Starting My Revision Journey

Hello everyone my name is David, I'm 34 and live in the Philly burbs. I had joined this website years ago when I was researching surgery, but I never wound up using the forums. I had the Realize Band placed 4 years ago back on 8/24/2010 & I started at 379 lbs and I ended up losing 100 lbs the first year. The past 3 years my weight has yo-yo'd up and down a bit, but for the most part I've stayed in the 280 - 290 lbs range. While I'm very happy to have maintained around a 90 lbs weight loss, I still have at least 100 lbs more to go so I'm thinking of revising to the VSG.

When I was first looking into bariatric surgery the surgeon of course was recommending the DS or the RNY for me because of the amount of weight that I needed to lose. For years and years I've suffered with tons of GI/stomach issues, including Rapid Gastric Emptying/Gastric Dumping, so the idea of getting my insides rerouted and changed was not appealing to me (and it still isn't, actually). Since I already was suffering from dumping before any type of bariatric surgery, I most certainly did not want to have bypass surgery in which one of the side effects could be dumping syndrome. So I decided on the band at that point, and it also is why I'm not considering a revision to one of the bypass surgeries now either.

As of right now I've been maintaining around a 40% loss of excess body weight which my surgeon says is a good result for the band. I currently have around 9 cc's in my band, so there isn't too much more that can be added. A majority of the time I have little to no restriction with my band, while sometimes I eat just a few bites and food gets stuck. The inconsistency of the restriction is driving me crazy. I just went and spoke to my surgeon this past week and I discussed revision to VSG and what I need to do to start the process. Pending insurance approval from Keystone Health Plant East for the revision, I am hoping to have the band taken out and be revised to the VSG sometime in December or January. The surgeon tells me that he will most likely do it as one surgery, but he of course will not know for sure until he goes in and removes the band to decide if it can be done at the same time.

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, and I look forward to reading about everyones weight loss journey.