A Day in My Life: How the Lap Band Affects Me

I know I do not do the best job at articulating how things are with me and I honestly try not to complain, although i do a lot of venting on my blog, that's why I started it here.
But after posting a fundraiser link on my Facebook page and causing a shit storm from a couple of my "Friends" correction , ex friends now I thought it might help to try to explain , the best I could what exactly the lap band aka crap band has done to me and my quality of life.
So let me start by saying this , I got the lap band to improve my quality of life. Because I have PCOS ( Poly Cystic ovarian syndrome ) and migraines I am at greater risk of things like stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure as it is. Being over weight adds to that. So I wanted the band to reduce that risk BEFORE anything bad  happened to me. I am a mother of 2 boys who need me . After I first got  the band things were great, I could eat what i wanted, just smaller portions and occasionally threw up after eating too much , or so I thought .. I even changed the way I ate, what i ate , i felt better so I ate better. I was , as you can ask my doctor , the model patient, i did everything I was suppose to (with the expectation of working out and that lesson has been learned trust me ) Eventually what I ate seemed to come back up more often , But after losing 125 pounds I thought I was doing ok.
At a year out a slipped my band , that is where my stomach comes up through the band and can potentially be very serious. After it corrected it self I gained some weight ... It slipped again , more weight gain .
I was then told my band had scar tissue build up around it and I could no longer get the fills I needed to lose the weight  the opening to my stomach would be closed off it was filled again . That was around 2-3 yrs ago .
As time has gone on I have slowly gotten worse. You see because of where the scar tissue is I still have " restriction" Meaning , I am still limited on what i eat , so things like steak, pork, chicken , solid proteins  wont go down .  The food literally sits on top of my band until it gets either pushed through , which is very painful , or it comes back up . If I throw up too much, my stomach swells and eating any form of solid food is impossible for several days. So i have to go to liquids, milk shakes, protein shakes , mash potatoes things like that.  Those type of things are high in calorie and cause me to gain weight , but what other choices do i have ? Broth, water ? Yeah those fill you up ?? NOT !
So my day goes like this ...
Breakfast: Protein shake cause eating in the morning is nearly impossible. That's if I can get it to go down if I cant and anything comes back up then its liquids for me the entire rest of the day
Lunch: I try to eat something semi solid but I usually end up eating soup
Dinner: Some times a salad works but most evenings I throw up my dinner several times over and end up in pain from the swelling . By that time liquids hurt to go down ...

NOW that leads me to my "other issues"
Joint pain
Fatigue
body aches
head aches
My teeth are deteriorating because of how much I throw up 
Cold feet
cold hands
numb feet
cysts on my feet 
numb hands
You see they are finding out now that people who have had bands for several years are developing auto immune disorders like Fibromyalgia .. Problem ? Docs done believe it yet .. So no doc will help me out . With out insurance I cant get proper diagnoses . You can read more about that stuff here .
I am now 20 or so pounds away from my original start weight before surgery . That's right I have gained nearly ALL My weight back . And at the rate I am going by next month or so I will exceed the 250 pounds i was before my surgery .

I hope you can see this is not a simple " I want this surgery to be thin " yes i want to be at a healthy weight again . This has more to do with wanting a quality of life again than ANYTHING ELSE !
Thanks for reading !