cduval04

It's def not my port..... I can feel my port also though...it is a good inch and a half above my port...I can still see the mark from the needle where she filled me on Monday.

hello, I am 4 months post banding & I was massaging my abdomen today (yes, I have IBS it helps sometime) and I felt this hard lump about the size of a ping pong ball maybe...it is not as defined as a ping pong ball though.... I was really worried so I asked my mom to feel it cuz she is a nurse & she said she could feel it...but then she noticed that it was directly under one of my laproscopic incisions, which led her to strongly believe it was scar tissue and not something "bad", then again she did admit that is what she wanted to belieive, but that she did really think that was what it was....& if it had not been right under the incsision she would have been way more concerned... just curious....has anyone (esp. with sensitive skin) had a buildup of scar tissue below an incision post op? I dont know if it has been there all along & I just didn't notice it, or if it just "appeared" thanks in advance!!

hello all, I was banded 16 weeks ago. I have had 3 fills. the first one they put in 3 cc's the second they put in 2 cc's the third they put in 2.5. The month following that fill I lost 7 lbs! I was so happy. So when I went to see the NP, I told her I felt restriction, but I didn't feel "quite there" yet..you know in that green zone...so she put in another 1.5 for a total of nine. After getting that fill, it is very hard to take pills, but they go down if I take them 1 at a time, and I noticed my weight loss has halted, and after reading similar posts on here, I think I know why. I am resorting to crap because it goes down easy, and am probably getting little, if any protein at all in. crap being all the crap I'm supposed to avoid, graham crackers, oreos, chocolate, and frozen yogurt and cereal, I have been living on healthy cereals, but yet still cereal b/c it goes down so easily. So maybe I was in my green zone at fill #3 and I just wasn't familiar enough with my new body to realize it. I mean I did lose 7 lbs in 24 days thats over 2 lbs a week so maybe I was in my green zone, Also, does anyone have problems with fluids going down? Seems to me water would just go right through the band, but for some reason, i can only take really small sips, and I feel like this is hindering my fluid intake. Sometimes on school days, I will go till 4pm and realize I have only had about 12 ounces of water. It doesn't make sense why any amount of fluid would have trouble going down. Is this a sure sign that I am too tight? I don't spit up or froth much, but that is because I have been avoiding any foods that would make me do that (although it has happened about 3 or 4 times just since my fill on march 25th) but I do get the "stuck" feeling a lot and that pain in my chest before the bolus of food travels down to the stomach. I dunno, it seems to me that if the 7.5 was working, and the 9 is not working as well at all, I should get unfilled, but I just wanted peoples experiences. Did people who went "one fill too many" have the same experience? did you have trouble "recognizing" your green zone when you first got there, or did you just know. I know they give you all the criteria for when you are in the green zone, but if you have never been there, isn't it hard to judge when you are there and not just say, i think I need another fill? I guess it boils down to, if I'm finding it so much of an effort to eat the right things that I have to eat around the band with the wrong things, then I;m probably overfilled? or maybe just lazy? I have no idea, please offer some insight. thanks, Carlie

Ya good lord I don't care if you weigh 400 or 4000lbs 130lbs Is a HUGE chunk of weight. You have lost 520 sticks of butter off you my friend-way to go!! (sry I like butter + I like math )

I was wondering what the purpose of going back to liqs for first 24 hours then mushies for next 24 hrs then back to normal after every fill is? is this standard, or is it that kind of depends on your doctor thing? I was just wondering becuase I "cheated" and ate solid food during first 48hrs (I know it was bad) and I was just wondering if there would be any permanant consequenses becuase of my actions.... (i hope to got that answer is no) so, any idea why they "prescribe" this plan after every fill? is there anyone who doesn't have to do this? thanks. 5cc's in an 11cc realize-c band and still no restriction....fills not done under flouro

I had similar issues, took forever to find center. doctor was so frusterated she was cussing . I was laughing at that. she moved the thing for like 5 min and then she said she bent the tip of the needle so had to stick me again....second needle took her just as long...finally she said she found it but she didn't have me leaving very confident...its not the stick that hurts it when they move it around every which way in there that gets you kind of woozy after awhile.....of course the fact that I still have no restriction doesnt boost my confidence either.

I tend to agree with acadia, my office does all their fills "blind" even fill #1 and it does not make me feel confident. they should at least do fouro on the first fill to resolve questions like: did everything heal correctly in place? did the port flip? etc......I dunno, to me it's kind of like driving somewhere where you don.t know how to get to and not using a map/gps I went for my second fill cuz I got 3ccs and was feeling nothing, and I asked my PA if it was possible the NP that filled me last time could have "missed" and she said "not probable, but possible" I wasnt comfortable at all with that answer......I had 2 more put in then and I am still feeling NOTHING.....sux

hello. was banded on 12/20 went in for first fill on 1/31 where they put 3 cc's in my 11cc realize-c band. (not done under flouro). I am not feeling much restriction and have only lost 1lb since the 31st (13 in total since pre surgery weight) so I am going back on friday to have it filled more. my question is about..well..my colon to be frank.....don't even know if it's related to the surgery, but a few weeks ago I got a pretty localized pain in the lower right side of my abdomen sort of next to and below my belly button. It seems to be getting a little worse every week, and appears to be positional, and related to whether I have eaten or not. ok.....sorry this is sorta gross but worrisome to me.....my bowel movements are ENORMOUS and when I say big I mean like 16-18 inches (no I didn't measure it but I have an 18-inch ruler at home and it looks just about the length of that) and my last one was probably the diameter of my entire large intestine (yes I did look that up lg intestine is 5 ft long 3 inches in diameter) I had these types of BM's a couple times before surgery, but they happened rarely. But now, my last 4 BM's have been like this, and they are usually two toned, half light brown half dark brown. Usually happens once a day. My mom has been a visiting nurse for 30 years gone into probably thousands of peoples homes and she looked at one and said she had never seen anything quite like it in all her years of nursing...now that scared me because the stories she comes home with...well let's just say I thought she had seen everything there is to see when it comes to gross. Before you call me an obsessive poop looker with too much time on my hands, keep in mind poo can be a huge indicator of your health, just as your pulse and temperature can be. (yes I also am a daily Dr. Oz show watcher ok there I admit it after all, he is the doctor who taught america to look in their toilets) all kidding aside though, this along with the pain scares me. I am going to GI and GYN on friday, but does anyone have any words of wisdom for me or shared similar symptoms? Bowel obstruction or something? thanks in advance, Carlie

I called the office and found out she put 3 in my band.....what is up with all these people having it done under flouro, at least the first time it makes sense (like to see if everything healed in place before they go blindly shooting saline in there, and frankly I'm a little upset that that's not the way they do it at my hospital....it would ease a lot of my nerves to know that everything healed where it was supposed to. about the delayed action thing, I was only told it by my NP and then I saw it in the sticky at the very top (first thread first post) of this fills forum...and then a few threads below mine was one titled 'delayed action fill' here. I dunno I guess everyone is just a little different, my worst fear of course being that I will never get true restriction or that something in my band is mechanically wrong, leak, kink etc. but it is said that 90% of what you worry about never happens, so I will keep worrying!

am week 7 post op but just wanted to say that soy protein tasted awesome going down, but about 1 hour after I got super nauseas, I bought the one with Spirutein and I think that may have been the ingredient that made me feel sick.....after that I gave up on the protein b/c I had tried so many and there was only like 4 days left in my clear liqs so I called the doc and she said I could add skim milk and carnation instant bfast. other than that I survived on broth, jello, gatorade and sf popsicles. My family had ham for christmas dinner...I had red and green jello yay....<img class="bbc_emoticon" alt=":ack2:" src="http://www.bariatricpal.com/public/style_emoticons/default/colorful/ack2.gif">...but thats over and I've lost 12lbs since 12/20.....I kinda expected to lose more but my first fill was only a week ago yesterday...so before that I was spending time in bandster hell....felt restriction with fill for like 48 hrs but now it has gone...I hope it comes back I know fills can have that delayed action thing....we will see...I forgot to ask her how many cc's she actually put in stupid me<img class="bbc_emoticon" alt="" src="http://www.bariatricpal.com/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif">......is there a protocol for first fill on the realize-c band?? maybe that should be a question for a new thread kind of getting off topic here....<br>

victoria this is exactly what happened to me, I had my very first fill last Monday and felt restriction for about 48 hours (during which I lost 2 pounds!) then it was gone and I was so confused...needless to say I have gained about 1 of those 2 lbs back...but my fill was only a week ago today, so it was nice to hear how your story worked out...I hope I start feeling some restriction sometime in the next week or so.

hi all, I was banded on 12/20 and had my first fill on 1/31. it was an experience...took her a good 10 min. to find the center of my port...the first needle she actually bent..so I got the pleasure of being stuck twice. She said I had something called a seroma...a little "sack" of serous Fluid that commonly develops after abdominal surgery so she was trying to get through/around that..... she was very repetitive in saying that I would not feel the full effects of the fill for a few weeks, because the fluid had to take time to distribute evenly..at the time I am writing this, the post directly below mine is titled "delayed action" fill so I guess I am not the only one with questions about this. I am worried though because instead of feeling more restriction, every day that passes I actually feel less. (I think I was playing it extra cautious the first couple days). She said to me that usually if patients call crying for another fill sooner than 3 weeks, they will not do it, she said she did it once and ended up over filling that person because the first fill kicked in after the second and then her band was way too tight. but I am thinking of calling anyway, because of the fact that I am feeling less restriction as time passes. I don't know whether the lack of restriction is because I have not given it enough time, or simply because she did not fill it enough, as they tend to be conservative on fill #1 because everyone's different Should I call, or is this normal and I should just wait a little while longer to see if I feel any "delayed" restriction? How many of you on your first fill ended up having the delayed restriction and how many of you ended up just not having enough fluid in there. So hard "getting to know" your new stomach! btw I have a realize-c band.