I work in an office and am in the early stages of planning to do the band. My insurance won't cover it, but Hubbs insurance will...and lucky for me this is open enrollement, so he's adding me this week..YAY!

Anyway, until I know for SURE that I qualify and WILL be banded I don't want to tell my work about it at all...people like to talk if ya' know what I mean

Just so I have an idea, how long are you typically off work, from the time you go in for surgery, until the time you are back in your chair at work?

Has anyone ever done it and NOT told an employer? You know, pretended to be on 'vacation' for the procedure and then returned after recovery magically losing weight?

How often do you get 'sick' when you're first banded? How much warning do you have before you need to hang yourself over a toilett....or do you have to upchuck in a trash can?

I know...random questions! I just want to mentally prepare for what lies ahead and want to be sure I will have enough time to get from my desk to the restroom (I'm about 30' from it)!

Thank you :wub:

I was banded on a Saturday and went back to work on the Monday. I never told my employer because I live in Korea and things are different here. If I told them, they would have told me I am not allowed to get the surgery done. I do have sick days but it is like pulling teeth to get a day off.

ANYWAYS so I had my surgery and went back to work on the Monday. It was not hard to see something was wrong but I just said I hurt myself at the gym and people left it at that. My one co worker knew in case of an emergency.

I think if you take a week off work you can return to work fine the next week. I didn't tell my friends and a week after surgery went drinking with them ( Water for me) and no one was the wiser.

Say your visiting sick family or someone is visiting from another country etc. It really isn't anyones business why your gone.

As for when you come back, for me at least my week 2 diet was mushies so it was easy to look almost normal eating lunches etc. Again if anyone asks say you got sick while you were gone, have a sore throat and am eating simple things for your stomach.

Once you start to lose weight you can say you started at the gym, made a bet with a friend to who loses the most weight in a year etc.

Good luck with everything

went back to work 10 days after the surgery....in my case my boss knew so there wasn't any problem....i had to tell him. everyone else didn't know, until months later, i told them, everybody kept asking about my weight loss..

I am having surgery on a Thursday and am not telling anyone at work. As far as my boss is concerned, I am having a minor outpatient procedure on Thursday and have arranged to take Thursday and Friday off. I plan to be back at work on Monday but with my job I have the option to work at home occasionally so if I am not feeling up to par then I will exercise that option.

I was lucky. I asked my doc how long I could be off work and he said as long as I wanted, so I took a month. My boss knew and I had enough sick time to get paid 100% for the full month.

But, I had surgery on Monday and could have easily gone back to work on Thur. Wed would have been pushing it.

I was banded on 09/08/10. I took off the day of surgery and then 4 more days. Plus, the weekend fell in the middle of that. So, if you can, schedule your surgery for the middle of the week and you'll get the weekend too. Good luck.

I had surgery on a Tuesday and could have easily gone back to my desk job on Wednesday.

Plan on taking a good part of the week off just to make sure.

It took me 4 weeks to get stuck and if I took my time chewing and concentrated on what I was doing, I'd never get stuck.