I had my band placed in December 2008, after many ups and downs my surgeons office told me that they no longer do the band since they had so many problems with it, they immediately sent me for a barium swallow and said I had a problem with my esophagus. So a complete unfill. Long story short gained weight. Back over 200! So after much soul searching and talking with my diabetes doc, I decided that a revision to RNY was the way to go. Now it seems as though I have to go through the whole process again. I had a little bit of anger around that, and voiced that to the people in the surgery center, Now it seems as though they really do not want to do surgery on me. The therapist told me I was free to find another surgeon if I did not like the way things were going, and the RN told me that I could still work the band. REALLY after they made such a production of telling me what damage it was doing to people and how risky it was to keep it. Then she said maybe I should think about just staying the way I am. What the H###. Does anyone think I should look for another surgeon. Or should I confront these people. I feel persecuted for being angry about the band.

One of the individuals in our Bariatric Surgery Support Group Meetings had a band. Over time it began to wear into his stomach and had to be removed. He underwent a RNY and was pleased with the result. Because his stomach was damaged by the band, when he was operated on, his pouch was smaller than most individuals undergoing RNY. This was because of the scar tissue. This meant that he was more limited by the volume of food he could initially consume. But he adapted to this and thrived. The only other issue that he discussed was that he became hypoglycemic after the operation even though he had no history of diabetes prior to the RNY. But once the problem was identified, he was able to cope with this problem with little difficulty. He was happy with the result and has lost a significant amount of weight overall.