So my surgeon's office has a twice-a-month support group, and people who've been banded, and those considering the band can attend.

The problem is that the majority of people who attend are the ones having problems with the band... not losing well, etc. The "success" stories are not attending.

The reason I ask is that one woman who is considering the surgery only gets to see the people struggling.... and it seems to be frustrating her.

What have other people's experience been? Do you attend a support group and do you mostly see successful bandsters there or people who are struggling or a mix?

My surgeon runs a support group that includes bypass and banders. I went twice and found it useless. It was mostly bypass patients. Since I knew that the practice had about 50% banders, I asked the nutritionist why they weren't there. She said, "They don't seem to need the support that the bypass patients do." There were a couple of band patients there, but they were either pre-op or just banded.

Honestly, I get the best support from this site. It's a great cross-section of banding practices throughout the world. You also get realtime responses from a wide variety of prespectives. While I regularly disagree with something that's been said, it's always interesting. I recommend this site to anyone who's contmeplating the band. You will see and hear about the good, bad and ugly here.

I think my surgeon's support group was only really useful, if you had questions specifically about their practice. The docs were there and you could ask anything, but I could do that at an appointment.

Cindy

I attend a monthly meeting of a small group of women in my area. It's really a satellite group of the main office and we just meet on our own, however, the doc has come up to one of our meetings for support. It's a mixture of people recently banded and some who have been banded for 2-3 years. It is a really good group of women who "get it" (all the issues and things that happen being banded). But, we are having some issues in the group that have nothing to do with the lap band and more to do with "girl drama" that may very well end up with us having no more meetings. Long story, some hurt feelings, and very unfortunate.

Such a shame because we come to the meetings for support and the other issues are what are keeping people from coming. But we have each other's e-mail addresses and if it does end up that the group no longer meets, we can still stay in touch with those who we want to stay in touch with.

I look forward to the meetings every month because it keeps me focused and also helps to reinforce that there are success stories out there and some terrific people who are blossoming now. It also has been a great source for advice and alerted me to the fact that I was a little too tight. Now that I have that taken care of....everything has been so much better!

My surgeon requires patients to go to support groups before the surgery, and it is suggested that we continue after surgery as well.

At first, it seemed that the groups were mostly made up of bypass patients, so a group of bandsters, pre and post op, got together and started meeting at one person's home.

The bandster who had been there longest took it up with our nutritionist and last year a once a month group for lap band patients was started, with quite a good turn-out.

It's nice to have people in my area to get together with on a weekly basis; but, as someone else said, this website is an absolute must for me as far as support is concerned.

Debbie

Thanks for the replies!

I have recommended this site to the woman who was questioning the Lap -Band based on the people who showed up at the support group. I hope she checks it out.