wheelchair and lap-band

Baba'schild · April 29, 2009

I'm the person who was wondering about singing and lap band earlier today. Still waiting for more response on that. the other thing I was wondering about is , "is there anyone out there that is wheelchair bound that did lap-band? I have a spinal cord injury and am paralyzed from the waist down. This limits my ability to exercise and as a result, I use much less calories than I once did.

Has anyone dealt with this issue? Does it change the way one approaches the surgery? Someone has recommended I do gastric bypass because less calories can be absorbed with it. I don't want to do such an invasive surgery and perfer lap-band.

Thanks for any and all responses.

Jachut · April 29, 2009

For about 2 years I did correspond with a lady on another forum who had the lapband, she was here in Australia, from Adelaide. She had MS and was wheelchair bound, having lost one leg and being simply too obese and out of condition to cope with crutches when she was well and then being simply too ill when she had a flare up.

She did quite well with her band, managing to get herself from super morbidly obese (BMI 50) down to a BMI of 35 or so and to the the point where during the times she was well, she was able to start exercising by walking on her crutches short distances.

As I recall it however, she really did have to live on about 600 calories a day to achieve this. She had to have her band very tight and live on mushies and liquid foods (which wasnt so inappropriate for her as she had swallowing issues too) to lose weight and it came off slowly, every pound was hard won. But she did it, give or take a bit of regaining during her times of illness.

Her main issue was that she'd get ill and bedridden and that she had swallowing issues to begin with, it made her weight journey extremely hard. If your health is stable then I guess you'd share more the extremely low calorie needs.

Personally, I've never found the band has the ability to keep me to a calorie intake that low, but many do find they're down there at 800 or so a day. I'd say that its important to examine your own habits, issues etc and weigh it up, certainly when you're limited in how much you can burn, a bypass makes a lot of sense. But that doesnt mean the band CANT work. And perhaps research the vertical sleeve gastrectomy forum here too, I dont know enough about it to say much but there's certainly help and advice to be had over there.