M Taylor

As long as there were six visits each a month apart, that would satisfy the pre-op diet requirement. My six months was actually a little over two years prior (Jan-June 05 with pre-auth documents sent in July 07) and I was fine. But my BCBS IL plan still made me provide medical records for the past five years documenting my weight and blood pressure at each visit (at least one per year).

He's been great. There have been a couple of times when I only had a follow up appointment with his nurse, Karyn (who is the nicest nurse ever), but if I wasn't feeling well or really needed a fill he'd make time to see me without an appointment. He also asks me what I want whenever I go in for fills instead of just telling me he's giving me X amount.

I also went through the Kane Center (Dr. Rantis). I already had my six month diet completed before starting the whole process. It still took six more months to go through all of their evaluations (and I didn't even need a sleep study, which would have pushed it back at least another month since the pulmonologist you need to see never has any openings).

It all depends on the specific insurance plan your employer has and the requirements of your surgeon. I have BCBS of IL. Some of the BCBS plans don't require the six month supervised diet and some do. Mine did, which thankfully I had already done. But due to the requirements my surgeon had (nutrition consults, psych eval, pulmonary eval, support meetings, etc) and the time it took to get in to see these people it was a very lengthy process. Not to mention the fact that they wouldn't even schedule the surgery until everything was completed, which meant waiting another month for the first available surgery date. It took me 6 months from the informational meeting until my surgery date. Granted, this is probably a bit longer than most, but just prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

The Inamed protocol states that the first fill should be 3-4cc at six weeks after surgery and the patient should be reviewed every 4-6 weeks after that. My first fill was 2cc 4 weeks after surgery and I've had one every four weeks since then.

My first fill was 2 cc with no restriction. Second fill was 1 cc for a total of 3 cc, no restriction. Third fill he asked me if I wanted a larger fill. Of course, I said yes. He gave me another 2 cc for a total of 5 cc, and within an hour and a half I was back in his office crying and heaving since I couldn't even swallow my own saliva. He took 1 cc out, leaving me with 4 cc. Since then I've had one more fill of .5 cc and will have another .5 cc tomorrow since my restriction level has been decreasing over the last two weeks. After tomorrow, my total fill volume will be 5 cc with, hopefully, decent restriction again.

Another user had posted this attachment a few months back and it's been very helpful and informative. Pages 7 and 8 go through the fill procedure step by step. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/attachments/f17/9239d1184711264-article-new-lap-band-advanced-platform-ap-band-allergan-dfs-products.pdf

I used to be addicted to diet soda, but stopped about a month before banding. The first time I tried it again was two months after surgery and it was so painful! I even tried making it flat once just so I could drink it, but of course what's soda without the bubbles? I'm three months out now and it's so uncomfortable that I don't even have a desire to drink it anymore. I'm now addicted to lemon water :smile: .

I was 22 when I was banded, but started looking into it when I was 16.

I'm going for my first fill next Tuesday. I never thought fills could be so difficult, but after reading this I'm a little scared! But I can feel my port through my skin, so hopefully I'll be one of the lucky "in and out" fills.

I had my surgery on a Friday and was back in class on the following Tuesday. I was pretty active (we stand while we practice us scanning and do a lot of bending and reaching) and was fine with three days of recovery.

After being thoroughly annoyed at seeing these blatant (and poorly executed) advertisements, I visited the website and checked a few of these products out. They contain no Protein (definitely a red flag for a bandster) and don't have anything my multivitamin/multimineral doesn't. On top of that, they have disturbingly high amounts (some up to 5000% recommended daily value) of certain Vitamins and minerals.