Anyhow, just feeling alone and discounted. Thanks for reading.

Maybe I am the only one who gets my feelings hurt on these forums. Maybe its the hormones out of wack since surgery. Or maybe its the fact that I haven't been off work for 6 weeks and I feel so isolated, so alone. And this site made me feel so comforted. Like I had this big group of friends in the same boat as me. Tonight I guess some of the hostility is getting to me. It seems if you go against someone who's been here longer or sleeved longer than watch out. I may be newly sleeved but I am not an idiot. My opinions can have value too. Anyhow, just feeling alone and discounted. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for your support.

I hear you NurseBarbie and I'm very sorry you feel hurt. As far as longest sleeved, I'm not even sure I comprehend why that is such a big claim to fame or basis for a power trip. No matter when sleeved, where sleeved, whom sleeved by we all share a common denominator.....,why sleeved. We are or were fat. We do or have struggled with obesity. We will or have sought the help of a surgeon for it. In other words, no matter who we are or where we stand on the road to the finish line we are all the same. None better than others. Your problems are our problems.

Pretty pretty!!

Here's my "band vet" take on LapBands! lol
Bands can work well if you find your "sweet spot" with fills. I did with my first band and lost 80 of the 100 I wanted to lose. But like a lot of people, despite my success, I ended up with complications in time (2.5 years out for me). I had a removal because my erosions from my slip were so bad. Over the year I was without the band, I gained back all 80 I had lost, plus another 20. I never put in the real effort to change my eating habits or deal with my head, so once restriction was gone, so was all of my success!
When I was rebanded in 2006 (unfortunately for me, still a pre-sleeve popularity time), I had a different size and brand of LapBand. It was supposed to be "better" or "more effective" and "safer." I didn't have complications with that one for almost 5 years, but never came close to finding my "sweet spot" either. I would either throw up everything regularly, or have what felt like zero restriction, no matter how many adjustments I got. It was insanely frustrating. Eventually my over eating/tight band, led to chronic prolapse and dilation. I emptied healed (3 months) and slowly refilled 3 times. But after all of that, almost a year later and at my highest weight (probably ever), I decided that I wanted my band out! I didn't even realize I could revise at the time, but through researching a self pay doctor to remove my band, I learned about the sleeve.
I know you and I have talked about this before nursebarbie, but I do believe that part of the failure of my 2nd band was my fault, as well as the regain in between. Yes, it is absolutely a flawed system that fails more people than it helps. And yes, my band likely would have failed to some degree no matter what I did. BUT, I was 18 when my band was placed. I wasn't educated about WLS the way I should have been, and didn't understand the many aspects that need to come together for its success. I expected it to be the magic solution that a lot of people (wrongly) assume all WLS is. I didn't make the changes I should have. I didn't change my lifestyle. I did the same things and even ate the same things, just less of them. I didn't add exercise or learn about nutrition or the way our body processes different foods. I never tracked food (or even thought of it). I kept the junk food in my life which meant that when I needed/wanted that fix, I loaded up on slider foods. And when I couldn't get that sweet spot, and all I could eat were sliders, I didn't go back to my doctor and try and really address my issues the way I should have. I was naive and scared that I would be adjusted down even more, and that less restriction would make things even worse. Even though the reality is that with a lapband, sometimes people actually need less restriction to avoid major complications and even just to be more successful. I always wonder how my path would have been different if I hadn't been so fearful of losing some of that (too tight) restriction. I believe it still wouldn't have been what I needed, but looking back, I'm still curious what might have been different had I not had that fear and just fully trusted in what my surgeon suggested.
Instead, I stayed too tight. I found myself borderline bulimic. I was eating awful foods and justifying eating more, because I was getting stuck and throwing up half of my meal so often. And even worse, it WORKED! I would go with this awful mentality for a few months and drop weight eating crap foods as I wished and "lucking out" because I got stuck and puked so often. Eventually the slider foods would lead me to gain it all back of course, but I followed a yo-yo weight pattern the entire time I had that second band.
Again, I share plenty of blame with the band itself. That evil little thing made truly healthy eating, darn near impossible!! Lean dense Protein? F that. I might as well have just throw it in the toilet and saved myself from playing middle man. Fruits and veggies?! Nope!! No way. Maybe if I cooked the hell out of the veggies and put enough butter on them that they'd slide down, sure. But raw veggies? Fruits in anything other than cooked form like jams, cobblers and pies?! All instantly stuck.
But when it came down to it, I relied purely on that flawed system to be some magic cure. I wasn't proactive and didn't make life changes along with it. So I really do believe that it's a shared failure!!
While I would NEVER recommend the band to anyone, I also don't regret my time with it. It showed me my own flaws and helped me to know what I was really going to need to do to make my sleeve work for me. It kept me from jumping into another WLS uneducated, with rose colored glasses on. This sleeve can be easy sometimes and other times, its hard as hell. I pushed myself to implement those life changes BEFORE my revision. After my band was emptied, I lost half of my total (63lbs), before I even had my revision surgery. I changed my diet to the foods I had avoided for fear or being "stuck" for the last 10 years. I felt like a new person just without Fluid in my band. I know that long term, I would still have faced problems with volume eating (my real base problem), but I was able to stay motivated, knowing "help was on the way."
The sleeve has helped me take that new lifestyle and be successful in reaching over halfway to my goal. And there are still days, post revision, when I want to load up on carbs and crap, and I very easily could, justifying that its ok, because I'll eat so much less of it. But I don't. And part of why I don't, is because of my experience with my band, and learning the hard way that restriction really is just part of a successful equation!!!

Maybe I am the only one who gets my feelings hurt on these forums. Maybe its the hormones out of wack since surgery. Or maybe its the fact that I haven't been off work for 6 weeks and I feel so isolated, so alone. And this site made me feel so comforted. Like I had this big group of friends in the same boat as me. Tonight I guess some of the hostility is getting to me. It seems if you go against someone who's been here longer or sleeved longer than watch out. I may be newly sleeved but I am not an idiot. My opinions can have value too. Anyhow, just feeling alone and discounted. Thanks for reading.

This is directed at you and at any other person that has jumped on the Dr Luna defense team.
I obviously have no first hand knowledge of Dr Luna or the medical practice in question here. I do however have first hand knowledge of men (including lecherous men) and people in general. It's as I have always said, you never know the feelings, thoughts and motivations of another person. You do not live in their head. You can only be sure of your own thoughts no matter who you are. You met the Dr Luna that he presented to you just as she did. Rest assured that just because he didn't play that crap on you doesn't mean it didn't happen to others.
Maybe the OP made the relationship more than it was in her own mind based on her own needs and desires. Maybe he manipulated her into doing so and maybe he didn't. Maybe she assumed he was single because omitted the fact he had a girlfriend and she didn't ask and maybe she thought so because he deliberately led her to believe it to be the case. Maybe the OP is naive and is easily manipulated and used and maybe after years of feeling overweight and unattractive the flirting and attention spoke for itself to her (albeit incorrectly). Maybe he has fine-tuned his victim radar and can easily pick them out. My point is that the only thing we know for sure is that a medical professional stepped out of bounds and had sex with a patient. That is wrong no matter what country it occurs in. The fact the he didn't come on to certain other patients adds no merit to his defense.

Good idea. Will try that.

Down 58 pounds total
24 pounds post op cw 200
Before
At 4 weeks post op
[ATTACH]16168[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]16169[/ATTACH]