OK--I was already completely impressed by Doctor Aceves, but now I am over the Moon with his gracious way of being in the world. I got a personal thank you note for doing my surgery with him on May 2-2011.

WOW-o-WOW

So let me share a few things. I lost 25 lbs in 22 days--now I have plateaued for a couple of days.

My incisions are sooooooo teeny weeny that I will be in a 2-piece bathing suit by the 4th of July. I heard that Doctor Aceves once considered being a plastic surgeon--which answer the question why HE is so good at making the incisions so small. Even the one where my stomach was pulled out--that one is smaller than the head of a fingernail clipper. I am now using Fougera Vitamin A & Vitamin D Ointment and wheat germ oil on the scars--I can barely see them.

I first heard about a Vertical Gastric Sleeve from a woman from Morroco who had her surgery in France. She told me all about the surgery, different from my incisions, hers were huge and her scars looked bad. That is what I had prepared myself for because I felt it was worth the weightloss.

OK-now don't I feel good that I found the right surgeon who has not only performed 3500 weight loss surgeries, has been a board certified surgeon for over 25 years, he also knows how to make his incisions so small that many would wish that they would have come to him.

Now Doctor Aceves is also realistic. Before he takes you into surgery, you can expect a 30 minute lecture about what he is doing to help you, and then WHAT is your responsibility to get where you want to go with your long-term weightloss. SUCCESS depends on YOU. [more on this on another post].

I do read on this forum about acid reflux. Dr. A requires that his patients take Nexium for a minimum of 3-mo's. What has helped me to lose the 25 lbs so quickly is the quality and the amount of PROTEIN I am bringing into my body. Doctor A. does a great blood test before the surgery, and even though I thought I was doing alot of protein before the surgery, it was low quality protein. My bloodtest came back extremely low in my protein levels!! WOW--who knew?

So finally I am hydrating my body with 64 oz of water daily and I went to GNC [not my normal place to shop] to pick up the ZERO carb Iso-pure drink [40 gm of protein per drink] and then I picked up the Vanilla IsoPure shakes, which is 50 gm of protein/shake. So one drink + one shake - I am getting 90 gm of protein/day and the minimum he feels we should have is 60 gm/day. It is important to get that protein into your body the first thing in the morning so I mix a 16 oz shake [two scoops] and put half of it in the fridge. Then throughout the day, I drink one zero-carb drink. My body is really responding well to THAT daily routine.

Check me out on YouTubes! Search for: I left my stomach in Mexicali.

Congrats on all of your success! I will look for you on Youtube!

Yep, Dr. Aceves is pretty wonderful , all right! I've never heard of any of his patients not absolutely loving him.

I am here in Mexicali and just had an upper GI to check out my sleeve. Dr. Campos did it. It was so great to see him. He had just had his sleeve when I had mine. He looks like a little boy now.

I love it here, even though because I just had plastic surgery, I can't go outside much.