MacMadame

Can I get in on this following around thing? :thumbup:

My boobs haven't been pretty in years. So losing weight isn't going to change anything but what not-pretty size they are. :thumbup:

Okay ... why did I think you were a guy?!?! Most places want you to lose some weight but they don't want you to lose it before they officially weigh you in if you are borderline. I'm in that place myself. I want to start losing weight now but the surgeon doesn't want to see me for a consult until my new insurance kicks in so I can't lose weight for a couple of months. Which means I'm not having my surgery any time in the next six months. Ugh. I'm not sure why they want you to lose 5 lb. before the liquid diet but it may be a screening thing. There are definitely people out there who wouldn't be able to do it and the program might want to screen them out right up front so that they are doing the surgery only on the people most likely to succeed. UCSD is a great facility, with an excellent reputation. But if you decide that there are too many people there that you don't want to deal with on a long-term basis, there are other surgeons in your area. Plus you are close to Mexico. If I still lived in SD, I would have given up on my insurance ages ago and made an appointment with Dr. Rumbaut. In fact, I'm still thinking about it ...

I don't know why IOW and OTOH and stuff like that isn't annoying but U and UR is. But it just is!

How about on the Wide World of Webs? In fact, it's still the most common WLS. There are definitely people who make WLS a big racket. It's discouraging to me because I hate feeling like if I don't pay attention every single second, I'm going to be taken advantage of. Plus when I started on this journey, I figure it would be like any other medical procedure ... now I've got insurance issues, am petrified I'll pick a surgeon with a high erosion or slippage stat and lots of other crap I wouldn't have to worry about if I were just getting my gallbladder out. It wasn't that good. It was just "go listen to Tony Robins". I don't hate Tony Robins as much as I hate Dr. Phil, but I still hate him enough not to go listen to him. :wink2: He never said his colon was perforated. He said the port had separated from the band and traveled to his colon. I think it's likely he's telling the truth. Lap bands do erode and once they are in the stomach, they can travel. But I think there are lots of things he's leaving out. Like the port sticking out ... I bet that happened before the incision healed 100%, for example. And that stuff about how he's in danger of dying from the operations .... sure, taking a lap band out of the stomach isn't going to be a piece of cake, but I wonder if at least half of the 'I might die!" is because he has a really high BMI and any surgery would be dangerous. If he had just come here, posted in Lap Band Complications a straightforward version of his story and left out all the drama and the condensing preaching, it probably would all be more believable. It sure as hell wouldn't have been half as annoying. Ha. If he does that, we'll be all over him like ants on honey. There are several photographers on here who can spot a photoshop fake a mile away.

I still want to know what NMU means. Wah!

It's not weird at all. That's exactly how everyone works. It's just that some of us have yo-yo dieted ourselves into bodies that think they should be 225 or 340 or some other really high and dangerous number. (Or we have a health condition that sets our number that high.) Maybe you'll be lucky and 170-ish will remain your number. It's a lot easier to tell a 170 body that it's number is really 145 than it is when your body is screaming for the calories of a 225 pound person. I know this from experience! Aw, it's probably not that deep and dark. There are workbooks you can buy that help you work through your mental issues, if you don't want to do it through traditional therapy. Most people can work through them in months, not years.

I believe it. I can see that Headhunter has got "religion". He's like the guy who just quit smoking and wants to tell everyone how dangerous smoking is. Only he had lap band surgery and it went horribly wrong and he wants to save other people from that. This is very understandable, but it can also be very annoying. :rolleyes2: I think in this case the problem is that you didn't communicate clearly. Because lots of people got the impression you were saying that this is part of why you had problems, not just the ones who don't believe you. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> Obesity happens for very complex reasons. If it was as easy as "don't eat too much of the wrong stuff" then diets would work for more than 2% of the population.Look, Headhunter, the stuff you are recommending DOES. NOT. WORK. for the majority of people. WLS has a much higher success rate. Even if Tony Robins and the Fast food Nation works for you and you keep your weight off 10 years from now (and you don't know yet if that will happen because it hasn't been that long), you will be one of a very, very small percentage that that stuff works for. Telling people who have struggled with their weight for years, been in therapy for it, taking drugs for it, gone through various WL programs for it, etc. that they should just try one more time because WLS is dangerous is the kind of crapy advice and pressure that people who have never struggled with morbid obesity pull. It's about 100x more inappropriate and annoying coming from someone who has been there and should really know better. If you really want to save people from themselves, this is my advice to you: 1) This is a support board and there are two sections -- complications and life after band -- where you will be able to get and give ample support from/to people with complications or who are worried about complications. People who are researching the band are also lurking there and may be moved by your story -- your "target audience" as you call them. 2) Start a blog -- take the time to tell your story right rather than scattershot postings on random message boards and make sure what you post is okay with your lawyer. 3) Go to places where your target audience *really* is. Like a dieting site. By the time people get here, it's well past the point where hearing one horror story is going to have a major impact. 4) Tell us the name of the doctor and hospital where you had your original surgery done. That way, we can avoid the place if it's on our list of places we're considering the surgery. :tongue: Obviously, you don't have to do any of this. But if you really want to stop people from getting WLS, I think you should at least think about it. After all, that's exactly what you ask those us without bands to do. :biggrin:

Also, the OP titled the thread "will any surgeon help me" and the honest answer is "Not in the US". It may suck but it's the reality of the band at this point in time. Even in Mexico, you need comorbidities if your BMI is under 35 -- and even then not all surgeons will do it. Yes there are studies being done on the band with people with BMIs in the 30-35 range. But, as far as I have been able to tell from my research on clinical trials, they've already got all their subjects and aren't accepting new ones.

The Lap Band complications rate is amazingly low and the mortality rate is even lower. The band has been around since the 80s. It's been widely used in the rest of the world since the mid-90s. That's about 20 years worth of data including several long-term studies that follow lap band patients for over a decade. If it really was a death trap, if it really didn't work for most people, we'd know it by now. I'm sorry that you were one of the rare people with complications. I hope you find some good support in the Complications and the Life without a Band sections of the board. But if your only purpose in being here is to talk people out of a surgery that they've researched extensively, done a good cost-benefit analysis on and have come to the decision that is right for them, I predict you won't get much out of being here.

That doesn't make it okay. It's still judgmental. Btw, being overly focused on other people isn't the kind of attitude that will serve you well in the long run, especially when it comes to weight loss. After all, there will always be someone thinner than you, who loses weight faster, who loses weight with less effort, etc. You can't focus on that and how "unfair" it is without getting side-tracked from your own situation and your own efforts.

I have all the forums I go to bookmarked. I hit my bookmark and each forum section opens up in a tab. So I never even see the home page unless I specifically go there.

There have been numerous articles about this in many business magazines. If you look at the top salaries for most companies it's many times more than the next level down. Plus there are many instances where companies have to close factories, lay off people, etc. to cut costs but that same year the Board votes to give all the top level execs bonuses. It's insane, frankly. If they can't run the business well enough to make a profit, why are they getting a *reward*? Yet that's when it's the most important to do so. And they can go out of business. Which they are well on their way to doing... How do you know I haven't got any numbers to support me? Again, there have been tons written the airline industry as well. The first thing they can do is stop thinking of themselves as being in the "airline business". They need to think about their business differently, more broadly. The successful companies do that. They have broad vision. Can you imagine if Google thought of themselves as only a search engine company or Apple thought of themselves as only a computer company? Here's something that will boggle the minds of all people who think you have to charge what something costs or not survive: the company I work for right now makes software. We recently started giving some of it away. We found we make MORE money if we start people out with a freebie. Some people come for the freebie but decide to buy the version that costs money. Many of these never would have even looked into our products if they hadn't heard about the free version. Some people take the freebie, but then they sign up for all these services to go with it ... services that cost money, services they wouldn't have signed up for if they hadn't gotten the base product for free. So it's not as simple as "it costs 20000 to fly this flight with 200 seats so I have to sell 200 tickets at $100 each." Thanks for not being condensing. :confused: Nobody said airlines have it good or that their execs make more than other execs. They are in trouble. But their answers are short-sighted. They are focusing on costs. They aren't using their imagination. They aren't showing me vision. And they aren't cutting the big costs -- executive salaries and bonuses. Coke and Pepsi used to spend millions of dollars a year fighting over a few percentage points of market share in the soft drink market. While they weren't looking, bottled-water and health drinks and energy drinks stole their market share out from under them. Instead of saying "we're a soft drink company and our expenses aren't being covered by our sales so we need to raise the price of soft drinks", they got creative. Pepsi bought Pizza Hut and Taco Bell -- which now exclusively sell Pepsi products. These companies got into the snack market too. So if you don't pick their drinks to go with your chips, maybe you'll at least pick their chips. They also expanded into the energy drink and health drink and bottled-water fields so they now have competitors in those niches. But then they went one-up ... instead of Coke just making a competitor to Vitamin Water, they added vitamins to Diet Coke! I think that's freaking brilliant. Keep all those Diet Coke drinkers in the fold instead of switching to one of the vitamin-added waters, which might not be *your* vitamin-added water. Pepsi and Coke could have been down for the count when the market changed, but instead they rethought their businesses. That's why they've been around forever and probably always will be. The airlines could take a few lessons from them.

I started with Dr. Foster but have to change because of insurance issues, too. Now I'm looking at Dr. Estakhri in Pleasanton. It's a little closer to home but a lot farther from work.

My experience has been that there is a point of diminishing returns and at some point, you don't really get healthier. I know when I was 145 lb., my blood pressure was around 90/54 and my cholesterol was 155. I actually got down to 135 for a while and none of my numbers improved. Plus if my blood pressure had gotten any lower, I would have needed one of those 'fainting couches' from the time when women wore corsets. I was already at the point where I had trouble giving blood regularly at that BP. Yet the charts say that 145 is overweight for me. You should have seen me, though. I was HOT. Yeah, I had a bit of belly, but that was it. If I'd had PS to get rid of it, I would have dropped to 140 at most. Which STILL was overweight on the charts. But I wouldn't have been able to drop any lower (I only got to 135 because I had gallbladder surgery) unless I had a breast reduction and found some way to make my bones weigh less. I like my boobies. I'm not getting them cut off so some chart says I'm healthy! :biggrin: Now later one I did creep up to 155 and at that point, I could see a difference in my health. But not between 145 and 135.

Every time I post to ask about a doctor in our area... no one says anything! Where are all the SF Bay people? Come out of the wood work and say HI! :biggrin:

We just finished 2006 and will file an extension for 2007. I still have some numbers to find for it and I can't get to it today. Getting the 2006 out is a HUGE step though. There was a time there I thought I'd have rob my (ex) accountant's house to get my records back.

Pleasanton is probably as far but up the 680 corridor and not the 101. So the commute should be more pleasant. My dh goes up 680 every day in that direction and it's against traffic. They have a boatload of car places right along 680 in Pleasanton and then a bit farther up in Dublin they have two boatloads. :grin: I'm assuming there isn't a lot of work that close to Gilroy though. (But, hey, at least you have garlic. Yum, garlic.)

It sucks to be poor enough to need Medicaid. Even if it meant my WLS was paid for, I wouldn't trade with those people. Therefore, I'm not worried that they have it "better" than me in this one area.

I think the government should stay out of religion mostly. But I also think that lots of people call themselves a religion so they can get away with doing bad things and God and true belief has nothing to do with it. This sect is a prime example. I hope they get their asses handed to them.

The salaries of most top execs are all out of whack compared to what the rest of the employees make. This bugs because the way companies make a profit is to squeeze more and more out of less and less employees. But the people at the top -- the ones that make the bad decisions that cause their companies to not be profitable -- don't tighten their belts. They don't. But it's not because fat people aren't paying for two seats. It's because they are extremely badly run with no consumer focus. If you aren't innovative or consumer-driven, you can't say in business -- unless you have a monopoly or serious government subsidy. A company that pisses on its customers soon doesn't have any. It's fair if you want to have a fair, but consumer-unfriendly policy. If less people fly, prices WILL go up. In fact, less people are flying and that's part of the problem. The airlines are driving away their customer-base without a plan in place to get a new customer-base. Or maybe stop believing the load of bull that the airlines hand out. :biggrin: If less and less people fly, there are less people to spread out the fixed costs of running the business. Every business has fixed costs and you need a customer base that pays for them or you have to charge extremely high prices -- higher than the market will bare ... which means Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 is in your future. I used to have my own business. I'm well aware of how it all works. You have to balance everything against what it takes to get and keep customers. If your business model includes charging lots more than your customers are willing to pay for the service you provide, it's not going to work. When I business is faced with economic woes, they have several options. 1) They can cut costs. There is often some slop that can be cut out. But cut too much and morale of your staff suffers and the service you provide will suffer too. 2) They can change the service/products they sell. 3) They can find new markets for their services that have a better profit margin. If they just do #1, it will work for a while, but it won't work forever. #2 and #3 are HARD and not every company can figure out how to do them effectively. So far, the airlines haven't been impressing me with their efforts, such as they are. They seem stuck on #1 and, as I said, that only goes so far for so long. It's not just BMI. It's how you are shaped. Plenty of people smaller than me can fit in a seat -- if they never move. But that's not realistic. You have to move around. Which means you will keep slopping over. Plus plenty of people with BMIs that are lower than 43 don't fit in the seats. If you do, you are very lucky. Don't fly! Which will really help airlines. You can run your company any way you want. IF you want to STAY in business, you have to offer customers a product or service they want at a price they are willing to pay for it.

Sure, it's 1-800-HEAVEN hee hee

I'm in a similar boat. My current insurance excludes WLS but my company has other plans with other companies that cover it. So I'm thinking about switching during open enrollment. But switching in the middle really throws a monkey wrench into things. The surgeon consult is expensive so you need to wait until you are covered but then they want you to lose weight. I want to start losing weight now but if I start now, I'll probably get too low a BMI to be covered. If I wait until Aug., I'll be having surgery in the middle of the holidays -- a time I really need to be at 100%. By Jan. things are crazy at work so I'll miss my window and have to wait until Fall '09. Obviously, I'd rather not do that. :biggrin: I'm really seriously thinking about Mexico again. I'd rather get it done locally as there are several excellent surgeons here but these hoops I have to jump through are driving me crazy. I don't have a problem with the pre-op requirements. I'm happy to go through any pre-op program or do any pre-op testing that is required. It's the phone calls to insurance where you get a different answer every time and not being able to control my own destiny (even more than normal when it comes to the US health system) that is driving me batty!

I didn't get to far with ThinnerFuture because of insurance issues. They want me to wait until I switch to my new insurance that covers WLS but they aren't in the network for the new insurance. Plus, Dr. Foster is in my network, but El Camino was not. I didn't realize that to start. I like the hoops they make you jump through pre-op. I think nutritional counseling and a psych eval and keeping a food diary for a week are reasonable. Plus I really liked Janet, the patient coordinator. I never got to meet anyone else so I haven't got much else to add.

I like all the suggestions for how to "gain" without actually eating more. Like drinking as much Water as you can before you get to the office and wearing heavy clothes and putting loose change in your pocket. If I only had to gain a few pounds, that's what I'd do.