MacMadame

Do you have to pay 10% of what the surgeon charges the insurance of 10% of what the insurance agrees to pay him? If it's the later, you should be okay; if it's the former, you better check with the surgeon -- sometimes they charge the insurance company a lot!

Sounds like you need to "work" at home tomorrow. That's what I'm doing. I'm getting my hair cut and re-pinked in the afternoon. Shh, don't tell anyone.

My company has an exclusion.

I'm still pre-op. I get my sleeve in about a month. So I do okay with water now but I think it will be harder afterwards.

Then you are more mature than some of the adults on here who start cheating as soon as they get home from the hospital. :thumbup: There are a lot of reasons that they give. Mostly I think it's more a function of how health care in the US works. We're really conservative. So there haven't been a lot of studies on WLS in teens and youths so the doctors don't want to do any until there are. There is also the growing issue. If you get a surgery with malabsorption, there is a chance you will be missing some important micronutrient that no one realizes today you need that could impact your growth. This isn't an issue with restriction-only surgeries like the band and the sleeve though. Then, some will say it's not good to restrict calories when you are growing. But those same people will put an overweight teen on a diet. So it's not really logical IMO. Another issue is the one you brought up about informed consent. Legally you have to be an adult to give informed consent so that means a surgeon is doing surgery on someone who can't give informed consent. They get it from your parents but you are the one with the surgery and the surgery is supposed to be for life. Even a mature 16 year old, as I was and you seem to be, doesn't really know what life will be like in several decades. But all these things have to be balanced against the alternatives. If you are already morbidly obese and you are a teenager, what is life going to be like for you if you don't get surgery? That's a consideration too. It's not an easy decision and I feel for you. I didn't get to be MO until I was in my late 20s and I have found it relatively easy to lose weight. My problem is keeping it off. So I'm not in the same place as you at all. I'm in the place of someone who has yo-yo dieted for decades convinced that THIS TIME the weight will stay off who has finally realized the insanity of that and is ready to try something new! Good luck, whatever you end up doing. This obesity thing is a really tough row to hoe.

What happens to people who get over a certain point is that they can't move around enough to burn very many calories so even normal eating can cause them to gain weight. It's a vicious cycle because the weight is causing more weight. I feel for anyone who gets in that position even if I hate them for the kid killing part.

You can have mine. And my farts too. I thought it was a bit much to have a baby at 41, but somehow still acceptable. Having one at 51 is just too too. Apparently being preggo makes people silly. Congrats, btw!

Nobody better send any baby making magic my way, I'm just saying... Did I mention my date got changed? Only by two days so I'll survive.

Yeah, it is. Luckily not all surgeons are like that.

If the band is doing it's job, it will help you feel full on much less food. This is not something a diet can do. So I don't agree that the band won't help her. Part of why people can't stick to diets or can't keep the weight off once the diet is done, is because they are hungry all the time. That isn't how WLS works. With WLS, there is hunger control, and that makes losing weight through diet and exercise possible. As for Mexico, there are some wonderful docs in Mexico like Dr. Aceves and Dr. Rumblaut. I think they are better than many of the US band docs, in fact. There are also some clunkers. So you need to be *very careful* and do a lot of research. There are several places that do pediatric bariatric surgery in the US though. Stanford does bands on teens, in my area, for example. Don't just skip the US and jump right to Mexico. I think it's always better if you can get insurance to pay and do it nearby. If you can't though, Mexico is a good alternative.

I put 22 because I always cross my legs. But I realized I do it "man style" so I can still do that pretty darn fat! Can I change my vote? :thumbup:

Here is my comment and this is not intended to upset anyone either. But it is Rants and Raves and it's one of my internet message board pet peeves. Too many people interpret disagreement as anger or, even worse, bashing when it is just disagreement.

I have to agree with that... but I'm not a big ketchup fan. I prefer mustard. (Not on grilled cheese though -- just in general.)

Probably not... It doesn't rank high enough on the "MacMadame Is it Worth it?" scale. This scale is modeled after Barney Stimson's Crazy vs. Hot scale for rating women. Simply put, the crazier a woman is, the hotter she has to be for it to be okay. Only for my scale, it's calories vs. taste. The more calories it has, the better it has to taste or it doesn't rise above the break-even line.

Not this America. I think gravy ranges from just okay to disgusting.

If you want to find out the bad of Lap Band, go to the Complication and Life After Banding forums on this site. It will give you a good picture of the worst that can happen. But once you get that picture, I recommend RUNNING AWAY because going there every day can give you a warped picture too. There isn't any place like that for the sleeve though. There is only one all sleeve board I've found (Gastric Sleeve Support) -- most of the rest are places that have boards for all the WLS and the sleevesters have their own place, but it's all mixed together. Anyway, I've been trolling the internet looking for the bad and there doesn't seem to be much of it. Some people are nauseous for a lot of the first 6 months to a year. Some have trouble eating certain foods. But most don't have these issues. There are people who aren't happy with their weight loss who revise to the DS, but not a lot. The rest of the negative stuff is the same as with any surgery -- dealing with carbs, trying to exercise when you don't really want to, falling back into old habits, stalls, etc. You'll find that in the band forums as well.

My thoughts are that I should have posted my predictions before the pick so I'd look psychic. For the record, my prediction was that he'd pick an older white dude who was perceived to be more conservative than him.

That's what ghrelin does to you. They've given it to normal-weighted guys who were full and they went nuts trying to eat more food. (They did the same thing with mice first--same result.) It also makes food look more appetizing. I'm looking forward to not having any/much. Now, I'm not discounting emotional eating or people with true food addictions. If you've got that and you don't deal with it, no WLS is going to be effective for you. But so many of us have been made to feel like our problems are all in our heads and that all we need is a little willpower and that just isn't accurate for most. If it was, WLS wouldn't be as effective as it is IMO.

Go, Chickie!

Sept. 22nd! It's not 100%. I'm going to call today and make sure they aren't going to move me due to not being able to get the OR.

There was nothing uncalm about my post. Do you want the long scientific explanation? Or the short one? The reality is that an obese person's physiology is different from those of the "normos" (as Jack calls them). We have 3 to 10x the amount of ghrelin in our bodies, for one thing. They've done studies that show that the brain activities in the part of the brain that registers satiety is less active in obese people compared to the normal weighted. These are just two examples of how the bodies of obese people work to keep them obese while the bodies of normal weighted people do not. This is why 90-99% of the people who diet and exercise without getting surgery don't lose the weight but then they get surgery and they can. WLS will cut down on your ghrelin and does other things to our bodies that we don't 100% understand that allows us to feel satiety and to be satisfied on much less food. Many WLS patients report feeling satiety for the very first time in their lives, in fact. If you never/rarely feel full, if you are always hungry, then dieting and exercise are like putting your finger in a dyke but never repairing that dyke. Eventually the water will pour out no matter how much self-control and willpower you've got. I agree, but that's a different question all together. That's about prevention. I don't know what it takes to prevent. But denying/discouraging WLS for the young or to the "only" obese doesn't prevent obesity. Once someone gets to be obese, prevention is too late for them.

Good luck, Laura! My date is 9/22 just a few days earlier. I admit at this point, I'm a little scared...

I agree. What's the point of having these BMI ranges and pushing people to get into them if they freak out when we do? Well it's not all bad. I seemed to have dropped 3 lb. and it doesn't appear to be coming back like I figured it would. In fact, today my scale flashed 199.5 before settling on 200.5. Too bad it's not my official weigh in day.

I went on my first diet at 13. Some people are obese or even morbidly obese in HS. I've been seriously obese since around age 25 and now I'm over 50. So that's 25 years I've been fruitlessly struggling with this problem. If only I was 25 now I could have cut out a lot of misery and unhealthy living. So I ask: how many years does someone have to struggle with their weight and be unhealthy before it's acceptable to stop doing the things that don't work and start doing something that does? 20? 10? 5? I say if you are obese and you have been on one serious diet where you got to goal or close to it and couldn't keep the weight off (or alternatively, if you couldn't even get to goal after a really great effort), that you've proven you are one of the 95-98% who can not lose and keep it off with diet & exercise alone. If that happens by the time you are 20, then why should you have to wait any longer? Heck, there are kids younger than that who have been dieting since the age of 8. If you are 16, are 100 lb. or more overweight, and have been dieting since you were 8, then you've been dieting unsuccessfully for 8 years. How much longer should someone in that situation have to wait? The only reason I don't like teenagers and younger kids getting WLS is because they are still growing and we don't necessarily know all the implications of WLS on a person's growth. But a WLS that is restrictive only is relatively safe and could help them maintain a normal weight while they are growing. I can't fault someone who has been struggling with their weight for years and is morbidly obese from getting WLS even if they are fairly young. If we had another alternative to offer them, that would be different. But right now WLS is our only effective treatment. So their choices are WLS or obesity. I can't fault a young person for choosing WLS given the alternative.

Sorry, I've been AWOL. I was letting some guy I just met put a camera up my butt. :biggrin: They found some polyps too so now I have to come back and get it done again in a few years. :smile: