BlackBerryJuice

I'll decide that for myself, thanks.

Thanks for the replies. I was just wondering if I should alert the students' affairs office when school starts in case a prof thinks I'm slacking or something.

From past dieting experiences, I know I get pretty affected mentally when I don't eat much - irritable, unable to concentrate, etc. For those of you who have the same problem, did you experience that in your first few weeks/months of recovery from WLS? I'm wondering if I'm going to be 100% mentally by the time I go back to school 3 weeks after my VSG.

For me personally, it's not about thinking that I can't touch "bad" foods again (I've concluded from multiple posts on here that you can still have whatever you want after a few months, just in small quantities). It's more about being able, for the first time in my life, to eat what I want and as much as I want of it without worrying about the consequences and feeling like a failure. I don't have a scale here, but I'm sure I've put on 2-3 lbs in the last 2 weeks, but I just revel in the ability to have a dessert with every dinner, have a peach or strawberry pop without agonizing over the 160 calories, etc. 4 more weeks!

I actually won't be able to tell my family doc until after I'm done - I'm out of the province til like 2 days before my surgery, back home for the weekend before, and then gone to Mexico on Sunday! So I'll have to tell her when I return. But I'm a med student and she is very respectful of my opinion and whenever I see her, she basically just lays out the options for me and lets me make the decision. I doubt she'd freak out, she'd probably just assume I did my research. I'll be looking for a referral to a shrink or some sort of support group, though, hopefully she can help me with that. So yeah, not much to say, I just wanted to respond to another Albertan, haha!

Thanks for the post. I'm a month away from my surgery, and always eager to read updates from people who just had the operation - especially those who also used Dr. Aceves.

Ha, I myself am from one of these "dangerous" countries and have almost never felt unsafe either when I lived there or when I go home to visit family. On the contrary, Ive been carjackef and held up at gunpoint when I lived in the "safe" US. I've lived in a city where I was afraid to go our alone at 3 pm - someone was murdered over $10 a few blocks from where I lived in the US! I dont listen to any of these horror stories. My own country has one of these travel advisories against it and it's a total crock. It's much more dangerous on Detroit or Baltimore than there!

As a med student and someone who's risk-averse, I wouldn't go for the procedure if this is all the data they have. It's a very small sample size, they excluded several patients from the results (one of the hallmarks of a poor quality study), and the follow-up is not very long, at 9 months. I might offer this procedure to a patient as an option, but as far as an option for myself, with these data, I would hold out until more information is available.

Cool, I will start corresponding with Nina from now on, until now it was with someone else.

Thanks. I've actually had a lot of issues communicating with them. On average, I have to send 2 or 3 e-mails/voicemails if I want to get any sort of reply. I e-mailed them about the flights a few days ago, waited 2 days for a response - nothing; so I called and left a voicemail; today I had 2 missed calls in the am, so I figured it was from them. I call them and they said they received neither my e-mail NOR my voicemail from yesterday, so the missed calls weren't from them, either. They said they were gonna respond to my e-mail and there's still nothing. This is the 3rd time I've had this problem, it's getting quite frustrating, to say the least. As you can imagine, I don't wanna be in a situation where someone doesn't pick me up at the airport despite my e-mailing and calling like 5 times.

25 and getting sleeved in a little over a month. Hoping to be "overweight" before I turn 26 at the end of the year....

Hey guys, I am starting to look at booking my flight and I'm having trouble with getting my e-mails answered by them, so I decided to just consult other Aceves sleevers. First off, can someone clarify the day/time I will be arriving and leaving? My surgery's on the 9th of August, so I understand I need to arrive on the 8th to get the labwork done, but how early? The earliest arrival time for San Diego that I can find from my city is 11:10 am. Am I going to have to fly in on the 7th and spend the night at the hotel? Also, along the same lines, what day and what time should I schedule my returning flight, if my surgery's on the 9th? Would that be the 12th? Do they want you to leave in the morning or evening? Last but not least, the only e-mail I've got from them so far was a list of what to bring to the hospital. Would someone be so kind as to send me the rest? Please post here if you can, and I'll PM you my e-mail address. Thanks!

Hey, I've scheduled for Aug. 9, not sure why the tickers in my sig are not showing....gotta look into that. So I think we could cross our paths on the 12th - I'm not sure if I have to leave on the 12th or the 13th given that my surgery is on the 9th. It does, but you have to be over a certain BMI (at 33, I'd never qualify), and the waitlist is 2-3 years long. As far as getting it here as an elective surgery, it's way more expensive. I didn't look into the sleeve here, but a lap band in Canada is $16-18,000 out of pocket.

I just booked one, too! Aug. 9. Gives me about 3 weeks of recovery time before school starts. Fittingly, the first topic we're going to study is gastroenterology (stomach/intestines/liver) and nutrition.

Just booked Aug. 9 with Dr. Aceves. Please PM me if you are around that date.

Just scheduled for Aug. 9 with Doctor Aceves. If anyone's around that date, please PM me, let's connect.

OMG, I can totally relate re: eating everything. I'm not very big, so I don't need to lose weight pre-op or shrink my liver or anything. My only concern is that I haven't been as active as I used to be in the last 2 months, and I'd like to get back in top cardio shape before my surgery. But I have to say, unlike you, I haven't been stressed about this at all. I HAVE been eating everything I want in the last few days, and it's incredibly liberating to have a couple of chocolate truffles or a Chipotle burrito without guilt. Yeah, this will probably add another 5 lbs to my pre-op weight, but this feeling of freedom is very new to me. I can finally live my boyfriend's life - he eats whatever he wants and if he does gain a pound after consuming about 20 McDonald's meals, he just goes for a run and the weight is GONE. It's like I'm getting a glimpse of what it's like to live in another person's body....haha.

I think the people who SHOULD be ashamed are the people who say fat people have no willpower and are generally the scum of the earth. Fat women get the worst of it. If I had a dime for every time I've heard some denigrating statement about an obese woman (or a woman who's THIN with a bit of cellulite, or someone who had kids and now has a bit of a belly, etc etc), I'd have my WLS paid for...The "no willpower" thing is such a crock of $^&^. I used to work full-time and go to school full-time, all while achieving top-notch grades so I could get into medical school. I moved out of my parents' home when I was 16 and went to another country alone...all these things demand a LOT of willpower. I have lots of "willpower" when it comes to other things - whether resisting something or subjecting myself to something. I have a friend who's an MD/PhD and is obese. It's just absurd that society considers her some sort of worthless blob because she's fat. What the hell!?

Hey guys, I saw that one of the recommended books for those considering the surgery is The Exodus from Obesity: The Guide to Long-Term Success with Weight-Loss Surgery, by Paula Peck. Unfortunately, neither the public library nor my university library have them, and it's over $90 on Amazon (with shipping) for a used copy. Would anyone be so kind as to lend it to me? I will cover the shipping cost with Paypal (or a check, if you are in Canada) and mail it back to you after. Please PM me if you can do that. Thanks!

I'm a pretty open person. I plan to tell anyone who asks. Like someone above me said, if they have an issue with it, it's their issue, not mine. So far, I've told two of my friends (the two who I thought might be interested in getting this as well - both of them aren't ready for it this year, unfortunately), my boyfriend (who's a little worried, but very supportive). I raised the issue with my mom, while trying to see if I could do the surgery back home - she said "I'm not going to assist you with any operations, diet is the only way to go, I'm out of town for the next 3 weeks, cheers!" I was tempted to ask her how that "DIET" is working for her, considering she's 5'3" and has been hovering in the 200s for at least a decade....I decided to just not raise the issue anymore until I'm done the procedure - unless she brings it up herself. The only person I won't tell is my father, for various reasons - we are not close at all AND he was always very abusive towards me about my weight, even when I wore a size 8. If I told him, he'd just call me a cow with no willpower, etc, like he always did. *eyeroll*

OMG, in Florida on vacation now - there are all kinds of cute clothes we don't have in Canada. Every time I'm in the mall, it's SO hard to resist buying something cute in a size medium....and I'm resisting buying anything for my current size unless it's stretchy or something like a wrap or cardigan that I could wear even if I was 20 lbs lighter - don't want to waste money on stuff that might fall off of me in 2 months....I'm sure I'm not alone here!

Thanks! I'm away on vacation this week, so too busy sight-seeing/going to the beach to write another long post, but I'll definitely continue after a little while.

Greetings from a wonderful vacation in Florida :thumbup:. I'm going to schedule tomorrow, but I'm a bit concerned about needing psychological support after the surgery. I tend to be an emotional eater and have even suffered from bulimia in the past (it's been almost a decade, tho), so I'm worried about no longer being able to deal with my emotions that way. Has anyone else experienced it? I understand that I could get informal support on this board and through an occasional meeting with other sleevers in my area, but would you suggest getting a counselor or something? If so, should I look for someone who has experience in eating disorders or is any regular counselor ok? My concern is that I'm a medical student and personally know the ED specialists in my city, so I'd rather avoid going to them because of the professional relationship. Thanks for any suggestions.

Re: dehydration in the first few days....shouldn't they be giving you IV fluids to compensate for your inability to drink much over the course of the day? Or did they send you home the next day?

Thanks guys, you've calmed my fears. I feel pretty comfortable with going on my own now. I just hope the flight's not too bad. I'm actually at the airport now, en route to vacation, and our landing for the 1st flight was terrible - I felt so nauseous and kept grabbing onto things because the plane was shaking. I can't imagine how that would've felt if I was 3 days out of surgery! Oh well, if everyone else dealt with the travel just fine, I'm sure I will, too.