MisforMimi

Happy Surgi-versary! Thanks for the informative post. Your current goals seem to be sufficient. Do you have fitness aspirations?? 5 or 10K? I can't imagine how light you must feel....WOW...And I also appreciate that you were not super heavy at the start...I'm getting over the feeling that I should be 300+ to have this surgery. I'm happy to know that goal and maintenance can be achieved. On other diets I think I stayed at my goal weight for about 36 hours!! So, 36 months is truly impressive!

@@ladypoohbear Thought I'd try, sometimes ppl work in across the Water...I searched 'Seattle' and this thread came up.... Good luck finding something in your area! Should be easy enough...

Washington State Weight Loss Surgery Support Group Support groups are very important to weight loss surgery success. They can help you flourish on your journey to complete wellness. This group is welcome to pre- and post-surgical patients. This an opportunity to meet others who are on the same path, educate and support each other through sharing ideas and tips, social & fitness activities and educational speakers. Together we have a wealth of information and using support groups as a tool along with your surgery you can increase your success in achieving maintenance and overall wellbeing. Join us and get inspired! WHERE: Lyons Den Café WHEN: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10415 Beardslee Blvd, Bothell, WA 98011 (425) 892-8954 TIME: 3:00 PM Finally, it is happening for the Seattle and the outlying areas! Please pass this information to anyone you think would be interested in attending this initial meeting. For questions, contact hosts Kay Feather at kayfeather304@gmail.com or Michelle L. at lotus_mimi@yahoo.com If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in staying in touch about future meetings, please contact us.

Below is the details on the local chapter support group: Washington State Weight Loss Surgery Support Group Support groups are very important to weight loss surgery success. They can help you flourish on your journey to complete wellness. This group is welcome to pre- and post-surgical patients. This an opportunity to meet others who are on the same path, educate and support each other through sharing ideas and tips, social & fitness activities and educational speakers. Together we have a wealth of information and using support groups as a tool along with your surgery you can increase your success in achieving maintenance and overall wellbeing. Join us and get inspired! WHERE: Lyons Den Café WHEN: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10415 Beardslee Blvd, Bothell, WA 98011 (425) 892-8954 TIME: 3:00 PM Finally, it is happening for the Seattle and the outlying areas! Please pass this information to anyone you think would be interested in attending this initial meeting. For questions, contact hosts Kay Feather at kayfeather304@gmail.com or Michelle L. at lotus_mimi@yahoo.com If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in staying in touch about future meetings, please contact us.

Washington State Weight Loss Surgery Support Group Support groups are very important to weight loss surgery success. They can help you flourish on your journey to complete wellness. This group is welcome to pre- and post-surgical patients of all surgery types. This an opportunity to meet others who are on the same path, educate and support each other through sharing ideas and tips, social & fitness activities and educational speakers. Together we have a wealth of information and using support groups as a tool along with your surgery you can increase your success in achieving maintenance and overall well-being. Join us and get inspired! WHERE: Lyons Den Café WHEN: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10415 Beardslee Blvd, Bothell, WA 98011 (425) 892-8954 TIME: 3:00 PM Finally, it is happening for the Seattle and the outlying areas! Please pass this information to anyone you think would be interested in attending this initial meeting. For questions, contact hosts Kay Feather at kayfeather304@gmail.com or Michelle L. at lotus_mimi@yahoo.com If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in staying in touch about future meetings, please contact us.

Washington State Weight Loss Surgery Support Group Support groups are very important to weight loss surgery success. They can help you flourish on your journey to complete wellness. This group is welcome to pre- and post-surgical patients of all surgery types. This an opportunity to meet others who are on the same path, educate and support each other through sharing ideas and tips, social & fitness activities and educational speakers. Together we have a wealth of information and using support groups as a tool along with your surgery you can increase your success in achieving maintenance and overall wellbeing. Join us and get inspired! WHERE: Lyons Den Café WHEN: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10415 Beardslee Blvd, Bothell, WA 98011 (425) 892-8954 TIME: 3:00 PM Finally, it is happening for the Seattle and the outlying areas! Please pass this information to anyone you think would be interested in attending this initial meeting. For questions, contact hosts Kay Feather at kayfeather304@gmail.com or Michelle L. at lotus_mimi@yahoo.com If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in staying in touch about future meetings, please contact us.

@@RealME1985 There is a Seattle meet-up happening on November 16th in Bothell. Search local chapters to find details....

Hi, you two.....There is a WA/PNW-area meet-up forming that might be of interest to you.... Washington State Weight Loss Surgery Support Group Support groups are very important to weight loss surgery success. They can help you flourish on your journey to complete wellness. This group is welcome to pre- and post-surgical patients. This an opportunity to meet others who are on the same path, educate and support each other through sharing ideas and tips, social & fitness activities and educational speakers. Together we have a wealth of information and using support groups as a tool along with your surgery you can increase your success in achieving maintenance and overall wellbeing. Join us and get inspired! WHERE: Lyons Den Café WHEN: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10415 Beardslee Blvd, Bothell, WA 98011 (425) 892-8954 TIME: 3:00 PM Finally, it is happening for the Seattle and the outlying areas! Please pass this information to anyone you think would be interested in attending this initial meeting. For questions, contact hosts Kay Feather at kayfeather304@gmail.com or Michelle L. at lotus_mimi@yahoo.com If you are unable to make this meeting but are interested in staying in touch about future meetings, please contact us.

@@Algae, I'm glad some one is speaking out about this. I am the chef for the family. We bring our lunches to work/school and I cook dinners ava breakfasts at home and it's a real treat for us to eat out. I've been on crazy diets before like not eating solids food for 60 days at a time but it's still hard and requires Iron will. I too have thought about ideas and recipes that I could serve for my family and myself without breaking up the program too much. But it sounds like you and me are similar in that it's enjoyable to figure out food quandaries!! We host a lot of parties and I have friends who are gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, paleo, lactose intolerant, no nightshades etc etc etc. Most ppl would scoff but I love a challenge!! Lol :-) I would say that when I've made a separate dish or dessert for myself that is in keeping with whatever the DOM (diet of the month!) is ppl usually really liked it when they taste it! I thinking some sort of bariatric no crust sweet potato souflee might work for dessert in the pureed stage during the holidays..sweet potatoes, Protein powder, sf egg nog syrup, egg, milk...baked and chilled...in a teeny tiny ramekin....yum.

Sounds like it's not the food that is the mitigating factor here. Sounds like you have the ability to let your son make you feel small? ashamed? inadequate? And like the actual food isn't really a problem at all....If you didn't trust him enough to tell him about the surgery, I would say it's pretty clear that having him around while you are focused on healing and recovering is not going to be the best idea, especially with whatever residual baggage/obligation that comes with holidays... Use this as a TEST to take start taking care of YOU first for once!...Everybody else sounds old enough to be OK...do what you would normally do and be OK with it, go for a family walk and then hit the movies or something else fun.....Tell your older son that this is what's going on and nothing more..give him the option to take it or leave it, but let him know ultimately, it's not the best time and you not up for visitors this year. He needs to see you laying it out there. Make it plain. This is a test of the emergency broadcast system....this is only a test! I know you can ACE this! :-)

Good bless the folks at the DMV, they never busted me when really could have for the last 20 years!!

Whoa! Ladies!!! I thought this was a family show! Lol gr8 job!

I've learned that EVERYONE, I MEAN EVERYONE wants to loose weight, even naturally skinny people. The normies, I call them, the ones who can happily eat plain lettuce with lemon slices and 3 ounces of dried up chicken breast for every meal. My brother is one. I do think there is an element of jealously involved like nobody can get a break on losing of maintaining weight if they didn't. And yes they think WLS is a break! A co-worker of mine is bipolar and she's having electroshock treatment and ppl are like great whatever works! The fear and hatred of the obese is so insidious and subversive in our culture it's unreal.

You are so right! It takes a lot of energy to raise small children and it only requires more as they age if you want to fully engaged in their lives. Your husband has some legitimate fears and concerns, but at the end of the day they are HIS fears and concerns and HE needs to deal with them. Sounds like his loss and having not fully grieving is taking center stage and he may need therapy to deal with his past or just a counselor or someone to talk to. Your family and relatives may need emergency and elective surgery. It happens to most people over the course of a lifetime. Your kids might break a bone, he might get in a car accident and break a bone a require surgery. I still have fears of anesthesia even though I lived through my father's amputation, my mother's pacemaker and my 3 year old daughters tonsillectomy oh and I work in an orthopedic surgery clinic. I have faith you all will figure this out. You owe getting healthy to yourself and then to your family and kids. With or without his blessing, move in the direction of health. You know if you could stay on a 1200 cal diet of your own will, yes, you would loose weight but if you are like any of us (pre-surgery) my guess is that you would gain it back and 40 pounds extra and would be on the roller coaster again. And research shows us the yo-yo dieting is bad as staying fat!!

I've not had surgery yet but my bet is that the success of this group is due to the fact that the ppl on here are getting extra support!! Which we all need. They are asking questions, starting connected, using resources, getting inspiration, going to follow up etc etc

Tell her all the WLS patients you know ARE exercising and watching their diets very carefully!!

Are you serious? That lump on my neck will go away???????!!!! I'm all in now!

You got this, boo!

I think I can use the flex spending account as well if I don't max out with my out of pocket expenses for the surgery

Getting your insurance company to pay for protein supplements, powders and RTD drinks??? I have Regence

Try not to eat after midnight or shall I say at all...LOL...since you're on 48 hour prep, but if you slip closer to the actual surgery it/can will be cancelled.....its not related to anesthesia dosing per se, but more labout choking on food as your body relaxes with anesthesia....

@@Jersrose43 Wow, how brave!! I curious to know what were your responses like? You have some good points. I think we all own the decision to some degree or we wouldn't be here. Even if some choose to use the medical and scientific community to support our decisions, which I'm sure you did as well, with all the research required to get here....I guess I don't care to hear ppls opinions....I already know that most people think this is taking the easy way out and loosing it on your own is best yadda yadda yadda and some ppl stuggle to keep their opinions to themselves. I have some relationships that I value for other intrinsic reasons besides what their views are on weight loss surgery....

@@Algae Sounds like your "friend" needs that other spiritual 12-step program called Al-Anon!! I hope told her to mind her business! Dang. That's rough.

I'm in the process of getting an HR certification and I'm learning a bit about the process. Technically, being obese with chronic health conditions and having surgery qualifies as disability, given you 9 months off and protected status. None of us really need that. FMLA gives you 12 weeks off if you qualify and places your position in a protected status. Both options require that you have medical certification from a physician. Your doctor could be vague saying you have a x health condition requiring inpatient surgically intervention and you can return to work in x weeks with x modifications. That paperwork is submitted to HR who is mandated to keep it private. If you work in a small office and your manager is your HR professional, then you run the risk of letting cat out of the bag before you may have wanted to. You could also choose to simply take vacation time and keep it totally private BUT what happens if at the end of 1, 2 or 3 weeks of vacation and you're not cleared by your surgeon to go back to work or you simply feel like you may need more time off or god forbid you have a complication? Now you would have to complete FMLA paperwork anyway. Your work team would / could be highly suspicious by you not coming back from "vacation" and HR will make you claim the previous period of time as FMLA. If you want to maintain privacy, you can take the FMLA, be truthful on the forms to HR, but simply tell your co-workers you are taking medical leave to have surgery. If you're old enough everyone will think you're having a hysterectomy! But not coming back from medical leave when expected is more understandable than vacation. Also every company has policies regarding leave, as stated above I would advise you read up on it. I was describing federal law above so what ever policy your company has had to be more generous to the employee or they would be in violation of federal law which is usually not the case.

You could make a complaint to the practice manager and if its affliated with a hospital, I would talk to someone in patient relations. Specifically, from the practice manager I would want to know what the standard of turn-around time you should expect from her (the mean paper-pusher). And report her attitude. You are a paying customer and there are other places that would happily compete for your dollars!! You could go to patient relations. Ask how are they prepared to offer you something in the way of service recovery for being inconvenienced and disrespected? Free parking, a private room (one can always hope)....etc etc... And most importantly let the surgeon know about your experience... Your surgeon pays her salary and would be highly displeased to get a complaint. You can decide how far you want to take it and what its worth to you but all those are reasonable options. I do the job of the woman you referenced at another facility and state and when a person calls on something I was supposed to do, I am all about the apology, explanations and their paperwork moves to the top of the pile. Healthcare is changing, the place where you are going ain't the only show in town....