Well it is out - and I am glad at this point. I had the surgery last Friday and it was somewhat worse than the doctors had thought.
The catheter that goes from the band to the port, which was not connected to a port, was loose in my abdomen, and had poked a hole in the bottom of my stomach, as bad as that sounds, that was the good part – since that was how the surgeon was able to find the actual band.
The surgeon said he was able to remove the catheter from the bottom of my stomach, and trace it around to where the band actually was. The entire band had totally eroded into my stomach, and was embedded pretty badly inside the stomach. He had to make a descent size incision into the stomach to get the band out, and then reclose the incision. So now I have no band, am pushing $30k out of pocket plus months of lost time for work.
The good side, I did lose a lot weight – and now I have to figure out how to keep it off by myself. I have a JP drain in for the next week, clear liquids for the next week, see the surgeon next Monday and will know what is next then.