2goldengirl

I did attach a copy of the policy to my post - so that anyone can have give to their surgeons office that as proof. The 5-day turnaround is a requirement by CA law for *** plans for routine (non urgent) requests when all necessary information is received at the time the request is submitted. That part isn't just Blue Shield.

That depends on what your surgeon and NUT tell you.

I've wondered the same thing, and I'm afraid there is one huge difference that only surgery provides: the portion of the stomach that is removed is the portion that secretes ghrelin, the hunger hormone. It's the removal of these cells, not just the physical reduction in stomach volume, that accounts for the big difference so many feel - they just "aren't interested" in eating, so they're able to eat for fuel, instead of entertainment, relief of boredom, emotional needs, etc. One big reason for me wanting the surgery is to achieve mastery over hunger.

Moisture as in storing them? They've never hung around long enough to find out, my husband can't stay away from them . If you mean do you have to dry off the leaves after washing, I run them through a salad spinner. Oh, and I use parchment on the sheet pan. You can also season them differently - add a little sesame oil and soy for Asian flavor, parmesan and garlic salt, hot pepper flakes, you get the idea. You can do the same thing with chard leaves.

OK. First, your body carries fluid (mostly water) in lots of different compartments: inside cells, outside cells, in your bloodstream, outside your bloodstream, all over the place. Your body seeks balance between fluid held inside and outside all those different places. What happens when you have surgery? First, you are deprived of fluid coming in to your body from food or drink for a number of hours beforehand. Then, during and after surgery, you get liters of fluid pumped into your bloodstream (it goes into a vein through your IV, remember). You still aren't getting fluid by the usual means - through food and drink - for some time after. Fluid that you normally ingest gets absorbed during the process of digestion. It gets filtered into your veins through the blood vessels throughout your digestive tract. IV fluids get dumped directly into a vein without that filtering. So right there, your veins are going "hey! that's a lot of Water there!", and they get the rest of the cells working to move the extra from inside the veins to where it belongs. And then you have surgery. Things get moved around, and cut, and jostled. Swelling happens. Swelling is (among other things) the movement of fluid from inside the cells, where it belongs, to outside the cells, where it has leaked out because the cells are damaged and send cellular cleanup crews to work on that. So we have fluid going into and out of places where it doesn't belong on an everyday basis, because surgery isn't an everyday event. It takes time for the body to get it's fluid balance back. That process is commonly known as a postop fluid shift. Some folks take longer for this fluid shift to resolve than others, but it happens to everyone, it's just a normal part of the way our bodies work. For the first week or so postop, our bodies are just trying to deal with the trauma of surgery. They are not interested in our weightloss goals. That's as it should be. I hope this helps!

First of all, I'm truly sorry that your self-esteem has taken such a beating over your weight, and from such an early age. Don't believe everything you read, especially over the internet. Everyone's experience is unique to them. Are you getting counseling about your issues with food? Because your post sounds a lot like the kind of "all or nothing" approach than can lead any of us into self-defeating behaviors where we cycle endlessly into feeling awful about eating "wrong", then eating even more because we feel so awful and guilty and hopeless. You can and should get help around these issues during the time you are waiting for your esophagus to heal. Look for a therapist that works in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and you can learn to "reprogram" those automatic conversations you have with yourself and change the cycle. And the "point of working out now" is because you reap benefits from working out no matter what your weight is. Good luck!

I'm a fool for kale chips - kale, tossed with a bit of olive oil & coarse salt, bake for 30" at 300. Crispy, crunchy, full of vitamins, and fiber.

They injected carbon dioxide into your abdomen during surgery to separate your organs, I'm surprised your surgeon didn't tell you this beforehand. That gas has to disspate, and it will, within a couple more days. Getting up and walking helps - even though I know it hurts!

This is not a stall, it's a completely normal postop fluid shift. Stop driving yourself crazy and stay off the scale. This has been one of my standard lessons to postop clients for decades, no matter the kind of surgery they had.

I applaud your courage in putting this very difficult post and issue out there, and in getting the help you need. My hope is that you will continue to internalize that you are so, so much more than what you do, or don't eat, or any number on any scale. I wish you nothing but good health and success.

I'm so very sorry to hear this. It must be a very unsettling and scary time for you and your family. Everything beyond taking care of yourself has to take a back seat now.

As a few others have said, people who have not fought obesity as long as many of us have have a completely different perspective. I plan to tell very few people ahead of time, because I don't want the topic to be the center of attention as I've witnessed it inevitably becomes. I, too, want to keep my focus internal, because this is an inside game. My energies will need to be spent on making changes. I don't want to explain myself or try one more time to educate well-meaning but seriously unhelpful folks who try to second-guess what is a very personal decision. I'm not afraid that my decision will make friends who also struggle with their weight "feel bad", we're adults and responsible for our own choices. What I decide to to afterwards remains to be seen. It isn't likely to become an issue until after people notice that my weight loss has gone beyond my usual yo-yo pattern anyhow. I plan to to take four weeks off work, and my coworkers may wonder what is up, but beyond saying I need to have some surgery, that's as much as I'm sharing on the front end. I work with a bunch of other healthcare professionals and I frankly just don't want the input.

Thank you for bringing this up; wrapping my head around this notion is a mind bender for me. Looking forward to responses.

Warning, i'm preop, so take this as it comes I feel ya. There is a part of all of us, I'm sure, who resent that we have to monitor every little stinkin' bite we take or pay the price in a weight gain. And there have been times when I've franklin fallen off my plan out of sheer rebellion at the relentlessness of it. I've spent the past year simply trying to be more aware of what I'm eating and why, quite deliberately trying to get the oughts and shoulds out of my thinking. And the real truth is, being overweight is just a pain in the posterior. It's inconvenient. it's uncomfortable, it's expensive - and that's without taking into account that it's gotten harder and harder to keep my blood pressure under control and now my blood sugar is creeping up, too. I've decided it's worth the relentlessness to get my health and energy back. I want to retire in the next couple-three years, and dangit, I want to enjoy it. I want to be able to travel and hike around Europe and simply bend over to tie my shoes comfortably and not wince at photos of myself. If I have to buy new clothes, I want it to be because I've either worn out or fallen out of love with the ones I have, not because I've gotten too big for them. I'm just plain done with that. I don't know that this will help you, but you've come this far, surely it's worth the the effort!

I don't know what state you're in (I'm in CA), but I've seen many, many folks approved who are on antidepressants, though not on MAO inhibitors, just the more common SSRI's. Less of them are on drugs for anxiety. What the psych eval is looking for in a case like that is that you're mentally healthy enough while on your meds to handle the postop routine and the life changes that are the result of surgery. Properly, they will also recommend that you start behavior therapy if you aren't already established with a therapist so that you have help negotiating your pre and postop courses. Your surgeon will determine whether your meds may be an issue postop. Depending on the procedure (more commonly with GBP than with VSG), some meds may need to be adjusted for proper absorption. I hope this helps!

It's not uncommon. For the folks I've followed, maybe 25% of the band to sleeve or GBP revisions had to be done in two steps. Remember that your surgeon made the decision to give you the best possible outcome. I'm so sorry you're disappointed!

Congratulations! I hope you feel as wonderful as you look!

Your mom is right You've paid your COBRA up front, which helps. Sometimes there can be a blip on the radar when your group plan changes to COBRA - there is an end date for the group policy and a start date for the COBRA policy. Your ID number shouldn't change, just your group number. Your surgeon's office knows what you're doing so they won't get fazed over any blips in eligibility. The hospital may do an eligibility check when you check in day of surgery, so make sure you have the new card with the new group number on it & you should be fine. There is a 90-day "global period" following surgery so postop visits during that timeframe by the globl fee your surgeon gets. You may want to have their office check with Cigna about that just to be sure. And if you itemize deductions, your tax person may advise you to deduct the cost of your COBRA payments. Good luck, and I hope this helps!

That you're making the time to meet your goals while raising kids and working more than full time is awesome. I'm so glad you're happy with the results, and I hope you are feeling very proud of your accomplishments!

Dude, that is a TON of exercise for a body recovering from surgery. I'm preop, so I have no personal experience with the 3-week stall, but postop recovery is something I get paid to help people through. Quite honestly, I'd back off on the exercise and see whether your NUT recommends upping your intake based on the amount of exercise you're doing. Your body is no doubt VERY confused on a cellular level. You're trying to build new cells to heal and breaking them down with so much exercise. In another three weeks or so, you may be ready to take on this much, but I really, really urge you to slow down. Your body's primary job right now is to heal from surgery, not get up the next hill. I realize it's kinda counterintuitive, but it's true. Yeah, you only had a few bandaids on the outside, but there's a whole lot of work going on inside. For now, stop focusing on your heart rate and how long you stay there. Try backing off both on mileage and how fast you're walking by about 20-25%. Not forever, just for a couple-three weeks. Then gradually build up again. Let your body catch up to your motivation, OK? Good luck!

You are less than two weeks out from major abdominal surgery. Your body is working overtime to heal. Fatigue is completely normal, especially if you are trying to do too much. Don't let the teeny incisions fool you, you're hard at work from the inside out. It's also normal to have a day when you feel better, you do more than usual, and you're wiped out for a day or two afterward. Hang in there!

Thank you for acknowledging the importance of our choices, day in, day out. Nobody is perfect at this game, if we were we wouldn't be on a board like this. And I can't believe that surgery is some kind of magic fairy dust that makes our journey perfect when we hadn't been before. I'm working on paying attention to the importance of choices while I'm pre-op, so this post was both timely and helpful. Go get 'em!

The BMI is, to put it mildly, flawed. It ignores gender, bone structure, and lean/fat ratios. For you, I'd dump the BMI entirely and go with lean/fat ratio. And don't let ANYONE else mess with your head. If, for example, you have 100 lbs of lean mass, then add on a reasonable fat ratio, which for women is somewhere between 20 and 25%. Ballet, gymnastics, and figure skating are loaded with women with eating disorders, as I'm sure you're aware. It can be enormously hard to turn off those messages you got from childhood. Keep working on it. I really believe you and your body will know when you're done losing and ready to make the transition to maintenance.

Unfortunately, my surgeon referral (hence scheduling initial consult with the surgeon) got delayed two weeks because my PCP got sick the day I was supposed to see her. And due to other commitments, I can't schedule surgery until January at the earliest anyhow. After doing a lot of reading and research, I've decided what I can and need to work on while I wait is being accountable to myself for my choices - all of them. I've got a history of avoiding weighing myself the morning after I've overeaten, and likewise skipping tracking food choices I'm less than proud of. That won't help me be successful with surgery. What I know is, the folks who are successful in the long run are the ones who stay accountable to themselves, are consistent in their choices, and stick with their plan. I have the time to do some inside work on examining my food choices. My goal is not to lose or gain weight, but to take a long honest look and find the stones in the road ahead. Putting this out there in public is one step in my accountability. My plan is to keep up with the daily weights, using my online tracker (I use Sparkpeople) every day, including the daily notes. Anybody want to join me? Or just keep me accountable?

Just be careful, peppermint extract is really potent. You use a lot less than you would with, for instance, vanilla. Back when she was in HS, my SD made a chocolate cake and she decided she'd use mint instead of vanilla in the frosting. She learned the hard way that too much mint made it taste like toothpaste