Okay,

I am new here. I was banded in August 2004 in Mexico by Dr. Lopez. I had believed that after a year of research that I had found a great doctor. Now I am not so sure. I have read the thread that so many of you have responded to about the puncture of a patients stomach. I just got back from Dr. Lopez's office last week. I went and received a fill. This time they found that my port has shifted and is not laying flat. Does this happen often? Is this a kinda normal thing? With everything I have read tonight (it is 2 in the morning here in CA) I am very worried. Maybe it is my own imagination, but my port is pertruding a bit more than usual tonight and it feels uncomfortable. I am not in major pain, it just feels odd. I know that if I eat too much, the saline tends to go back through the tube a bit and makes my port feel this way, but now I wonder if it is more than that. I am only 15 pounds or so from goal. Can this be because of my body shifting (shrinking) from weight loss? Please help me. I can't believe that just a few minutes ago I felt like I had the greatest doctor in the world, and now my world is upside down

prettyone

okay, I think I found the thread in question. However, there has been no moderator posts in that thread, so maybe it's a different thread you are thinking of Prettyone? http://lapbandtalk.com/showthread.php?t=8331 I didn't bump it, and it's not locked. It is however, burried on Page 6 of the general forum. It hasn't been active for 12 days. (forever in internet time )

The doc in question was asked by one of his patients to introduce himself and so he did. Several of our members use him, and really like him too. He does outline how much he charges for fee, but most of the thread is very interesting and informative.

Yes, that is the one.

Thank you for finding it.

prettyone

I was reading Dr. Pleatman's posts and found it interesting....albeit a rather "subtle" way of advertising. As with everything in life, we have to do our own research....and learn to read between the lines.

I was reading Dr. Pleatman's posts and found it interesting....albeit a rather "subtle" way of advertising. As with everything in life, we have to do our own research....and learn to read between the lines.

I was the member that begged my Doctor to post this thread & introduce himself.

I told him the people on LBT would appreciate him & find his imput useful.

I also told him that there were many pateince in need of a good fill Doctor & port revision Doctor. He is one of them.

Prior to this he had been asked many questions by his patience from others who were not his patiences for help & advice.

His website had been mentioned several times from past patiences BEFORE he ever was on LBT.

He is not here for the main purpose of advertising AT ALL!

It was to help & inform those who may want a Doctors opinion.

I think its wonderful that he takes time out of his extremely busy schedual to offer advice to those in need who are not his patiences.

Name me one other Doctor that does???

So he mentions his website-so what.

I was the one who told him to make sure he included it because many had mentioned it before in other threads!

Everyone & anyone can metion websites.

I sure hope that we WELCOME him here instead of Blackballing him.

The Doctors who have threads mentioning problems are from patiences that have had problems with those Doctors.

They are legitimate concerns & should be heard.

Any comments should be directed to me personally-

I feel complete responsiblity. Sorry if this is offensive in anyway.

Thank You

Christina

Crystal & Pathworker- Thank you for your comments & stating everything openly.

Christina you don't have to explain because you are very pleased with your doctor. I applaud you 4 getting Dr. Pleatman to come to this board cause let's face it some of us are in the medical field and can explain somethings but he is the expert cause he has done the actual procedure! I feel that the reason 4 saying it was advertisement stemmed from a post about a lady who got banded with a hernia by Dr. Lopez who just ignored it(the hernia) and it almost killed her(thank God 4 the people on this board, Penni and Delarla who went to Dr. Lopez and saw the signs quickly and helped to save her life!) I think that prettyone was scared because she had some weird symptoms and the feeling was uh-oh Dr. Lopez strikes again. To make a long story short(yeah right) I thank Penni and Delarla for verbalizing their experience and helping I belive it was whoamama to not become the 1% that doesn't survive the Lapband. Everyone was really accepting to Dr. Pleatman and not so nice about Dr. Lopez. I know there can be some bad outcomes with surgery of anykind. I see this daily in the hospital I work at. We just have to pray 4 a positive outcome. I want to hear the good and the bad but the decision is going to be mine. I have a question for prettyone, If (God forbid) a dear friend of yours decided to go to Dr. Lopez and get the band because you encouraged her/him to after they have read all the things some people had to say on this site about his work and they almost die or get severly ill how would you feel? How do you think they would feel? So your experience with Dr. Lopez was good count it a blessing cause it could have been like the other 3 people. Remember the saying " There but for the grace of God go I ". I am GLAD you are doing well and I can say that everyone wishes everyone great sucess and good health with the band.

This site is to inform and have conversation about fears and whatever concerns people have about the lapband. I think this is a GREAT SITE with GREAT PEOPLE. AMerica is a beautiful country we can speak our minds and agree to disagree. GOd Bless!!

Dee Dee

I really like Dr. Pleatman's posts, and I thank Christina for asking him to introduce himself and Dr. Pleatman for doing so and for taking the time to answer so many questions. I think it's important to know there are choices for self-pay patients to be banded in the US as well as out of the US.

I didn't know there were those choices, but I still don't regret my decision, not for one minute.

That being said, I can't help but wonder what LBT'ers would say if, Dr. Rombault (sp)., Dr. Kuri, or Dr. Ortiz posted here.

Anyone?

I've really enjoyed Dr Pleatman's posts also. He's given us some good information.

And I'd love to hear what any other Doctor had to say. As far as I'm concerned we cannot have TOO much information.

It would be interesting to hear what Dr Lopez had to say about the events cited w/ his patients, but I'm sure he couldn't address the issue because of legal ramifications. I am in a business where I have to be very careful what I say because of legal issues and I would advise everyone to keep in mind that there is advice some professionals might, personally, want to give but cannot because of the liability.

But as far as negative experiences with doctors--I think it is very important that we share them here--especially with doctors out of the country. The fact that any bad experience with them is likely to result in negative publicity and therefore loss of income can only act as a deterrent.

I believe ALL doctors are going to have some bad outcomes with ANY surgery eventually. It's how they follow up on those problems and whether or not they tried to make it right that really matters to me.

Dee Dee & Karen - thank you for your kind words. I am very happy to see so many LBTers enjoying all kinds of information from all kinds of sources.

Interesting question abut how poeple would feel other docs posted. I don't know how I could feel. We have had posts from time to time from people who seemed to be a from someone in their office. At the very best, they were ... weird. But they didn't claim to be from the doc, but a patient.

I personally like it when medical people come to share their expertise. Many bandsters don't have the time or the temperament to ask ALL their questions during their limited meetings with their docs, so it's great to have access to them here.

That's a long way from advertising--though of course it's completely possible for the same person to do both. So we would never ban any individual from posting here, but inappropriate posts may be moderated against if necessary.

This thread points directly to the freedoms giving to us in this forum. I believe all of us that first came to this site were looking for information and someone to talk to that has either been banded or is pre banding. I believe we are mainly here to share information about a subject we all share. The friendships that are made here are an added bonus. I agree 100% with Kare I want and am in titled to all the info I can get whether good, bad or indifferent. Whether we realize it or not being banded is a MAJOR surgery and it can be life threatening. If someone posts a message about their own experience, if it’s true, it can not be classified as slander. We also have to face the fact that we are all emotional creatures. Many of us have gotten to know others here and encourage one another so when we hear of one of our fellow bansters that has experienced problems then we are allowed to express our feelings about what is happening to them.

The messages that are posted here about personal experiences with this doctor or that one are all about choices. Giving everyone looking into being banded the information they need to make the best choice for them. The moderators here would be remised and committing a grave disservice to all of us if they only allowed the good and happy posts to remain and remove any that may be negative. That would take away my ability to make my own choice. Suppose I encouraged a loved one to see a specific doctor based on only the positive posts and something were to happen to that loved one and only to find out later that the not so positive posts about that doctor had been removed so I was unable to access the information needed to make a different choice or at least let me know what to look for. And for every negative post about a certain doctor there are also positive ones. There are several posts here about that doctor and what a wonderful experience they had.

I would also like to thank Christina for asking Dr. Pleatman to post here. I had forgotten about the post so I went back and read it. It was a very professional post. Self-serving?? Not hardly. I followed the link to his web site. He has posted a lot of good information. I applaud any doctor that takes time out to answer questions from people who are not his patients. It might be a good idea to encourage other Dr’s to post here to be available to answer questions. Sometimes I think of questions that I don’t remember to write down to ask my own doctor.

I would encourage anyone that comes to this forum to read more than just one or two threads before judgment. Everyone that posts here gives a little piece of themselves to share with everyone else. We give what ever advice we can, we give encouragement with every Fiber of our being, and yes we do get emotional.

Thank you to our moderators for the wealth of information and to everyone that gives of themselves.

________________

Not banded yet.

To me the thing that gives this forum so much credibility is that members can post whatever their issue, question, success story, etc. is. Personally I don't want to see anything about it change. I found it to be the best site on the Internet when I was doing my research, and I would not have felt it was credible if people didn't have the ability to post their experiences beit good, bad or ugly.

I am thankful for LBT and in the fashion that it exists and plan on using it as my primary support now that I am headed down the journey of being banded. I appreciate ALL the posts. Prettone, I am glad you posted your feelings on this to allow others to share their feelings and information with you. I am glad you had a good experience and I wish that for everyone.

Barb, I second everything you said! In fact I started my own reply and reread yours - I agree with you 100% - especially the credibility statement. I visit other sites, but this is the one site I've come to rely on the get the facts and like you said the "good, bad or ugly". My surgery was 6/7/05 and I'm very pleased and happy with my band even though I've switched doctors for my fills. The switch had nothing to do with my surgeon's skills - the fill scheduling was a nightmare - so, I fixed it by finding another doctor - no big deal:rolleyes:

To me the thing that gives this forum so much credibility is that members can post whatever their issue, question, success story, etc. is. Personally I don't want to see anything about it change. I found it to be the best site on the Internet when I was doing my research, and I would not have felt it was credible if people didn't have the ability to post their experiences beit good, bad or ugly.

I am thankful for LBT and in the fashion that it exists and plan on using it as my primary support now that I am headed down the journey of being banded. I appreciate ALL the posts. Prettone, I am glad you posted your feelings on this to allow others to share their feelings and information with you. I am glad you had a good experience and I wish that for everyone.

Can someone summarize what's going on here? Are we talking about Lopez or Pleatman? Prettyone, you are being very vague. Please be specific to the "vindictive" and "slanderous" statements you're referring to. Who is on a witch hunt, and what doctor is being hunted and slandered?

I'm trying to figure out if you consider anthing I've ever said on this board to be anything but factual. What exactly are you saying?

Lisa, we were talking about Lopez in the begining of the thread, since she'd used Lopez and had felt stressed out wondering if she'd made a mistake.

She then felt that it wasn't fair that some docs were getting slammed, when it seemed that others got free ride to post all sorts of adverts. She also felt that some of the moderators here worked for particular docs, as is the case on other boards. After talking with Penni, she worked out that that is not the case.

I pointed out that our experience colors our experiences, and then changed the subject to Pleatman, since I found the thread she was taking about. Christina thought she was taking some heat, which she wasn't, Dr. Pleatman wasn't taking any heat.

...

So to recap, it was Lopez, Prettyone talked to Penni and got the real dope, and appologized. The thread got changed to Pleatman, where we stand now.

On tomorrow's episode, we shall find out if Hope and Luke will ever get back together again after Luke's bout with brain worms and dealing with Hope's Alien Abduction.