My name is Patricia Drew, and I'm a doctoral candidate in sociology at UC Santa Barbara. I am currently researching people who have had - or are planning to have - weight loss surgery.
I'm looking for people to talk with about their surgery-related experiences - whether you've already had the surgery or you're planning on having it soon. This study focuses on why you decided to have surgery and how it has affected your life.
If you are interested, you can answer questions via email or engage in either a telephone or in-person interview. All information will be confidential and your name, email address, and other identifiers will be removed.
Findings from this study will reveal how and why bariatric surgery is important to patients. It will also show how weight loss surgery affects patients' social lives and personal relationships. Study findings may be published in OH Magazine, academic journals, and, potentially, as a book.
I have put up a website with more information about my research. The address is: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~pdrew
If you would like to participate or find out more, please email me at: [email protected].
Thanks for your time! I hope to hear from you soon!
Sincerely, Patricia Drew

The past few months I've been emailing back and forth with a lady who's brother didn't do to well with surgery. As in Jeremy's case he's had some rather severe complications. He had surgery on July 19th and has not been home since. He's currently in a nursing home trying to get rehab to walk again. So far he's lost 120 pounds, but he's still unable to take care of his self and is bed ridden. They don't have any phones in his room so mail is all he's got to look forward to. Please if you can take a moment to send Ken some well wishes, his family would be so grateful. Just a little note or card that we are all thinking about him. Let's show some OH love! :love: :kiss:

Ken Svejda
Cedar Valley Health Center
6124 Raytown Rd
Raytown, MO 64133

Ken's profile page, the top entry is from his sister.
http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/members/status.php?N=S1101230692

Thanks Everyone!

Amy Williams

Everyone

We've had a number of hardware issues recently. You've probably experienced problems on the message boards with posts disappearing and reappearing. The problem here has been the age of some of our servers. We've recently had a number of server failures which have caused problems in the databases that support the web site. In addition, the older servers are slow. Our newest software is going to need better, faster machines. We can't upgrade the website until we've improved our servers. This process is ongoing and we've replaced a number of them recently.

Friday evening, the 9th of December at around 10PM Pacific time, we're going to replace one of our main servers. When we replace this one, it will be impossible for a period of anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to post to any of the message boards. This is a very important change to support future upgrades, but also it will replace old hardware that has been prone to failure.

We know how much you depend on the boards to make contact with people who are helping you. For some people, they've become a life line ... a way to reach for and achieve a new life. We're committed to serving you as well as we can, but we sometimes fail in getting changes done cleanly and so cause you problems. We'll do our best to let you know when things are changing so you can be prepared. We're here for you and we hope you'll at least give us credit for trying.

We appreciate your patience as we work through this.

Amy Williams
Member Services Dept

Bummer! I am going to be at McKennan. I hope all goes well for you!! I will let you know if I need anything. I mostly will probably need advice . Blessings~ Becky

Many people don't realize or won't until they try to access their profile that you must now have a username. This is something new, unless you've just recently made a username, you don't have one yet. If you haven't made a username please take a moment to log out and create one. This can be done easily by following these steps.

***Keep in mind you must have your first and last name you currently use to log in to create your username.***



Make sure you are logged out first:

1. Go here: http://www.obesityhelp.com/login

2. Locate the box that says "Already a member?"

3. Locate the text that says "I am a member, but don't have a username. Click Here" and click on that link.

4. You will then be prompted to enter in your First Name, Last Name, and Password. These areas would be the current log in information that you have been using.

5. You will then also be prompted to enter in a User Name. This is the new part and will be unique to you. So please select the User Name that you would like to have associate with your account. Tip - Your User Name should be what you would want the public to see associated with your account

6. Then click the button that says "Create Username".


You will then need to sign in with your newly made Username and Password, instead of your First Name, Last Name, Password that you used to log in with.


Things to remember:
The user name is NOT what will show up on your profile page or on the message boards. (This will come in future updates) Once you've made your user name you can always change what's viewed from the message board or on your profile by logging into "my account" then going to "general info". Once in the general info area, the name that appears in the first and last name blank is what shows up on your profile and the message boards. You change it here and then "update". This is also where you can change your password by entering it in twice and update.

If you are unable to log in after doing the following please Email us for help.

Amy Williams
Obesityhelp Member Services