The road to banding

I have had a major obstacle crop up on the pathway to the lap band: the only surgeon at Dartmouth who does banding quit abruptly to go to New York and head a bariatric surgical programme there. Given that I am a good 80% of the way through the process at Dartmouth, this is a major bummer, since I obviously can't have surgery if there is no surgeon. I am in the process of transferring to a surgeon up in Burlington, and meeting all of THEIR requirements, since I have to start from scratch in that programme, and have kept up at Dartmouth in case they suddenly get a replacement band surgeon.

Meanwhile, all the bellydancing is paying off, as I am now down to 206 pounds, a mere two pounds away from the minimum pre-op requirement. Of course I won't stop there--I'm 82 pounds away from my goal weight! Its a nice drop from the 227 I was two years ago, and its rather fun to occasionally have people who haven't seen me in a while notice the change. I have nearly two inches of extra space in my waistbands now, and I'm pretty happy with that.