SeattleSweetie

Good Lord, almost 300 pounds! (reading from your sig) That's AWESOME!!! It gives me hope, since I want to lose at least 210! Congratulations! My check in is 10am tomorrow, I'm supper-loopy and excited right now. Wish me luck!

If the insurance approved, they approved. However, if you're uncertain, it may be good to call the coordinator at your doctor's office, or someone on the office staff who handles insurance, and just have them confirm that this is an official approval, and nothing further will be needed from insurance.

Tomorrow is my band date and the only people I've told about the band are my mother, my best friend, and my fiancee. My dad is a really judgmental person, so my mom agreed to keep it a total secret from him. If I lose a lot of weight, he'd be happy for me, but if he knew it was because of a band, it would just turn into a big episode of how I wasn't able to do it on my own, and that's no fun for anyone. I'd rather he just be proud of me for me. My fiancee and best friend are both great people and have promised secrecy (fiancee isn't one to really talk much anyway - he doesn't like having other people in his business). I've had to take a good amount of time off work for various doctor appointments, so I just told my boss I had a thyroid problem and was having a small exploratory surgery. She's a blabbermouth and if I tell her about the band, it will get around to the entire company, and like many others who have posted here, I don't want everyone judging every bite I take of food or if I'm losing wait too fast, to slow, or otherwise.

I would think that they should, given that a chirporactor is still a doctor of some sort. When I submitted to UHC, I didn't have 5 years of history with anyone, cause like you, I would never let anyone weigh me. I had random weights here and there over the least ten years, so I wrote a leatter to UHC filling in where I knew I had been for the last five years and they accepted that. Good luck!!

This is the scale I just ordered from Amazon. I can't give an official review, as I have yet to receive it, but the two reviews already placed by owners are both 5-stars. [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q6RECK]Amazon.com: Health o meter 844KL High Capacity Digital Bathroom Weight Scale with 1.5 in. LCD, 440 lb x 0.1 lb: Health & Personal Care[/ame] It's got a high weight limit (400lbs) and a large screen for easy reading. I agree with you, I don't want to obsess over me weight either, but I do want to be able to see when my weight loss starts slowing down so I know to go in for a fill.

Hi Everyone, I'm new here (getting banded in two days! YAY!) and was looking around the other day and saw a picture thread of everyone's incision scars. I wanted to show my boyfriend so he would know what to expect, but now I can't find it. Sorry this is probably the wrong place for this question, but nevertheless, can anyone help me out?

Congrats Froggi! I totally understand that it's so hard to be patient, but at least you already have the insurance approval! One of the hardest things is sitting around waiting knowing that everything else is done, but wondering if your insurance will still find a reason to say no. So you're lucky, you have a clear-cut plan, an approval and a timeline, you're in great shape so far. The next six months will be hard, but you're taking good steps learning how to eat properly and cutting out all the bad food. When you finally do get your band, you'll be ready to hit the ground running and you'll be a step ahead of all of us who waited until the time of our surgeries to learn how to eat and make the most of it. I know waiting's hard, but with how fast time flies nowadays, 6 months will be over before you even know it! (((((huge hugs)))))

Well, after nearly a year of wishing, and hoping, and thinking, and praying, and planning, and and dreaming... okay, I won't break out into song here (Oh, come on! If you aren't old enough to know the original song, you had to at least have seen My Best Friend's Wedding)... I've finally been approved, cleared, and am scheduled for surgery on Monday. I'm really psyched, but nervous and scared too... With my insurance, doctor visits, etc, this has all been a pretty easy and simple process and I'm starting to worry that it's been too simple. I'm scared I'm going to get to the hospital, be knocked out on the OR table, and my doctor's going to start poking around and find out I have some bizare liver problem or tumor or something that would prevent him from putting the band in. I think the only reason I'm thinking of this now if because I went to do all of my consent form signings a couple days ago and one of the forms they explain to you gives them authorization that if they find something wierd like a tumor or growth or whatnot while you're in the OR, that they're allowed to biopsy it or do whatever they feel is needed to make sure you're okay for the procedure. My doctor said that it's rare for him to find something like that, but that it has happened before and prevented surgery. I've been to every type of doctor imaginable (some more than once!) and been tested for everything from cancer to hepatitis to west nile virus to friggin' ebola, and I've come up clean. But nevertheless, I'm psyching myself out now. Help! I need a serious confidence boost so I don't have a nervous brekdown before Monday!

Congrats to both of you also, GF and RAS! check in afterwards and let us know how it went. My check in time is 10am, surgery at 12:30 and I'll be staying overnight. The closer I get, the more exciting it really is. I think it's finally sinking in that I'm actually getting to do this! Molly, I'm definitely going to enjoy the sun this week! I'm gonna lay out on my balcony like a beached whale and not care who sees cause this will be the last summer I'll ever have to feel like this.

I've never read it, but that's soooo bizzare you just brought it up. I girl I work with just took a road trip down the Oregon coast a week or two ago and she said she ran into a film crew on a beach shooting scenes because they're turning the books into a movie. I've never heard of Twilight before she was talking about it and now it's come up twice in the last couple days.

Thank you thank you! I kept looking in this section and I must have just been expecting a different title name.

Yep, I had an EKG, then another EKG, then an ECHO and then FINALLY they cleared me. I had to do a lot of different tests though. My doctor is pretty neurotic about knowing EXACTLY what kind of health you're in so there are no surprises during surgery. I swear my insurance company will raise rates for the whole company next year just because of how many things they've paid for me so far... haha

The signature picture was made by another user (.lexi.) At the top of this page, go to the blue bar with all the options (User CP, Albums, Blogs, etc) and click on the little down arrow next to "quick links". Pick "Edit Signature" from the drop down you get. Then copy this into your signature: [img ]http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb253/corylexy/shrinkoswithflowers.gif[/img ] And take out the spaces between the g and the bracket so it looks like . Do this both at beginning and end. These are called image tags. (I have to put spaces in for now to write this example, otherwise you wouldn't see the code, you'd just see the picture.) Also, I'm super happy for you and wish you all the best! Getting a second chance at anything in life is lucky indeed!

Thank you all, I'm so super excited, I can't even believe it. I figure if God didn't want me to have this surgery he would have put a stop to all this somehow long before now, LOL. But still nerve-wracking nonetheless. Reinventing and CHW, I hope all goes well for you, also! Reinventing, no matter what happens with the marriage, just remember this is the best thing you can do for yourself and even when you're having problems with other people, this is the one thing no one can else can control or affect, so long as you don't let them. :frown:

I did two EKGs that were 'abnormal' and was sent to a cardiologist to do an echocardiogram. You know how on heart monitors, you see a little flat line that bumps when your heart beats? Well apparently, the line is supposed to go up and then down, but mine goes down just a tiny tiny tiny bit first, then up, then down again. "Inferior Q waves", it's called. Anyway, it turned out to be no big deal, a "not-uncommon abnormality" or some such. So onto surgery on Monday...

Don't be. Just as Celtic and Hope said, it's really simple, and you'll pretty much be out through all of it anyway. They'll just knock you out and then stick a camera down your throat to make sure your stomach and whatnot are okay. The back of your throat may be a little sore for a day or so afterward, but it's no worse than when you start getting a cold and you first feel it in your throat. It should go away fairly quickly though. I wish you the best!

Same here! We just switched to UHC this year, and so far I'm lovin' it. :party: last year we had BCBS and there were many hoops to jump through. I was just starting my 6-month doctor-supervised weight loss program when I found out my employer was switching to UHC for 2008. Thankfully, once the new insurance kicked in, they didn't have nearly so many requirements. Just a weight history, list of co-morbidities (if applicable), and some sort of idea that you'd tried to lose weight before. The UHC approval people called me on the phone and just asked what weight loss attempts I'd made. I didn't have anything doctor-supervised, but I explained the counting calories, atkins, diet pills, excercise, etc, and that was good enough. I didn't even have to have my PCP write a letter, I did it myself explaining my history and why I wanted the surgery. They approved it in two weeks, and now my surgery is on Monday. Yay! :party:

Agreed, however, it's not necessarily the insurance company that is excluding it. Your employer chooses what sorts of procedures they don't want included in their standard coverage, and even though it may cost the insurance companies more in the long run, due to weight-related problems, it will cost your employer less in premiums because they aren't paying premiums to cover as many things. At the end of the day, if your employer chooses to exclude weight loss surgery from their coverage, that's about all there is to it, unfortunately. :party: If your insurance will cover the surgery, they will cover the fills.

One thing to consider, there aren't a whole lot of nerve endings in that part of your body, so if a stitch does rip or something goes wrong, you may not realize it until after it starts having a bigger effect and causing other problems or types of pain. I agree with everyone else that you should do what your doctor tells you, however, your particular doc's instructions just seem very out of whack compared with so many other people on this forum (including myself, from the instructions they've given me for post-op). For that reason alone, if it was me, I would probably voice my concerns to my doctor and just ask him for sure if eating such 'sturdy' foods so soon could potentially cause healing problems. It may not be a bad idea to stick to softer or more liquified foods as much as you can.

Well, no one can really make that decision but you, but nevertheless I'll throw in my two cents... YES! Do the Lap Band! Almost every study done shows that after two years, the percentage of weight lost is almost exactly the same for Lap Band and GB patients. The difference is that GB patients lose a little faster initially because it's such a dramatic change to the body, but once it evens out (within a year or so) LB and GB patients progress the same and lose the same amounts. Lap Band is FAR safer and completely reversable, should anything in the world go wrong. Your body is put together a certain way and GB is a huge, unreversable change in your anatomy. If so much as one staple leaked, the toxins could cause death. GB is no more a miracle cure than LB is. It just comes with much worse side effects and consequences when you give in to will power and eat something you really shouldn't. Google things like "dumping syndrome" for fun examples. In my mind, it would seem the more you have to lose, the more benefit you would get from the Lap Band - Someone who weighs 250lbs probably doesn't eat as much as someone who weighs 400, so the reduction in calories would be greater, and therefore cause faster weight loss, in the larger person. Granted, I don't know that last part for a fact, that's just the reasoning that goes through my mind. I wish you the best, whatever choice you make!

That's awesome for you! It took me about three months all together. I went to my first seminar with my current doctor on Jan 24th, had my first consultation appt two weeks later, spent a month on tests and waited a month for insurance approval, and now my surgery is on Monday. All said, just over three months.

I love it!

Haha! Love it Lexi!

Haha! I love it too. Another user created and posted it in the LapBand Support Groups section. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f180/shrinko-de-mayo-new-logo-61822/

The doctor I'm having surgery with this week says he uses the "drinking Water method" (whatever that is, I don't know yet?) because when he used to use the x-ray method he had a tendency to underfill people because it *looks* like such a small area, that he thought it was almost too tight, even though it wasn't at all. Does your doctor offer the "drinking water" method to test for doing a fill? If so, you may want to request that instead as a more accurate guage for how much of a fill you should really get.