MacMadame

Tell her that as a nursing student, you're surprise she's so FREAKING IGNORANT about lapband surgery. And feel free to use a different F work for Freaking, if you are so inclined. :blushing: I really can't imagine the gall of someone to come into someone's room and give them a big lecture based on watching what pages they web surf. For all she knows, you have a close family member who is thinking about getting the surgery and you are here to learn how to support them. In fact, I couldn't imagine barging into someone's room and giving them unsolicited advice even if they were doing something really stupid -- like taking up smoking or doing hard drugs. So I sure wouldn't do it over something like this. Polite people wait until the other person brings it up; nosy parkers barge in uninvited and start spewing. Nobody likes a nosy parker. :thumbup:

It's the secret Lap-Band handshake. That's how we know each other when we meet up in public. :blushing:

I do. I find testing and grades to be fairly arbitrary and not a good indication of whether kids are really learning. I say stop with this incessent testing and use all that time, energy and money to actually teach things. For one thing, I don't care if my kids learn the approved state curriculum. I don't think a kid who isn't interesting in CA history in 4th grade when they decide to teach it is a failure. I think telling kids who want to take a certain class or learn about a particular subject that they can't do it because they aren't in the right grade yet is ridiculous. How can we get kids excited about learning and get them to be lifetime learners if we constantly are telling them to only be interested in what we want them to be interested in? It's not going to happen for the vast majority of them.

Hmm. I need more fiber in my diet.

I was thinking about this thread yesterday when I was buying shoes. There was a big display of belts at the store and I noticed something about them ... they were all STRAIGHT! Not a "pre-curved" belt among them. Oh noes, when I put them around my round waist, they will crease and form a triangle!! Except not. :blushing:

I think I already look like a Pinto Bean with limbs. But it's a VERY BIG pinto bean! :blushing:

I have to say that when I started on this journey, I expected it to be much more straightforward -- more like getting your gallbladder out. I would go to my PCP, get a referral to a local surgeon and have it done. End of story. Boy was I naive!! It really bugs me that bariatric surgery is such a big racket for some people. There are all these web sites out there that remind me of people trying to sell timeshares or discount cruises with lots of screaming big letters, flashing prices, specials of the month, amazing -- but not in the least realistic -- success stories, but no mention of the important things -- like what a surgeon's infection rate is or how many lap band procedures they've done. I really hate feeling like people are trying to take advantage of me and I especially hate it that there is a whole industry trying to take advantage of fat people's desperation. I've already been through that with the diet industry. WLS was supposed to save me from all that not introduce me to an entirely new cast of unethical characters. Thank goodness for LBT though. I'd be lost without you guys! :eek:

When I ordered my wedding dress, I was in the middle of a big weight loss and wanted to order a smaller size. The people in the shop said they always order at the size that you are when you come in because you can't predict what size you'll be by the time the wedding happens. Some people lose but some people gain! I continued to lose and when my dress came in, they had to remake it onto my body. I didn't mind though because for the cost of alterations, I ended up with what was essentially a custom-made dress. A few months later I ordered a bridesmaid gown and the sample must have stretched out plus I had lost some more weight due to gallbladder surgery. Well, by the time the dress came in, I was 5 lb. heavier and it didn't fit at all. They let it out as much as they could but I was pretty uncomfortable and ended up never being able to fit into it ever again. So based on both those experiences, I'd say get it the size you are now and let them take in what they need to when the time comes. It's a much better experience to have people exclaiming about how much weight you've lost compared to having them tsk tsk as they try to make something too small fit you.

But if the sleeve doesn't work out for you, it's not reversible like the band is. It's also not as safe as Lap band surgery because it takes longer to do and requires them to cut off part of your stomach. Finally, it's more expensive than Lap band, which is a factor for some people. There is no way I am going to rearrange my insides in any permanent way to lose weight and I'm very concerned with the mortality rate as well. It wasn't until Lap band surgery came along that I've even considered WLS because it's the first WLS that met my criteria on those two counts. I'm still somewhat concerned with how new the surgery is and how many unknowns there are. It seems like TPTB don't 100% understand why the band slips, for example. I worry that I'll have mine put in and two years from now they'll come up with some revolutionary technique that makes slips something that happen less than 1% of the time instead of 3%.

Some insurance companies require a 6 month medically supervised diet and won't accept the 3 month version. Mine let's me chose, thank goodness.

Yes, men can be very irritating. Ha! Not fast enough.

I just bought arch supports yesterday and already I see a big reduction in pain. I'm also hoping WLS will being the final nail in my plantar fasciitis coffin.

If you've been fighting your weight for 26 years, you've already proven you can't do it on your own. There is no shame in admitting that and trying something that has a higher % chance of working. After all, trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is not logical. OTOH, if you are hesitating because the lapband doesn't make sense for you, then don't let us talk you into it.

Ha, I had one of those moments today! Thought of this thread right away too. Though to be fair, the fatter person pulled out in front of me in a parking lot so I was already in a judging mood. :thumbup:

I'm not in that area, so I don't have any direct experience, but I would say that the important thing is that your surgeon has a lot of experience with the band. There appears to be a steep learning curve so you don't want to be one of his or her first patients. I look at 3 programs. One had great stats, but they were only on 50 lap band surgeries! That wasn't enough for me.

Oops. I played anyway. I guess I'm not a rule follower.

My insurance company requires that you be morbidly obese now but you only have to be obese in the past, not morbidly obese. Have you checked your insurance company's requirements? Are you sure they require 5 years of being morbidly obese? Because that's more than the NIH protocol requires.

It is interesting how our attitudes towards weight change as our circumstances change. I remember being given a hard time about my weight, nagged about every bit of food I put into my body as a child. Yet, I wasn't particularly overweight. I was 110 and 4 ft 11 inches at 13 and most of that was boobs and booty. According to the BMI charts, my BMI would have been around 23 and that is considered a healthy weight. Yet I felt the pressure to go on a diet and did, thus starting a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and taking the first step on my journey towards morbidly obesity. I look back and I remember how dissatisfied I was with my body most of my life. When I was 110, I wanted to be 100. When I was 120, I wanted to be 110. When I was 135, I wanted to be 125. Yet, it wasn't until I hit 135 that my BMI truly qualified me as being overweight and even then only barely. Now, I look back on 135 with envy. My goal weight is only 145, mainly because I have fat stores I know are never going away and I don't think 135 is realistic at 50. Sometimes I wish I could have those years back so that I could enjoy how I looked instead of constantly being critical of myself for not meeting some unrealistic standard. As for the void-of-course moon, all I can say is

If your husband is worried about things like nutritional deficiencies, then he's confusing Lapband surgery with something like Gastric Bypass. So, probably, if you just educate him, he'll come around. The whole idea that getting this surgery is the easy way out comes from the fact that we've been brainwashed as a society to believe that losing weight is "just" a matter of exercising more and eating less. But there are tons and tons of studies showing that more is going on. In particular, dieting -- something we've all done and are being encouraged to do now instead of getting a lab band -- can put your body in a place were it is no longer possible to lose weight and keep it off. Once you are at that place, however you got there, trying something over and over that has been proven not work, is the height of insanity IMO. Only somewhere between 2 and 5 % of all dieters manage to lose weight and *keep* it off for only as little a period of time as 5 years. WLS patients do much better than that. Anywhere from 42 to 75% have managed to lose significant weight -- at least 50% of their excess weight -- and keep it off in those same time periods. But the fact that WLS doesn't have a 100% success rate shows that it is *far* from the easy way out. If you want to be one of the successful ones -- the ones who get a significant amount of weight off and keep it off, but not necessarily even all of the weight you want to lose -- you have to work at it. You have to watch what you eat and change how you think about food. If you want to be one of the extraordinary people -- the ones who get to goal and stay there for the rest of their lives -- you have to work DAMN HARD. People can say "oh, you can do that without the lap band". Yes, you can. But what the lap band does is combat some of the biological realities of being obese. First, it tames the hunger. Instead of getting hungry every 1-2 hours, you will find yourself getting hungry more like a normal-weight person. Second, it controls portion size. However, that second part only works if you follow the rules. Following the rules is HARD. But at least, if you aren't hungry every time you turn around, you have a shot at following the rules. That's all the band is really -- a tool to make it biologically possible to eat properly. It's not a magic wand that you wave and the weight falls off with no effort on your part. It's more of a leveling devise that evens the playing field so you have the same chance of success as a normal-weighted person whose body doesn't fight their efforts to lose weight and keep it off.

I did my research on the docs covered by my insurance and decided to start of with Thinner Future and see how it goes. They have 3 docs who do the bands and I'm wondering who would be the best for me. They have Dr. Wetter, Dr. Foster and Dr. Sanchez. I'm leaning towards Dr. Foster based on feedback on ObesityHelp.com, but I haven't met any of them yet so reserve the right to change my mind. Also, they do them out of Mills-Peninsula and El Camino Hospital. El Camino is right by my work so I'm figuring I'll get it done there. Anyone have any experience with their program? Their web site says their hospital and WLS programs have won all sorts of awards and is a Center of Excellence. I was really hoping to get it done somewhere closer to home, but the only doctor near my house who does WLS has only done 50 bands. I want someone more experienced than that. (Figures the hospital SIX BLOCKS from my house doesn't do WLS. :tea: )

How can a pretty balloon barf?

According to WLS for Dummies, the gurgling is gas and it's normal. Do you guys think that's true?

Ask for a copy of your plan. Not the plan summary but the full plan with all the details and the exact language.

I didn't write the letter because I found out that there was small print ... it is covered if it's "medically necessary". So I'm going to see how this plays out before I go to HR. I have a call into a surgery group so I should know soon if they are going to just say no right up front.

I wasn't sure but I think it might be this one: Cousin Biotech... They call it the BioRing but their web site is so horrible it's hard to tell what anything is and if they have an "E" version.