anonemouse

It really does suck, since I had already jumped through the hoops for my original surgeon. It sucks even more because I live about 6-7 hours away from the new one, and I have class on Wednesday nights. I'll have to let my professor know that I have to be in Memphis that night, even if I go to the Thursday nutrition class. Luckily, I will only wind up missing one class, since the first nutrition class in March falls during my spring break.

I just opened the application packet my new surgeon's office sent me, and they require me to attend two nutrition classes before they submit to insurance. Of course, the classes are only taught once a month. The first one is taught on the 2nd Wednesday or Thursday of each month and the second class is taught on the 4th Wednesday or Thursday. Now I need to find out whether I have to attend them in order or if I can go to the second one before the first one. I really hope I can do that, because this whole damn process will be pushed off a whole two months otherwise, since (of course, the way my luck has run) the first class was taught this week for Febuary and I didn't know about it. If I can't do them out of order, I won't be able to get my stuff sent to insurance until the end of March. Maybe I can talk them into going ahead and submitting to insurance if I promise to attend those damn classes, since I already have been evaluated by an nutritionist for the other surgeon. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with attending nutrition classes. I think that it is a really good idea. I just wish they were at a more convenient time and taught more often during the month.

Who cares if they reported you? If you are still here, obviously the mods didn't see anything wrong with what you said. Some people (people in general, not necessarily anyone that was mentioned) are just giant babies and can't stand other people voicing an opinion. Personally, I'd say "screw 'em" and stick around just to piss them off.

Hi Lee, I am also going to be banded by Dr. Weaver. Well, if I can get approved, that is. I was originally going to use a surgeon in Nashville, but found out after I had gotten everything submitted to insurance that he wasn't in-network for me. I actually just got the paperwork from Dr. Weaver's office today. I am hoping that I can get everything rolling pretty soon, because I want this darn surgery sooner rather than later.

I am pre-op as well, and I haven't tried any of the protein drinks yet. Sorry.

I agree. I can't eat or drink anything that is made with Splenda or other fake sugars. They just taste like chemicals to me. I have a pretty sensitive sense of tast, I guess, because anything made with it is just too sweet and leaves an aftertaste like I've been chewing on aluminum. The only thing I will drink or eat anymore that is made with artificial sweeteners is hot tea, but I just use enough to cut the bitterness of it (about 1/3 packet), because if I use enough that the tea is actually sweet, it starts tasting funky to me. Occasionally, I'll drink a crystal light, but it has to be really cold and a little watered down because otherwise the metal taste is there. With diet sodas, the only tolerable one I have had is the Kroger brand diet root beer. Otherwise, I would rather drink decaf unsweetened iced tea or plain Water, because the rest of the diet drinks taste like I am chugging aluminum.:yuck:

That made me snort! If I had been drinking anything, it would have been all over the computer.

Oh, wow. Congrats, Julie! I can't wait to be a loser, as well.

If any of you remember, the banding process got stalled for me last week when I learned that the surgeon I had chosen wasn't in-network for me and that there are only two surgeons in Tennessee that are in-network. I chose the one that is more experienced with banding, even though she is several more hours away from me, in Memphis. Well, her office sent the application paperwork to my parents' house and they finally got it yesterday. My mom forwarded it to me today, so I should get it in the next day or two. Once I get it faxed to the surgeon's office, I can get the paperwork and clearances that I had done for the other surgeon transferred over. Hopefully, it won't be long before I will hear something after that.

Exude, I would follow your surgeon's advice. After all, he is very experienced, and he must have a good reason for not wanting to do lap-bands on patients that have hiatal hernias. Maybe you can talk with him about some of the other surgeries, not just RNY.

My former surgeon said it depended on the size of the haital hernia. If it was a small one, there wouldn't be a lot of trouble, but if there was a large one, he considered it a contraindication for the band, since the diaphragm helps hold the band in the proper position.

You've only been banded for 8 days, so don't put the cart before the horse and give up now. Give it a few more days, part of what is wrong is that you are probably just having a bad reaction to the anesthesia. I haven't been banded yet, but when my mom had her knees replaced, the pain killers and anesthesia literally made her feel like she wasn't going to make it out of the hospital.

And that's why I said "in many cases". And that's why the best methods are neither complete restriction or complete permission. In the case of teaching boys respect for women, I think you can do it in a way that teaches them that they can appreciate someone's attractiveness without ogling them. Noticing that a woman has nice breasts or a nice rear or a pretty face isn't disrespecting them. Ogling them is. To me, teaching a child that he must look away whenever he sees attractive women (or even unattractive women), isn't teaching them to respect those women. I think you can teach them to look, but not to stare. Gadgetlady, I don't know if your friend's son will associate women with something "wrong" or if he wound up being sexualized early or if he was affected negatively in any way. But to be honest, I think teaching very young boys "respect for women" (even though I don't think it necessarily does that) by that method has more dangers than benefits. Every woman in the world has breasts. They aren't something we should be ashamed of and try to hide. The ability to feed children doesn't make them sacred objects. On a similar note, I mentioned my former roommate's ex-husband earlier. I would use him as an example of how being raised very conservatively (he was Mormon) can adversely affect how you live your lfe. This guy was extremely repressed and very immature. When he was at a store, he would take the long way around a store just to avoid the women's underwear section. I always wondered how he would react if he ever had to go into Victoria's Secret with my roommate, since it was the underwear section in Wal-Mart he was avoiding (Almost the most vanilla underwear section you can find!). He would blush and literally get angry at my roommate when she would even mention the words "tampon" or "pad", even when it was in the context of writing them on a grocery list. He would also avoid that section of the store. I'm sorry, but I think if you avoid the underwear section of stores entirely and can't even hear the names of feminine products, you are repressed, not respectful.

In fact, it is this tendency that has led to a lot of us being here and developing the attitudes we have about food. In many cases, we grew up with very restictive parents and were told that "eating this can make us fat, so you can't have any". What did we do, in many cases? Ate in private, where no one could see, and binged.

Since those statistics are only for reported rapes, I doubt that they are right at all. In many Muslim countries, or at in least Saudi Arabia, I believe, a woman reporting a rape can legally be put to death.

Exactly. Once you refuse something to a child or say that they "must not do this or that", they want to see what all the fuss is about. Either that, or they start viewing whatever it is in an entirely unhealthy way.

I think I am going to agree with Sunta. Rape and other sex crimes aren't about sex, they are about men having power over their victim. Since many fundamentalist religions emphasize men's power over women, I would imagine that sex crimes also increase in those areas.

We had a saying at the university where I did my undergraduate work: "The students who can't make it in the other fields get business degrees, and the students who can't make it in business get education degrees." It sounds mean, but it was a fairly accurate description for a lot of the people majoring in education there. The classes required for the education degrees had reputations for being incredibly easy (learning how to make smiley-faces on a computer, etc.). That, combined with having free summers and a limited work-week, was a major attraction for a lot of people. To be honest, it's no wonder our education system is crap.

I have before. My dad is a veterinarian, so we have both gotten pets that were previously adopted by other people and we have given animals to other people. We have also had them euthanized if we thought that they might be a danger to other people or their pets. It sounds like you may have trouble giving your poodle away. Most people who already have pets would probably not take an animal that has a history of attacking other pets. And if you don't tell the person adopting it about it's history, you are legally liable if it attacks their pets or a person.

Personally, I think a virgin is anyone that hasn't done anything they could catch an STD from.

Oh, that's definitely true. I just think that there should be better ways of teaching respect for women than possibly inadvertently teaching that a woman's body is "bad".

Some of you may be wondering about what I mean by "early sexualization". It's something that we've all seen, whether in real life or in movies and on TV. You know, the family is all standing around, usually in a group of people. One person doesn something a little shocking or risque, and the parents reach down to cover the child's eyes. Now, the child might not really realize that what he or she is watching is considered "taboo", but by the simple act of covering his or her eyes, the parents make it clear that it is something the child isn't supposed to see. Of course, this makes the child want to see it even more, so they move the parent's hands away. To me, the method that Gadgetlady descibed is similar to that situation, when it is used on a child that is too young. By telling a very young child not to look at scantily-clad women, I think that the message sent is that there is something there that is forbidden. Many kids, I think, would actually want to find out what it is that their parents are trying to keep them from seeing. By using the method on a too-young child, IMO, you would risk exposing him to something that he wouldn't have discovered for several more years.

From what Gadgetlady said, I inferred that the woman had been teaching her son to look away from women for quite a while. I really have no problem with the method when it is used at an appropriate age, but I feel that if your child is too young to learn about sex, that method is not age-appropriate, because of the reasons I stated earlier. I agree, waiting until your son is 16 is too long to teach him to respect women, but I also think that using the method when your son is 4, or 5, or 6, etc. is going way too far, too early. Simply put, if your child is too young to understand the reasons why he is doing what he is (whatever the method may be), he is probably too young to use that particular method. If your son is about to hit puberty, and is starting to notice women, then I think the method is age-appropriate. But until then, I think using the method would simply be either sexualizing a child earlier than he would be otherwise (since, at that point, he hopefully wouldn't have realized that there was supposed to be something titillating about a woman's body being exposed) or making him think that there was something wrong about those women he's not supposed to look at.

The doctors may have missed something, too. If any of you have ever talked to Vinesqueen, you know that she has Cushing's disease. In many cases, Cushing's is misdiagnosed or the patient is told that nothing at all is wrong with them. In kids, it shows up as extreme obesity and short stature, among other things.

I agree, which is why the only talk radio I listen to is "All Things Considered" on NPR.