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.

I've got 5 - four of them are so small they could easily be mistaken for being part of my stretch marks and my port incision is about one inch long. I already had a freaky belly button scar courtesy of an emergency appendectomy earlier this year, so I'm glad they didn't go through that scar and make it any worse.

Halfway between belly button and breastbone, four inches to the left of midline. It is palpable, but not visible and doesn't hurt at all. Only a tiny one inch scar.

The APS and APL bands are 10cc and 14cc respectively. Whichever band you got, if it's 10cc it still holds the same amount as the smaller AP band. Sorry that happened to you, but would you really want to go through re-operation?

My issue is that by now (week 3) my nutritionist said I should be getting my protein from food (it says meat/eggs/vegetables) and not protein drinks, but the food needs to be puree consistency. I can only eat so much cottage cheese, so is there a difference between chewing to puree consistency and swallowing pre-pureed food?

I'm 5'9" and had a starting BMI of 50. I received the AP Standard (APS).

This just goes to show that everyone's body responds differently to the band. I get the same pain, but my pain comes when my stomach starts to rumble because it's been too long since I last ate.

Day of surgery was really boring, didn't sleep as much as I would have liked to. Pain was minimal, about one third as painful as the laparoscopic appendectomy I had in January. If it weren't for the awful shoulder pain I wouldn't have needed many pain meds. Had to get up every two hours to pee thanks to all the IV fluids. Sleeping that night was a nightmare, my alarms went off every five minutes because my heart rate kept dropping below 50. Eventually they just reset my alarms to not alarm unless it went under 40. Day after I was up and running around, waiting to be discharged. As soon as I got home I tried to do the dishes, but my mother in law ordered me to bed. My surgery was on a Friday and I was back at school on Tuesday. (Could have gone Monday, but there was no class.)

I'm starting week 3 and my post-op diet booklet says I can have any meat/vegetables/eggs as long as they're pureed. Personally, I can't stomach the idea of eating pureed food, but I spent a lot of time before surgery practicing chewing to puree consistency. Is there a difference between pureeing the food in a food processor and chewing to the point of puree texture?

The band does limit what you can eat, but liquid things pass through the band faster, making it possible for you to eat more. Eating around the band would be consuming things like milkshakes, which pass through the band easier than solid food and are packed with calories, or drinking while you eat, which helps the food to pass through the band faster as well. Both of these result in you being able to take in an increased amount of calories. Even with the band, if you're still eating the same number of calories, you won't lose weight. If you're eating solid protein and following the rules about waiting before and after a meal to drink, you should be fine. Of course, the better food choices you make, the faster you'll lose.

Interesting....Boost and Ensure are what my nutritionist and surgeon encourage me to use as my main Protein source in the liquid stage.

I was banded three days ago, and while I don't have any hunger ( I actually have to force myself to eat 2 oz) I do have a lot of stomach rumbling. It happens every few minutes all day long, and it is so loud both my mom and my husband can hear it from across the room! Has anyone else experienced this? Does it go away?

If the band itself didn't do anything no one would have it put in. I think that much is obvious. "Once you recover, nothing really changes." Everything changes if you use the band correctly. There are people who go through all the trouble and expense of having a band put in and never follow up with their surgeon for fills. Of course it doesn't work for them, they only had half the procedure done! (This of course excludes those very few lucky people who obtain restriction with no fills.) When maintaining a proper fill level, you physically cannot overeat. It will be painful, and most likely come right back up. You quickly learn to stop eating when you're full. Before banding, I ate when I wasn't hungry all the time, just because I was bored. The prospect of gaining a few pounds a month made me feel guilty, but wasn't enough to stop me. The first time I tried to eat when I wasn't hungry, just because I was used to eating all the time, I vowed never to do it again. Excruciating chest pain is a great deterrent to eating when I'm not hungry. Granted I'm only one week post op, but if overeating on liquids causes pain, I'm sure not going to try it once I'm on solid foods. Before banding, I could count calories like a pro. Only problem was I needed to eat less than 1000 calories per day to lose weight, and my stomach couldn't deal with that. Now, since I'm still on liquids, I eat half that, but I never go hungry. Of course caloric intake will increase with solid foods, but when properly restricted solid foods satisfy longer than liquids. Personally, I plan on never counting calories again. Protein is what fills you up, and as long as I get in all of my protein (something I'm desparately struggling with at the moment) I don't see how I could have enough room for excessive amounts of fat and carbs. This is all just my two cents (well, at this point, more like a dollar) but in the six years I've been researching and looking into having this done, and the four months I've spent on LBT, I've seen it both work and fail. The people it works for use it as a tool helping make the necessary changes easier to accomplish. The people it doesn't work for (for the most part, there are always exceptions) don't do their share of the work.

I had an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) almost three years ago for acid reflux problems. The worst part was the taste of the lidocaine they sprayed in the back of my mouth, but once the IV drugs were in I didn't care anymore and don't remember much. Just had to have someone drive me home and slept for a few hours afterwords. Marie