riley4183

Yes, I still plan to go to my pre-op classes on Thursday, and will talk to Liz and I also have my pre-op exam with Tom Greenwood that day, he goes over EVERYthing and hopefully will be able to guide me! The only thing that I am putting off until I hear for sure is the pre-op lab work, because it is only good for 30 days and if they push it to late March I would have to do it twice. But I am so discouraged that I've gained 2 pounds back! My first trial . . . .

Dr. Baggs asked me about snoring too, as I had checked it on the form . . he asked if I was sleepy during the day (no), had ever fallen asleep while driving (no), woke of gasping (no) or if I ever woke up with a headache (no). No symptome outside of the snoring. Have you been screened for apnea? Its a little questionnaire called the epworth scale Epworth sleepiness scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . . . I had classes I had to take at my kaiser, they screened everyone in my 14-week class for it, twice even. I was always under 10 but I wrote on there that I snore so I guess that triggered them, even tho Dr. Baggs was not concerned. In any case, better if it's diagnosed because folks with untreated apnea can have difficulties coming out of anesthesia, and my single biggest fear is not waking up . . . . so I am glad they found it, just not glad that they did not get me in for 2 and a half:unsure: months. Jerks.

Dr. Baggs asked me about snoring too, as I had checked it on the form . . he asked if I was sleepy during the day (no), had ever fallen asleep while driving (no), woke of gasping (no) or if I ever woke up with a headache (no). No symptome outside of the snoring. Have you been screened for apnea? Its a little questionnaire called the epworth scale Epworth sleepiness scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . . . I had classes I had to take at my kaiser, they screened everyone in my 14-week class for it, twice even. I was always under 10 but I wrote on there that I snore so I guess that triggered them, even tho Dr. Baggs was not concerned. In any case, better if it's diagnosed because folks with untreated apnea can have difficulties coming out of anesthesia, and my single biggest fear is not waking up . . . . so I am glad they found it, just not glad that they did not get me in for 2 and a hald months. Jerks.

Heck if I know what happened! I took the screening test (Epworth questionnaire) in early November with the rest of my 14-week class, all but 2 of us got called within a week to come in and pick up the equipment for an overnight sleep study, most of them already knew that they had apnea . . . . i am one of the lowest BMIs in there and do not have symptoms, so I just figured I screened negative. I did write "but I snore!" on the questionnaire . . . so anyway, everyone else in my class has now been treated for apnea for at least 2 months, which is what they require before you can get your CM appointment. Well the day AFTER I had my CM appointment - my surgery already scheduled for less than a month out - the pulmonology department at kaiser santa rosa calls and says you have to come in for a sleep study, we have an opening this afternoon can you come, of course I argued that I did not need it, but they said fine then just go ahead and do this test and we will leave you alone, right now it is in your records that you need it, so I went to the class and got the tester and did it that night and the next morning I go to the website and there is an appointment for me to go to a class to learn about sleep apnea on like the 13th, which means i tested positive so I called and they finally told me my results and are getting me in to get the trial CPAP machine on Tuesday instead of 2 weeks from now. I don't know if they lost my paperwork, or forgot me or someone else suddenly decided that I needed a sleep test, or what but here I am! If they still want 2 months of treatment then my surgery date is going to get moved up to March or April, and I am very discouraged after I worked so hard and everyone arranged their time off around my surgery date. NOT HAPPY :thumbup:

Have any of you recently been diagnosed with apnea and started treatment? They JUST called me in for sleep study . . .I was screened way back in November and no one called me until last week to come in - and it showed moderate apnea, which I now have to treat with a CPAP that they of course want me to purchase, go to a class on the 13th etc. this is at my local Kaiser. My surgery is scheduled for the 23rd! I do not have ANY apnea symptoms and was all zeros and 1's on the epworth questionnaire, but in any case I could have already been being treated for it if they had called me back when I did the screening! Has anyone else been diagnosed right before surgery? Riley

Holy cow Christine, that's a lot of exercise! A lot of weight loss too, thats great! I will also lose at 3 lbs a week, but for me then I go for 3 weeks without losing a dag blammed THING, and there is no reason for that! Just none at all . . but it sure happens! Keep up the great work!:bored:

woo-hoo! You are TOTALLY kickin butt!!! Yes you will get your surgery date at your CM appointment, that is SO EXCITING!!! Congratulations!

Good luck today ladies! Let us know how it went! My pre-ops and classes are Feb. 5th. The pre-op medical exam is short, I went with a friend to hers and I stayed in the room. He goes over the medications in very fine detail, goes over instructions for the day before surgery, he is a very professional medical assistant EE GADS I can't remember his name right now! Thomas something . . . His pic is hanging in the surgeon's waiting area. The actual lay-on-the-table exam is very short, shorter even than the one Dr. Baggs did, you lay down and pull up your shirt and he looks and presses and you're done.

For lap-band, all you need are the multivitamin (I got Flintstones!) with minerals - Centrum is good as long as it has 100% RDA of iron - and calcium. We can take any kind of calcium; I got Os-cal and she said it was fine. Both must be CHEWABLE

Nicole ~ So sweet when you start feeling skinny! A size 16 - WOW! I sure can't say that! 36 pounds down and I am just NOW starting to see a change in the way my clothes fit. People are just starting to notice. . . . Don't be nervous about tomorrow. You are one of the STARS cause you lost all of your weight so fast and have been doing it by doing what they tell you to do! You will be a teacher's pet! Liz is a total sweetheart, she was only gruff in the beginning when they wanted to weed out the people who were not serious. Bring your Vitamins, if you have the wrong ones whe will just tell you and make some recommendations - she will not make you feel bad or dumb or anything. If you get any questions wrong on your test, she will go over them with you kust to make sure that you know where to find the info in your binder after surgery. You will need to be in a support group or planning on attending the Richmond one. Or signing up for individual appts. with a counselor. I would tell her that you are meeting with other kaiser richmond patients in Sacto, so she knows that you are meeting with supporters who are not "just friends that you talk about it to." It is FINE! I felt very supported. She was awfully sweet, patted my arm a bunch and stuff like that. She's there to support YOU - she is strict to, but that's so you will be safe.

Oh my goodness, Nicole, you lost that weight FAST! For me the weight loss got slower after I lost my first 10 lbs! THAT part was easy . . . probably because I was like totally bloated from eating junk and Chinese food just before orientation! LOL. But then I had to exercise a whole bunch to lose more, dag blam it. . . . . now it's fast again but probably because I am so nervous about having surgery so soon! I can hardly eat!

I know there's not a difference in the scales - Dr. baggs said that they had just had them all checked a couple of weeks ago and they were all accurate to within 2/10 of a pound, that is pretty darned good! I just like the one in the first room on the right in the surgery suite 'cause it's the first one that showed me below my 10% goal! And that was not even my appointment, I was just there with a friend - who is having her surgery tomorrow, and started in September - she is RNY and also lost all of her weight by surgeon appt.

Nicole, we were @ the same orientation girl! We are tracking the same . . . .

Tina, one more thing re: your decision to have lap-band or RNY. Liz said in my CM meeting yesterday, that they will continue to treat us at Kaiser Richmond (for the bariatric stuff only of course) for the rest of our lives, even if we no longer have Kaiser. It is all part of the aftercare. She said that the only thing that they cannot do for us if we are no longer Kaiser is the lab work. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?! We are BLESSED to have Kaiser my friends!:cursing:

Nicole, I spend the day before any weigh-in drinking GOBS of diet cranberry juice (the ocean spray one with 5 calories per serving) with gobs of plain water, like 64 ounces EACH. I am up all night (for obvious reasons) but it is a wonderful natural diuretic and it releives my panic that I will weigh in 1/2 pound over or something . . . . I like the scale in the first room on the surgery side best! :-):cursing:

Christine, you are almost there! Kick on those afterburners and commit yourself to burning off (via excercise) more calories than you take in for a couple of weeks! That will mean several hours of excercise a day if you want to eat anywhere close to your 1200, but you can do it! I had to re-arrange my work schedule to be able to do 5-8 miles a day, but I did it! I use a calorie and excercise counter-tool (www.caloriecount.about.com) and log every single thing I eat, and all my active excercise. This is what got me off of my L O N G platuea (like, the whole month of December!) and started my losing again, from 1 lb lost in 4 weeks to 3 pounds a week. I also don't eat most of the starchy carbs from the 1200 diet . . . no bread or potatoes for me, because they make me want more bread and potatoes! My most important thing, tho, is my 3 support groups - I need my people!!!

Tina, how did you email him? He doesn't come up on my selection menu . . . . They offered to schedule me for surgery on Feb. 18, but I already have almost a week off of work starting Veb 25 - I WAS going to go to Vegas, but not now! Dr. Baggs said that they do the lap-bands first thing in the day, I should go home by 2 pm. No hospital stay. From recovery (while you are in recovery he sits with your family members and show them pictures of your insides that he took during surgery) you go to a room with the blowy-uppy things on your legs, you wake up fully and they put you in a chair to go to x-ray for your barium swallow, when they bring you back from that they put you in a recliner and give you liquids (you continue to walk around), when you prove you can get liquids down and keep them down you are out of there. They did not give me paperwork, but I did not need it and didnt ask for it. The appointments on Feb 5 are pre-op eating (8-10) RNY Teach (it covers lap-band too, 10-12) and my pre-op medical exam. They were schedulin through the end of March so you should be fine to get a date you chose! I got within a day of the one I requestd.

Weighing = shoes off, socks on. If you wear sandals, wear socks with 'em! I had my EKG and bloodwork on Friday before I left Richmond so the results would be there for my CM appt. today. It took about 15 minutes, the lab looked really crowded but they went real fast. The results were actually online by Saturday evening (bloodwork only). Today they ordered a bunch MORE labwork I don't even know what it is yet! They said to get it at Santa Rosa.

Hey everyone; My Case Manager appointment with Liz went great today, I was down another 2 lbs. and had my surgery scheduled for February 23rd! Woo-hoo! Then they said hey we're taking you chart across the hall and Dr. Baggs is going to see you, I'm like, WHAT? I just saw him Friday, they said yeah well this is your next visit with him, oh and all of your classes and your pre-op exam are on Feb 5th. WHEW! Talk about fast-tracked! Shazam. So Tina we talked more about the new band today, you were right it's the APS (advanced performance small) and he says it has 3 ccs in it at the end of surgery, and he says the barium swallow is really yummy, hahaha he has a good sense of humor. OK I'm excited but now it's almost too fast! Yikes! Riley

Oh heck once I get out there on the "web" I get so lost! I just hate that I can't find my way back to what I was reading the day before. Oh well, when you or I run across it again Tina we'll know where it is! Hey everyone, did you notice we're up to 20 pages now?!?! I think we should call our thread just Kaiser Richmond or something, and make ourselves a formal group! Does anyone know how to do that? I'm thinking it might make us easier to find for new patients or those who are just signing on . . . . what do you think? Riley PS, my Case Manager appt. with Liz is tomorrow! Wish me luck!:confused:

Tina; I heard about this newer method of "installing" the lap-band from Dr. Woodbury, who is the #1 Bariatric & Endocrine surgeon in this area. There is a huge bariatric surgery support group up here, it meets once a month and it's mostly his patients and Kaiser Richmond & SSF patients. I think his patients are required to attend . . . anyway, he spoke last month and was talking about it, the same things that Dr. Baggs was saying Friday. He called the method some name that I can't remember. I later saw SOMEwhere that Dr. Baggs had done a more recent training in Lap-Band for that, but I can't remember where! It was recent, and all I can find online now is no more current than 2004. I wish I could remember where I saw it! I will definately let you know when/if I find out. Are you doing a mission trip in Africa?

My goal is to be down 40 by surgery. I want a BMI under 40 when I go under! But see, I started eating meat again just so I could do the pre-op and post-op diet stages. A main reason I am going lap-band is so I can go back to vegetarian once I have lost the weight and stabilized. So I stick to the 1200 but don't do the starches, at all. The only carbs I eat are berries and beans and vegies. Oh and the ultra high-fiber tortillas that are 7 fiber 3 net carbs and 5 protein. I log everything in caloriecount.about.com, which sows that I actually average from 900-1100 caloeis a day. I drink all of my water, and more if i can. AND . . . I walk 5 miles every day. But the #1 most important thing I do is my support groups, one at kaiser tuesday nights, one (hiking) one on saturday mornings, and the big sonoma county group once a month. I get emails, texts and calls from my group members morning, afternoon and evening, it is almost like AA or something (so I hear) and it's really hard to fail and get discouraged with all these people cheering me on day and night! Isn't Dr. Baggs wonderful??? So smart, so young, so witty, so adorable! :scared2: He might be young enough to be my son, LOL! I will try to find the thing about his training and post it

Nicole we are so on the same track here, we had orientation together and we have both lost almost exactly the same amount we have CM appts. within days of one another - and wouldn't it be great if we had the same surgery dates too?? CONGRATS on your weight loss! Riley:thumbup:

I saw Dr. Baggs there today, too! My appointment was at 11 but I got there early so he saw me early - that has happened every time I go down there for me. I am definately lap-band, he said thats great since my BMI is less than 42 that's a good choice for me. Something about it has better results with the lower BMIs. Anyways he let me play with one its pretty cool, he told me all about how much better they have gotten, a new method of putting them in really cuts down on hunger, etc (I did my homework,and I knew that he had studied this new method - that's why I chose him). Anyways he set my goal at 255 and I was 251 so he walked me across the hall and got me my Case Manager appointment for . . . MONDAY! He says surgery should be at the end of Feb! Considering I went to orientation only in November, I'm moving right along here!! So I shound get my surgery date on Monday. YEA!!!:scared2: Riley

Momc, so did you get a fill when you were down there Friday? I was there too, but probably didn't see you as we arrived around 11 and walked up the ramps in the parking garage for while before my friend's weigh-in They took us as soon and we checked in and did both appointments back-to-back hours ahead of schedule, too. Friday was a good day at Kaiser Richmond!