LauraH.
4/3/08
I have been over weight most of my life. I actually attended my first weight watchers meeting, with my Dad, when I was 10. And that began the ride on the diet rollercoaster. Over the years I have lost and regained hundreds of pounds. I've done weight watchers, atkins, south beach, starvation, the scarsdale diet, the cabbage soup diet, weigh down work shop, over eaters anonymous, etc. etc. etc.. I have read books, upon books ( Susan Powter--Remember her?
). I have kept those " Seen only on TV, Not available in stores" companies in business for years! Some of my efforts worked... for a time, and then the weight came back, always with an extra 10-15lbs. And with those pounds came high blood pressure, depression, high cholesterol, and finally diabetes. I began my journey on Sept 18th, 2007, when I attended my informational session. Up until that point I really didnot have too much information on WLS, other than I knew several people who had one or the other done, ( RNY, lap band), and had they been very successful. I had actually made an appt to attend a seminar 2 years earlier, but chickened out.
Well, after "officially" being diagnosed with diabetes, I decided I needed to revisit the whole WLS idea, and so attended my seminar. Everything moved very quickly for me after that. I began researching RNY, and lap band, and decided lap band was the way to go for me. I met with the surgeon, in October,weighed in at 235 lbs, with a BMI of around 43 ( I am 5' 1 1/2"). I met with the NUT in November, had my psych consult in December, attended the required support groups, and finished all my cardiac testing in mid-January. I had begun putting the band rules into place to see if I could handle it, and actually had become pretty good at them. Everything was going great. I had also lost about 20 lbs on my supervised diet. I was so mentally prepared, and was awaiting for everything to be submitted to my insurance, and then it happened...
The beginning of February I ended up in the emergency room, and was admitted to the hospital for 5 days, with a GI bleed. Everything was put on hold. Talk about bummed out! The only "good" thing ( if you can call it that), was I lost another 7 lbs, putting my total loss at 27lbs.
I had to get more testing done, had to wait for the MD's to communicate with one another, send the test results, blah blah blah blah blah.... So here it is, 2 months later, and finally everything is in place. Hopefully Dr.A will review my chart this week, sign off on it, and submit it to insurance. I had totally lost my focus, and basically almost all the good band habits I learned have gone by the wayside. At least I haven't gained any weight back.
I am hoping that I can have my surgery the beginning of May. I have begun to practice the band rules again, and hopefully in the next few weeks I can get a handle on them again. So here I sit patiently ( or not 
) awaitng for approval and a date. Keeping my fingers crossed......
Laura
