My Mum had it, lost 40 kgs, and then the band slipped. She's fallen through the cracks of the system and hasn't bothered making another appointment to get checked out. She fully admits that she knows how to cheat the band, and that's why it isn't working for her.
In WA, you can get the band done for free in the public system. Speak to your doc first, and they send you for some appointments with a dietician to try and lose the weight by yourself, and then do the band surgery. It took 18 months - 2 years for Mum, but that was close to 10 years ago. It may be like this through Australia, the best thing to do would be speak to your GP.
I'm here. I had great success with the band with eating well and exercise. I used the band to control my portions (and it did, so much so I ate the equivalent of a three year old in portions) and went from a size 22 to a size 6. I lost the weight in 7 months and kept it off for almost 3 years.
Then about 8 months ago my band sprung a leak. I've had revision surgery to fix it but it has not gone back to working the way it used to. I'm either struggling with it not working well or working too well (and not hold anything down, including my own saliva). My dr is completely confused and I'm starting to think my band won't ever work again.
As a result of my issues (and not exercising anymore because I was maintaining easily) I've gained about 10kgs back. I'm now a size 10/12. I'm going to have to resume exercise and dieting if I don't want to regain even more from here, and that's frustrating, but them's the breaks. It can fail because you don't work it, it can fail because the band fails, it can work for years and then fail and it can work for years without issues. You need to research the risks, the statistics and figure out if you are willing to trade the cost for the return (and the return is by no means guaranteed, but when it does work, it's awesome). I think I would do it all again if I had to just to have had 3 years of having it easy, but the flipside of that is that last few months have not been fun. Weigh it all up and decide which way you want to go.
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