First let me say i've never been so happy with the lap band. I had it placed in 2010, for 1yr it did nothing, I felt my love of food even prevented the band from helping, this was until my last fill in 2011. It was extremely tight, I could barely get much down and this was ok with me because food was my enemy and i'd rather deal with restriction than be fat again. It changed my life and for that I will always be indebted to it. Then.....

I started to have some unique issues beginning August of 2016. I went to the ER due to severe pain in my butt (literally). It turns out I had a rare abscess, intersphincteric. I was septic. It was drained and less than a month later returned in another area. I had to have two incisions on each side of my rectum to drain the fluid. They healed and I needed yet another surgery to place a seton in so it could continuously drain. It did, and it has since august. I had a total of 4 surgeries. It was hell. I lost 40lbs but that was a plus in my book. The constant drainage was humiliating and not one doctor could tell me what was wrong. There were no stomach pains and I continued to eat as I did so it never occurred to me the band was the issue. I mentioned it to so many specialists and not one doctor thought to even X-ray my abdomen. The MRIs and cat scans were all taken of my pelvic region. I had severe constipation once a month (and fecal impact) when I was pre menstrual. The abscesses would flare and then it would all go away every month so I only assumed it was a hormonal thing, until this week.

All of the sudden I could eat, I could eat!!! I wasn't even paying attention to my health problem because I was enjoying food. It was a glass of water that I took down in one gulp that set the alarm off. When was the last time I even puked due to restriction? I did it all the time but I couldn't remember the last time for the life of me. The clarity continued. I was confusing loss of appetite with restriction. I know without a doubt that my extremely tight band eroded. Now i'm sitting here in complete shock. The idea of dying was no where near as terrifying as the idea of being 330lbs again. This weight thing has been my main issue all my life, I wished to be skinny on every birthday cake, wishbone, water fountain, ever since I was a child. I've lost over 100lbs 4x by dieting naturally but it always came back. Now it's coming back again and the thought of it has me in complete an utter despair.

Where do I go? What do I do? I have a cat-scan Thursday and i'm sure it will confirm my worst nightmare. I no longer even have a lap band doctor. Who should I see? Can the band, which I know they will remove, be replaced? Will they even consider it now that i'm not morbidly obese? Any advice?

This post wasn't really meant for advice as much as it's meant as a warning. I can't tell you how much research i've done trying to diagnose my symptoms...I exhausted everything and specialists didn't even know what to do. Hopefully if anyone suffers from these symptoms my post will pop up.

Edited April 30, 20179 yr by Marisa

18 hours ago, Marisa said:

This post wasn't really meant for advice as much as it's meant as a warning. I can't tell you how much research i've done trying to diagnose my symptoms...I exhausted everything and specialists didn't even know what to do. Hopefully if anyone suffers from these symptoms my post will pop up.

Edited 18 hours ago by Marisa

Holy Hell...

I know you're not asking for advice, but I feel you need it.

1) I hope you're joking when you say you'd rather be dead than fat. How would your mother feel? Do you have a spouse and/or kids? How would they feel? Do you think they'd rather visit you in the cemetery or keep loving you regardless of your weight?

2) FIND A BARIATRIC SURGEON FOR GOD'S SAKE. Get that band out of your stomach. There's a wonderful thing called "revision" and hopefully your insurance will cover it if the band failed you. If not, assuming you'd rather be dead than fat, I believe you'd rather be poor than dead so you can always take out a loan.

3) Throwing up was NORMAL for you?? Girl, that ain't right. I do my best to chew my food so well that I don't have a chance at barfing because that is no way to live. If you're going to get revision surgery, you need to nip that habit in the bud. You could cause yourself some serious damage if you ripped the incisions on your stomach after a sleeve or RNY.

4) Actually, before you do anything else, SEE A PSYCHOLOGIST. You have some issues you need to work through before surgery works for you. Your goal all along should've been health, not size necessarily (though being able to fit into cute, smaller clothes is a happy side effect). Your doctor shouldn't have performed surgery on you from what you're saying here (that you'd rather be dead than fat, which indicates you're majorly hung up on the superficial aspects of weight loss and not the deeper, positive effects of reduced blood pressure, reduced risk of diabetes, and slashing your chances of getting cancer).

5) Shame on your doctor for giving you the surgery and then setting you loose after filling you too tight. My surgeon would never have done that. He filled me too tight at my last appointment and wouldn't let me leave like that (the water I drank to test the restriction was gurgling in my throat). Filling so tight that you can't eat healthy food without making yourself sick should absolutely not be the goal of this surgery. Fat is bad, yes, and it's uncomfortable, unhealthy, and unattractive - BUT it is better than being a corpse.

Okay, that's all I got I think. Even if you don't want this advice, I hope if anyone else comes along with the same issues as you reads this and gives their surgery a second thought or seeks mental health assistance, I will be happy I wrote it.

I do wish you luck and health, and pray you take care of yourself if only for the sake of your family. I would be sick with anger if my mom did this to herself, or my spouse, or especially my son.

No, I absolutely welcome advice, it's just not my main goal here. I regularly see a psychiatrist mostly due to this uncontrollable anger that seems to arise every time the abscesses fill which is right around PMS. I've done so much research i'm exhausted. The best I could come up with is endometriosis growing on the dead tissue of my eroded band. I've seen so many specialists but never once has one even acknowledged that it could be the lap band. This has been going on since august and i'm literally at my wits end. I don't have a husband or children which is why i'm so quick to just pull the plug instead of be fat again. It seems so irrational but dealing with this weight since childhood is exhausting. I'm tough and have tons of willpower but it's never lasted longer than a year when it comes to food.

I know my band was tight. When I did the barium swallow test the X-ray tech said it was very restricted but if i'm ok with it so is he. This is more than likely due to the fact that I was still heavy. No one seems to understand even with a couple bites a food a day (and yes even that made me puke which was normal) I was still overweight but a size 16 was fine for me, i'm not greedy, I get it I will always be heavy.

Until august, now i'm down to 180 and dropping even without restriction and tons of food. It's so frustrating that I can't find the help and it never occurred to me that it was erosion because the symptoms were always loss of restriction and I assumed I still had it since I wasn't eating. I'm basically living on ensure.

Anyway, PMS is here and the drainage is picking up so my best bet is the UofM ER considering it's a research hospital maybe they will show more concern. Thy have Bariatric specialists as well as endometriosis specialists.

You're right, no amount of money will stop me from a revision. The exact reason I stopped seeing my lap band doctor is because it took over a year of tiny fills to even get restriction, he only wanted my money so I never looked back.

Thank you for putting this all into perspective, I will head to the ER tomorrow.

I get it - I love food, too, which is why I needed the surgery. I don't have a "stop" button when it comes to eating, but my band became a "stop" button. Even with this awesome tool, I get frustrated because I WANT to eat more, but I CAN'T. Like last night we had a work dinner with prime rib (YUMMMMMMM) but I could only eat a sliver of that, some green beans, and a few bites of potatoes. I wanted a lot more, but it wouldn't be worth the pain. I'm very averse to vomiting, so I guess that's a good thing. But I'll admit it, sometimes I miss being able to have a good binge when I'm having a terrible day.

Point is, I understand where you're coming from. Being fat sucks. Wanting food all the time sucks, too. No surgery will stop that feeling, even the sleeve or RNY because it's mostly psychological. I still get mad when I grab my small plate and put a couple ounces of meet and a cup of veggies on it and think to myself "this will never fill me up" but it does. It's just different now.

Anyway, I'm glad you're taking care of yourself. Make sure you're talking to a bariatric surgeon when asking about revision. I don't know how that works with lap band erosion (might be dangerous to remove the band and revise you all at once) but it's worth asking. Also, check with your insurance! They very well might cover the revision cost due to band failure.

Good luck!!! Keep us posted on what you find out and what they'll do for you.