THE NEWS

OK so I suppose now is as good of a time as any to make my announcement.

I am having my lap-band removed.

This isn't exactly a "bad" thing...although it kind of is. The main reason is because it is FULL and I still have NO restriction! You are all witness to my many posts after my many fills and saying that I still don't feel any restriction. It's also been causing a lot of other problems though. I have seriously bad acid refulx lately, caused by my band. And my port hurts ALL the time. Not contstantly, but multiple times a day, for no reason just out of the blue I'll double over in pain from it causing muscle cramps. It's just making my life miserable, especially since I'm not even losing weight with it.

I went and had my fluoroscope over a month ago and they couldn't find anything wrong. The weird thing is that my port has moved about 5 inches down from where they originally placed it. The Dr's are baffled, they have no idea how that happened, because it's not flipped, it's not loose, it just moved.

So next month on the 18th will be my 1 year band-iversary and I have only been able to maintain an overall weight loss of about 15 lbs. I've re-gained everything I originally had lost but those 15 lbs. And I lost those before my surgery, so they don't even count.

The good part of it though, is that I'm not just giving up. I'm having a revision surgery to the Duodenal Switch (DS). I've not a LOT of research and I've decided that this is CLEARLY the best surgery for me. It's what I should have had in the first place.

I don't want to discourage ANYONE who is thinking about getting the band, and I am not in any way bitter or resentful and I will never trash talk the Lap-Band. It works very well for MOST people. I just happen to be one of those rare few who just can't get any restriction at all.

I really hope that my fellow bandsters who follow my blog will stay with me. Our over-all goal is the same, we will just have different tools now.

There will be more posts to follow were I will talk more about the DS, but I wanted to make my announcement.

I'm not upset, so this isn't a "boo-hoo" post, this is a "moving on in a productive way" post. I'm actually very excited for my revision surgery. It's in the VERY early planning stages, but I'm 110% decided on it. So I hope you can all be happy for me :) I am ashamed and embarrassed that the band didn't work for me, but like I've told a few people...at the end of the day I have to do what's best for me and not worry about what didn't work. I tried, and it just didn't work.
So all I can do now is move on and keep working toward my goal of health and happiness!

I'll keep you all posted :)