Lap Band Lifestyle

Just go to the Lap-Band website and watch the intro. What starts as a sad and elegant musical score becomes quietly triumphant as people testify that the lapbad can solve everything from joint pain to type II diabetes. Moments before I had been goading myself to keep an open mind as I researched the topic, but soon I was silently cheering for the potentially happy lives this product might give these poor sad people. That's marketing.

To begin my research I went through the traditional channels. According to various medical websites, the lap band is an inflatable silicon band that fits around the top portion of the stomach. It is said to be a minimally invasive surgery that can be reversed in a relatively easy manner to accomodate unforseen circumstances such as a pregnancy. Liquid can be injected into the band to make it feel tighter so that the patient can better abstain from food. It is supposed to help people who have struggled with obesity for at least five years and who have failed in other attempts at weight loss. It brags of a low mortality rate and less loss of hair due to vitamin deficiency.

Where things really got weird was when I went onto newer media outlets. A casing of twitter showed feed after feed of post-op patients who seemed miserable. Don't get me wrong- no one lusts for food more than I do....but I don't tweet every time I smell something delicious. (Maybe that's because I'm too busy eating it) Take "Soon 2 B Skinny," who posted numerous times about her inability to quit caffeine as the surgery required. I feel you, sister. Then she tweets about her sadness at not being able to eat cake at a birthday party she's attending. Three hours later she posts that her husband is making spaghetti marinara and that makes her miserable. Hmmm. I scroll back a little and find that the day's first tweet is about lying to her son about why she couldn't go to his field trip because she's having surgery. Is lying about surgery normal?

Facebook is even worse. A group dedicated to people living with the Lap-Band shows a thread of people sharing advice that would better be discussed with their doctors. In the thread "To get a fill or not to get a fill?", a woman in Kansas feels she is eating more than she should if the band were tight enough. Upon the urging of a dozen other group members, none of whom claim to be md's, she decides to pump more liquid into the band to get a more restricted feeling. There is a big difference between a support group and a medical opinion, and one can only hope she knows the difference.

Three days of clear liquid eating, followed by six weeks of drinking only protein shake on the hour would be enough for me to remove the band myself after about ten minutes. A list of complications that includes band leakage, nausea, ulceration, and death is available on official websites but was not being widely discussed in any social medium I encountered. Perhaps the fact that it is reversible means the risks are no longer that risky?