MacMadame

I started losing mine at 1.5 weeks! (I may have said this before, but the indignity of it still annoys me to this day. :party4:)

BLIS is great but so few surgeons are in the program. Bah! My surgeon told me that he would not charge me extra for his work in helping with any complications, btw. (I forgot to mention that before.) But that the hospital absolutely would charge me, if I was in there for more days than overnight for the surgery.

My surgeon and I decide to keep me on mushies for longer than normal, too. I ended up waiting until week 7 to start regular food and that was fine with me.

Isopure is 100% whey protein isolate. The other stuff -- the ones that come in a tube -- are collegan and whey protein and casein protein.

Hey, DK35 on OH used him and loves him. He gives a 10% discount if you lost more than 100 pounds, too. It's still a lot of money and down time though. I don't agree with putting people on 10 days of clears. There is no real medical reason to do this that I have found and I think it makes the first two weeks post-op much more miserable than they have to be. The ASMBS also says that there is no real reason to do clears post-op, just a liquid diet. Now, to be clear, it is VERY important to do 2-3 weeks of liquids post op while the incision is healing. But they don't have to be *clear* liquids. I am also on the fence about oversewing the staple line. Some doctors believe that it puts some stress on the incision and can actually increase the risk of leaks. OTOH, Dr. Aceves' leak rate is very good. So I went back and forth on that one. He's also started to use a larger boughie size and I wanted the smallest I could get and still be safe. I know the difference between 36 oversewn and 32 not oversewn is tiny and probably not stastically significant, but at the time I was researching, 32 f seemed to be the norm so that's what I wanted. Like I said, none of these were deal-breakers. Deal-breakers would be things like doing the surgery on an out-patient basis, having done less than 100 sleeves, using a 40 f or larger boughie, putting you on softs almost immediately out of the hospital and having minimal to non-existent after care. And, yes, I've seen all those things...

They aren't doing any walks in my area this year...

What's his name? Maybe someone here has used him.

Hey, you asked me a question on another thread but I was out of town and I lost it. Can you bump that thread up or I can just hijack this thread, I guess...

I had my clot in '80 and a lot has changed since then. In my case, they put me on an IV with heperin for 11 days and I had to stay in the hospital the entire time. Then they moved me to coumidin and released me and I had to stay on coumidin for a while. Months, though, not years. But mine was also in my lungs, not my legs and I don't think they make you stay in the hospital the whole time these days, either. It really was kind of a waste for me to be there 11 days. I felt fine after about 1-2 days of being hooked up to heperin. So I wasn't sick but I was stuck in the hospital. It was quite annoying, actually.

I told everyone and was suprised how supportive people were. But now that I'm in maintenance, I find I don't want everything to be about my having had WLS. So I don't tell people I meet casually and may never meet again. Well, sometimes I still do, but I'm starting not to.

I am one of those skinny bitches. :party4: And, yes, it's fabulous.

I get drunk much easier than I used (and I used to get drunk VERY easily). It's hard to hit that "mellow" spot. I'm either sober or slurring my words. It doesn't burn any more than it used to though.

Sorry you are going through a rough patch.

It happens a lot with WLS folks! I think it's because a lot of the eating is scheduled and you can't eat a lot at each meal.

I guess I'm weird. I did scrambled eggs on my soft diet almost right away and they went down just fine. They were a staple food for me during that period.

Diarrhea is definitely an incentive to get off liquids. :001_tt2: I just <3 Amy. I need to make an appointment to see her when I go for my next follow-up.

Yes, I do feel lucky. Not only that Dr. C was here locally to me, but that I really like him and we have a good patient-doctor relationship. But I would have gone to MX, if I didn't like one of the 3 local guys here who have done a lot of sleeves. I had my list narrowed down to Dr. Rumblaut and Dr. Aceves. But I was waffling. Rumblaut hadn't done a lot of sleeves at that time and I know Aceves is kind of worshiped here on VST, but there are a couple of things in his protocol that I don't agree with. They weren't deal-breakers, but they contributed to my indecision. So I was waffling back and forth about it. You can imagine how glad I was when I went to the seminar and decided Dr. C was the one I wanted to cut me! I was afraid I'd hate him and have to keep looking... :sad0: I agree that PS in MX is very tempting as well. The things is, I think bariatric surgery is pretty straightforward most of the time and even the medocre docs don't have horrible stats. (But don't get me started on the butchers.) So doing it out of state or out of country seems reasoanble. But PS requires so much more downtime and so much more follow-up. Plus, revisions and multiple procedures are very common. So it's actually something that doesn't work nearly as well long-distance. Yet, the price differential between the US and MX makes it 100x more tempting than it was for my sleeve surgery!

Honestly, I'm not sure where you can find unbiased data. And that's for any doctor, not just one outside the US. This is one reason why I think it's important that your surgeon belong to some sort of organization that enforces some kind of minimum standards. Then they have incentive not to inflate their stats or lie about their complication rates as they will be called to task, if they do. The other thing you can do is see if their info passes the sniff test. There are surgeons out there claiming ridiculous stats. But you can't find their patients. It's unlikely their patients are not on the internet in larger proportions than anyone else's so if you see a doc who claims 1000 sleeves and you see their patients everywhere and another doc claims 1000 sleeves and you can hardly find their patients, well.... it's a hint, anyway. :sad0: Another way to "sniff" is to consider how many surgeries it is possible for them to do in a year. Most surgeons do 3-5 surgeries a day a few times a week. The busiest surgeons do about 500-750 a year. So, if you have a doc who claims to do RnY, bands and sleeves and he's been doing sleeves for less than a year, he hasn't done 1000 of them either. But I don't know of anyway to know *for sure*. If there is such a way, I'd love to hear about it!

And I would say the same thing about your post. Instead of saying "please clarify", you make it personal and like there is something wrong with ME. There is absolutely NO NEED to make it personal like this. But I will clarify anyway: You said that the MX surgeons are much more experienced than the US surgeons. I said that they are about the same. Both countries have a handful of experienced, but the vast majority in both countries are inexperienced. It's important that people don't assume that, if they go to MX, they will automatically get better and more experienced than US. They have to do their research and make sure their surgeon is one of the handful that is experienced and not the vast majority that are inexperienced.

Drainage is no biggie. It's a temporary thing -- the drain isn't in that long maybe 10 days or two weeks tops. Heck a lot of surgeons don't even use them. (Plus, I'd be surprised if sleevesters really have more trouble in general than RnYers when it comes to that. Maybe to the sessions she attended, but even then anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable.)

I didn't want to answer this because I didn't want to sound negative but I decided to be honest because I want to help you. I have been on the various WLS for 1.5 years. In that time I have seen this question asked a ZILLION times about all the various types of WLS and I have seen <1% responses of "I have regrets" and everyone else -- 95-99% of which are less than a year out -- says they have no regrets. Yet, if you hang out where people are more than a year out with any surgery, you will see people having troubles and regrets and revisions to other surgery types. You'll see bandsters getting RnY and sleeved. You'll see RnYers getting bands put over their pouches or revised to the DS. You'll see sleevesters getting the DS. You'll see people with the DS getting theirs "taken down" (this is essentially converting it to a sleeve by restoring the intestines) or being revised to RnY (converting their intestinal switch into a different configuration). You'll see people who are struggling with regaining their weight. Are these the majority? Absolutely not. But they exist and we can learn from them. It can be very helpful to know why people's surgeries didn't work for them because something about their story may be like your story. Maybe they had a certain approach to life that you share and they picked the wrong surgery for that approach. That's helpful to know. Or maybe they aren't anything like you and their problems are unlikely to be your problems. That's also helpful to know. But you aren't going to find these stories by starting a thread saying "Any regrets?" (even though that seems like a logical thing to do) You have to hunt them out because the less successful aren't as active on the boards as the successful. They either aren't around or they don't say much. Maybe they won't say anything out of fear of the response (sometimes some early pre-ops are brutal to those whose surgery didn't work well, probably out of fear that it will happen to them -- not here so much, thank goodness) or because they feel like their problems are all their own doing (even when they aren't) or because they don't want to publicly admit they aren't doing as well as handful of stars. To find them, my advice is to do the following: -Go to boards with Revision forums and Regret forums and read and read people's stories. -Go to boards with a different surgery type from the one you are thinking about getting and asking if there are any "Your-type-to-their-type" revisions and why they revised. (For example, a DS forum is a great place to find VSG revisions because a lot of sleevesters who can't lose all their weight revise to the DS.) -Go to boards for your surgery type and listen to the stories of people farther out. Notice when people have problems, what kind of problems they have. I did this when I was planning to get a band and, as a result, I decided not to get one. There were too many stories of people who did everything right and couldn't get proper restriction and so were always hungry. I knew I couldn't keep my weight off if I was always hungry and I didn't want a surgery where so many people end up fighting hunger. But my point isn't my conclusion about me. It's about the process ... it's the only way I've seen to find out what long-term life with a particular surgery type is *really* like and if it's the life for you. Good luck!

My advice is to talk to Amy, our NUT. She is AWESOME and she will help you get over your fears and recommend stuff that is consistent with the recommendations of our program.

I think it's pretty common in the US to stay overnight. There is one surgeon I know of who does this surgery on an outpatient basis. I don't agree with that, myself. I think the risk of leaks is high enough that it would make me extremely uncomfortable to be discharged that day. Most surgeons believe a minimum of 24 hours of observation is necessary for this operation. The situation in MX is different for a number of reasons. One of which is that people are coming from other countries. You don't want to put someone on a plane for hours at a time the day after having surgery. You want to observe them longer. My surgeon does the same for out of town patients. They don't say in the hospital because the price would be exorbitant. They say in a nearby hotel and don't go home until they are cleared by the doctor. I'm pretty sure other US surgeons with a big out-of-town practice do the same.

My experience is that a sip or two will not hurt. But if I do more than that, I can eat more at that meal and if I don't wait at least 30 min, but preferably 45, I do get hungry sooner. I have actually deliberately sipped a drink with a meal in order to fit more in. I wanted to fit in and also sample everything available. I still ate about half what everyone else ate, but it's a slippery slope so I try not to do that more than a few times a year on special occasions.

I don't really agree with this. There are a handful of surgeons all over the world who are very experienced with the VSG. A few are in MX and a few more are in the US, a few are in Europe and there are a few scattered around the rest of the world. The rest of the surgeons in both the US and MX and everywhere else are not very experienced with the sleeve. It was different with the band. Because the band had to be approved by the FDA, surgeons in other parts of the world, especially MX, had quite a head start on US surgeons. The MX surgeons pioneered some of the techniques used today by US surgeon. But that didn't happen with the sleeve. The pioneers of the sleeve are Balastar in Spain, Gagner on the East Coast of the US and LapSF (Jossart & Cirangle) on the West Coast. There are a couple of other guys whose names appear on the all early papers about the sleeve, as well, but these are the guys who put a lot of effort into refining sleeve technique and promoting the surgery.