green

I seem to be feeling less bad....

Butter, you currently weigh 350+ and you are 39 years old. I mention these two facts not in order to disrespect you but in order to point out to you that you do have a health crisis in your future if you do not take action. Most of us who are members of this site have tried the diet and exercise route and know that this approach works for very, very few people. Yep, you can diet and lose weight and then the moment that you forget to keep up your vigilance all the weight which you have lost plus some bonus pounds will come crowding onto your body. This yo-yo dieting is unhealthy for your body and it is ruinous for your sense of self-respect. If your weight issues are rooted in a problem with portion control, then the lapband is the perfect tool. People who suffer from a sweet tooth do have more problems with losing weight via the band but even so they will lose if they are prepared to go to war against all things sweet. Certainly lapband surgery is much less invasive than any of the other forms of weight loss surgery. Less invasive means faster recovery time and lower risk of death on the operating table. These are plusses in my view. You will have to relearn how to eat which is a good thing, and some people claim that the weight loss which one experiences through lapband surgery is not as fast. It is my opinion that learning how to eat safely and healthily is a very good thing and I figure that a slower rate of weight loss is easier on your body, on its organs. As you can see, I am all for the lapband. My own experience has been a very positive one. I would advise you to poke around this website, do read, and do keep on asking questions. Best of luck to ya, eh.

Erectile dysfunction spam is way worse in my opinion. A morning coffee, a handful of vitamins and anti-depressants, etc, and some idiot telling you that your life would be oh so much happier if your mate's apparatus was longer and harder.... Now if they were hustling a quickie cure for acid reflux, heart disease, lung cancer, I might, possibly might be interested. *cough* All you want to tell these bozos is fork erff! but if you mail them back you are likely to find yourself with an ugly little virus.

I am a fan of the Frenchies because these were what my parents served us on special occasions when we were young. Then I spent 3 years living in France, 2 of these with a mate, a French guy who had deep pockets and a real affection for wine. During this period I was exposed to some truly magnificient wine, stuff which was expensive and difficult to obtain by French standards. I left France back in the summer of 1984 and after suffering some initial degree of grief about returning to Toronto in order to resume my real life I finally did calm down and I rightfully realised that life in Toronto can be very bluddy wonderful. Nevertheless, I still do find myself pawing and scratching at the vitrines behind which Vintages houses the really good stuff. You see, there had been a day when I had had the privilege of being able to guzzle that stuff.

I agree with Kat. The notion that the mother seems to hold, that the kid can treat her band like an automatic purging device - if she eats too much she will vomit it up - is entirely against the band rules of course. This behaviour will lead to careless eating habits, a stretched pouch, band slippage and possible erosion. So what is going to be next for that young girl? A gastric bypass?!? Not only is this mother horribly ill-informed, it appears that she has no desire to be well-informed. (Her unwillingness to have the child go through a psych evaluation, etc indicates this.) As we all know, following the band rules is tough even for motivated and informed adults. Here we've got a mother and a kid who has just entered her teen years who both seem to believe that surgeries are the magic solution. This is a disaster in the making. Unlike Kelliebelly I do hope they do consult this site - I have learned so very much about the band thanks to LBT and I do believe that this site is a most valuable resource for all banded people - and I would personally be comfortable if they read our comments concerning their current approach to weight loss. I would hope that both the girl and her mum might successfully sort through any evidence of malice and irritation displayed twowards then on this thread in order to focus on the bigger issues associated with obesity and with weight loss.

My favourites are the Frenchies, particularly those from Bordeaux, but I am not too fussy really. I like them dry and I like them to come with French passports is all.

I saw my doc at 12:15 and croaked to her that everything was as bad as ever. She had seemed surprised that the asthma meds that she had put me on weren't curbing the coughing. I grumpily said that that was because it's due to acid reflux. She then listened to my lungs and had me go for an X-ray. It turns out I have bronchitis and now I am on antibiotics. She also decided to switch my reflux meds to Nexium. I then spent the next hour and a half killing time by walking around downtown before going to my appt for a defill. Man, was it hot! Fortunately I didn't see anything I wanted to buy. And fortunately I really love walking. It is my favourite form of exercise. Nevertheless, I did arrive 15 minutes early for my appt and found the waiting room fairly full of overweight women sipping on water. I asked them when they had their surgery and we all ended having a pleasant discussion about the band. There were, however, a couple of thin women sitting in another part of the room who were keeping to themselves. As it happened, I was mentioning that I was in for a defill just as the fill nurse walked in the door and she said "defill? Come with me." Well, it seems that the skinny people were also in for a defill and they were really pissed off to see me about to be taken out of turn. I told the nurse that it was true that they were first in line and that I had arrived early for my appointment. They were extremely nasty to her and had bitched that they had been kept waiting 3 minutes past their appt time so by the time she was ready to see me she was a little shaken up by the mauling they had given her. She kept telling me what a nice person I was! She was surprised to hear that I wanted to be emptied out and she managed to get 5 cc out of the 6.5 that was in there. Now I have got to wait and see and trust that my life will return to normal. Here's hoping....... Oh, and my drug plan won't cover the cost of Nexium without an explanation from my doctor. So I am still on omeprazole for the moment.

I was banded last September and until recently I have had no problems. Though my weight loss was slower than some - I started at a lower BMI (which also has its difficulties as we are slower to lose) and I am an older bandster - I reached my goal weight and BMI in less than a calendar year. My current BMI is 23.8 and I weigh 147.5. I know this because I requested a completed defill this afternoon. It was about 2.5 months ago that I started to suffer from acid reflux. Because I have never, ever had any problems with my digestive tract it took me and my doctor quite awhile to figure this out. It took even longer for her to place me on a regime of prescription meds and for these to fail to make a dent in my symptoms before I figured that maybe I should shoot for a temporary defill. As of today I am defilled, on antibiotics, and still staying the course with the prescribed antacid stuff. I hope this works.

Japan's domestic economy is run on mom and pop stores. Unemployment is extremely low and all goods, including such local brand names as Sony, Hitachi, Yamaha etc, are very expensive in Japan. This is why Japan has made it impossible for U.S. big box mass retail stores to gain a domestic foothold. Many American and Canadian business types complain bitterly about what they see as an unfairly protectionist attitude on the part of Japan. Of cource this is because they see the glowing successes which such companies as Sony, Fuji, Honda have achieved in the west and they figure that they are owed a crack at Japan. This theory might be described as the "tit for tat" school of economics and the argument does have a lot of merit. The thing is that Japan has chosen to drive its internal economy on the mom & pop approach. This means that just about everyone will have the honour of having a role, a role which permits the family to honourably support themselves, in society. It also means that everyone pays through the snout for all their goods and services. Life is expensive in Japan. There are fewer rich people and there is less waste for this is not a lavish society. Your average middle class Japanese works harder, works longer hours, and lives in a much, much smaller crib than we who live in the States or Canada do. At the same time there is far less disparity percentage-wise between the paycheck of a worker, his manager, and the CEO of a Japanese company. I find myself writing about this in response to some of the above comments concerning Walmart and this company's ability to smother local economies.

If you find that you feel hungry then you likely need more fill.

The mother seems like a flake with shallow values. This is not going to help that kid.

From all that I have read on this site PCOS can really complicate weight loss. By using the search option on the bar at the top of this page and typing in PCOS you will be able to call up all the past threads which discuss the problems which individuals with PCOS can run into.

I use to gross out my ex-husband by calling them pus cakes. :heh:

I went to Expo '67 with some of the senior grrls from my boarding school. We were chaparoned by nuns and slept in the rec hall in a church in downtown Montreal. A few of us picked up some boys and arranged to sneak out at midnight to meet up with them. The necking sessions we had were great but ended up with all of us being suspended for a week. Later on that fall I got expelled for smoking dope. My father responded by insisting that I get my "hippie" hair cut off.

Oh, I have been really, really sick with this for the past couple of months (it took me awhile to figure out that it was acid reflux, eh) in spite of taking a bunch of meds. I have also developed a hiatus hernia! I am suffering but am unhappy about the defill because I am now at goal. I hope I don't gain weight and that I can get a refill soon.

Many, many years ago I read about a study which described the same difference in behaviour between thin people and fat people as your husband describes. The researchers claimed that they found that fat people are far more economical in their movements.

I was banded last September and I am at goal but I recently developed acid reflux and this is still out of control and so today I am going in for a complete defill. Another LBTer mentioned that this was what his lapband surgeon advised in his case. Cruising on empty is going to be very weird. I am hoping that my new eating habits will help me out during this empty period. Still, I am very, very nervous.

My defill appt is for 3 PM. I am really hoping that this will work. I am really suffering from acid reflux, my throat hurts all the time, I cough, and now I sound like a wiseguy when I talk. :omg: I will fill you in on the results. :ranger: I guess it will take a few days....

Thanks for posting this. I have suddenly started suffering from major acid reflux trouble for the first time in my life and this won't go away even though I have had a small defill and I am now on prescription meds. I have arranged for a complete defill tomorrow. Your post is making me feel hopeful. :bounce:

Wow! Thanks for posting this for all of us on LBT. I remember reading the original coverage and entering into the original discussion on LBT. At the time I was kinda sympathetic to the kid if I remember correctly. As we all know, being that big little kid is a horrible, painful, lonely experience. After watching this coverage my attitude has changed. It seems that her mother has colluded with her child's vision that surgeries are the easy way out of the fat control issue. A responsible mother would be anxious to research sleep apnea and pschological issues as well as everything else which might be pertinent prior to giving the approval to have the child operated on. These tests are the norm for many folk and, afterall, this kid is much younger than your average lapbander. Good mums want to be sure that there are not going to be any screw-ups when it comes to their babies. Of course we are looking a young kid who is far too immature to eat according to band rules. Band rules do require knowledge and discipline, as we all know. She will stretch her pouch. She may well suffer slippage or erosion. This is likely not going to end well and the kid is going to end up with more damage. Ugh!

I, too, dimly remember those days, Bitter, but that train has long since pulled out of the station and the trade-off has been much lower prices. To be honest with you, I doubt that anyone but the extremely privileged will ever experience that level of service again. Apart from our unwillingness to pay the ticket is the fact that the (largely hidden in Canada and the United States) caste system has finally truly dissolved; you are not going to find people who want to earn indifferent amounts of money doing work of this nature anymore. At my local Walmart the clerks will bag your goods and hand you the bags and that's it. From that moment on you must deal with your own purchases. This doesn't really bother me. I am used dealing with my purchases and I understand that these workers are making mini-money. In fact the Walmart treatment works out better than the situation at my two local discount grocery stores for there you must purchase plastic bags if you have forgotten to bring your own, pay, and then pack your own groceries. Customers can get very jammed up when they are behind someone who is slow moving and who has done a lot of shopping - the proverbial little old lady, let's say. My husband and I shop together and we always bring our own luggage in order to avoid unwanted plastic bag build-up. For many years this used to be a gym bag but now many of the Canadian grocery chains are making a point of producing and selling permanent shopping bags; these are Water resistant, hold a whole lot of groceries, are very strong, and have a lifetime guarantee. Locally they are referred to as enviro-bags. And they are cheap - we paid 5 bucks for 5 of them! We use them instead of the gym bag now. They make great beach bags, too. (We took one to Mexico.) And the cat likes them. She will nest in one for hours. I am under the impression that pretty well all the people who work in our Canadian grocery chains are unionised employees and so do get a fair wage and good benefits as well as job protection. But I have read that people who work as cashiers do have a tendency to end up with carpal tunnel syndrome. This is a crippling and very painful repetitive strain injury and is the result of the constant reaching and grabbing for items. Since reading about this my husband and I make a point of setting our groceries within easy reach of the cashier. This means that we place all our stuff, especially the heavy or awkward stuff, closest to her. I really don't know whether this helps but I like to think that it might. You do raise an interesting point in your grumble, Bitter. Many of us are ageing and will have to deal with bad backs, lousy eyesight, etc and yet we will need to shop, get around, and live our lives, for we won't be sick, and we won't belong in homes - we'll just be slower, less agile, and not as strong. Bette Davis said: "Old age isn't for sissies."

Oops, I meant to type that they will bag your groceries.

The Home Depot near me used to be open 24/7. Because I worked permanent off-shift this was a weird and wonderful experience which I could enjoy on a routine basis. Drifting through the Depot in the early hours of the morning was very, very cool. :bounce: Now they have trimmed back to straight man's hours. Too bad, so sad. :think

Bummer! Ashanti is Hindu and doesn't appear about to try any conversion numbers on her mostly white clientele, especially the Portuguese and Italian grannies. :heh: Our neighbourhood is multi-national and so we mostly talk about the local restaurants, the ones within walking distance - Indian, South Indian, Ethiopian, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Jamaican, Thai, and the two most recent ones, Mexican and Vietnamese. I've been eating huevos and refrieds at the Mexican joint a lot lately and then this Saturday I had lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant with a grrlfriend. The chow was excellent! :bounce:Afterwards my friend stopped by Ashanti's salon for a haircut and I followed along in order to give Ashanti an update on the two new restaurants. :hungry: She was finishing off a Portuguese granny's doo and there was a friend of hers who lives in the neighbourhood who was just hanging out, reading magazines, etc. The conversation ended up being about elderly women who have in vitro babies.... None of us thought that this was a wise idea. And of course we talk about such important items as men, shopping, and children. I know you would enjoy a visit to this salon.

You make a good point, Donna.