Back after a leak repair

Jul 06, 2010

I’ve been away from OH at least 15 or 16 months.  It is not easy to come back, but I think that it would be good for me.  I had the band installed in November 2008 and felt like I was a failure with the band.

I left because of a partially misplaced shame.  My band has never been right.  It never held saline.  A needle puncture in the tube close to the port, the day after initial surgery produced a leak that only was confirmed in January.  I didn’t want to get it fixed because my experience with the band was not a good one.  I could mostly eat whatever I wanted to eat if I did so slowly enough.  My weight had been down to 235, but it climbed back up to 270.  Occasionally I would get stuck if I didn’t chew well or ate a bit too much, but for the most part I had zero restriction.

After prodding by my PC and wife, I decided to get the port repaired and did so on June 16.  The surgery was uneventful.  I began to eat soft food the next day.  Dr. Boorse put in 10cc of saline.  My experience is 100% different than it had been.  Initially I thought that I had too much restriction (imagine that).  Cold drinks go down very slowly and about half a cup of food is all that I can eat.  But the remarkable thing which I never experienced before is that eating small amounts of food is satisfying!!   In the 20 days since the repair, I’ve lost 20 lbs.  Now for the first time in 20 months I feel as though I have the band experience.  After hating it, now I really like it.  Go figure … Am I fickle or what!

So moral of the story for me is,   I go the band because I have limited control over my ability to control how much I eat.  Now that the band is working, I have no choice but to have control and it is working. 

Don’t be discourage if you don’t have full restriction, and don’t let the decades of shame about weight rule your life, as it has mine.

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