MacMadame

I wanna be a homosexual liberal atheist too! Are there classes for that?

I really had a hard time not laughing when she told me her name, to be honest. Maybe she sensed that. Well, the good news is: I don't have to change my insurance. I really didn't want to as I really like the policy I have now.

Be careful. Anyone can open a PO box somewhere and have their mail forwarded elsewhere. There tons of these places on the web. They do scheduling for certain doctors and promise to make it easier for you than dealing with the doctors' office directly but many of them have slimy reputations. IMO it's always better to find a doctor directly and deal with them directly. Dr. Lopez is a Mexican doctor who practices in Mexico. Do a search of LapbandTalk if you want to find info him .. there is a lot and there are a lot of complaints. I have recently exhausted my insurance options and am looking at Mexico. Currently I'm looking at Dr. Aceves and Dr. Rumblaut. Another popular surgeon is Dr. Ortiz but for various reasons, he didn't make my list. I'm using the article "How to Research a Mexican Doctor" in the LBT magazine area to help me with my research (which is still on-going) and also doing a lot of google searches, looking at Doctor recommendations at ObesityHelp.com and searching LBT for different doctors by name. I really recommend the article by WasABubbleButt and also looking for what real people say about doctors on the Internet.

Thanks. I just thought it was weird that she picked me out of about 3 people who were saying about the same thing to spew hateful, mean crap at all the while accusing me of being hateful and mean. Then telling me I shouldn't post like I did and say what I did because it's not right to tell people who and what to post. :cursing: Anyway, I do understand that for some people hearing "0.25% chance of mortality" has no meaning. But neither does hearing "so-and-so knows someone who has a friend who died". Maybe it makes the risk of death seem real to them in a way that hearing a stat doesn't, but it still doesn't tell you want your risks are and how likely it is that you will die.

I tried calling 2x but the second time I didn't get an answer at all. (They were supposed to call me back. Ha!) So I asked the HR department, particularly the one who negotiates the contracts with the insurance companies.

Something I HATE, HATE, HATE about having to deal with insurance companies is that you can never get a straight answer out of them and they never give the same answer twice. Take Moonshine. Moonshine is the CS rep who answered UHC's hotline the day I called to find out if WLS was excluded on my company's policy. Moonshine looked it up on her little computer ... or maybe she just pulled her answer out her ass ... and told me that it was. But Moonshine was wrong. So for the past three months that I've been thinking all I had to do was switch to UHC when Open Enrollment came along and I'd be fine for my surgery in the fall. That's three months wasted. Three months I could have spent working with a surgeon to get my pre-op requirements out of the way as as self-pay patient. That's also three months that I spent making lifestyle changes in preparation for having a band that lead to me dropping below 40 BMI. If I'd been under a surgeon's care with my weight recorded at its highest, it wouldn't matter and all this weight would count towards the 10% that the surgeons in my area want you to lose before they operate. I am not feeling very charitable towards Moonshine right now.

Blender? I just chew really well. If you chew it well enough, it's just like being blended.

I"m going to stick Moonshine somewhere the Moon don't shine... (Moonshine is the [expletive delete] CS rep at UHC who LIED TO ME.)

Or maybe he was making fun of how we make up words for things instead of facing what it actually is.

One of the reasons we can't keep weight off is that morbidly obese peple have something like 10% the ghrelin (hunger hormone) that regular people do. They've given this hormone to rats who had just eaten a big meal and they went NUTS eating. Now humans have a high enough IQ that we can control ourselves somewhat and aren't always at the mercy of our hormones. But it's still extremely difficult to not eat when your brain is receiving a signal 24/7 that you are STARVING and you need to eat or you will DIE ... because that's what having 10x the ghrelin you are supposed to does to people.

It doesn't have to be 100% true to shut them up. Just saying. :drool:

Trust me, you aren't.

My insurance has a lifetime limit of 2 mil. But it's group insurance through my company. Lots of times private policies have a much smaller limit.

Here are some more too ... in case you need something missing from the first one: Sample surgeon's letter - VSG FAQ's Denied by insurance? - VSG FAQ's And here is a series of articles on working with your insurance company: OAC

First people are eating lambs... will cute bunny rabbits be next?!?! Also, you get blooming onions at Outback Steakhouse. I'ts Chilis' that has the awesome blossum. Therefore you are probabaly fine. You are drinking 64 oz. of Water every day right? Maybe you should drink 100 oz. Hey, I heard it's a really good idea to drink 3 gallons in about 30 min. Why don't you try that?* *In case anyone thinks I'm serious... that much water in 30 min. can kill you so don't really try it.

It's not the surgeon's job to decide what we need and don't need to know. They aren't our parents and we aren't children. If we want to know how big our bands are and how much fill there is in them, then they should just tell us and not play games.

You can tell them: -People who get it taken out regain their weight because they lose the hunger control -The amount of calories the band lets me eat is the right amount to maintain my goal weight. If it's not, I might get a slight unfill. I think the problem is that people think of diets as these things you go on and then go off. They think you are on a diet. So, of course, when you get to goal, you stop dieting and that means taking out the band or getting an unfill so you can start eating "normally" again.

Sorry, adult whips will never be soft enough for me. :tongue:

The sleeve can be rough for the first couple of months. Your body continues to make the bile/stomach acid for a normal sized stomach. But after a while, it settles down and then you don't get stuck (your stomach opening is the same size as before), you don't have to worry about erosion or slippage and you don't have to go to the doctor all the time for adjustments (fills). So it's a trade off. All the surgeries have their pluses and minues, IMO. It really comes down to what you can live with and everyone is going to have a different answer to that.

I'm sure you'll be fine! Just don't do it again... (I had to say this too... but no one had to dare me.)

I would never rant about the 50 millionth person to ask "what's a PB?" or "I have pain in my shoulder... what is it?" It gets on my nerves because I've seen it 100x times before, but I get that this is my problem. I don't deal well with repetition. So I just don't open those threads most of the time. At the same time, I really wish people would read a lot before they make their first post. I know some people will never do that, but I encourage the rest to think about it. Please. It clutters up the board with the same question being asked over and over when the answer is just two threads down in the list or in the next section over. Plus you can get into trouble by coming onto a new board guns blazing. It's better to get a feel for the board first .. what kind of language is acceptable... how people treat each other. But what really gets me are people who seem *determined* to lose their bands, sometimes even before they get them. I never know what to say to those posts. Is it worth it to try to fight with them to see what they are doing? Or should I MYOB? Even though they made it my business by posting in a public forum.

Hey, I use baby whips when I poo too. They are nice and soft and they work really well.

I did go pee. I think I'll go pee again.

I tried fitday.com, sparkspeople.com and dailyplate.com I use dailyplate.com -- the rest I abandoned because they were too hard to use.

I understood that Bettencourt was not actually a doctor. At least he hasn't got a license any more. Btw, now he's disappeared off the face of the earth, how do you get your fills?