green

You've got a point. Maybe I'll buy one this weekend. I might be losing weight right now and not even realize it....

I am starting to wonder whether I should buy myself a scale. I've never owned one and for years - since I was 25 years old - I didn't know my weight. Whenever I had to be weighed I would ask that I not be told. I knew that I was getting fatter and fatter by the sizes of the clothes I was buying and by looking in the mirror, something I was only doing by accident over the past decade. (Ugh!) I weighed myself the morning of my operation at the TLBC. Naturally, I didn't like the news but then I wasn't expecting to. Now I have finished my second week of post-op diet, my gut is still big, but people say that my face looks thinner. I am at the point where I am starting to feel like I am starving, especially at night (I am a nightime eater), and I am impatient to see that gut start to deflate. There is a lot of action at first: the op, the first week of post-op when a grrl is going through a lot of big time recovery, and then the thrill of being able to eat soup. Now I am feeling healthy, bored and hungry, and yet I haven't healed enough to go to the gym and work off some of my frustrations that way. And I can't meet any of my friends for lunch! Oops! This ended up being a long post, eh.

Thanx for your feedback, Susan4794.

I've just been doing lots of soup (Gardenay), apple juice, and yogurt along with vitamins and clacium supplements. I am hoping that the yogurt will cover my protein needs. Speaking of that, I bought some low-fat sour cream dill dip today. I figure I can do with a break from tzatziki. I am starting to look forward to a week from today when it will be mushie time!

I have been reading that Bandsters experience hair loss. I have just been newly banded (Sept 7 of this year) and have learned a lot from all of you who post on this site but I know nothing about hair loss. Does everyone experience it? How much hair do you lose? And why? If you would tell me your experiences I would really appreciate it.

Wow! I paid 16 Gs at the TLBC. Maybe I should have shopped around but then maybe I would have chickened out. I dunno. TLBC was easy for me. It is practically within walking distance of my house. Still, I could have saved a lot of $$$....

This is brilliant! Congratulations!! Goes to shows that the band really does work, eh. Good work, Argon!

Where I live teachers are unionized and they are well paid but this doesn't stop them from suffering from burn-out. One of my closest friends is a teacher and she has told me many stories over the years. At this point she is looking forward to retirement. It's a tough job and one that I couldn't handle. Teachers should be well-paid and well-respected.

Waging war in Iraq at this time is a terrible mistake, I believe, and this war will turn out to be this generation's Vietnam. The geo-political situation in the Middle East has been a mess since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was then that the European powers, notably Britain, went in and carved the area up into what it is now its present countries. They did so ignoring traditional ethnic and religious alliances. Thus the tragedy of the Kurds in Iraq and thus the in-fighting between the Sunnis and the Shi'as. Then the establishment of Israel threw the area into further turmoil. Had Bush spent more time reading up on history and foreign policy and less time reading the Bible he and his cronies might have thought twice about blundering in and in so doing blowing trillions of taxpayer dollars, alienating the country from much of the international community, and squandering the Republican party's overall credibility. A little more attention to domestic affairs might have ensured that the aftermath of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was less grotesque. I have read recently in the newspapers that he feels that God is helping him govern. It would be nice to see a few more competent and less corrupt advisors on board along with God for Bush's close association with big business is showing. Big business is not, you know, gonna get taxed for this very expensive war. And now that the region is destabilized Iran is getting out of control and the problem of the on-going presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon has not been solved. They are still there. They are quiet at the moment is all.

How much do you save by having the op done in Mexico?

Sixteen grand seems to be cheaper or the same as U.S. prices. I did some nosing around on the main site because I was curious about costs. The average seems to be 14 to 16 grand down there and that is in U.S. bucks. I did find one person who paid $8,000 and another who paid $18,000. I wonder what people pay down in Mexico.

Oh, I love wine. I lived in France for a couple of years and got into the habit of drinking it with lunch and dinner. The guy I was living with knew his wines and he had fairly deep pockets and so I got to drink some fairly fabulous stuff. Now I see some of those bottles in Vintages and I moan for awhile. *sound of Green sobbing*

My husband was cool until the day of the surgery. While we were at the clinic waiting for my turn he started to panic. Then he left and drank 3 beers but they were big beers! We had to go home in a cab. As for bitchiness, I got really, really bitchy for awhile on the post-op diet. My husband and I were both suffering. :paranoid

From what I read on the main site about fills it seems that it is best to treat that post-fill period kinda like that post-op period. This means taking it easy on your stomach. Perhaps soups and mushies are a good way to go, and they are less "embiggening," as Homer would say. But don't get discouraged, Time2, remember that you are in this for the long haul and over the short haul we will all have our ups and downs.

Maybe the thing to do when you feel yourself going out of control is to revert to a week of the post-op diet. Right now I am on week two of post-op and am eating soup (Gardenay soups) and lots of yogurt. I don't mind this diet and I figure I can go back to this whenever I find myself drifting back into my bad habits. One of my problems, apart from the carb thing, is that I am a nighttime eater. I am now trying to learn to eat much smaller amounts and during the day. This is really tough for me.

Yep, you should ask your doc about it. I don't think that post-op gas is supposed to last quite this long. There must be another reason for this gas. Gas pains are a real drag.

Ooh, I became very bitchy on the post-op diet so I can imagine how you must be feeling on the pre-op diet when you haven't even been banded yet.

This is bad news indeed. I suppose that there is no way that the operation can be pushed up to ASAP in order that you can be through physiotherapy and able to get another few contract gigs under your belt further down the road. Also, I don't know how any of this works stateside. Will this operation be covered by health insurance? I live in Canada and your medical procedure would be covered by the state because it is a necessary one. As you may know, we have socialized medicine up here. My mother had her knee replaced when she was 82 and this was covered by the state. I, on the other hand, had to pay for my lapband operation as this is deemed a vanity procedure. Your knee certainly sounds very painful and you have all my sympathy. You are receiving a number of body blows at this time.

People can be very strange. When I decided to be banded and booked my operation date my brother, a doctor, had a bit of a freak out and because he is a doctor he was able to back this up with lots of medical warnings. I almost cancelled the surgery since other folks in my life were being negative about it, too. Anyway, I didn't. I was banded two weeks ago this coming Thursday and I feel fine. I also know that I lack the will power to lose weight without an aid like this and I was getting to the point where I had had enough with my body. My interior (and external) life was getting out of hand thanks to my issues with weight. Oof! This is the long way to tell you to go for it and don't worry about what anyone other than your surgeon thinks.

It seems to me that you should be careful about what you eat and how much in that post-op phase. I believe that the theory is that you don't want to stretch your stomach pouch and you also want to let it heal. My docs put me on their post-op diet: one week clear fluids, two weeks fluids (soups and yogurts), followed by two weeks of mushy food. In addition to the type of food they also restrict the amounts. (I got banded a week and a half ago and so I am still on the soup and yogurt stage.) Apparently this is a time when a lot of bandsters lose quite a chunk of weight and this is an added bonus.

I had a lot of gas for the first week after the op. I was going through the chewable Gas-X like the stuff was chocolate. I am now in week two of post op and I feel fine. The gas does eventually go away. Moving around does seem to help.

I've always drunk a lot of water with my meals but now that I have been banded I am trying to train myself out of this. It is difficult to give this habit up.

I wouldn't get too bent out of shape about this if I were you as long as the rest of your marriage is in good shape. Many men who would never stray in real life do enjoy a fantasy life. Just as some women enjoy reading romances, some men enjoy watching porn. Men are configured differently from us; they like to look. This being said, the suggestion that you ask if you might watch a porn flick or two with him is a good one. However, it may be something in the way of a private pleasure for him, and we all need our private pleasures. My own husband occasionally goes to the local strip joint for a beer or two, and he will look at girls over the internet late at night after his work shift is over. He is quite open about this and I have been around men - I work in the aircraft industry - to know that this is par for the course. As he says, "I like to look," and in all other ways he is a great mate. If you've got yourself a good man, then try to absorb his porn habit. It seems to be a guy thing.

Yah, carbs are my downfall, too. I am a carb freak. Sweets and soda don't interest me at all but breads, pasta, and potatoes.... Mmmm. And then there has to be cheese on top of all them carbs just to make them taste even better!

Worshipping a picture of George Bush?!?! That's like worshipping a picture of Howdy Doody!