MacMadame

God, that sounds like heaven. I'm not banded yet and right now I'm eating my second dinner. :thumbup: They were both small dinners and one was earlier than usual (and one later), but still... It really frustrates me that it takes 4 meals and a few Snacks every day to feel full. I agree that some people need lifestyle changes to make their band work. But some of us already eat fairly healthily and really just need something to kill the hunger and help us with portion control when our brain goes nuts and screams that we're going to die without more food.

Well having your alcoholic husband commit suicide right before you give birth sounds like situational depression to me. :thumbup: I also find it bizzare that this therapist told her (essentially) that he would have failed her if her doctor didn't need the business. That doesn't sound right to me and it would be one more bad therapist experience to add to my list and make me distrust the entire profession.

I was irregular for years. Sometimes I'd only get it a few times a year. Then I had my second child (at 41!) and now I get every 28 days like clockwork. It's interesting because now I know how the rest of the world experiences this stuff. They always looked at my funny when I said I almost never got it. Plus now I can plan around it, if I have to. That's the good part. The bad part is that I'm 50 and I'm as fertile as a 20 something. I'm supposed to be in menopause, or at least perimenopause.

I'd like to help out too. I'm a professional photographer so if someone else can collect the pictures, I can make a nice collage.

It's really hard when a couple doesn't agree about money. Sometimes counseling can help that because the counselor is a neutral person who can see both sides.

You should talk to your surgeon about this. My understanding is that depression is considered a co-morbidity. That means that being depressed -- in and of itself -- shouldn't prevent you from having the surgery. Your surgeon needs to send you to a therapist that understands that or he's going to be failing tons of patients.

Is that what your doctor's office says? Because most recommend doing on liquids for only a day or two after a fill and some people don't even do that. How can you tell if the fill worked if you don't eat solid food? ETA. Looks like shortgal and I were posting at the same time.

What kind of yearly limit to do you have on what you can pay out of pocket? It might be lower than $5000. (Mine is $3000, for example.) Plus any co-pays you have already paid this year will come out of that and make it even lower.

It's stuff like this that make me not want to tell anyone at work about my surgery. My family won't do that because they know me too well to try. Casual acquaintances I don't see very often usually don't either. But something about work makes people think it's okay -- maybe it's that they don't know you *that* well but they see you every day so they think they know you well enough.

It's good for flexibility too. I kind of miss it but only in an abstract way. Finding I wasn't enjoying it more is part of why I realized I needed to DO SOMETHING about my weight. Well I walked up 5 flights of stairs today. Does that count?

Because dieting doesn't work and WLS does. I would ask your husband why he thinks you will be one of the 2-5% who is able to lose significant weight and keep it off for at least 5 years particularly as you never have managed before. Ask him what is different now? It's really not logical to keep doing what doesn't work over and over and maybe you can make him see that if you phrase it the right way.

I was told by my surgeon's office that they bill fills as an office visit and so they are covered. Not everyone bills this way though.

Hey, for free I might be able to get over my fear of letting someone else's software run my stomach.

I hate Lane Bryant. They seem to think all fat women are AMAZONS. I am a shorty. The only thing I can buy there are tops. The Right Fit jeans are okay but the legs are SO WIDE that I look like I'm wearing gauchos. I love their bras though. You can get DDD there! I've never found them anywhere else. What is CJ Banks? I don't think we have those around here.

But Rock Band is awesome. (Even if it's not out on the Wiii yet.)

For the past 10 years I've been ice skating. I really loved it for along time but the past year I've just been going through the motions so I stopped. Now I need a new activity. I actually like to work out but I never have time to go to the gym -- even though we have one at work! I also am thinking about taking up ballroom dancing, but I don't really want to start when I'm so overweight. There are always more girls than guys and the guys all want to dance with the skinny chicks. :drool: I'm trying to get motivated to do SOMETHING because I miss having some activity in my life.

I won't meet anyone until next month though I'm going to try to go to a support group first. Maybe we'll see each other in the waiting room one day! :drool:

If it's just to get a second opinion, probably not. OTOH I agree about getting a 1st opinion that makes sense first. But if you can't get that, taking your records to another surgeon and asking for their opinion couldn't cost more than an office visit co-pay. If the second surgeon makes you feel more comfortable, you can consider switching to them at that point, and at that point you can find out what you'd have to do over and what they'd accept from your first shot.

I struggle with how much to tell the people I work with. I don't particularly want to hide it from them, but I do want to be low key about. Very, very, low key. I don't want them asking me how much I've lost all the time and watching every bit of food I put into my mouth.

It wouldn't hurt to get a second opinion. It is surgery after all.

Maybe your surgeon meant Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. You should tell him that he's sending out conflicting messages.

Once you get out of school, no one cares what you got on your SATs or that you got an 89% on that history test in 4th grade instead of a 92%. (What?! I thought that went on my 'permanent' record!) In the real world, there is very little testing going on. My son was homeschooled for two years via a state-sponsored charter school (one that is apparently illegal according to this 1953 law/ruling :tongue:). He had tests and grades and all the records he would have had if he went to public school. It was better for him than traditional school -- for one thing, I finally taught him to write a decent essay, something 9 years worth of credentialed teachers never managed -- but it still wasn't right for him. Now he's at an alternative school. There are no formal classes, no grades and no tests. All learning is self-directed by the students. It's only now that he's figured out that learning is something you do for yourself, not because people get on your ass if you don't. He's actually signing up for some classes at the local community college and he thinks he knows what he wants to major in. None of that was happening in a traditional school setting with grades and testing. Grades and testing was putting him on the path to being a HS drop-out, in fact. When it's time to go to college FT, he will have some college credits already and it will just be a transfer and not a 1st time admission so the lack of grades will not hurt him at all. He'll might not even have to take the SATs depending on where he ends up going. IMO we have tests and grades in school because schools are full of bureaucracy and want everything to be standardized. But life isn't standardized. In the long run, grades are meaningless and standardized tests don't define someone's value as a person -- or even how well they'll do in their profession.

You don't have to eat it. :tongue: You measure it with a tape measure and then give the other person a coy look. Oh, don't forget to cup your breast. That's the secret sign. :tt2:

She sounds like a great friend!

I have this sort-of mole on my chin. It's not actually a mole but it looks enough like one that it might as well be. It popped up about 14 years ago and I hate it. But haven't done anything about it for one reason or another. I don't plan to do anything else. I don't care what I look like naked as long as I look good in clothing and even bat wings and a stomach flap will look better than what I've got now.