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melonpie05 - have you completed the 5 months or was it a week short etc? My insurance wanted a 3 months supervision stint after having already approved the time frame the first time when my surgeon submitted the paperwork. They denied me the first time because they wanted weights for the past 4 years. Then when they were given that they denied because of the 3 months supervision they said was short by a few weeks. My surgeon fought that stating they approved it the first time. So we won that battle but, then it came down to my PCP's letter not stating the exact wording of "medical release for surgery". Turns out my PCP was on vacation so my surgery had to be delayed. I saw my PCP and was then approved after she wrote yet another letter stating the medical release. It's amazing what some insurances make us do but, folks are right...your surgeon's office knows what needs to be done. Talk with them and don't be afraid to call your insurance company yourself. I do medical billing for a living and tell my patients that all the time. Sometimes a patient calling gets things moved along faster and some denials approved. Call your insurance and ask them straight out what those words mean and what needs to be done to correct it and get the approval. You'd be surprised how much further a patient can get than their doctor sometimes. Good luck! I was denied twice and finally have my date...so it possible!

I'm new to this site. . . I began my journey last week and have completed the psyc eval, had visit with nutritionalist, had blood work done, and attempted(!) the stress test. I assume I didn't "pass" because they are sending me to see a cardiologist. I'm very worried about it! My appt is tomorrow...I'm wondering how common this is and how many people don't get clearance for surgery from the cardiologist? I look forward to reading your comments.

It will be o.k. If I were you I would calmly speak to the person at your doctors office and state what you were told and the name of the person at medicare who told you the information. I would ask if she could submit the information since there is obviously not a submission date that will be sent to her. As stated above, we still have at least another month before school starts back. I went back to work the next week. I was back to work after 8 calendar days (which included weekends) and really I could have been back to work by day four. So it will be o.k.

I'm 1 week from yesterday too. its crazy how the time has flown by. I think I just hit the nervous stage today. I actually leave to travel to south carolina for my "surgication" tomorrow. If you guys are on FB I have a group on there of august sleevers, and a thread here "august sleevers where ya's at" ...theres a lot of support on both pages if you need some.

My surgery is next Friday on Aug. the 10th and I have been seeing all of the complications and its making me nervous. I know I know that I knew all of these possible complications before but, for some reason they are just now becoming real.

I Am currently starting the second week of my 2 week vacation on Cape Cod. luckily, we are camping at our favorite state park we go to yearly and the folks are always friendly and dress is very casual. i have never been this heavy. i am embarrasses to put on my giant bathing suits and walk the 100 feet to the wonderful lake. Went to Provincetown to go whale watching and notice myself in the shop windows and got so depressed. I want to wear cute sundresses, not moomoos. i want to wear shorts and tank tops, not stretch capris and double x flowy tops. i want to be able to buy the bohemian skirts and dresses you find on the strip. I am tired of hiding behind my kids in group photos. I have to wait and see, finish my requirements and hope to Gosh, my insurance company approves. i want a different body, next time I visit P-town

HI Katie: Glad to see your consult is next week. Are you going to see Dr. H. at Newton-Wellesley? I think she did a great job on my tummy, but it cost alot more than $1k extra like the poster above said. If you've got really good credit, go and get a credit card that has no interest, and then play the credit card juggling game to trade for a different one that has no interest until you've paid it off. Another possibility is a credit union loan if you belong to one. Let us know how it goes. Sue

Well I was all set on the LapBand and then I met with my nutrionist who started to sway me towards the gastric, because I will lose more, and lose it faster. So I met with the other surgeon and I told them I wanted to ponder my decision and so I went to work and talked to three people who had had gastric bypass (2) and one person who had the lapband. One of the two people who had the gastric looked sickly and emactiated and the other one was ok. However, she told me she did not "mean to" lose all that weight but she did, the bottom line is that you can't control the weight loss. How much or how fast, and with lap band you can control both so I decided to go that way. I have 200 lbs to lose and that seems to be a challenge on the lapband, but I know it's possible, So that's why I chose to have it...August 16th is my surgery date.

noelria, I saw a previous post of yours. I too have a lower bmi of 34.4, not as low as yours though. My surgery is the first week of July... Good luck to us.

I am having my surgery on July 26th in Mexico with Dr. Alvarez. Anyone else having sleeve that day? I have been on the preop liquid diet for 1 week now. I cannot believe in just one 1 week I will have been sleeved!! My friend is going also and being sleeved the same day. Our husbands are going with us for support.

I understand what your going through,I'm coming to an end of my 2 week liquid diet and a friend of mine asked if I have lost any weight from the pre-op diet...I said yes,8 pounds in 9 days and their response was "why did you resort to a surgery then if your doing just fine on your liquid diet?!" I wanted to be like UH HELLO!who are you?!weird as it sounds I know it was coming from a good place.i feel like everyone thinks I'm taking the easy way out....so far from it.its a frustrating feeling but just gotta remember your doing it for yourself,your health and your happiness:)

I have Cigna too. My requirements were all done last week but my surgeon's office has yet to submit my package to them. I'm still waiting. Hopefully you'll get an approval soon!

I'm going to the info seminar next week. How long does it usually take from the info surgery to the actual surgery? I don't expect problems from my insurance. Also, if someone has time to type in the steps between the seminar and surgery, I'd really appreciate it.

First of all Welcome!!!! I think we were all terrified at one point... then we learned a little more about the surgery and the success of others and started to feel more comfortable about the surgery. From time to time pre-op I questioned myself and was very nervous about having the surgery. I'm 8 weeks post op now and am so glad I went through with it. My advice to you is to spend some time on the boards, read, learn,ask questions, make new friends and you too will soon see that terrified feeling go away. I have lost 60lbs since starting this journey... some pre-op, some post op and I would have never been able to do it without the surgery. I feel so much better and can see a huge difference. Good luck with your surgery on the 4th

I have 4 weeks before my surgeon can submit to my insurance for approval. Ever since I made the decision to do this, everyday that goes by I get more anxious for it to happen. I never hated the way I looked as much as I hate it now. I read all these wonderful stories of incredible weight loss and self discipline, and I all do is think of what I will miss, so I can eat it...gaining more weight. I don't know if lurking around these boards is encouraging or anxiety producing. I have gotten so much good info here, i am so excited to start my journey, but my inpatience is getting the best of me making me feel so down in the dumps. Help?

Hey Crystal. One of my bandbuddies who had surgery the same day as me had tested positive for the stomach bacteria, I think it's called pylori (sp?). Our surgeon had recommended that we have all of our testing done ASAP so if anything like this came up we could be treated. Our doctor put her on antibiotics for 2 weeks and she was still able to have the surgery on schedule.

Oh my gosh, you can eat burgers, with the bun? I tried eating half a tuna sandwich the other day, oh no, I so cannot eat bread. I was in so much pain, I thought I was going to die. Then I sat there and slimed stuff up for 30 minutes, ewwww. I don't think you hurt your band. I was eating mushies at a little over a week out and am on solids now. He told me as long as I don't eat something that disagrees with me and causes me to vomit, my band will be fine. He said the type of stitches he used are very strong and would not rip or come loose or whatever by eating food.

After being banded for about three weeks, I noticed gobs of hair coming out when I was shampooing my hair, or in my round brush after blow drying it. That is a lot earlier than anything that I read - typically it is after about three months - so I was concerned. I read posts on here and on Obesityhelp.com and found some people had success with Biotin. I checked with my nutritionist at my doctor's and she highly recommended it. I've been taking 5000 mcg's each day and after three more weeks, the loss has stopped completely. I'm ecstatic for the moment...who knows what could happen in the future, but claiming this victory for now! I'm not 20 anymore and my hair was already thinning out a bit anyways, so I was getting really concerned. Don't know if it's related, but my nails are growing faster and stronger now too, so since it's a B complex, I'm sure that could be another benefit! Just wanted to share a success! xoxo Lori

Habeas Fascismus: The Terrorists Win By Michael I Niman ArtVoice (etc.) 10/5/06 Last week was one that will go down in infamy as one of the most important and shameful weeks in western history. While future Americans might not be allowed to freely discuss such subversive topics as history, school children in other countries will learn what happened in the last week of September, 2006. A mere five years after a band of razor wielding two-bit terrorists declared war on America by destroying the World Trade Center, both houses of the US Congress finished their job and voted to end all pretenses of democracy and begin the transition to an imperial form of governance backed by state terror. Habeas Corpus: 1215-2006 On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week, while most Americans were busy discussing the possibilities of the new football season, the US Senate and Congress voted on and passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Of course, unless you’re reading The Christian Science Monitor or Al Jazeerah, you probably weren’t even privy to the proper name of the bill that ended our 791 year-old British-American legal tradition of Habeas Corpus – the foundation of all human rights legislation since before the Magna Carta. Habeas Corpus, which is Latin for “you may have the body,” is, according to the US Supreme Court, “the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.” It is the basic requirement, formerly at least rhetorically respected, by almost every legal system on earth, that states that people who are arrested must be charged with a crime, and eventually have their day in court to defend themselves. The British Parliament adopted Habeas Corpus as the law of the land across the empire in 1679, while historians trace the first appearance of Habeas Corpus in British law to 1215. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 ends all of that, placing the United States at the bottom of the dung heap when it comes to legal protections of the most basic of human rights – the right not to be “disappeared” by one’s own government. On the subject of disappearances, it seems all references to The Military Commissions Act of 2006 were preemptively disappeared before the bill was voted on. Talk about obfuscation – according to a Lexis/Nexis database search of all major US newspapers, only five articles mentioned the bill by name, and of the five, only two mentioned it before it was voted on. Quisling Genuflection to Fascism Bill of 2006 The rest of the US press, according to another Lexis/Nexis search, made up euphemistically loaded names for the bill, such as The Detainee Bill, Interrogation Legislation, or the Terror Bill, as if this law would only affect “terrorists.” Of course, all this confusion made it quite difficult to locate a copy of the actual bill before it was voted on, and to locate a roll call for the vote after it was passed. It shouldn’t require a sleuth to find out something as simple as the name of the bill that essentially ends our pretenses toward democracy. In any event, I’ll join the rest of the press corps and rename the bill for my own purposes as well, hereon in calling it the Quisling Genuflection to Fascism Bill of 2006, which I’ll simply gloss as the “Quisling Act.” According to the New York Times, the Quisling Act (s3930) creates an undefined category of people called “enemy combatants,” a designation which can be arbitrarily doled out by the Bush administration or their minions. According to The Times, once designated as an enemy combatant, a person can be subjected “to arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal.” The bill strips the legislative branch of government of any oversight over disappearances ordained by an imperial presidency. According to The Times, All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him [sic.] an illegal combatant . . .” With the elimination of Habeas Corpus, the Times points out, the disappeared “would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment.” And while in prison, the Quisling Act allows for the disappeared to be tortured and gives the Bush administration the legal authority to decide what does and does not constitute torture, while drawing the line only at rape, murder, waterboarding and a few other of the more vile acts American interrogators have recently been accused of. Of course, if someone else, say the “democratic” government of Iraq, waterboards a prisoner, the Quisling Act states that any testimony obtained can be used as evidence in American courts. The bill doesn’t specifically mention beating detainees with pikes, stretching them on racks, or feeding them to lions – so the ultimate determination as to whether those forms of interrogation would be prohibited lies with the imperial president. A Law to Negate the Rule of Law The Quisling Act brings the US into uncharted legal territory. It essence, it is a law to negate the rule of law. According to legal scholars, the Bush administration can designate US citizens as enemy combatants using purposely vague guidelines under which someone can be disappeared for lending an undefined sort of material aid to a group or person unilaterally determined by the Bush administration to fall under the “terrorism” rubric. The Bush administration can also determine someone to be an enemy combatant for “purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.” Of course, this term is not defined. And if you are disappeared for allegedly providing such support, you will not have the right to argue that you didn’t. It gets worse. Recent laws have attempted to define terrorism in corporate friendly terms so that anyone protesting against commercial activities could be designated a terrorist. Utah, for example, passed a “commercial terrorism” bill that identified anyone picketing a business with the intent of discouraging people from entering it, as engaging in terrorism. Under this law, for instance, the now celebrated 1960 sit-in at a segregated North Carolina Woolworth’s lunch counter would be considered terrorism. If that law and the new Quisling Act were in place in 1960, the four black civil rights heroes who demanded their right to be served lunch along with white patrons would have simply been disappeared off to gulags. A federal court struck down Utah’s law in 2001 and many people are certain that the Supreme Court will strike down the Quisling Act. But, in case you haven’t noticed, the courts are a changing. The Supreme Court has nine members. Four of them, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Bush appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have already shown themselves to line up with the Bush junta even when this meant undermining the rule of law. One more Bush appointee, and this could happen if the Republicans retain control of the Senate, and the Supreme Court could swing to becoming a 5-4 rubber stamp for whatever insanity the Bush administration sends their way. Predictive Assassination So lets go back and revisit what constitutes a terrorist supporter – someone who, under the laws passed this week, can be disappeared into a system of secret Gulags. Journalist Robert Parry points out that in a recent speech given by George W. Bush in the lead-up to the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he blamed the Russian revolution and the rise of the Nazis on the fact that no one took out Lenin when he first stated publishing pamphlets on communism, or Hitler, when he first started writing about Nazism. Hence, it appears, Bush is now advocating preemptive strikes against speech – what Parry calls, the end of free speech and free thought. According to Parry, Bush’s fantasy of “wiping out some future Lenin or Hitler would require killing or imprisoning anyone who wrote about political change in a way that rulers considered objectionable at that time.” Such “predictive assassination,” Parry argues, might kill, along with a Hitler or a Lenin, a Mandela or a Jefferson. And if you’re wondering who the new targets for predictive assassination might be, you don’t have to look too far. In the same September 5 th speech (available at whitehouse.gov), Bush warns that intelligence evidence shows “al Qaeda intends to [launch], in [bin Laden’s] words, ‘a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.’" Bush goes on to explain that such a campaign would paint the War on Terror as causing financial losses and casualties, ultimately, with the aim of – and he explains that these are bin Laden’s words – "creating pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan." Duck and Cover Get it. It’s the free press, reporting ridiculous notions about the costs of war, and perhaps its ineffectiveness at making us safer from anything, that are out there supporting hostilities against the United States by spreading what Bush deems as al Qaeda propaganda – or more accurately, by reporting the news of the day. How much more clear does the writing on the wall have to be? Why were we supposed to think it was a joke when Bush, early in his judicially imposed presidency, said that things would be a lot easier if this was a dictatorship, as long as he was the dictator. The Quisling Act isn’t about locking up terrorists. We’ve always done that. It’s about locking up innocent people. People who can’t be convicted of a crime because there’s no evidence that they committed a crime. This is the only new class of people who will be detained under this new law – people who were never, nor would they likely ever be, convicted of a crime. This is a bill about locking up innocent people and terrorizing the population by holding the threat of disappearance and torture over our heads. The Senate approved the Quisling Act 65-34, with 12 Democrats joining in with an almost unanimous pack of Republicans. The Congress approved it 250-170, with 34 Democrats supporting the Republican mob.

Here is is Thursday, I aint dont crap all week except eat. I need to get my stuff together for real!! I am a lazy sob and need to get off my azz and do something. Okay so I said it and I am still here sitting at my damn desk. &%^$$@%$ I just finished reading some jounals and yall are doing great! Let me go to the gym and get my 30 min in...

Are you talking next week, as in March 29th? I'll be flying out that day. I'd love to see you again too, but alas, they think they need me in St Louis.

Visiting a friend who is interested in the Lap Band. Already emailed Barbara (babsintx) and Leatha (leatha_g) and got their phone numbers. :banana I'd love to meet some of you wonderful people. How does Tuesday evening sound? My friend lives five minutes from DFW -- let me know if there is a great band friendly restaurant around. I will check in with all of you when I arrive on Monday. Look forward to seeing you again (Barbara and Leatha!). Carol

I first broached the subject with my doctor in October 2009. Attended the seminar, met with the nurse in charge of the hopital weight management program, had three monthly appointments with the dietician, then a psyche exam and a fairly lengthy wait for the insurance company to decide in my favor (I didn't need to los quite the required 100 pounds but had co-morbidities like arthritis, GERD, low sleep oxygen, and family history of diabetes). From start to finish, I waited about five months. It seemed endless at the time, but it gave me a chance to settle into a new way of thinking and test my resolve.

I was private pay and as long as I had medical records showing I'd been obese for a while, that's all that was needed. Went to my first seminar late October, had surgery 6 weeks later...but the doc did require some weight loss in the mean time.