MacMadame

Welcome to LapBandTalk! Good luck at the seminar and let us know how it goes.

People always say that if you have sugar cravings, you should get bypass, but I don't agree. First, not everyone with a bypass dumps. Secondly, lots of people lose their sweet tooth when they get WLS. I have a gastric sleeve and my sweet tooth is gone. My surgery was safer than bypass, cost less and has similar weight loss stats. I think bypass will be a thing of the past in about 10 years and replaced by the sleeve. Be sure to look into all four WLS types and then pick the one that directly deals with your food issues and has the post-op lifestyle that you can live with. For example, some people, the maintenance of a band is too much. They know they won't be pro-active about getting fills. For others, the malabsorption of the bypass scares them as they know they'll be bad at taking their Vitamins. For some, dumping is a deal-breaker -- they want to be in control of what they eat -- but for others it's a benefit. You have to answer those questions for you. Here is a chart that shows all the surgeries: Weight-Loss Surgeries Compared

Typical OR times are 45 min to an hour.

I think in the environment that you are in, not telling could have repercussions. For example, there is a teacher I know whose students started spreading gossip that she was losing weight because she was a drug addict.... because she was always taking "pills" (i.e., her Vitamins & supplements). She ended up telling them and going over all the stuff in her pill box. I'm not sure if a big announcement is the way to go though. But when people ask you how you are losing weight, you can tell them you are eating less, moving more and you had WLS to deal with your hunger. Tell just a few people and the word will spread...

None of that sounds mental to me. WLS works because it provides hunger control. If you have no restriction, it's like not having WLS at all. So you are in the same place as someone who hasn't been banded and can't stick to a diet. IOW, you are in the same place you were before you got your band.

Full liquids includes things like yogurt and FAGE yogurt is high in protein. I had a lot of special "bariatric" foods for that time including protein soups. Or you can add protein to your soups. What's the name of the unflavored protein powder you are using?

Hunger, for me, feels mostly like an emptiness. I can tell I'm weaker and it's time to eat. Sometimes it is gnawing though, but that's mostly A rule of thumb is that it's normal to feel hunger every 3-4 hours. So, if it's been that long since you last had calories, eat something.

Welcome to LapBandTalk and Congrats on your weight loss!

There is special insurance, but I believe you can purchase it here before you go from your regular insurance company. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's optional. At least that's the way it worked when I lived in San Diego.

No, every doctor doesn't have horror stories under their belt. They all have patients with complications, but that isn't the same thing as horror stories. My surgeon, for example, has never lost a patient. Ever. And he's done thousands of surgeries including the complicated DS which he does laparoscopically. Dr. Huacuz has lost at least a handful that I know about and who knows how many more that I haven't heard about. I'm glad you had a good experience with Dr. Huacuz, but that doesn't make him a good doctor. He's a butcher and the only reason he doesn't kill more people is that these surgeries are pretty safe overall. But if I had a choice to go to a doctor with a mortality rate of 1 in 200 or one with a mortality rate of 0%, I'm going to go with the one who has a 0% rate.

Zinc is definitely on the list of minerals that can cause hair loss if you are deficient. But most of us aren't losing hair due to vitamin/mineral deficiencies or protein deficiencies. It's the shock to our system of surgery and anesthesia combined with rapid weight loss.

Welcome to LapBandTalk! I self-payed for my surgery too. I was qualified when I started looking into it, but then I lost weight and also I wanted a vertical sleeve gastrectomy and that wasn't covered either. Then I found out my company has an exclusion for weight loss surgery so it was all moot anyway.

A gastric sleeve is when they remove part of your stomach so the remaining part is shaped like a sleeve. They move the part that makes ghrelin, a hormone that gives you a big appetite.

I find that very difficult to believe. He's been pretty adamant that you need to be as small as possible. But I can ask him at this month's support meeting. :tt2:

It's routine when you take out a body part to have it biopsied, at least around here. I think they look for abnormal tissues.

Congrats on your success!

I stayed overnight so about 36 hours. Went back to work at 1.5 weeks but wished I'd stayed out for 2.

The gurgling can be from stomach acid too and also from drinking too fast. Both of these things feel very much like hunger so it's good to treat them. Are you on a PPI and, if so, maybe you need a different one?

Today we went paddle-boating at the lake near work. Man, was that a lot more work than I was expecting!

From what I can tell, self-pay patients actually pay more than the surgeon's get from the insurance companies once the insurance company knocks down the bill. That's why a bunch of them have started charging insurance patients extra fees -- to make up the difference.

Mine says Ford and Chevy. :eek: It's been used for years in the rest of the world (especially Europe) and had to go through the same clinical trials that the Lap-Band went through to get approved in the US. You can find data about it on MedLine Plus if you want to read the studies. Once I decided to go for the sleeve instead of the band, I didn't save my research so I don't have anything handy.

I hit a guy on a cycle once and it was really bad for him but all I got was a bruise on my forehead. I haven't been on one since.

Nope, bigger isn't better in this case. The bigger ones stretch too much over time and weight regain is an issue. My surgeon has been doing this procedure for about eight years now and they used to use a 48 f just like for their DS patients. They saw weight regain with too many patients as early as two years out with that size and now they use the 32 f. There is a study that shows you need to remove at least 500 cc of stomach to have long term success as well. IMO 32 and 34 f are good sizes and anything 48 f and over is too big. In between 34 and 48 (mostly 36, 40, & 42), I think the jury is out on. I eat 1100 calories a day right now and I'm only 7.5 months out. I could easily eat 1500 just by making different food choices. There is no problem eating enough to maintain for the vast majority of people. It's always possible to eat more often or to eat more calorie dense foods. Like with all the different WLS types, many more people don't get to goal or have some regain than have trouble with losing too much.

Actually, it's not. It's some old procedure that insurance still pays for even though it sucks. They put a mesh band around the top of your stomach and they separate out part of your stomach from the rest, but they don't cut the rest off.

Even though my insurance doesn't cover WLS, I was able to get all my pre-op testing and post-op stuff covered. They even paid for my stomach biopsy (which they probably shouldn't have)!