Wheetsin

It is, and I can empathize with you being in the position of having to be in it. Your surgeon should let you know about your candidacy. Sometimes rebanding is a good option, sometimes it isn't. Either way it's not an easy prospect. Best of luck.

I know a bit about how insurance companies work behind-the-scenes, and I definitely can relate to it seeming like there's a hell of a runaround in trying to get anything done. Did you guys submit for your husband's surgery, or did the surgeon's office? My insurance company didn't want to pay for the anesthesia bill from my surgery. Something about the anesthesiologist office claiming my insurance company required the billing to be split between the anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist, and my insurance company saying they already paid the bill (the paid the anesthesiologist half). It took me about 6 months to get it resolved, that includes having support from the anesthesia office and a lady in my surgeon's program who was invaluable in helping/advocating. Just keep fighting the fight, really. Call them every day if you have to. That's what I did. A co-worker is fighting to get some charges from her infant delivery covered, and she calls first thing every Monday morning. Actually, come to think of it -- I even arranged conference calls with me, the rep from the billing office, and whomever we had on the phone from the insurance company. I finally did that to avoid any more he said/she said. Perhaps that's an option if your surgeon filed for the approval.

A lot of things could be going on, but don't wait too much longer before you call your doctor. A backup/constipation can hurt, but there can also be other things going on in your body that could cause the symptoms and pain.

Do ask for elixirs, chewables, etc. for everything you get. I cannot take pills at all. I've tried a few times. I have to crush them, chew them (same thing), or get an elixit/chewable alternative. I tried once to take a pill about the size of a Tylenol. I cut it into 4 pieces, and had one of my worst PBs on one of the tiny pieces. I've had to take a capsule once. I put it in a bowl, punctured it with a knife, and squeezed as much of the liquid out as I could... then mixed the liquid with apple juice. It was nasty and made my throat and mouth burn for a good 3 hours. Plus the capsules are tough - it was a lot more work than this makes it sound like. If I never need to take that particular thing again, I will ask a pharmacist about a liquid or chewable equivalent.

There are people for whom the RNY is probably better, but this isn't a diagnosis, it's just a recommendation. Factors to consider would include (you don't have to answer these, they're just some of the things that IMO a surgeon/team should consider before making a recommendation... too often I think recommendations are made based on where the largest profit comes from): Is your weight putting your health in immediate and serious danger? Is it a matter of life or death for you to lose weight quickly? What foods are you most likely to cheat on? What is your aptitude for modifying behaviors? How committed are you to follow-up with aftercare? Etc. Perhaps ask your surgeon why s/he recommended gastric - see what their rationale is. Ultimately it's your decision, but it may help you to know their reasoning.

People with slips and/or erosions have had their bands removed, healed, and gone on to be banded successfully after a full recovery. Let's not start saying that this is your god's way of saying she's not a good candidate. If that were the case, then several twice-banded members here would still be fighting their obesity, rather than enjoying lives at or close to goal. This topic doesn't even need to go there.

I've seen the way bands fasten, and I've had it described to be my the good folks at Allergan, and once fastened it really would be REALLY REALLY hard to come undone. I can't say impossible, but you've probably seen it compared to the mechanism of a cable tie before. Those just don't undo themselves. Certainly nothing that just being in your body would cause. I've come across maybe 10 ppl who found their bands were open, and in all the cases I've heard follow-up on, it was a matter of the surgeon not doing the installation properly... not an issue of the band itself actually being able to open. If you can get a ruling on what happened before it's removed, do so (not sure if that can be done). If not, when your band is removed, insist that you receive it, not the surgeon. You can then have it tested to see if there was mechanism failure. See this post.

1)- Does anyone know if Gastric Bypass is reasonable for a lower BMI person? 37 isn't really a lower BMI in terms of weightlosss surgery. That's well into obese and not too far from morbid obesity. 35 is the cutoff (insurance) for most surgeries to treat obesity, but surgeons will still go below that for self-pay. 2)- Did anyone look into this other option? if so, why did you choose lapband? Reversibility. Removability. Adjustability. No dumping. If I wanted ice cream I could have a scoop of ice cream. There are no foods I can never have again (and if I have them, I don't have to worry about being sick/pain/etc. because of it). Malabsorptive procedures have never really appealed to me. I'm not big on starving myself, on needing shots to get base Vitamins, on malnourishing myself to weightloss, etc. There are cases for which I would advocate RnY, but I wasn't one of them. I think restricive procedures are long-term safer, and I think now especially that procedures and tools have changed, we'll start to see more long-term success with restrictive procedures over malabsorptive. I also don't mind having to work a little for my weightloss. It lets me feel that *I'm* still accomplishing this (with some help), over having it handed to me.

Insurance companies have different plans, and different plans are likely to require different things. E.g. I have a UHC plan, but had drastically different requirements than others here who have different UHC plans. Why not just call Cigna and ask them what they require? They will be able to tell you exactly what's required for your individual plan.

My big ones aren't options in the poll, so I voted using the options available, which means my votes actually represent something closer to numbers 18, 20 and 32 than numbers 1 - 3. :biggrin:

Think of it as a blessing is disguise. scales are probably one of our worst enemies. When I use mine, I have to weigh 3 times, disregard the first number, and average the last two. The first time will always weigh me about 8 lbs over, or 8 lbs under. I guess it needs to warm up first or something. The next two weights are normally within 2 lbs of each other, and usually get me within 2 lbs of the doctor's scale.

Sudden weight gains 99.999999999% of the time are just fluid fluctuations. It's weight gain, not fat gain. And fat's what we really care about, right? :biggrin:

About 7.5 wks in and still have my fill. No morning sickness, no problems getting food down. Will be keeping my eyes open & senses alert tho.

I haven't posted much about pregnancy, just mentioned it in one other post I believe. I found out via home test 2/29. Comfirmed with the doctor 3/5. I'm down another 6 lbs, mostly hydration I'm sure. Had a tough few days since Thu inc. an ER visit for bleeding/cramps. They saw a heartbeat & fetal pole on the US Thu, but I had continued bleeding/cramping this weekend. All brown/old, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'll go in today to see if my HCG is increasing the way it should. OB still doesn't want to see me until Wed.

He said he feels a "lump" down between his breast bone. I say lump but he says it's almost as if there is something there poking him from the inside. Is this just the band he is feeling? Did any of y'all feel this? He thinks it may just be the procedure (or band) that he is feeling, but today is the first time he is feeling this kind of feeling. I never felt a lump, but did feel some pressure when I ate or drank during the first few days post-op. Is it happening when he eats/drinks, or all the time? He really shouldn't feel the band itself. If it doesn't go away, have him call the surgeon. Also, he has broken out in a red rash all around his belly - except for a box right around all the incisions. It's almost as if they had something draped over his entire front side (not down his legs) that he had an allergic reaction on the areas it touched. Does this sound normal? I had something similar to what you're describing. Here's why. (This isn't an explanation for what your husband has, just what caused something similar for me) I'm allergic to most adhesives. I'm also sensitive to latex and can get a rash from very little contact with it. Adhesives and latex both will give me a rash-like welt that itches like mad. Adhesives will sort of "melt" into my skin and can actually remove skin when they're pulled off, the latex is more surface - bumps, redness, etc. At my incision sites, to cover the staples, they used this plastic sheeting stuff. Think super stickly clear contact paper. The entire surface is adhesive, but the escaping gas, blood, etc. prevented it from having much contact with the actual incisions. The areas farther out from the incisions maintained enough contact with my skin to have the reaction, so once the plastic adhesive stuff was removed, it looked like I had a box or ring of rash around each of the incision sites. I may have to make him call the Dr today if this all persists, but I wanted to get y'alls opinions on it, too. Thanks in advance!

Call and ask for an explanation of the denial, if they haven't already sent it. If they require two years' history and are denying you because you don't have history from 2005, then ask them to reconsider/resbmit, and/or to talk to a supervisor or what several companies call a "rapid resolution expert."

Lack of sugar.

Moving your post to the board questions area, where you'll find answers to your questions. Browse through the sticky posts at the top of the forum.

Abbreviations and What They Mean

The main purpose of the pre-op diet is to deplete the liver of its sugar stores. The liver stores sugars, when the body isn't getting sugars from the food you're eating, it will signal the liver to let go of its stores. Tossing out its sugars will make the liver smaller. A smaller liver makes it easier for the surgeon to access the area where s/he will put the band. Someone on a 2k calorie diet would eat around 300gm of carbohydrates. 100gm is not a huge reduction compared to what most people are told to do during their pre-op diet. My pre-op diet was 0gm carb for 2 days.

I think that most of the "healthy" alternatives are worse for us in the long run. I've quit artificial sweetners becase it just wasn't making sense to me that a little packet of chemicals was better for my body than a little packet of natural sugar. The margarine is another example. You really need to keep an eye out for processing. Frankenfoods kinda creep me out anyway. But Cool Whip is so good....

Turykey is kind of a known trouble food for many people. Pay attention on Thanksgiving and shortly after -- you'll see PB posts by the dozens. My public yaks have included - the shoulder if the interstate during airport rush hour, my parents' front yard, the bushes in front of a Greek restaurant... *sigh* Welcome to bandster life. :tt2:

30 gm is not so much. Why not just eat it in low calorie foods like lean meats? That's about as simple as it gets.

This is truly just a rant b/c I'm fuming about something. It's my catharsis. Please don't even read unless you're really bored. My graduate program unfortunately involves a lot of group projects. They're not my favorite, but I understand why they do them. So far, they've been tolerable experiences, and a few have been positive (was in a group of self-starters, we could agree on natural work divisions, etc.) This semester is a completely different story. I was put in a group with 3 other people. At first it seemed ok - up until it was too late to request a group change, anyway. We have a project due tomorrow. It's a very large project that required several additional documents, a lot of research, a nice presentation, etc. As of Friday, two of us had submitted work for the project - kind of. I had submitted several paragraphs to paste into a final presentation, and all of the attachments we needed except for one. One other person in the group had submitted a half-assed final project document (the skeleton -- still needed all the text/attachments/etc.) -- based on a template I built and submitted. It had a total of about 6 sentences in it. Of the two other people in the group, one had offered a lot of criticism on the work I had done, but had not offered up anything of her own. The fourth person has not contributed one single piece of anything. She has asked us for clarification on the assignment, and told this week she wouldn't have internet access for one day (that was on Wed). We haven't heard from her since. I'm working to maintain my GPA and this is my last required course so I'm being extra careful. So I took about 10 hours yesterday and built the entire document. Places where I didn't have the data, I just made something up as a placeholder, then highlighted it so it could easily be found when whomever owned that piece decided to get it done. I created about 3 powerpoints, 5 word documents, tons of tables & graphs, etc. I then told the peolpe in my group that since the template was hard to use, please don't make changes to the document directly. If you don't like the template, that's fine -- you're welcomed to redo it. But if you are ok with it, just printscreen or copy what you want to change into a basic word doc and indicate what you think should be changed. Do you think anyone did that? Nope. They made their suggestions right into the document, so not only did I have to line-y-line compare with the original to see what was different, I also had to spend about an hour reformatting everything. Then, they had a lot of criticism on some of my tables. I told them "These are just drafts I created so we would have something there, these will need to be refined for submission." I guess they can't read, because those disclaimers were completely ignored and they kinda jumped on me about how they want to see something more professional (umm... then freaking SUBMIT SOMETHING?!) One girl, while making changes, managed to delete 11 of the 14 pages in the document. When I reverted it back to a version that had all the pages, she became irate that I had "disregarded her feedback." Umm -- no, I just had to get back the content. I figured that was more important than your suggested revisions, which were poor quality and not accurate anyway. I've written the proffessor, emphasizing that I'm not a whiner or tattletale, but trying to elicit her help in getting these people motivated. This project, though it's large, is just a very small piece of an overall semester-long project and I can't solo that one. I did make it clear that the one person had contributed nothing. She hasn't yet responded to me. The rules for grading this are -- everyone shares 95% of the grade, with the last 5% coming from peer evaluations that the rest of the group does on you. That means that if our group gets 100% on the project, everyone is guaranteed a score of 95%. Including the one person who has done zero. And I've been pretty direct wtih them, telling them they need to quit deleting the content, quit messing up the template because it costs me more time, etc. Of course part of the peer evaluation is how well they liked working with you. And Ive butted heads with 2 of these people in prior classes, and two of them are buddy-buddy. If we get 100% and everyone has their 95%, it's within the realm of possiblities that the buddies could give each other good feedback, give me crappy feedback, and they'd walk away with a higher score than me even though I've essentially soloed the entire project, and have to submit it with the group's names. I hate it when dead weight gets free rides. This professor has been very reasonable about some things that have happened in other classes I've taken with her. Hopefully she will be able to do something in this case. If not, I'm one irritated student, and going to have a serious talk with my group about the amount of effort they expect from me toward the larger semester project. Fooking deadbeats.

Hundreds here who have already had the surgery. I didn't really need help making my decision. A few years of saying, "If I'm not at X weight by this time next year, I will consider surgery" was enough. Recovery was easy. Abdominal pain with abdominal movement, but that was it. No gas, etc. My surgery was a Wed. I went to the store Fri b/c I was tired of sitting at home. Went out of town Sat. Pretty much back to normal Sun.