Wheetsin

Yak works for me! (I've used it many times) Whomever coined "pb" should be... PBed on! Stoma slushie - that's pretty good. Stoma shot... Band barf... hmm... I see a contest in the future! Ok guys, how about this: 1. No, I can't tell you which WLS to get. 2. No, exercise isn't going to fix my scrotum-looking upper arms, or yours. 3. Yes, someone else has experienced it, whatever "it" is. 4. No, I don't know if you're going to need PS. 5. No, you're not in starvation mode. 6. No, I don't know if your band has slipped 6 hours post-op. 7. Yes, I've heared of it, whatever "it" is. Or, better yet, let me reincarnate a "thread killers" post I made a while ago:

Oh you know what? Dammit, I shouldn't get started. And, yes, I'm overreacting, but this bugs the shit out of me. We have a neighbor who wants us to sell him a portion of our yard. Our backyard borders his side yard (if you look out our back door, you're seeing the side of his house). He wants to do construction to the back of his house, but doesn't want to pay extra for a truck to pump the concrete over his house. He doesn't have enough clearance between the side of his house and our fence for the truck to fit. So instead he wants to pay us $1000, and for this we are to cut an angle from about halfway into our yard to the right-hand corner, tear down the fence (cedar, and cost over $4500k to put up 6 years ago, not to mention the labor of treating/staining it, etc.), and then rebuild the fence where needed. Umm - HELL NO. And we have told him this. (I forgot to mention that our property line kind of makes a pie slice with his front yard, but we didn't want to run our fence up to the sidewalk and just leave him with a V shaped side yard, so we "donated" him some land and just told the fencing guys to run it on a straight line... I can't explain well, see graphic below.) But every time we're outside, he interrupts what we're doing and basically starts begging us to do this again, tells us we're being unreasonable, and that "good neighbors" would do it. Well we're not good neighbors, and neither is he! Let's not even mention that the guy, in the 5ish years he has lived there, only spoke to us two or three times before this became an issue. He has one of those cats that runs wherever it wants, craps wherever it wants, has pissed on my bushes and killed them, etc. We've gotten home and found it curled up on DH's truck, our front step, our firewood pile... you name it. It gets in our yard and craps, climbs on our deck and craps and pisses on things... I HATE CATS. Our dog is very property-protective. He'll bark if he sees something outside the fence, but goes nuts if something is inside. So all of this drives our dog ape shit. I'm seriously one step away from setting a trap for his cat, and then taking it to a pound like 3 states away. As a matter of fact, we told him that our dog gets REALLY agitated by the cat, told him our dog tries to go after the cat, and asked him to please please please try and keep it out of our yard. Please. Please. We've asked him that 6 times. He says, "It's an outdoor cat, what do you want me to do?" The last time we asked, that same night we let our dog out to do his business and hear this horrible yelping (which is the sound our dog makes when somethings he doesn't like is on his turf), and go running outside just in time to see the cat in our yard, swatting at the dog, jumping over the fence, and our dog is going after the cat and crashes into the fence. Oddly enough, he's limping the next morning and ended up needing a $4k surgery on his leg. And this guy thinks I'm going to sell him my land for any amount of money, let alone $1k including all fence reconstruction costs??? LOLOLOL! CRY CRY CRY! Here's the graphic I mentioned. The lower box is our house, the upper box is his. Black dotted line is our property line, gray dotted line is where our fence is, and red dotted line is what he wants us to do. Cool, I owe you guys for the free therapy!

Our neighbors have a son who has one of those POS cars that go *bvoom bvoom bvoom* with bass... so much so that you hear the car rattling a hell of a lot more than you hear any beat. And he works a late shift somewhere, so we hear him around 2:45am.

Now see, I'm in a different school. To me, a PB and vomit are totally different. I don't equate what gets lodged in the stoma to contents of the stomach. This is one that actually bugs me, because if someone posts that they've PBed, and posts that they've vomitted, I'm thinking different things and likely to give very different advice. E.g., chewing better, eating more slowly, etc. won't necessarily do crap for vomitting, but can help with a lot of PB issues. I will agree that "PB" is stupid. I've never had a burp hurt or make me yak up shampoo lather. But I can't comfortably call it vomit, either. We need a new term!

Hypertrophic scarring is when the scar can be discolored and raised, but stays within the limits of the wound. It's different from keloiding in that keloiding can "color outside the lines" and spread past the original wound. (determined by collagen types during the healing process) My scars are all tiny little faint streaks I can barely see except my port scar. My port scar, for several months, was raised & red along the entire scar. Then it started to subside in thirds. Weird, huh? The right-most third defalted and faded, then the middle third, then the left-most third, but not nearly as much as the other two thirds. So now 2/3 of my scar is a (much thicker than the strand of hair you might expect) regular scar, like a scar that forms over an unclosed wound, and the remaining 1/3 is hypertrophic. It looks really weird. To top it off, about 6 weeks ago I had Gb removal and the surgeon cut across the same scar, so we'll see what it looks like in the end! My scar (as you can expect with hypertrophic scars) looked its worst a few months post-op, then improved rather quickly & significantly after. (I think hypertrophic scars are as bad as they're going to get by 8 months in, but I would have to look it up to be sure). Keloid scars are what they are - they might get worse, but the don'y really get any better.

Sounds like you had your first PB. Sliming happens en route to a PB. Did you hit a stage where you were salivating uncontrollably? Welcome to sliming. It gets grosser. More gross? Anyway. "Slime" is very viscuous stuff. You know how if you pour something very viscuous into something not so viscuous, it will stay separate? Yeah. PB slime into a toilet, and it stays its own little PB "Water slide" from the top of the water to the bottom of the bowl.

Colbert says he's running for president: Can he take the heat? - On Politics - USATODAY.com

So request a copy of your records. You don't have to tell them why. For all they need to know, you just like having a copy on hand.

Oh I didn't even go there! My surgeon now triple books fill appointments. My last fill was scheduled at 1pm, and I got my fill a little before 4. There have been times where I'ee walked out because I'm not going to wait any longer. Why is it that surgeons and medical staff in general get license to be 2, 3, 4 hours late for an appointment and we're supposed to nod and say thank you, but if we're late we're cancelled or in some cases charged a fee...? Why do we let medical staff get away with that? Who else can get away with being that late, and it's "acceptable"? Me thinks I may need to move this to RnR.

I think 5 lbs is great! I think 1 lb would be great! Anything that's not gaining is pretty damn good in my book.

If chewables bother you, there are liquid vitamins. There are kinds that come as a bottled drink (vitamins mixed in), and "concentrates" where you swallow a spoonful and have your daily dose. I've not tried them, the carb counts were higher than I could justify for a vitamin, but if you can't stomach the chewables they're one alternative. Here are some examples.

Forgot to finish before I posted. Often, people are looking for someone to validate what they want to hear. I see this a lot with the band. And I'm going to use messageboards because it's an easy example, but it could be anything. For example, let's say that someone is PBing with every meal, since I already used that in my earlier post. They post "Help me I'm PBing with every meal" (BTW, if anyone out there has actually posted that, it's purely coincidental). The poster doesn't want an unfill because they're afraid of their own accountability if they are not that tight. Already you know they're posting with a motive. They're seeking something, and will seek until they find it. 99 of 100 people reply "get an unfill, that's not natural." 1 person replies, "Me too, my surgeon said that's normal." They latch on to that one reply, and virtually ignore the others, because all it took was one other anonymous & random voice to give them the validation they were looking for.

People are alarmingly ignorant about all aspects of their bodies and health, not just the band. But, the band too, for sure. Not that long ago I was exchanging messages with someone else here who, like me, tends to confront the myths and excuses. We were both surprised (maybe I should say dismayed) by how easily people will believe what they read/hear when it comes to their own well-being, and how generally ignorant some people are happy to stay about their health. I think there is a strong correlation between slips and restriction. Maybe not, I haven't seen the current literature, but it makes sense to my not-a-doctor brain. I routinely talk to people who have gone 3, 4 months of daily PBing, but will not seek an unfill because they like their rate of loss, or "someone told them" that that's what happens with the band, you PB every time you eat, so they "didn't know anything was wrong." I know these people, in real life, and they're not stupid in general, so why are they so stupid and thick-headed when it comes to this?

Susan, how much do you have to lose? Be patient with the fills, it will happen. Oh boy, will it ever happen. For ppl with starting weights like mine or the OP's, it takes a bit more. I think my first size took about 40 lbs. Now with 50ish lbs to lose, a size is about 15 - 20 lbs.

Darnell, do you still experience dumping with your bypass? If you still dump, do you dump easily, or can you eat a fair amount of sugar? Your ability to cheat could be moderated by this. Adding a band won't do anything to change the lasting effects of your bypass. The band is all about portion control. When properly restricted, you won't be able to eat very much. But we don't have the "automatic" control that the bypass procedures can give, in that we can physically digest and absorb everything we eat. You had your bypass a while ago. Do you remember early on, when just a few bites of food would fill you up? That's what the band is like, only the full sensation is longer term. EVERYONE I know who has had the bypass can eat more than me (quantity) and less than me (selection). If, over time, the full sensation takes longer to achieve, you go get more fill and there it is again. Like you, we can stretch. You do have to pay attention to what your body is telling you, and how much you're eating. And even then, it may not tell you anything. I'm t-i-g-h-t during the day, up until early evening. Come evening, I'm o-p-e-n. I can eat WAY more than a bandster 'should' be able to eat if I wait until evening. But come the next morning, I'm still going to slime over two bites of yogurt. What helps is that my stomach has become accustomed to small meals and in the evening, even though I physcally can eat more, I don't need to.

Hi and welcome! I'm not from Boise but I do attend BSU online.

Oh - my hands. That was another area where people commented early on. I still get "God your hands look so boney!"

We have similar stats. I was 382 when banded and I'm now around 235. Unfortunately although my thighs & stomach have definitely shrunk a lot, from my bellybutton to my knees is the most resistant area of my body (this is common). I have not shrunk proportionately. And my skin is not doing me any favors. Here is the last round of progress pics I posted. You can tell that I'm still larger in the hips and butt. The thighs don't show in that outfit, but they're still big too.

Not really, IMO. I try to break into percentages of 85% Protein, 10% carbs, 5% fat. To figure it out, just look at your nutrion values and look at the protein/carb/fat content of what you're eating. Different kinds of foods have different calorie amounts. 1 gm fat = 9 calories 1 gm protein = 4 calories 1 gm carb = 4 calories Get your desired caloric intake, and then just do the math to find the percentages based on the number of grams you've eaten. E.g. if you've eaten 80 gm protein, 90 gm carbs, 30 gm fat, you're at: 80*4 = 320 calories 90 * 4 = 360 calories 30 * 9 = 270 calories Total = 950 calories So then divide out by the total to get your percentages: 320/950 = 34% 360/950 = 38% 270/950 = 28%

Yay, you're obese!!! (That sounds so wrong, but it is definitely a reason to celebrate!)

People noticed fairly quickly, about 50 lbs in for me, which took about 2 mos to lose. The first area was definitely my upper body - face/shouders.

Maybe he thinks people will obsess about it? I've heard of surgeons not telling for this reason, but they can't keep that info from you. They're YOUR records. Tell him he can just tell you, or you will request a copy of your file (which they have to give you - it's your right by law) and read it for yourself, after his office has to do that much more work.

You will still want to binge until you mentally make that shift away from the behavior. A common expression is "We get our stomachs banded, not our heads" and it's so true! Where the band will help is with the quantity. When you're well-restricted, you pretty much can't binge. If you do, some nice aversion therapy will kick in, and you probably won't want to do it too many more times. Compulsive overeating/binging is something to bring up during your psych consult.

You can click their name and then "Send a private message to <name>." You can also go to your CP and under Private Messages click Send New message. See:

Ordered a new couch & loveseat to go in the family room. I can't wait! Our current set is only about 2 years old but I never could grow to love it. This is the set I should have ordered. We also stripped the family room bare lastnight, minus the TV/TV stand (it's TOO heavy!) GREAT opportunity to vaccuum/steam the carpets. That floor hasn't been this clean in a loooong time. And I found several things I'd been missing! And several things that pissed me off, like juice stains where my husband sits. Why can't men clean up after themselves? Why do they get to be the ones born without the "clean up after yourself" gene??