My 2nd chance - Don't F$#k it up this time...

The fasting began at 7am.

Today is the day that the annoying lower abdomen and groin pain that I have been suffering with the last 4 1/2 months goes away for good when they reconnect my band tube which inadvertently came apart while I was travelling overseas a few months ago. At first I thought it was appendicitis, but then the pain moved - and kept moving, as well as coming and going - for the rest of the trip. Not in my wildest dreams did I think the band had come apart and there was this little metal piece moving around down there.

My appetite was more than usual - and noticed the weight was slowly coming back, but I thought that may have been the fact I needed a fill. It turns out I do because there is nothing restricting my stomach, apart from the lap band hardware itself.

At 1.30pm today my new surgeon, Prof Wendy Brown, will get in there and fix it all up, and put some fluid back into it; and so starts the slow process again of getting back down to my goal weight. It will be hard, but I'm determined again to not let this beat me.

Back to the liquids, and then mushies for a week or so until it all settles down; and then its back to smaller portions, slower eating and satiety. Time to pull out my 'Lap Band Manual' folder from the initial op and refresh my mind about how to use it properly.

While I'm waiting to go in to surgery, I'm going to start reading the updated version of The Lap-Band Solution to remind me why I went down this path in the first place.

I'll keep you posted with how I go...

A Missing Link

So its been a while. Six years on and I've been travelling along fairly well and still remaining under triple figures in my weigh (just). Recently there has been a weigh increase of about 5-7kg over the last 4 months or so. That said I can still get to back under the 100kg mark without too much of a problem.

Last year I moved from Sydney to Melbourne and settling into my new life down here fairly well. Finally I found some time to get my 'band affairs' sorted and have moved from Circle of Care in Sydney to The Centre for Bariatric Surgery (CBS) here in Melbourne... I've been away with work for an extended period during the winter and came back with a few extra kilos which I manages to shed 2-3 fairly quickly but the rest wouldn't budge. Time to make an appointment for a checkup with my new clinic which I went to 3 weeks ago. The doctor was great. We spent about 20 minutes bringing her up to speed with my journey, but then it came to the crunch - I needed a fill. Fair enough, I knew it was coming.

Portion sizes had been getting bigger, and evening snacking becoming more frequent, but still had the morning restrictions and occasional issues when I'm eating so I didn't think there was any problems.

Given it was my first one with CBS she, and I hadn't had any adjustments for a couple of years; she decided to take it all out and then put it back with a little bit more just to help me a bit. That's when we realized there was a problem. She couldn't pull any out. So she thought she try and give it a flush; Put some in and try and draw it back out. So in some went, but nothing could come out. By this stage I was wincing (I'm a 'needlephobe'), so she let it go and said she'd try again in a few weeks (today).

So again today, she tried to do a fill. She felt the port go 'pop' and put .4ml in, but again couldn't draw it out. Something weird is going on...

So off I trot to try and get a fill under X-ray. It was all going well, they found the port, it hadn't flipped and it was in the position she thought, but there was a missing link. Some how, at some time the tube has come apart. (see image below). This was the last thing I needed.

Finally though, it does explain some unexplained pains I've been having in my lower stomach / groin region since late June while I was away. Whether it happened then, or before that, is unclear at this stage. I go back to see my specialist on the 28 October, where I find out my fate then.

A few steps backwards, but at least I now know what the problem is and I will get back on track real soon...