MacMadame

My library is hit or miss. I'm going to check them out though because the local bookstores have NO wls books and I can't tell from reading the info on Amazon which are the good ones and which aren't.

I've been cutting the cheese all day...

I've always lied. But I haven't had a new license in so long that I've hit the weight it says I am at least twice since I lied about it.

Froggi- I've decided that I'm getting rid of my WLS for Dummies book. If you want it, PM me. P.S. I don't think YOU were the rude one here. :redface:

That is the problem with a lot of food. Do you guys what How I met your Mother? On that show, Barney Stinson has a theory about women... the hotter they are, the crazier they are allowed to be. I feel the same way about food. The more calories it has, the better it has to taste in order to be "worth it". If has 1000 calories and it doesn't taste awesome, I don't put it in my body. Because cheese is a Protein and we need to eat a lot of protein.

I have to take back what I said about Mr. Mac. We talked today about it and he was even willing for us to take out a SMALL home equity loan and willing to pay up to 20K for it. Before he was saying we couldn't afford it and I should try dieting again and blah blah blah. I think he's realized that his big deal is with surgery in general and that I'm really going to go through with it so it's not worth whining. Plus normally he's a great husband and very supportive so not being supportive is something he has trouble maintaining for very long. :redface:

Flowers - you need to RUN RUN RUN. They didn't leave the name off the quote accidentally. They want to be able to use whatever doctor is available at the time you show up. It's called Bait and Switch and the less reputable agencies do this. If you can't get reliable info out of your booking agency, if they continually mess up, if you feel like they are giving you the run around and aren't on the up-and-up, then RUN. There are other booking agencies. Or you can deal with the doctors office directly (once you fire your booking agency that is; they won't talk to you until then because they don't want to have a bad relationship with the agency). Then start a new thread asking for the names of some good surgeons who have a reasonable self-pay price near El Paso. You will get a bunch of names and you can go from there trying to get info on them. Don't just look in MX as there are a lot of surgeons in TX. But don't cut MX completely out either. That is my advice to you.... for what it's worth.

But you see, I wouldn't. If that happened to me, I'd be all over the internet saying DON'T GO TO DR. [insert the name of doctor]. I wouldn't say DON'T GO TO [insert country/state I was butchered in]. That's not how I roll. [quoe]I've never heard of anybody who came close to death and then debanded and the threw out in the street here in the USA You need to talk to HeadHunter on this site then. Though I'm not sure he's had his debanding surgery yet as his case is complicated and they don't want to kill him taking his band out. All of that happened in Southern CA, btw. Not Mexico. Your case is IN THIS THREAD. And several other threads here and on WLSFacts.com. You post it everywhere. I have come to realize that there are many people out there who don't know how to do research. Then, there are the people who trust something a real live person tells them over anything they read. So knowing two people who had a good experience with a doctor is much better to them than reading on the internet that their doctor is a butcher. They will ignore reading about how their doctor messed up many surgeries if they have two friends who love that doctor, in fact. They do this even though a doctor with 10x the complication rate of a good surgeon is still going to have hundreds of happy patients. I have explained a little bit how I researched doctors in this thread. I can do it some more but I think it might make a better standalone thread or magazine article. It's true that WASa has sources that people not in the medical profession don't have. But you don't have to be in the medical profession to find out that there are a handful of doctors in Mexico who are really bad news and a handful that are not such great news. It may not be perfect research, but if you stick to doctors that have done lots of patients, but hadn't had reports of bad problems (caused by the surgeons), you will be much happier than if you go to someone based on price or your next-door neighbor loved them, or you can't find any info about about them so they must be good.

I thought my husband was supportive until I started talking about details of how we are going to pay for it. It turns out he thinks it's a eye-roll worthy idea. So screw him. (And not in the way he likes either.)

Hey, that rhymes. It looks like I'm going to be self-pay. Are there any good weight loss surgeons in the SF Bay area with reasonable self-pay prices who do the vertical sleeve?

How helpful of you. :redface:

Ooh, Jachut, you are SO going to get it :redface: I do disagree with one thing though. I don't think "if I could do that, I wouldn't need a lap band" is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It depends on what 'that' is. The reality is that we can't lose weight and keep it off and that's what WLS is for. So if that's what they are saying, then I agree ... if they could do THAT, they wouldn't need a lap band. OTOH, if "that" is "stay on the pre-op diet for 10 days", then, yeah, it's just an excuse.

No, you're one of those people who when something bad happens, has to blame it on someone and over-generalizes. You knew what the culture was like before you decided to go there. You were perfectly fine with it beforehand. But then something bad happened. Now you are blaming the culture for what happened to you. Yet what happened to you happens to about 1% of people who get bands (give or take a few fractions of a percent) and could have happened here. Plus, you went to a doctor who has a lot of unhappy customers posting on the internet about their experiences. So, in fact, no bribery to "buy" a reputation was involved in your case since your doc hasn't got a great reputation. No infection that can only happen in Mexico was responsible for your problems either. You didn't have a complication in a surgery center and not get to the hospital on time (something else to watch out for in Mexico), either. You didn't even have a problem that you could successfully sue a doctor in the US for. Conclusion: Mexico had nothing to do with. Instead of trying to warn people of the "dangers of Mexico" why not warn them of the real dangers your case illustrates: Such as the dangers of self-pay: When you self-pay, if you have complications, you are really stuck. You've paid for your surgery and now you have to pay for your complication to be fixed. In the end, you pay a LOT of money and you get butkiss for it.

Yet knowing this, you choose to go to Mexico for your surgery.

I have a couple of friends but the way I approach the site, it makes no difference so I guess I might as not have bothered. I'm not big on this feature. I have a Facebook account I never use. I guess I have other ways to check up on my friends.

Here's the page: Patient Information and Support Groups - Stanford Hospital & Clinics - Stanford University Medical Center It says that the intro meeting is next Wed. but the support meetings are the 2nd Wed., not the last. Bummer. Most hospitals do them one after the other so newbies can stay for the support group after. I didn't catch the "2nd" part because of expecting that.

According to their web site, Stanford has support meetings. Didn't they tell you about them. :confused_smile: I'm going to the intro seminar next Wed. and there is a support meeting after that. Maybe we could all meet up.

I would yell out "If you loved me, you'd STFU" and then laugh HA HA like she did. This is EXACTLY why I don't want people at work to know about my surgery. There is something about the work environment that makes people think they can behave like this and, usually, because you don't want to make a fuss or be the bad guy, they get away with it. It's happen to me before when I've lost a lot and I don't want to have it happen again.

Agreed. Each WLS has it's pros and cons. OTOH, he might have done just as well with a sleeve though. In fact, at 500 lb. it would be a lot safer to do a 2-parter IMO. But I'm not a doctor. I just play one on the internet. :biggrin: Generally, I would never try to talk someone out of having WLS. I might make sure they knew about other options -- some people don't. But if they knew about them and had decided some other surgery was the right one for them, I would feel presumptuous to try to talk them out of it. Even if I secretly felt they were nuts to pick the one they picked.

What is your site going to be about?

In that case, you should still have a little once in a while. My doctor says it's fine and it's important not to deprive yourself or you will binge.

It's not that easy. Scar tissue will have formed. It's a big hairy operation and it's rarely done. Absolutely not true. The mortality rate for GB is about 0.5% (1 in 200). The mortality rate for lap band is around 1 in 2000 or 0.05% -- ten times less likely to die.

Definitely. And if you call your insurance company and they say something, get it writing or call back and see if the answer is the same the second time. I've been told the wrong info twice now and it's really aggravating.

I came here because I was intent on getting a band. I only knew about the band and RnY and I do not believe in malabsorption procedures on principle -- I don't want something that allows me to eat more food than my body needs; I want something that allows me to eat regular portions and feel satiety. Anyway, then I found out about all sorts of other options like DS, sleeve, VBLOC. It was confusing at first, but I've recently decided that a sleeve is a better option for me. First, I've come to terms with the whole surgery thing. At first, I was freaked out by something *permanent* but it's not like having a lap band is like wearing a belt with your slacks. It's a surgery and it adheres to your stomach with scars -- scars that are probably permanent. The reasons you would want to take one out are because of erosion or slippage or other damage that the lap band caused. So if you don't get one, you don't need to undo it. I do like the adjustability of the band. I like the idea of being able to eat most things by not being super tight. But will I be able to get to that elusive "sweet spot" where I feel satiety when I eat normally but can still eat most foods if I chew well enough? After hanging out here for a 4 months, I see that it's not a given. Plus what really bugs is that many of the foods you can't get down because of a band are good for you. Plus even if you find your sweet spot, the band can be fickle -- tight certain times of day, loose at others -- tight certain TOM or after flying or when you are under stress. So you can be at the sweet spot then lose it over and over again. Another reason for getting a band is that you can get an unfill if you need more nutrition, say when you get pregnant. I'm past the age of getting pregnant. I may get cancer, but my understanding is that most people with cancer have problems with nutrition because they are too sick to eat. Unfilling the band may help, but it's not going to make you want to eat. Finally, there is the matter of costs. The band is cheaper in the short run, but adjustments can drive up costs. WLS is not covered under my insurance so not only would I have to pay to put it in, but if something happened and it had to be taken out, I'd have to pay for that. With a sleeve, you get it and that's it. So it's a one-time cost. The sleeve works by making your stomach smaller but, unlike with a lap band, there is no stoma so you have a much smaller chance of getting stuck. It also removes the portion of your stomach that produces ghrelin, the hunger hormone, so that you don't feel hungry. Most of my overeating comes from hunger issues so something that definitely controls hunger is a good choice for me. This particular operation has been done for reasons other than weight loss since the 80s. It has been done as a two-part operation for DS patients who were too sick to get DS for a while too. It has only been done as a stand-alone operation since around 2001 (and contrary to the info on the intranet, was not started in the UK :cursing: ). This is also the year the Lap band was approved for use in the US so, in fact, it's been done in the US as long as bands have been done here. Not that it matters: don't go by what is popular in the US or common in the US -- we really out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to WLS. The bad parts of the sleeve, to me, are: Not a lot of data on long term results. There is one published 3 year study and one getting ready for publishing 5 year study. The results of that study are promising. It seems unlikely that the sleeve will expand that much over time. Plus, while your stomach does figure out how to make ghrelin after a few years, it doesn't make it at the levels that it used to (morbidly obese people have about 10x the ghrelin as normal). But only two studies is a bit scary. The 1 and 2 year studies show that weight loss is similar to bypass with safety similar to lap band, however. So those are promising. Not a lot of doctors do them. Now I live in a major metropolitan area and I know of at least 6 surgeons who do them including some who have done them since 2001, but most people won't find that. Insurance won't pay for it yet. But my insurance doesn't pay for WLS at all. Plus, there are ways to get around the "no sleeve" limitation... it is approved as a 2-part operation after all. :biggrin: I think there is no one right WLS for everyone. The sleeve appeals to me for a number of reasons, but it's not going to appeal to everyone. OTOH, it's definitely not some fly-by-night, unsafe surgery that has no track record what-so-ever and I do think a few posts in this thread gave that impression whether intentionally or not.

I'm fat too. My face was prettier when I was younger. Now I look too much like how I picture my mom. When did that happen? I don't like euphemisms in general and I really don't like are too cutsie. I am just not a cutsie person -- in spite of the pink hair.