Hi, my name is Chris - I was just banded on Wed 1/23 by Dr. James Davidson in Dallas. I'm 44 and have been fighting my weight since college. it has been a slow upward spiral with lots of weight loss followed by even more weight gain. I finally decided to do something about it as I hit an all time high of 304 and a BMI of 40+. My insurance excludes bariatric surgery so I had to go the self-pay route, fortunately Dr. Davidson was running a $9500 special and I decided to go for it. I lost 18 pounds on the pre-op diet (but have my expectations set a lot lower for the next few weeks based on all the posts about stagnant weight during the post-surgery period).

anyway, just wanted to say hello to everyone. I'm looking forward to the journey!

Chris

Hello Chris. I am scheduled to be banded April 13th By Dr. Wade Barker in Dallas. He is also running a $9,500 special, which prompted me to finally take the plunge. I am so glad to find people on here that are going down the same path as me. I tried to talk to some people in the waiting room, but it seemed like I was the only one there for lapband, everyone else was getting gastric bypass. I even felt the Dr. was somewhat partial to the bypass over the lapband. Did you get that feeling?

Davidson was pretty agnostic about which procedure for me - definitely didn't push the bypass on me at all. after a discussion with me about my eating habits, he thought that the band was the way to go for me (I think he doesn't push the bypass unless you have more weight to lose).

I didn't really feel like he was pusing it on me, just did more bypass I guess. He said other than the fact that I was female, I was the best candidate for the lapband because of my age and lower BMI ( in comparison). Now that I have had my surgery, I think he was just trying to make sure I understood all of my options. He also mentioned the gastric sleeve? Scary! Did you know they cut out the biggest part of your stomach and throw it away! My surgery being said and done I now feel like I made the best choice for me, the lapband.