Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Day #400 Water, Water, & More Water!

Wow! 400 days of trying to lose weight! That's a lot of days :-) Today I weighed 207! Woohoo! My goal for today has been to focus on drinking more water. I drank about 40 oz water today and i'm so proud of myself. We bought a bag of sonic ice and i've been munching on that. This is my food intake for today:

Breakfast:
Refried Beans

Water

Lunch:
Black Forest Ham
Honey Smoked Turkey
Sharp Cheddar Cheese
Yellow Mustard

Water
Snack:
1 tbsp Peanut Butter
Tiny squirt of Strawberry Jelly

Water
Dinner:
Chicken
Iced Tea

Water and Ice

Not feeling hungry is helping me so much!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Day #399 Primary Physician Follow Up

Today I had my first follow up appointment with my primary physician. I was last weighed on their scale four days before my surgery and today I weighed 18 lbs less! I'm losing weight crazy fast. I know the inevitable stall is coming, but i'm hoping I get under 200 before that happens.

I'm starting to feel more like myself, moreso today than any other day. My scars are healing well, I haven't had any nausea or vomiting, and i'm tolerating food well. I also started on my vitamins today and they're not too bad. I was taking some amazing gummy bear ones before surgery but since i'm not eating very much food I figured I would give the bariatric ones a shot. I started to measure myself and realized that my measurements really haven't changed much (or i'm just not being consistent with where I measured) and abandoned it.

I've had moments where I have mourned food and miss food as a social experience. At this time I hate eating! It takes so long to eat what little i've served myself that a few bites in everything else is cold already. Also, I have to chew things so thoroughly that they don't taste good anymore. I expect that this will change as my diet progresses and I don't have to chew things to a pureed consistency.

Even though there are definitely difficult things to deal with along this path I have chosen, i'm very satisfied with the results already!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Day #395 Diet Phase II

Today has been an awesome day for me. I have been better at getting in my fluids and was able to start eating some non-liquids!

The Diet Phase I includes only clear liquids (water, no sugar added fruit juices, crystal light, broth, sf jello, etc). I had to do this 24 hrs post op once I passed my leak test until this morning.

This morning I started on Phase II which allows for scrambled eggs, yogurt, refried beans, pureed and strained soups, all the beverage choices from phase I, sf hot chocolate, vegetable juice, coffe, tea, oatmeal or cream of wheat. Let's see...the only things I like from this phase are the eggs, yogurt, refried beans, strained soups, liquids, and tea. I have to do this for 7 days! It's not hard in the sense that my stomach is hungry all the time, but it's hard because my head is hungry. As I sit here and watch daytime tv I see all of these commercials of delicious food and I daydream about food I can't eat. I don't dwell on it, but it does make it harder.

I'm trying to learn my comfort zone on how much liquids I can take in, because when i'm too full my right shoulder hurts really bad. I thought it would be more of a substernal pain, but it's more referred pain. Today I have had:

Before Lunch (154 calories)
1 scrambled egg with 1/8 of a cheese slice crumbled and melted into the egg while cooking with 1tbsp ketchup
2 oz no sugar added Apple Juice
4 oz water
1 100% Fruit Juice no fruit pieces popsicle

Before Dinner (133 calories)
1/4c. strained chicken tortilla soup from chickfila
1/4c. light fat free strawberry yogurt
1 100% Fruit Juice no fruit pieces popsicle
4 oz water

Dinner and After (180 calories)
1 100% Fruit Juice no fruit pieces popsicle
8 oz Unjury Chicken Soup

I'm only at a little over half of the protein intake I should be eating (70g) and half of the water I should be drinking (48-64 oz) but I feel like i'm making good progress from yesterday when I could only eat one jello, 2 oz of apple juice and a popsicle. I don't want to stretch my suture lines and cause a leak so i'm taking it "slow".

Today was a great day, i'm just bored. I'm a workaholic that's not used to sitting still. We're moving into an apartment on Saturday and half of our stuff is in storage already. I feel bad that I can't help pack or move anything :-( but luckily we have amazing friends that are coming to help us move!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Day #394 The Surgery Experience

I couldn't sleep at all on Sunday night. I went to bed at 11 something and woke up every hour until 3 when my alarm went off. I woke up, showered, dried & straightened my hair (no makeup as per hospital rules) and got dressed in comfortable clothes.  I took some pre-op pictures:



I also took pre-op measurements: Bust 40" Waist 47.5" Right Thigh 25.5" Left Thigh 27.5" Neck 14.5" Right Wrist 7" Right Bicep 15" Left Wrist 7" Left Bicep 16".

Then I woke up my husband and we hit the road. It was really early:


I was in the surgical waiting area at exactly 5am and no hospital staff was there yet. After a while someone came out and started handing out numbers. This crazy lady who was sitting behind me was standing at the counter waiting for a number (I guess she has had surgery before?) and wanted to be number 1, even though she was at least 2nd or 3rd case. I knew I was first case and casually walked up to the counter after the other people sat down and got number 3. I chuckled to myself when they called #3 first.

Having surgery at the hospital I work at was sometimes beneficial, sometimes embarassing. They called me back and didn't let my husband come in. The tech gave me a plastic gown and told me to take everything else off and put that on. Then she gave me a warm blanket which felt awesome. At this point it's 530 and my husband was still not allowed in. They wanted to wait until I had signed all of the consents and had my iv in before he could come in. My nurse didn't come into my room until a little after 6. Because I work at the hospital I know where to sign for all of the consents and that went by in a flash. She reviewed all of the paperwork with me and then started my IV. She said she hated starting IV's on other nurses but was really good. She let me pick the site and got it on one try. The only bad thing was that it was an 18G and was near the surface of my skin so any time the tubing was moved it hurt. 



Once they finished all of that stuff they let him in and we just sat and talked until a few minutes after 7 when my CRNA came in and gave me some preop meds for nausea. They took me to the OR and I remember transferring onto the table but then that was it, I don't remember anything else.

I woke up in PACU (where I work PRN) and had severe pain from the gas (the procedure was laparoscopic). My nurse was awesome. She went above and beyond to make me feel comfortable and I really appreciate it, even now it makes me really happy to think about it. There were no beds available so I stayed in PACU until noon. When I got to my room I was miserable. The room was really hot, the sheets were really scratchy and there were linens all bunched up underneath me. I also still had the plastic gown on and it didn't help with feeling really hot. I got a little panicky and started throwing off all the covers. I had my husband help me put my own clothes back on. I called the maintenance line to lower the temp in my room but it felt like it never started cooling. Then I called the front desk and asked for a fan. It never came. After about 30 minutes where no one came into my room I got frustrated and decided to start walking around the unit, hoping to figure out who my nurse was. Halfway down the hall I found her and she got me a fan by the time I got back into my room. When I got back from walking I had my husband change my linens and I felt a lot better.

I spent the day doing laps around the unit and then taking naps. The gas pain was severe. I felt it in my abdomen and my right shoulder. I also had really bad nausea. I kept dry heaving. A combination of toradol and zofran made my day a lot better. My husband has been battling a severe sinus infection since two days before the surgery and had started losing his voice at this point so I sent him home. I had a rough night. The gas pain was horrible and it just triggered the dry heaving. I actually cried which was a little embarassing.

When I woke up in the morning at 7 I got up by myself, peed, brushed my teeth, walked 5 laps around the unit and then waited until 8. This entire time I had been NPO. Nothing at all. I was really thirsty but strangely not hungry in the least. At 8 I called my friend that works in radiology and asked him if I could be the first person to go down for the leak test, he obliged and came for me a few minutes later. The barium tasted horrible! It was like a combination of the smell of pinesol and hand soap. I had to take one small sip and one big sip and they had me turning left to right to check all the angles. I had no leaks! I came upstairs and called my nutritionist friend to tell him I had the surgery and the bariatric coordinator came in around the same time. They gave me more post op instructions and ordered me a breakfast tray.

My breakfast tray had one jello and one apple juice. I struggled to drink half an apple juice from the time they brought my breakfast until they brought my lunch tray. I had two tiny bites of jello also. When they brought my lunch (chicken broth, grape juice and a jello) I was having a lot of pain (and had already convinced my nurse to take out my IV) so I was forced to drink a lortab elixir. Wow, it is definitely not tasty. I foolishly drank about half of it (7.5cc) and right away started dry heaving. That is just too big of a sip for me. Even though I only drank half of it I fell asleep. I even had a visitor stop by and leave me a note but I don't remember anyone coming. I woke up a little after 3 and decided to walk again. I started to drink more fluids but had a really hard time taking in very much.

At 5 I got my orders to go home and called my husband right away who luckily was already walking into the hospital. He packed up all of my stuff and we left. As soon as I got home I tried to drink more liquids sitting up on the couch, but I just kept throwing up. I couldn't keep anything down. I was determined not to have to go back to the hospital and remembered that I had some orally dissolving zofran from a few years ago and decided to take one. It made me really sleepy and I woke up in my bed in the middle of the night. I got up to pee and then came back to bed. I then woke up one more time because I had rolled onto my stomach and it hurt really really bad. I finally woke up for real at 7am and started by eating a sf strawberry jello. I've eaten 1/4 of the cup so far today and have had a few sips of apple juice. I haven't had to throw up yet and am feeling better. I still feel very bloated, and my stomach makes weird growly noises all the time. These are my four incisions:




Pre-Surgery I weighed 221. This morning I weighed 217. Everytime I feel bad I just keep reminding myself why I did this, and the benefits that I will reap from having done this.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Day #390 Monday is the Big Day!

These last few weeks have been a rollercoaster of stress and emotions! After telling me that January 23rd was a go for surgery on January 6th in the morning, I received a call in the afternoon saying that my insurance had denied me. In order to have the surgery they required that I have a BMI of 35, two comorbidities, and lose 10% of my body weight in three months.

Well, after doing everything they said to do, they then said I couldn't have the surgery because I had lost too much weight too fast and I could obviously do it on my own, oh, and now I needed three comorbidities. I didn't find out until Wednesday the 18th that my peer-to-peer review with my insurance was approved. So the last couple weeks I have been "pre-op dieting" with the hopes that my insurance would approve me.

I'm so excited for Monday!