Revisiting Friend Requests

If your profile is private, you haven't posted about yourself, where you are in your plastics journey or weight lost, don't expect everyone to friend you just because you ask.

Please create a thread and introduce yourself.  Tell us about your journey so far.  Open your profile so that we can see that you have other friends that are on the same journey.  

Some of us have posted very graphic PS pictures on our profiles and in group areas to help those who are considering PS as their final journey to look and feel as normal as possible without all the loose skin, floppy boobs, squirrel arms, hanging pannis and sagging faces.

We do this to protect ourselves.  This doesn't mean that I won't answer your friend request, but please be open about yourself.  We have had stalkers frequent these pages.  Also, having a current picture is much better than a cartoon.

Sorry if this upsets anyone.

I just hope it is not directed at me if did something wrong
Next tine I turn on my computer - I am an iPhone addict!- I will try to update my profile and pics-even though I am not a patient of Dr.S.
Mikimi in Israel

Mikimi it wasn't you.  It was someone that I haven't seen posting at all, and the profile is private.  This is to protect all of us who do post PS pics.  Please put a picture up of yourself and a little info about your.  Posting on other threads is nice to see that you are really looking into PS...  

This ia a pic of me from about five years ago but before any Plastics.
I am not very computer proficient and I mostly use my iPhone.
I do post on myself: before my TT (8 August 2011) with hernia repair on C-scar and gangrene and treatment on WoundVac; and my Mastopexy and TT revision and inguinal hernia repair on 30 July 2012 - and my right breast opening...
And I am now pursuing a thigh lift and in the beginning stages of an Appeal against my HMO.
I would need computer help to update my avatar and I would like to upload pics to my profile of my journey. I hope to one day have time and patience and knowledge to do it. I might need to call someone for detailed directions on how to proceed.
If you were willing to pm me your phone number and convenient time slot to speak, I would gladly call you (from Israel) for the neccessary assistance.
Thank you for your continuous help.
Mikimi in Israel

Mikimi, There are a few people who do this type of thing.  It's not you at all!  People who have no avatar picture and a private profile and have never posted anywhere else set off alarms in my mind.

I hear you (but my low self-esteem issues yend to surface and then I think I must have done something wrong even if I didn't)
I post about my situation and I try to be supportive of others along their journey to "a more normal body with emotional health" as I like to call our plastics.

If I already got you answering me... I wanted/needed you to kmow that You are quite the inspiration to me for your journey ( the Band often gets a bad rap in Israel with many needing revisions [I,myself, from two previous permanent bands in open surgery,SRVG - and 8 years later the VBG; and in Feb.,2008 my RnY] but you have written of being SMO and succeeding at losing so much!) and your detailed knowledgeable and educationsl responses that you write to so many of us. I tried to "friend" you on OH or to pm you but could not figure out how.
For me, here in Israel, although I can speak+read in Hebrew almost as well as in English (well many English-speakers claim that after awhile we are illiterate on both languages-probably also true of me too) I thrive on every piece of info I glean
from the Plastics Board and Dr.S. I am do happy to be a part of these two groups even though I am not a patient of Dr.S.-his personality, caring and knowledge and treatment supersede everything and give me fantasies of his being my PS while knowing that will never happen for me-his many patients posting, give me so much knowledge and very often support for my one situation.
Only someone who has walked in our situation of having been SMO (or whatever variation of obesity) can truly understand the often physical/emotional discomfort or even pain we might and often feel in being or having been obese. And then we lose weight (with or without the help of a surgery) and all-too-often the "empty" hanging skin gets in our way to having "normal" functioning bodies. And as such, our,my need, for Plastics (my TT and Mastopexy) were not aesthetic/cosmetic but medical in nature!
I want/need a thigh lift and my mastopexy left me with dog-ears on the sides. My HMO medical review committee claims that what I want on the breasts is cosmetic -umm, hello! The scar at the outer edges itches but also hurts, more so the left than the right. And that the thighs are like many who are obese. I lost 40K!
I may have been a "lightweight" with a highest of 120K but being short at 152cm/5ft, my BMI was 51. Today is still not a normal BMI but ...
I am in the midst of appealing. That was my project today in actually turning on my computer (I am so addicted to my iPhone-I sleep with it!) opening and saving documents and photos from scanned items at a friend's as I don't have a scanner, and uploading etc. Another friend who knows computer much better than myself came to help me .I walked her out of my hi-rise building to the parking lot and on my way back in-I tripped and fell. I somehow limped my way to the elevator but throughout the rest of the night different aches and pains have been showing up that I took homeopathy and put on ThermaRub but in the end I took the real heavy duty stuff, oxycontin and then later tramadex. I get loopy on the narcotics and itchy and sometimes nauseous but I think right now that the pain is finally just about under control. However,I fell at 16:00, but at 20:00 when I pulled myself out of my recliner to go to the toilet, I stood up to excruciating pain such that to
walk was almost unbearable. I gave a walker from when I had Ankle Fusion in 2006 and now it getting used again.
So I nod off to sleep and awake to itchiness and turn on the iphone abd become literate and philosophical and rambling.
And here at 05:16, maybe I should try to go back to slumberland...
Mikimi in Israel

I agree!  I did get a friend request from a "stalker" after I posted my pics in a bikini........I added them to the block list instead!

U r so right, if people don't have a picture and they r private then I don't friend them or answer their posts

Susan