apu

Dr Ramos Kelly, I had a great experience, healed well and quickly, am down over 115 lbs and enjoying life

Well its official...I'm in onderland, woohoo

I am sorry to hear of your complication, i hope you recover quickly, hugs,

Just a few ounces short of 100 lbs. almost there

Looking good, congrats

I had a great experience with Dr Ramos as my surgeon. The surgery went perfectly uncomplicated, My recovery was extremely quick, experienced zero side effect including no gas pain post op. As you can see by my stats the surgery was also successful. I guess as with everything your mileage may vary. To be clear I am not a Ramos fanboy, I am just very satisfied with the job I asked him to do. I wasn't looking for someone to make me feel good or fluff my ego. I was looking for competent surgeon and don't regret my choice.

I actually did a lot of research before deciding on Dr Kelly. I learned that he had excellent training and actively keeps himself current. He has been doing VSG and other bariatric surgeries for well over a decade. He not only has likely done more bariatric surgeries than most other Mexican surgeons but at the same time has tackled many more high risk surgeries (i.e. super obese and /or concurrent significant medical commodities ) that other surgeons have avoided to keep their complication/death stats down. I also learned there is a great deal of non altruistic motivated politics in Mexico's bariatric scene.

Well done Fluffy, very impressive

It doesn't matter, any of the acetaminophen preparations are fine.

Yeah, weight is a difficult measure of healthy body mass for me. I carry a lot of muscle weight in my legs. I was genetically blessed with abnormally muscular legs. Great for a guy but my sister was not particularly thrilled about this gift. It was great in high school when I was a running back. It literally took more than 4 guys to tackle me as my legs had no problem carrying the weight of the additional players piling onto me. Now having powerful legs does nothing for me except mess up my perspective of what weight I should land on

No need to worry about me ladies but I really do appreciate the concern. I am not going to squander my honeymoon period, I am going loose as much as my body will allow but at the same time be mindful of the perceptions of the folks near me. I agree generally folks have terrible self perception issues. My minds eye never correlated to the photos of myself. I was always surprised how unhealthy I looked at my heaviest. I hated getting pictures of myself , now I truly enjoy getting pictures taken with my family.

My target goal weight of a "normal" BMI may be unrealistic as I was always a pretty muscular guy even with all the superficial fat. Nonetheless I will still loose at least another 20 pounds before I need to reassess. Right now I wear a size 34 pant comfortably with no muffin top and I can fit into medium shirts( down from a 2XL shirt and 44 pant) that my svelte 20 and 23 year old boys wear. Wifey wants me to sport some abs, so I guess I have to keep going, especially after subjecting her to the flabs for last couple of decades

4 hours ago, RickM said:

Perhaps your PCP doesn't know what labs are appropriate, as DS labs will differ some from RNY or VSG labs? Or is he constrained by being in an insurance network (such as Kaiser or other ***) that needs to approve his work?

These are the labs that my wife gets done every year from our PCP (she is a 2005 DS) -

http://www.paclap.com/downloads/annualdslaborders.pdf

We have had no problem getting these done with our PCP, or getting insurance coverage for them.

While it is helpful to have a bariatric surgeon's insight as to what levels are appropriate with your DS, what variances from "normal" levels are acceptable or desirable, they aren't essential.

Good luck on working this out....

By chance, are you a Dr. Baltasar patient? He was high on our list before deciding to self pay semi-locally.

I suspect its more of an insurance thing, That list of labs is probably close to $1200-2000.

That said I am a busy and experienced PCP with a relatively large practice and yet only look after a handful of bariatric patients. Honestly I have yet to order any nutritional labs for them. Usually bariatric surgery follows them. I have no problem requesting bariatric labs but since I rarely do this I would likely seek guidance specific to the needs of duodenal switch or bypass patient. If there is a transfer of specialty care its usually helpful for some correspondence from that specialty to your PCP.

4 hours ago, Berry78 said:

When people start telling you not to lose any more, it is a good time to take stock of where you actually are. BMI is NOT gospel when it comes to a healthy body.

First metric is waist to height measurement. 6'1 is 73 inches. Your natural waist should be, at most, half that number... 36.5 inches. (Find your natural waist by looking for the area in your side where your ribs and hip bone almost touch. Place the tape measure between the bottom rib and the top of the hip bone. Measure horizontally around that area.. easiest in the mirror). Once you are below that number, then you've reached a healthy size.. and any extra losses are just icing on the cake. (It's not a bad idea to overshoot by an inch or two to guard against a bit of regain).

1 hour ago, FamilyGuyNJ said:

I also hit an overweight BMI today. I started at a BMI of 50 just over a year ago. Congrats to us!

Sent from my SM-G950U using BariatricPal mobile app

berry you are absolutely right about listening to those close to you. That is a interesting perspective using waist to height measurement. I recently moved into a size 34 pant, so I must be pretty close, yet I know I still have some room to go, I think I will reassess my goal in the next 20 pounds.

Congratulations familyguynj, amazing weight loss, well done sir.

I know its not a major deal but my scales this morning officially kicked me out of obesity. I am simply "overweight" according to the BMI chart. I am quite psyched about this as I have not seen this weight since I got married over 23 years ago. I am having to work harder for each pound lost but determined to loose my last 42 pounds. Weird thing, people around me are telling me not to loose more weight, whats up with that?

My vote is to proceed asap. Once I made my decision I was locked and loaded and it couldn't be done soon enough. Then again it might be just a a guy mentality. Good luck with whatever your choose.

Ok new goal which I recently met. I wanted fit into the kilt and Jacket I got married in, 25 years ago. I am so going to wear it when the formal opportunity presents, Funny thing happened recently I realized I could fit in the same clothes a my 21 year old son. I don't think he was impressed.

Absorption and bio-availability of your thyroid medication will likely be affected. There is a liquid version of T4, Tirosint. Its manufactured in Europe so I am not entirely sure of its general availability.

3 minutes ago, CJ Sunshine said:

$2 is a steal! I pay $6!!!

You think that is a deal! We own a 70 acre pasture that our neighbor takes some of his hay for his cattle in exchange for all the farm eggs we can eat, We have 4 teenagers in the house so we probably go through 2-3 dozen a week. Its a sweet deal, he cuts my grass and I get free eggs

2 months out and I find that there is nothing my new and improved tummy can't handle. Once I tried a couple ounces of beer, it was fine I just didn't want any more. For me an absolute forbidden food is chips, its a slider that I have very little control over, its just easier banning it from the house. Fortunately I have yet to meet an animal Protein or veg that my tummy does not agree with.

I think the only thing I would like is perhaps a picture of me with my family in a happy place like the Caribbean. For too may years I have avoided most photo opportunities because how I disliked seeing myself as a heavy person. I felt like a ghost in a way, there but not really. Now that I see everyone else's wish list I'm thinking I might need to set my bar higher I kinda like the Porsche idea but I think it be a bit of a hard sell to the wifey and probably to myself. Almost bought a Maserati a few months ago until I investigated how much routine maintenance cost and decided it was a little too crazy even if I had the money,

Whenever you have your follow up blood work ask your provider to also check your thyroid labs

couple of questions: How do you shower or otherwise attend to your hygiene without Water? This is just out of curiosity so you really don't need to answer.

More importantly what is glucinda? i googled it and got no clues. Is it glucerna? Irregardless berry gave some excellent advice instead of a presumed dietary supplement/replacement.

Your gastrointestinal bacterial flora is changing as a consequence of how quickly food is being propelled, altered nutritional absorption and different macro nutrients ratios. It will continue to change over next few weeks and likely will have less flatulence over time.

This something you need to follow up with your physician. Although you can get low serum Protein levels from chronic malnutrition, you seem to be painting a liver failure picture, it might need more attention than upping your protein intake.

Vitamix fan here. We have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. We use the Vitamix to puree several pounds at a time, add onions and basil from the garden and then we toss in the slow cooker for 12 hours. Out comes some of the most delicious Pasta Sauce without the added sugar, corn Syrup, calories and crap that comes with the commercial stuff . We end up pressure canning most of it for use over the winter.

That is really impressive, well done!!!