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Update on consumption today 2 activia yogs 1 muller light yog 3 cambridge packs 1 coffee (black no sugar) 2 litres Water It's not alot but, you know what I feel better for not stuffing myself today! I'm not even particularly hungry today, but there's always tomorrow for that!

I should be able to fit it in between appointments on Tuesday or after appointments on Monday morning! I've been looking at my itinerary and it seems pretty full now!!! Consumption so far 2x activia yoghurts prune and fig flavours 1x chocolate cambridge pack 500ml water... Feelings; not hungry at the moment but have carton in the car and a further 500ml of water to take with me to Pontypool! Image.... had to buy a new suit for work because I had nothing to wear again (damn last supper syndrome!) Look like a roly poly in baggy trousers... and water logged as I've got TOM visiting, so face very 'moon like'! But you know What? I don't care because I know that this is my body's last gasps at obesity, and I'm going to crack it! I've made a start on my pre op diet and I'm getting out the 'big guns'!!!

14 days left... Starting my pre op diet in earnest today... After failing miserably to 'cut down' I've decided to have Cambridge diet supplemented with yoghurt (I've decided that I will allow myself as many as I want, that way I won't be 'cheating') :Banane43: Starting to feel a bit anxious about the whole thing generally.... Suppose it's normal. I've booked my flights and my hotel for the two nights... .I think that I might treat myself to a Disney Land paris trip on one of my pre op days.... I've bought new pajamas, slippers, dressing gown. I've stocked up on moist toilet tissue and bought some dressings for when I get home. I've also bought to Hibiscrub to wash myself with ( I'm not paranoid about MRSA, am I !?! ) and some arnica which I will start taking today to reduce the bruising. I've got some moist mouth drops too for that dry mouth post op period.... Plenty of books to read, I've just got to get my ipod up to speed with some cool new tunes and I think that I'll have it covered then.... Is there anything essential that you think I should take with me? Any suggestions gratefully received.

OOOOhhhhh that's gonna hurt your bank balance! Still I hope that it's worth it for you. Ought really to breakdown my costs further 4500 (£3126).band and clinic £58.40 flights 125Euro (83.20)hotel room for two nights. 3 fills @ £100 Grand total: £3567 I've taken the average amount of fills needed to reach that all important sweet spot, but I'm probably going to be awkward and need loads of adjustments!! I haven't included the shopping opportunities that I'll have in Paris either!!!

So..... what price are you paying..... REallly nosey I know, I hope you don't mind...I'm paying 4500 Euro plus £75 per fill....

OK, pre op diet starts on Monday, and I've got it BAD :hungry: :hungry: Thought I would try and eat a proper Breakfast... managed, but then not 1/2 hour later I thought.... there's ice cream in the freezer Now I've eaten a tub of Hagen Daas!!:guess OMG! I'm actually shocked at what I've just done, I'm not even dressed! I guess I'll have to just accept that it's just how the weekend is going to pan out... and try not to make myself ill!!!

Hi there, Are your soups and shakes in packs that you have to mix up? Just wondering.... Also because I'm such a nosy mare, who are you having your surgery with? I 'm booked in with Dr Anfroy in Paris, Flying out on 18th op on 21st! No pre op diet needed, however I will be following Lighter LIfe for a week as I've got a week's supply in the cupboard.

OK it's 21 days til I'm finally banded... feeling quite excited and nervous now... I found it really hard to get off to sleep last night. worrying about of all things the pre op tests, I'm going to be having a pre op endoscopy Hate the thought of having something down my throat... I'm gagging at the very thought of it! The other problem is the last supper syndrome that I'm suffering big time from at the moment.... So many restaurants so little time!!! I'm thinking of starting a blog.... to record my trials and tribulations through my weight loss surgery and journey to slimdom!!

Hi there, As people have been asking about surgeons I thought that it might be useful to have a thread with a list of surgeons contact details on... No advertisement of their abilities.. good or otherwise, but a place to access information on services available to us Brits.... (we are special!) With this in mind here are the few I know.... Mr David Hewin Winfield Hospital Tewkesbury Road Longford Gloucs GL2 9WH Switchboard number is 01452 331111 Dr Jean Pierre Anfroy www.euroband.co.uk Clinique International du Parc Monceau 21 Rue de Chazelles 75017 Paris FRANCE www.obesitechirurgie.com Please add more!

Be prepared this is a long one. I found this post on Wlsinfo.org and thought that you guys might benefit from the words of wisdom contained within. This is a girl called Delly from Manchester, she was banded last April.... I hope that it brings some comfort to those who are feeling frustrated and the certain knowledge that fills will provide them with the restriction and therefore results that we expect and crave....... Please feel free to post any additional pearls of wisdom or comments on the helpfulness of this post below:clap2: It saddens me to read of so many bandsters feeling despondent in the early months of being banded, even brandishing themselves failures! When I was conducting my research it became apparent to me very quickly that there appeared to be a pattern with bandsters, I admit not everyone fit the pattern but it appeared like a very strong trend to me. For most a pre-op diet is recommended and consequently most enjoy some weight loss, then in the 7-10 days following surgery another good weight loss is usually enjoyed as restriction is felt due to stomach swelling after the op. Some 3lbs some as high as 16lbs – all depending I suspect on our starting weight and pre-band eating habits. Most people seem to get their appetite back by 2 weeks post op so and weight loss consequently either seems to grind to a halt or even we regain some of the weight we lost. Yes there are the very disciplined/lucky or maybe the higher starting BMI’s who continue to lose after 2 weeks but they appear in the minority to me? So in most cases we have 4 more weeks to wait for our first fill (some NHS patients have 10 more weeks to wait) Its all very well for the dieticians to give us a post op diet to follow but lets be honest here whilst it’s a fantastic plan of course to eat as healthily as possible lets not forget that its continuous diets that got us fat in the first place. I have been on a diet for over 20 years and I don’t know about anyone else but I just got FATTER! I read of members joining WW or SW and if that works for them that’s fabulous but for me I have done WW etc more than 20 times and if it worked for me, if I could be a success on a diet then I wouldn’t have ever considered WLS! Long term success with a band stems from reduced quantity and satiety training not doing another diet! So we have to get through these 4-10 weeks whilst waiting for our first fill without feeling like a failure –that’s not easy I know because I'm currently going through it, yes I'm eating a lot less than I ever ate pre-op but obviously not enough to continue losing as I'm still at the same weight I was 1 week post-op. I'm not disappointed though as this is EXACTLY what I expected and it’s what everyone should EXPECT! If your expectations are realistic then you won’t be frustrated when things don’t go according to some weight loss plan you have hatched that had you in a size 10 by Christmas! LOL At last the day comes for our first fill we have been waiting for it like Christmas morning but again we must be patient as the very large majority of bandsters don’t feel adequate restriction after their first fill. We mustn’t feel despondent we must accept and fully grasp the concept that most bandsters don’t reach their “sweet spot” until their 3rd, 4th or 5th fill. If you’re having private fills this gets you to approximately 4 or 5 months post-op, if you’re having NHS fills this could be as much as 12 months post-op. Then of course you have to allow time to lose the weight, lets just say this could take another 12-18 months so before you know it your goal weight is 2 years away. This seems like an inordinate amount of time to wait but the statistics show that 18 months - 2 years is the average time to goal so there is little point expecting to reach goal before then and if we do then whoopee dooo darrr that’s a great bonus but if we are average or a little longer than average that’s whooooppeee doo darrr too because I bet it sure took a lot longer than 2 years to gain all that excess weight in the first place so what’s the rush? It’s not a race with a band it’s more of a marathon but we will all reach the finish line, happier, healthier and most importantly lighter!!!

Don't forget sooz... this is your journey and you are in the driving seat, which means that you lose weight at a rate that you choose (according to your restriction) If you get to a stage where you are happy with your weight... you choose to have a small defill to enable you to eat enough to maintain your weight. On a more personal note... Breasts have a nasty habit of becoming Spaniels ears!!! (Sort of empty sacks slightly thicker at the bottom!!) I remember it when i lost lots of weight last year... regain has had the happy side effect of refilling my bags!!! Take it easy, don't go at this any faster than you want, your brain will catch up with your body (I'm told that it takes around 6 months for your brain to catch up with the changes in your body size...) The other thing to consider is that you may need some plastic surgery to put right the droopy bits... good news is that you can get this on the NHS... Remember to ask sooner rather than later as the wait can be considerable. Good to see your weight on the downwards spiral and that your joints are complaining a little less... long may it continue! Take care babes night night.

(www.clinique-monceau.com). www.euroband.org I will be seeing Dr Anfroy. You can email him from the euroband site. The cost is 4500 euro plus 2 nights in hotel and flight. Found flights for £41.00 return and hotel(near L'Arc De Triomphe) for 60Euro a night. so all additional costs are reasonable. Of course there is the cost of the aftercare, but it's local for me, so it'll just be £100 per fill I think... Hope that this helps....

Sure it will feeling good about it... I just need to arrange my bloods to be done and the local hospital. I need to have a cortisol done which takes 10 days to come back. I'll be in France for 5 days all in all and I'll be spending 3 nights in hospital (seems like a really long time, but I'm told that it's the French way to recover quietly with supervision!!) So i'm going to go with the flow and take it as it comes.... God I sound really laid back! Not that I am at the moment... 3 weeks tomorrow and I'll be off to Gay Paris!!! Feeling anxious and excited that I'm finally taking the plunge and tackling my weight problem, permanently Thanks for your thoughts Yvonne

Hello All, I've dithered and coped the OH have a wobble about money more than anything else. I've booked with surgeon in Belgium... then cancelled. I've booked with a surgeon in Gloucester and cancelled.... In the end it boiled down to money with OH and him not wanting me to borrow money for surgery... But now I've saved enough and there's no stopping me. I will be operated on in Paris by Dr Anfroy on 21/3/07. I just need to get some blood tests done before I go! and all in for 4500Euro, which is half that I would have payed in Gloucester and about £600 less than I would have paid for Belgium! Plus I'm getting a MidBand, which is what I wanted, because it has good adjustability. Which is important to me. Have told OH now and he's been unimpressed, but hasn't put up an argument! Woo HOO!!

Just thinking about the easy band and wondering what would happen if you were on holiday and needed an emergency defill? Do they give you a telemetry box to do this if you really need to, or would you have to fly home immediately. O was also wondering if you would be more likely to suffer from erosion. as the tightening device is a metal band won't it make it harder and more rigid? I'm not trying to put you off this band, but these are the things that worry me about it.

Hi Suz and D Strangely, I don't feel half as gutted as I thought I would... but Friday isn't here yet. Just had news from work that our national conference has been cancelled (hurray!) which means that I don't have to go and face all these people judging my latest weight gain. That's taken the pressure off as well. I think that everything happens for a reason so as they say in the song Que sera sera.... I know that I am going to have it done and I really want to book a date for January, and that will probably happen sooner rather than later. He's still being a bit funny about me borrowing the money but I feel that I'm worth the expense of the credit as in the longer term I will only benefit from it. Just a case of waiting for it. Yes I feel desperate. Yes, I am disappointed, but I am no longer despairing at what the future holds for me. I've made a decision. I've got the old man on side and I know that it will happen and it will happen sooner rather than later. Make no bones girls, I am a woman on a mission!

Just a note to update, you. H the decisive has given in to marital pressure and decided to postpone my op until the new year. OH was sooo unhappy. He said that in principle he thought it would be a good idea for me, but that he didn't know enough about it all to be comfortable with me having it done on Friday :cry After 20 years of marriage, I know now why I left it until the last moment to tell him about it. I knew that he would worry about it. I knew that he would get mardi about the financial side of it, and I knew that I didn't want to deal with the conflict. :paranoid I, perhaps wish that I'd told him sooner about it, but I would still have the probs that I have with him now. However, I would be further down the road now and, perhaps, I would be having my op on Friday:confused: The band counsellor we went to see today was brilliant! She explained to OH all the advantages and disadvantages of the op. Even the merits of all the different bands that are available. How many operations Mr Hewin has performed. what the success rate of all the patients they have treated to date is over all (better than published data! with 87%EWL achieved at 2 years) He was really worried that I wouldn't be able to eat anything ever again.... ( Oh dear, he thought that I'd have to survive on liquids for the rest of my life! ) Sharon, who was banded herself 7 years ago told him what she had eaten in a restaurant the last two nights..... he seemed much happier after that. She even have him a CD Rom with a video of the op on it! She was really careful to say that I as the patient should be left to eat what I pleased and that he shouldn't critisize my diet before during or after the op. She confirmed that 'last supper syndrome' was completely normal in the circumstances and that this is not only a farewell to overeating it's a type of mourning, a fond fairwell to our old, fat selves. I haven't booked a date yet, but we'll talk about it tonight and look for a time that is good to do this. We are also going to attend the support group at the local hospital so that he can meet more bansters, who manage to go out and enjoy themselves.....at a restaurant .... with food!!! OK very long post and I lost the first one yesterday and the will to write it again, just left me!! Hx

OMG!!! Well in our household I'm currently experiencing 'picture, no sound'! Not funny really. I put off telling him on holiday because I knew that this was the reaction I was going to get.... All he said was.... £6000, after we've got ourselves straight with no debt.... and left it hanging. He's sulked since Saturday morning and has hardly said two words to me. :phanvan After being horrid to me on holiday about my weight. Now he just looks at me as if he can't believe that I think that I'm worth spending that money on.... MY MONEY incidentally, it's not like I'm even asking him to pay.... :cry If he really wanted to persuade me then there are better ways of doing so, like saying he would help me conquer my weight problem, or that he loved me no matter what size I am, which incidentally I do already know, but a repeat wouldn't go a miss. Feeling devastated by his attitude, but he should know that I'm not going to give in on this one.... whether or not he supports me. Arrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! I'm really angry at him, but until he talks to me I'm not making mega effort with him, I just hate it that he gives me the silent treatment. B*gger him!!! Ok , calm, calm, deep breaths, and..... relax! Hx

Hi Sara! As far as I know most of the European Docs use either the Heliogast (Dr Mignon, Dr De Bruyne, Dr Dillemans) or the midband(Vincent Frering) However I have not researched this fully. My UK doc is using the Midband and it is used extensively in the UK, as is the Inamed band. I understand your concern if you are from the US as only the inamed band is licenced over there, however the principles of the band and the fill methods are the same regardless of which band you use. You shouldn't have any problems getting a fill back home. I hope that this helps. Hx

I'm trying to tell him honest:rolleyes I have really already told him that I was going to do it.... he knows I've been to the appointment. All the pre op stuff came today and I'm not hiding it from him :eek: Just had a look at the calender, I reckon I could get a fortnight off with my doc... that'll make for a great Christmas break:eek: Well the good news is that I managed to finish my end of year review today so that's a big pressure off me! just need to pack my clothes for SRi Lanka!!! Woohooo!!!

Hi Ya! Good news that the scales have finally moved.... Even better news 4 kg is 8.8lb which means that you've lost more than you thought!!! Weighing everyday is seen by some experts as a good way of staying in control of your weight, it's really only problem if your mood/behavious is adversley affected by the number you see! Got all my bumf through from the surgeon today. I'm down for 8th December! (stomach flips feelling nervous!) 12 sheets of A4 of info to read ... planning on giving it to OH to read thru' and am planning on taking him to the support group on 3rd December to chat to others who have had the surgery, I hope that this will get him over his negativity and jitters.

How r u sarah? Feeling good still besides the windy pain? Are u weighing yourself everyday? You know that it will go up and down a lot day to day.... I should talk I jump om the scales everyday.... it's really depressing at the moment, but from my post i'm sure that you can see the end is nigh!!!!

Hello Sarah, glad you're back and feeling OK... :clap2: Full on Soup and yoghurt eh? Can't be bad! Although I have to say I'm surprised that you still like the stuff after an entire week of the stuff:cool: Bring on the weight loss babes!! Welcome to the thread Donatella!! Hope all goes well with your op.... although you'll be prepped by surgery by now and won't read this until you return... We're all thinking of you! Went and saw Mr Hewin yesterday. He can do my band on 8th December a week after I get back from India... Just in time to get in the pre op yoghurt diet!!! Got an appointment with the nurse counsellor on the monday after I'm back from hols and I'm taking OH with me so that he can ask any questions and put his mind at ease. I'm also off to the Doc's today to see if I can get my aftercare paid for by the NHS!! :omg: With regards to last supper syndrome, it seems to be better today... Have no particular urge to scoff my head off, yet I'm having a midband, it's bigger than the heliogast and he puts no fill in at all. He reckons I should be on soft foods by Christmas!! :hungry: Feeling very positive at the moment!! ... holidays on Thursday Yay yay!!! :confused:

Sarah, Are you back with us hunny? How did it go? good I hope! Looking forward to hearing about your journey and all that happened to you with the hospital, the journey the B&B. I need to know everything :heh: all the details ....I'm just nosey I guess! How are you getting on S? Being good and following those bandster rules I hope! PB's should not be a 'normal' part of life!!! Do you feel like you have some restriction still? Are you filling in a food diary or just eating as normally as you can within the guidelines??? Still struggling with OH, but I will get there, Honestly! :embarassed: :embarassed:

I'm still waiting to see if they can fit me in before Christmas.... I certainly hope so! I really will have to tackle OH, then won't I!:faint: But I really think that this will be the best course of action, I can really do without the biggest Christmas binge ever so this will certainly help that! The thought had occurred to me that I could just not tell him at all!!! !:rolleyes :omg: until after the op..... Probably not such a good idea! Will tackle him again tonight! I really need to get to grips with this!