I am faced with making a very hard decision in a short period of time. I've had my band for 14 months now and I've loss a little over 50lbs, it probably could have been more if I worked harder on my poor eating habits. However I love my band but unfortunately for the past 7 months I've been having mild-serious complications with it. To make a very long story short...I've had surgery in May to reposition my port after that my band slipped pretty bad and had to remove ALL of my Fluid to relief the pain and in hopes for my band to go back in position and to avoid a 3rd surgery. Well my band slightly went back into position but not 100% but my doc didnt want to do surgery we just decided to leave it be, dont fill it and maybe it will go back to its place after a while. A month later I was very ill with gastritis and couldn't eat or hardly drink anything for 2 weeks and after that my band felt very tight although I didn't have any fluid in it. I did the barium swallow and everything showed up good.

Now for the past month I've been having really bad pain in what seems to be deep in my band area of my stomach when I eat, breathe, sneeze, cough, sleep, or move a certain way. Went back to do a barium swallow and my band is still slipped and now that its giving me trouble he wants to do surgery to put it back in place!!

First off I'm scared to have surgery again this will be my 5th surgery in 4 years, I'm getting older and my recovery time is longer now. Secondly I'm thinking maybe my body is rejecting the band for whatever reason. Thirdly I'm not even sure if I go thru with having it put into place will my band ever be the same, I mean will I still get the full benefits of having it in the first place especially if I can get any fills to keep me restricted thats the main reason I got it. And will I continue to have issues or will it slip again or will my port flip again??? That concerns me a great deal especially as of 1/1/2012 my healthy insurance will change 100% and I won't have the same benefits/coverage I have now and I can't afford to pay extensive hospital bills. And by my insurance changing in less than 3 months that only give me half of that time to decided if I want to just keep the band and endure the pain here and there, have the surgery to reposition my band and pray that it dont give me anymore problems, just have it removed altogether even though I don't want to or see if my current insurance will cover me switching from the band to the sleeve and have a permanent surgery that can't be reversible?? I just really don't know what to do and I don't have much time to think about it...

I just really want to get you guys feedback and if your were/are in a similar situation let me know what you did or what your going to do!!! Thanks!!

And by no means am I speaking bad about the band, I'm just one of the very very few that if something could happen it probably would happen lol so I'm not trying to discourage anyone from getting it. I think it is a great tool for weigh loss!!!

I wish you the best! Just said a prayer for you! I too have had some complications... But with my port. I've had three surgeries in three months and will be having another one in 5 weeks to put my new port in, but it's worth it to me. Surgery also takes me a while to feel back to normal, so I understand your hesitation. my family would also tell me to get it removed if I were going through the same thing ad you, but you're right- they don't understand. They just want you to feel better. Hopefully, this surgery will be your last and you'll be back on the road to weight loss.

If it were me, I would do what you're going to do and get it fixed while you have great insurance. Unfortunately, God doesn't tell us what's going to happen in the future(usually) but that's why we have to trust him. wish you the best!