Lap_dancer

what a great feeling!

This is how I roll: Upon reservations I let them know I need a wheelchair door to door. You get out of the car at curbside, check bags, get your ride. Someone pushes you to the gate, first one on, last one off. Ask the flight Attendant for a seat extender for your belt. You are met by a wheelchair roller and/or a golfcart type vehicle to take you end to end. Someone will get you to the awaiting buses to the car rental area. I'm never afraid to ask for a wheelchair or front door drop off. (I've huffed long enough) When you get to the plaza where Dr. K's office is, you can park and take the shuttle to the front door or you can do valet parking. Since that shuttle is rolling every five minutes, it's quicker. No charge either. Hope this helps. Best to you.

Walgreens-red liquid in the pain medication section.

I take room temp clear fluids and if I've had a PB I give my stomach a rest. (it will typically swell after this)

I'd like to start a dialogue on the psychological and emotional post-op emotions after banding. What happens when we are no longer able to mask our problems with food? Discuss. ........... She had bypass but relevent to me was this portion of something Star Jones said. from Glamour, September 2007. "Getting Over Myself" An interview with Star Jones. Page 312, "The Night Before the surgery" The night before the surgery, I convinced myself that afterward everything would be fine and I could get on with the rest of my life. I had no idea that before I could move on, I would have to face the present and the past as they were, not as I wished them to be. A few years ago, I wrote, "Living in truth means living in confrontation." I admit that when asked about my obvious weight loss over the past four years, I was intentionally evasive. Lying was never an option for me, so I called it a "medical intervention" which was true, but it was really a pathetic attempt to tell only the truth I could handle at the time. Although I'd shared my decision with friends, family and my collegues at The View, I wasn't ready to invite the world into my process for a number of reasons: First, I didn't know if the surgery would work. I had never stuck to a diet or committed to exercise for more than a month, and I had spent my entire adult life telling everyone that I was fine with the way I looked. I also never thought I'd have to explain it. I actually thought that I could say, "None of your business," and people would say "Okay, she wants to remain private." If that isn't evidence of someone not living in truth, I don't know what is. Everything about me was already so public (mostly my own doing --talk about dumb!) so of course everyone wanted to know what I had done. I was also terrified someone would have a tragic result after emulating me without making an informed decision with her doctor. But the complete truth is, I was scared of what people might think of me. I was afraid to be vulnerable, and ashamed at not being able to get myself under control without this procedure. ( cont' in Glamour)

I used a loofah scrubby and bath gel. Soak soak soak and scrub.

Thank you all for being so open. Ghost thanks for sharing your photos, honey they look REAL familiar. So it is called a MONS lift. Well count me in. I'm getting one. I'll keep checking back. Patty

I'm all for the pregnant parking. I actually asked a police officer if I could park in a HC spot because I was carrying my 10 lb. baby at the time. It was all I could do to shop. The pram parking? I used a grocery cart.

Adios to Marinara sauce and Pasta. Pasta you get stuck and cause me to get sick. I've decided you aren't worth it. Marinara, the high acid of tomatoes is more than my stomach can take. you cause me to experience excruiciating stomach pains. You aren't worth it. Butter, I love you. Butter you make everything so much tastier but butter, you give me horrid indigestion and you are not worth it. Frosting from Publix, we've had some great parties but you now give me an intense headache and make me feel yucky all over. I need to say goodbye to you but thanks for the memories. Sicilian deep dish, you know you are my most favorite pizza but with the sauce, the thick crust, it detonates my stomach to eat you. I suffer for days even trying small bites so goodbye deep dish. Hello lightweight stomach. You feel so much easier to carry. Welcome home.

CHAT MEETINGS OF SUPPORT! Like Thursday, 8 PM - 9 PM Eastern or 9-10.

My husband was not commenting when I began this process. He said nothing. I think with all the promises of losing weight after twenty years, he thought ( yeah right ). He's changing his tune now that we are five months post op. and he is seeing the changes. **Actions speak louder than words**

Thanks so much. When I see the pictures I know there is a difference. I wish the scale would show it more though. Can't wait for my stomach to really go down!! But putting on makeup is such a joy. There is less "surface area" to cover. And isn't it great turning to the side and seeing cheek bones???? Love it. My gold bracelet is sliding...gee, guess I'll need to replace that too!

Congratulations on the bones and YES more *BLING* cause sizing it simply won't do!! Feels great doesn't it? I found my jaw bone!

Sorry I did not read this sooner. I hope your night got easier. I'm doing some "head work" as I call it. Meaning that I did not get to a point of 200+ pounds overweight by the occasional snack. My food urges came by way of examples at home I saw growing up, addiction in my family which I inherited. For me, I got to a point where I had some candy and I had another type of sweet on another occasion. I saw myself moving in the direction of the occasional splurge. I know that as a sign I'm eventually going to slide into the habit of reaching for those things that are unhealthy as a means of coping with whatever is wrong in my life and searching for that feeling of "high" I would get when I consumed enough carbs to put my body into that sluggish, sedated food feeling I would go for. Just like an alcoholic, like someone craving a smoke, ...it's really no different. If you get to a point where it really is a struggle, I can offer that I went into therapy and it is definately helping. I specifically sought out counseling for addiction. I also was put on medication therapy to ease the process a little (for me I was really having an emotionally hard time) I hope this helps and I do hope your night went better!

Great ideas! Noah's Mom greetings! I am a recovering claustrophobic who still has panic disorder. I can recommend that you ask your doctor for a sedative, I take Klonzipam, starting a few days before your flight. ( you may not need it but I'm assuming you are like me and might hide in the bathroom vomiting for an hour like me) Give yourself a treat for arriving to the airport. The bookstore/gift shop just before the shuttle to gateside has some neat stuff and there are also several shops at gateside. Break up the flight into increments. Home to the airport=reward, to flightside=reward. I can recommend going over to the security check to the left rather than the line. I found I simply couldn't stand that long without pain ( I am 300 + ) You can also get a wheelchair at the front of the airport and instead of having to walk the entire way, you can be pushed through security (you will have to stand, take off shoes, etc.,) but will then be pushed to your gate and will be first on and when you get to California, last off. As you pass by the flight attendant, ask for a seat extender, they are in the first overhead compartment that they use for supplies. (my sister is a flight attendant) In the air, I take a camera and photograph the sky. It's just so awesome, absolutely amazing...all the clouds, the colors, fascinating. If you have a digital camera, all the better. Burn a CD of your favorite music or take your favorite CD. My CD had 1 hour worth of tunes and I also had loaded the MP3 player with music. Things to remember: Statistically, you have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than being in a plane crash. Statistically, more accidents happen within three miles of your own home than anywhere else. Hyperventilating from anxiety does not mean you are "gonna die" and in fact, if you are breathing you are very much alive. Pick up a favorite magazine and read it over the second half of the flight. Take a nap. Enjoy a glass of wine. It helps you to relax. Depending on your airline, you might be lucky and have a screen in front of you to watch a movie. Best of luck. I want to share one last thing Noah's Mom, I had my surgery in Denver! So I flew from TIA four hours to Denver with a one hour layover in Atlanta for my surgery. I go back to Denver for fills and am going back in October. My reward is seeing parts of the country I otherwise wouldn't be seeing (one of the rare positive aspects of being obese...the Lap Banding). I almost went to Mexico (where I am told the accomidations are great) but went to Denver instead. Check out the shopping there. Flying home was a breeze. The pain medicine knocked me out! Patty

I use to be a Pasta freak, now it tastes like paste to me. Candy also doesn't do it for me and neither do chips. This is something I noticed strongly when the day after surgery. I had simply lost my taste for some foods that I use to love. I'll take that.

I have to echo what Dana just said above me. I am my own best advocate and they developed through years of frustration and my determination to become my own medical advocate. Lucky for us, we have the internet. You would be better off to call your state government agency in the capitol in Springfield (let's see if my geography is right). Start from the top and then work your way down to a person or office that may help. Here are some suggestions: Write yourself a script and practice reading it: My name is **** and I live in (city). I'm calling because I am attempting to find out if I have coverage through my Medicaid on a medical procedure. I have contacted my caseworker and I think five weeks is enough time to know if it is a covered benefit. Unfortunately I don't have an answer yet and that is why I'm calling. (they might say) What is it that you want to know about? (you say) The Lap Band which is a gastric procedure for morbid obesity. ( they may say) We don't deal with that here. (you say) Okay, can you direct me to the appropriate agency? (they may say) I would continue to try your caseworker... (you say) Again, I am very frustrated and simply would like an answer as to if it is a covered benefit. What you want: Is it a covered benefit and if so who is the doctor in your area to see/hospitals with a bariatrics program. Be nice. Be understanding that you are one in one hundred plus calls they take. Be polite and say thank you. Ask the person's name and that them by name. Write down their name, the time and date after you hang up. Write a brief summary of what was said so that when you call their supervisor in six weeks, you can have a detailed recollection of who, what, where and when. ....been down that long and winding road more times than I care to recall. Good luck. ..........................What I found with a GOOGLE search HFS Agency Information

Well I'm at the ton of food category. I can eat about a cup of food. I do stick with the regiment of Protein first to get it in there, no liquid going down with my meal (most of the time). My last fill was in July. I was restricted for about three days and then it settled into what I thought was a sweet spot. That lasted one month. Now I feel hungry, not like I use to before the band, not that nawing feeling, but enough to know that it wasn't like a month after the band when I had limited ability on volume. I'm still having to S-l-o-w down.

80 grams of protein a day is what my doctor ordered. Dietary intake starts with protein first so you get that in there followed by your vegetables. Drink your water throughout the day. A multi vitamin supplement could help. I take Flintstone Vitamins.

Congratulations!!! We have an entire thread about Dr. Kirshenbaum that you can JUMP forums to at the bottom of this page. Go to Doctors and Hospitals and it is titled "Considering Dr. Kirshenbaum". I flew from Tampa, Florida to Dr. K. He is the best!!! I am flying back out October 11 for a check-up and fill. You are making the right choice! Isn't it exciting? I know how you feel by once again having HOPE. I can recommend for you a hotel, The Holiday Inn Select at Parker, CO. When you make reservations, tell them you are a patient of Dr. Kirshenbaum coming in for surgery, they will give you a discount. That hotel is directly across the street from Crowne which is a lovely medical center. For an upgrade of about $10 you can get a room with a mini fridge, sofa and coffee table. Best wishes and best of luck to you for an awesome experience. He is the best!! Patty in Florida

I decided I needed some head work when I went to the store and bought something, oh..now I remember, it was at Cracker Barrell and I purchased chocolate covered dried cherries, usually a seasonal item I buy at Christmas but now they are available year round. I did not eat this bag at one sitting, rather, I GRAZED on them over the course of three days. They were good but when I considered all that I had put myself through, even flying to Denver from Florida to have a self-pay operation, the vastness of my actions to become healthy only to EAT CHOCOLATE?? was a self awakening. I concluded on my own I have an addiction to food. Admitting you have an addiction was not easy for me atleast. But I do. I suspect I've been addicted for years. I can tell you I have actually gotten a buzz off of food. I think part of the high for me was sending my body into a woozy food induced haze by way of sugar/carbs. I sought out an addiction counselor and she had my number after about ten minutes. Right now our sessions focus on digging in the dirt and excavating the lies I have told myself. Nasty work but necessary. I also joined Overeaters Anonymous ( OA ). I'm working the 12 steps to recovery but I'm only moving up a step until I can tell myself I have a solid acceptance of each step. So far I am on step 2. For me the headwork is just as important as not drinking liquids with my meals, and avoiding old habits. We'll get there!!

This sounds right up my alley. YUM. What store did you buy it at?

Hammer I'm a self pay too. I had mine put in April 17th. Here is what I can offer to you. The hardest thing for me to break has been my eating habit. The band isn't going to do that for me I have learned because I just get sick when I eat the way I typically do. I am use to large bites, short chews and swallows. I might get away with one or two bites but try a third one and I will get sick, I'll have pain and so forth. For an immediate, I can suggest for one day to give your belly a rest by switching it up to post-op food like the broth, soft easy foods like Toddler meals from Gerber. I've even done it for two days and up to three at one time, just to give my stomach a rest. (we have to remember what has just happened and to be gentle on our system) For me, that seems to take me out of a pain and worry zone into a calmer place. I start all over like that and have done so on several occasions. I go real slow and eat chicken and easily digested foods (research that on the internet). Another thing I have done is joined Overeaters Anonymous. To attempt to describe the help would not do it justice. Yahoo Groups has an awesome selection of message boards and "Loops" where you can receive emails of support. Although our intake is unique, anyone who has an obesity issue and is trying to gain some semblence of new lifestyle..HEALTHY lifestyle, is relateable to us. I have a 10CC band and am filled to just under 7.5 CC's right now. I weigh 336 and started out at 375. I didn't get like this over night or in one year so I also know that for the average person, 10 pounds a month is a healthy level of weight loss. Hope this has helped. Good luck

At four months post-op with my band, I'm taking the next step in my journey by doing some "head work". I went into therapy a few weeks ago. Today I came across something I would like to share; I think it is relative to all of us at some point. -------------------------------------------------------------------- From PREVENTION, "Don't Check Arrival Times, Changing your relationship with food is a journey not a destination." By Geneen Roth If a wish-granting genie had appeared during the 17 years I was gaining and losing a thousand pounds, I would've said, "Take 50 pounds off my body immediately and make me thin. When I wake up tomorrow, let me eat ice cream without guilt and munch potato chips without seeing them on my hips within 10 minutes." If the aforementioned genie had been smart, she probably would've said to me, "Are you kidding? With all the wishes you could possibly have--being forever happy or endlessly wise or even unspeakably rich, you want to be thin?" And my answer would've been a resounding YES. I wanted your basic miracle. Just one teeny miracle. If there is one refrain I hear constantly from people who are struggling with food, it's that they want this to be over, done, kaput. They want to wake up think tomorrow and spend the rest of their lives without a food problem. Yup, I understand. Been there Wished that. But let me tell you the good news about that wish: It's entirely possible to break free from emotional eating. You can be someone who walks around without thoughts of food occupying the main portion of your mental life. The bad news, of course, is that the work of transormation is up to you, and the work itself is a journey that-- uh-oh--here it comes--never ends. Rats. Part of the challenge of dealing with food involves changing how we think about it: from a problem to fix to a path we walk. Instead of telling ourselves that we want to get rid of our struggles, we can ask ourselves how the vehicle we've chosen for the journey--our relationship with food--functions in our lives. How is emotional eating helping us, speaking for us, and expressing something we feel we can't express directly? One of the principles of my work is that there are always exquisitely good reasons we turn to food when we aren't hungry-- and our work is to develop a kinder, wiser relationship not only with food but also with ourselves. It means being willing to consider and then exploe how we use food in our lives. It means treating ourselves with compassion, and understanding that the point isn't to arrive at some imagined destination but to have a transformative, fascinating, fabulous time arriving. And arriving and arriving. (snip) After she lost weight, Rebecca would go back to her dessert-laden lifestyle. Rebecca wanted help figuring out why she constantly sabotaged herself. I told her that I believe we use food for good reasons and even though it seemed like self-sabotage, I knew she was trying to care for herself in some way; it was our task to discover what that was. At first, Rebecca was only interested in discovering how to fix herself immediately; she wanted magic. She wanted instant answers. She wanted to wake up thin tomorrow. But when she relaxed and stopped focusing on the goal, she remember that when she was younger, her parents were very poor and there was never enough food on the table but there were always Cookies. "We always had sweets because they were cheap, and my mother could feel she was giving us something we liked." Once she realized what she was doing, she could ask herself if what she believed was actually true. And she recognized, of course, that it wasn't, and that there were other unharmful ways to remember her parents. When she stopped wnting to make the problem go away, she relaxed enough to explore the root of her eating. And she stopped being married to sugar. If Rebecca had woken up thin before understanding the reasons she was eating sweets, the sense of guilt and abandoning her family would've still haunted her. (snip) Think about how different life could be if you stopped emphasizing the end, the fix, or getting there and began enjoying each step of the way. If one moment was as good as the next. If the goal in life was not to fix yourself but to transform yourself. Here, after all, is a miracle: You're already on the journey. You already know and already have everything you need to continue. Relax, breathe, be kind to yourself and everyone else. Oh, there's one more thing, enjoy the ride.

Wow, awesome ladies!!! The ringing of hands is a tactile thing (touch ). Is like a mini burst of energy release and squeezing her hands is a way of easing it. ( I would bet she would go crazy with a nerf ball or stretch Armstrong doll ). That journey with him will be a long one. Become educated and ask the questions. That is the best thing you can do for him and for his daughter. Typically younger siblings don't really know their older sibling as being anybody different than who they are and how they act. You can't really go wrong by treating the younger one as you would under any other circumstance. I would wager the older child would not identify with the concept of jealousy. Best of luck to you.