Sajijoma

So sounds to me that everyone isn't talking to each other. When you went to your first initial appt, your surgeon's office should have sent in something to the insurance stating that you plan to pursue surgical options for weightloss and then they'd gather from insurance a list of what they want you to do to qualify. After that, you should have started whichever program your insurance expects. For my insurance, and because I went to a Bariatric center of excellence, I did a 90 day program with 3 NUT visits and a psych eval to get approved. Had I had a different insurance plan, I would have been required to go on the 6 months supervised weightloss, psych eval plan and to know which one to put me on meant they contacted insurance to find out. So the fact you've been on a 6 month plan means someone somewhere had to contact your insurance to find out what your requirements would be and that would have been your pre authorization. Now that you've completed the program, your packet and all the notes about your weightloss are submitted for authorization to perform the surgery. So maybe it's just that they aren't understanding what you mean by pre authorization? I hope for your sake. The idea of waiting and having to be on supervised weightloss for a year to get surgery seems beyond cruel.

I don't think you have failed as long as you don't give up. You need to find a good NUT to work with who will encourage you and keep you accountable and you might need to see some kind of therapist to work through issues. We all come from a lot of baggage...maybe from our weight alone, maybe from childhood abuse, maybe from being in an abusive relationship and these things, if they aren't properly taken out and worked with will eat away at any success you make. I know you've gotten a lot of great advice up above about doing a pouch reset and just cleaning up your diet, but you also have to be committed to this for life. You can't get lax otherwise,, you will end up right back where you were. Obesity is a disease and while wls does put it into remission, it's up to us to keep it in remission.

Turkey bacon, sausage, cheese cubes, ham or turkey cubes, tuna salad with multigrain flax crackers, yogurt....nuts(if you can tolerate them). I don't usually have breakfast as such because my pouch can't tolerate food that early in the morning, so I grab a shake and then at lunch, I'll have something from the list above and at dinner, I try to eat what the rest of the family is having, but if it's something that won't work for me because of carbs, fat, grease, or texture, then I usually keep peanut butter or cheese on hand and have that instead.

You are about a month ahead of me, but I wonder if it could be partially at least acid. I know there are days I have skipped my pantoprazole and it almost feels like hunger! It's crazy! When I do take it though, that feeling goes right away. I also don't know how much water you are getting in the day, but try to hit at least 64oz and stick to a measured portion at meals with no snacking, because our pouches are still very new and things like eating a fiber bar with water at the same time can stretch the pouch over time. That's why fiber bars exist is to expand and make a stomach feel full. If you do that to your pouch, over time, it's going to take that new expanded shape and all this will be for naught! Also, eating with water or any drink can flush the food right out and make you feel hungry again sooner. My NUT says to choose the most solid foods you can tolerate to get full and stay full the longest. Avoid things like soup, soft foods, etc once you are in the final stage of diet because you need to think of your pouch like a funnel and the thinner the stuff the faster it flows through. Always eat the solid proteins and leave behind the ones that are more likely to run right through. You should never to mix the dense proteins with liquids like in soups because it can subtly expand the pouch over time or again, wash the whole lot right out leaving you hungry again sooner. I've followed her advice to the letter and at almost 3 months out, I still can only eat about 2oz at a meal, and even then sometimes I am just so not interested in food that it's a chore to have to eat.

my surgeon told me that he believes the pre op liquid diet will be phased out of most practices in the next year, because they've proven that they aren't that effective and it's really abusive to the patients. I didn't have a liquid diet at all or any restrictions whatsoever. He said the o my time where a liquid diet would be effective would be to drop the weight of someone who was like 600lbs to make the surgery safer mortality wise, but he sees it going away in the next few years. He's also an inspector and qualifies places for their center of excellence status, so I assume he knows what he's talking about as far as that. I know I was grateful because I had been sweating the idea of the liquid diet for a long time and when he said there wasn't going to be one I was absolutely estatic!

I asked my NUT at my first month visit about straws because if I don't drink out of my contigo autospout which has a straw in it, I drink significantly less water. She told me that it's not a big deal and straws are perfectly fine to use as long as it's not causing pain. People tend to take bigger drinks and swallow air which can make their new stomach hurt in the beginning, but if it doesn't to feel free to use it. I've been using straws ever since.

I've got quite the cow utter(thanks for the name btw it describes it perfectly) under my arms. The skin may retract if it is healthy, but it'll take time and doing exercises will help. For me though, I've been all he way up to 429lbs and I have stretched my skin completely out of shape. I went to a lecture by a skin surgeon for Bariatric patients and he said that generally the best indicator on if you will need surgery to repair the damage is to look for stretch marks. The more the stretch marks the more the skin is damaged and cannot bounce back. Mine is full of stretch marks and already hanging so low it hurts to put on certain shirts with sleeves. I imagine by the time I reach goal, I may just well be able to hang glide with these things! ????

They probably will approve it. The second eval shows that whether you were or not in the right mind frame the first time, that you are now.

I like syntrax twisted cherry(tastes like coolaid), wild grape(tastes like flat grape nehi), and crystal sky which is a bit tart and acidic and such a refreshing change from the chocolate and vanilla shakes everyone makes. I came out of surgery lactose intolerant, so beyond the syntrax line, it was hard to find a protein powder I could use.

Mine didn't kick in at the normal time it should have....i drank it at like 4:30pm and it didn't start working until 1am. All the time inbetween I was just in cramping pain. I kept going and going and going clear up til the time I left for the hospital. The last time I used it, it was a lot more sudden.

As long as your liver shrinks enough to perform the surgery, the surgery itself and the diet after surgery will definitely reduce your liver even more. It's a matter of getting it down enough I guess. I didn't have a pre op diet and my liver oddly was not a problem, but I hear the liquid diets before hand can be hard. Just stick to the plan. ???? it's so much better on the other side!

My surgeon required a bowel prep before surgery that consisted of a clear liquid diet and then magnesium citrate the evening before. The stuff is aweful, but it did the job it was meant to do. My intestines were sparkly clean!

The last thing I remember was the mask on my face and the anesthesiologist touched my shoulder and told me it was ok. I made it now I needed to go to sleep. The first thing I remember waking up was the pain and someone saying "she's waking up should I take it out now?" And then feeling something being pulled out of my mouth. I assume it was the breathing tube thing. Then they gave me pain meds and I went to sleep and woke up later in my room.

Congratulations on your decision. So much of what you said resonates with me. I have always been the fat kid too and I have 7 kids I love and want to be able to be the mom they deserve. I had rny in November and it was the best decision I ever made. I can do so much more now than I used to be able to. I would get winded walking to the kitchen or from the kitchen to the bathroom and forget the stairs! That would be a lay on the bed huffing and puffing unable to breathe event every time I had to go upstairs. Fast forward to today, and I not only can walk up the stairs without being winded, but I run up the stairs and don't double foot each step. I dance with my kids, I walk around the neighborhood and I wear clothes that 6 months ago were nothing more than a distant fantasy. It really is the best decision I made and I know you won't regret it either.

Congratulations! This is going to be an exciting journey for you! ❤️ I am 2 1/2 months out and it really was the best thing I've ever done for myself.

@@frankenstein what you are experiencing is normal. This is a big deal! About a week before my surgery I became preoccupied with the thought of "what if I die." It got so bad that at one point I did call the office about cancelling, but the receptionist who I had become friends with over the months of prep told me they hear this all the time and to just ask myself what I plan to do if not this, because my weight was going to kill me if I didn't do something. I knew this. I knew I had no other real options and that I needed this. I was just afraid of leaving my kids behind. I thought about it and prayed about it and I decided I would rather die in surgery showing my kids I tried to get my life back, than to die in my sleep from sleep apnea, a heart attack trying to put my shoes on or a stroke from trying to make it down the drive way. We all have our reasons that brought us to this point and you really need to focus on those as the time for surgery nears. For me, I prayed to God to give me strength, peace, and to keep me safe and bring me home to my family. On the actual day of my surgery I was zen. After all the tears and fear, the day of surgery I was almost stoic! Fast forward to almost 3 months out and Imm so glad she talked me down from the ledge and I had the surgery. I don't regret it at all and I haven't felt this alive in a long long time. My kids are getting the mother they deserve instead of the mother they had to settle for because of my weight.

resale shops and thrift stores as well as clearance are my best friends right now. I'm down 60 lbs since surgery, but 100lbs since I attended the wls seminar. I've gone through so many sizes so far from a 32/34 down to a 22/24 and dropping. Wearing clothes that fit really make me feel better and makes me proud of what I have accomplished with my new body. It deserves to be out there saying "I'm kicking butt!" Not hiding under ridiculously big pants and baggy shirts. The way I see it, if someone wants to give me clothes and I can use them, I'd take them. It's just a short stop on the way down the weight ladder, but it does many things. It helps you see your body as the smaller vessel it is becoming and it makes the giver feel good too. ????

I take probiotics daily. It really helps to keep your gut bacteria healthy. Surgery, antibiotics, the large amounts of sugar free products all wreck the natural balance of our flora and fauna. I get mine at Sprouts Markets. I get the Quattro and it runs about $45 a bottle I think. It's in the refrigerated section. I wouldn't trust a probiotic that wasn't refrigerated.

I talked a lot with my NUT about regaining weight before I had surgery, because I absolutely did not want to go through a major surgery just to end up back at my old weight or heavier. Some of the things she told me were that some people don't follow the plan even from the get go. She had one guy try to eat a hard shell taco in the puréed stage and nearly killed himself. Then when he got out of the hospital, within a week he had eaten a whole king size snickers bar. His total disregard for following the rules meant he not only didn't lose weight, but he gained weight. The guidelines are given for a reason. Part of it is so your body can heal, but part of it is also to change the way you eat so that you are successful long term. If you start out eating the insides of a soft taco today and in a year or two progress to just eating the whole damn taco and then down the road to two tacos...there are extra carbs and calories in that. To be successful we need to be as vigilant at day 100 and 900 as we are at day 1. Dumping is also not a given. I have had dumping only once and that was from Protidiet vegan chili. I honestly don't know what if anything it would take me to dump, but I'm so afraid of the idea that I'm not even going to try to find out! lol we need to keep that mentality going forward even after a year or so has passed and our bodies adapt to the ability to process fat and sugars again. The biggest reason people regain weight, though, is from failure to change their original bad habits. They go back to eating candy because they find out they can and it's what they always did before, or they start eating potato chips before bed again, or eating cake with gobs of frosting. It's a very short time really to put all your demons to bed and pick up new habits for life. It helps to have a good accountability and support including a NUT and psych should things goes in a negative direction so you can course correct and get back on track. You can be successful, but this operation is a tool and nothing more or less. You get out of it what you are willing to put into it.

I'm 2 1/2 months out but so far I cannot tolerate chicken in any form, pork in any form, only beef I can handle is a fattier tender cut like ribeye or tenderloin. I can't tolerate bacon, or protein bars, lunch meats, beans, rice, bread or crackers, um pretty much all I can tolerate these days are fish, shrimp(which I just became able to eat this week), eggs, salad as long as the lettuce is tender, and cheese. I jokingly say I've become a lacto pescitarian since all I eat is cheese and fish. ????

I am 2 1/2 months out and I get so cold it's unreal. I have always been the person to walk out in the snow without shoes on or a jacket or long pants for that matter, and now I spend my nights under an electric blanket with socks on and slippers and a big full length sweater...I keep mittens stashed in my chair and my desk drawer, and everywhere else. I even wear sock hats around the house. I used to laugh at people who wore sock hats. How could anyone possibly have a head THAT cold...well, now I do! lol the fact my hair is thinning out probably helps too. I have gone from super bushy hair to very fine limp stringy hair. It's weird for me.

I just had that exact same experience with my collar bone! ???? I was like holy mother of God! What is this lump and then I saw it on the other side and after a bit of poking discovered that OMG! I can feel my collarbone! I cannot remember when was the last time I felt them!

I went through this with my husband too in the beginning. He didn't understand how much pain I was in on a daily basis or how much torture I went through on a daily basis from my weight itself and from trying to diet and being so hungry all the time it hurt too bad to sleep. I sat down and poured my heart out into a letter and gave it to him. I even linked to a bunch of different YouTube videos for him to watch both from Bariatric surgeons and from people just like me who have had the surgery. It helped him wrap his mind around why I wanted to do such a thing. We still had bumpy patches throughout the whole process including him refusing to read my post op care book to see what it was I needed him to do since he missed the class. Since surgery though, as he's seen me gain back use of my body that I had lost and to see me smile again and be happy and active, he's good now. He was afraid in the beginning that I could die and that this was just another in a long list of "lose weight schemes" like all the pills, the various diet companies-weight watchers, Jenny Craig, nutrisystem that we poured so much money into with no real results, and that I was putting my faith in a surgery because I was out of options. Now he knows better.

I've never heard of needing another surgeon. When I had my surgery, there was a surgical assistant that was used who was not covered and that cost me $500, but I've never heard of needing a second surgeon. In fact, some places are doing the sleeve via robot now, so needing 2 surgeons does seem a surprise. Are you going to a Bariatric center of excellence? If not, you might want to consider transferring to one.

it means it's full of bile sludge and that is causing the pain. There could be some small stones in there too. It's not uncommon after wls to have gall bladder issues. That's why some surgeons take them out as part of the wls procedure.