:confused:I am having the lapban next month. How is this surgery?Painful? Vomiting, nausea? What do they mean when the people here speak of "my next filling" I am a nurse and have read up on thiss but want to talk to real peples with real exxperience.. Thank You..Inda:smile:

Good Morning! I had surgery back in August 2008 and it wasn't a bad experience at all. Of course you will have pain in your abdomen area. It will be a little hard on getting out and down out of bed. I used a "hug" pillow to help me with that. As for being sick. I wasn't. There was no vomitting or anything. It just takes a lot out of you just like any surgery. You will need to relax and take it easy. I went back to work 4 days later but I wouldn't recommend that.

As for filling your lap band has a port attached to it with a tube that hooks to the band itself. The doctor inserts a needle through your abdomen into the port to inject saline that makes the band tighter around your stomach. This limits on what you can take in and you will know what you can eat and not eat. I just had my second fill and I finally have some restriction. I am not eating much at meal times.

Good Luck in your journey!

The worst (and only truly 'bad' part of the surgery) was the first 10 minutes after waking up from anesthesia.

I've never had surgery before so I didn't know how I'd handle the whole process. I woke up ready to fly out of the bed/chair thing I’d been lying in and run out of the room. I wasn’t having ‘mental’ issues – I just felt very, very antsy. I kept asking the doctors for morphine even though what I was feeling wasn’t pain at all but rather something akin to how I suspect a Ritalin overdose might feel like. When I went to do the barium swallow (Is that what it’s called when you swallow that chalk stuff in front of a live x-ray machine?) I vomited but that was because I obviously don’t handle anesthesia very well.

Recovery was easy for me. The incisions healed nicely, the pain was so miniscule that I never actually had to take the pain meds the surgeon prescribed. The only complaint with recovery was how exhausted I felt all the time (lasted for a week or more). Looking back, though, that was probably because I didn’t follow my doc’s orders and drink protein. Had I done that, it probably would have been an incredibly fast recovery.

Oh- and for about two to three weeks, I felt quite gassy. That went away.

Congratulations on your decision to change your life. Don’t stress too much about the surgery, it’ll definitely be worth it.

Have you checked out the surgery experiences thread? Tons of people have shared their surgery day stories, it is really educational!

You can find it here.