Refill update

Well, here it is, September already. I miss you, August. Please come back soon.

Yesterday I returned to my band people to check out the status of my refill 2 weeks ago. It seems that my (new) band surgeon has turned over all things band-related to his PA, Brian. Which is fine with me. Brian is the band guy at NW Surgical Bariatrics. That's cool. I get that surgeons like doing surgery, not long-term management afterward. I know, I know, but really. There's a reason that bariatric surgeons often recommend gastric bypass when the band would work just fine--they didn't go to med school and do a surgical residency and a bariatric surgery fellowship just to manage fills and help patients figure out that drinking a McDonald's milkshake every meal will not help their weight loss. Surgeons like doing surgery. So my surgeon turned over band management to the PA, which is not unusual and works out fine for everyone.

Anyway, there was good news when he accessed my port: all 2.5cc were still there. It felt like there was nothing there again, but it was there. He said this isn't uncommon, and I know many people have talked about their fills "settling in" after a day or so. He added 0.5cc to put me at 3cc total, and told me to come back to check on it again in 2 weeks.

We also talked about how losing this last bit of weight is going to be all in the details. In the beginning, you can go along doing the "right" things 80% of the time and lose weight. But he used a good analogy for the last few (several?) pounds of major weight loss. He said if you want to get an A in a class, you have to get about 95% right, and that's what I'll have to do now to get an A in my weight loss. Eat the right things 95%, exercise right 95%. That makes good sense to me. He also reiterated what I have said on this blog for a long time: I am more efficient at storing calories than many people are, or in other words, I have to eat fewer calories to lose weight than most people do. There are people who are even more efficient than I am, and they have to work even harder, but a few calories makes a big difference for me. The same is true for most people who have WLS. If simple dieting would have worked for us, we wouldn't have had surgery.

I'm happy not to have surgery looming on me now. I still wonder what happened to 2.5cc over the course of 15 months (since my previous fill). The saline fairies must have taken it. I guess I will just be more vigilent about keeping a good fill level and going back to the office if things don't seem right.

In the future, if I do find the band is leaking, I'll do what I have to do then. For now, I hope I can get back to a place where I am losing weight again and keeping it off. I do acknowledge that gaining only 15 pounds with an empty band for 6 months is itself something of an accomplishment. I don't want to think too much about that, though, because complacency will not get me to goal.