5 Weeks Post Op

We are now 5 weeks post op! As of the scale I borrowed at my kids docs office yesterday I am down 35 lbs since I started the pre op liquid diet and 48 lbs total from the first time I stepped in my surgeons office last May.

I’m also down:
6.5” off my hips since May and 2.5” in the last 7 weeks.
5.25” off my waist since May and 2.25” in the last 7 weeks.
4.25” off my thigh (just one not both) since May, 2.75 of those in the last 7 weeks.
7” off my upper stomach since May, 4.5” of that in the last 7 weeks.
4.5” off my chest total, 1.5” in the last 7
2” off my upper arm, both in the last 7 weeks (stupid stubborn fat!)
4” off my calf, 1.25” in the last 7 weeks

It is amazing to me how different my shape looks in the mirror. That upper belly fat is amazingly stubborn and that’s what’s melting fastest at the moment and I could not be more thrilled.

Diet wise I am starting Week 2 of “Soft Chopped Solids” which is really extremely livable but man I really miss apples and crunchy veggies. One more week and I can have crunchy things and I am so excited about it. My proportions are still tiny. And proportion control is king bc it I eat even one bite too many I’m going to be very, very sorry. I still haven’t puked even if I’ve wished I could more than once. It’s good for my hernia repair that I haven’t though. I do NOT want to tear that up!

Mostly I’m learning what foods my body likes and what foods are not okay. It was my birthday a few days back and while my birthday cake tasted every bit as amazing as ever, it makes me feel like crap for a good 2 hours after eating it. I’m finding that’s pretty common. If I probably shouldn’t eat it, it’s going to make me feel like mud even if I eat it slow and not too much. And I pay attention to that feeling bc it helps reinforce that this is something that isn’t worth it if it’s gonna make me miserable! They said I could have some taste bud change too and so far I hadn’t seen much of that with savory foods but I’m noticing it now mostly with sweets. Some things just don’t taste right or they’re way, way too sweet and they make me feel like crud so I’m just passing on them instead of sneaking a bite or two.

I can drink carbonation!!! Some people can and some just never can again post surgery. Given my love affair with Diet Coke which I was really missing, I was afraid. But with my dieticians permission, I tried it and carbonation has always settled my stomach when I was sick and that apparently hasn’t changed. And sipping a caffeine free Diet Pepsi (when it’s too late for caffeine) or a Diet Coke is incredibly gratifying and it doesn’t cost me any calories at all and it doesn’t hurt my stomach so I am a very happy camper. I’m still only having a single glass a couple times a week but it’s lovely.

My weight loss is slowing down some so I’ve started trying to increase my exercise and activity levels to try to get it back up where I want it! Have to wait another week to see if it’s working. I knew my body would start to fight back but I really hoped it would wait a while longer but oh well.

I’ve lost enough weight I’m having to use belts to keep my pants from falling off and having to shop my closet for smaller clothes. So this week I made a purchase of an item I haven’t wanted in my living space since high school. That’s right, I purchased and installed a full length mirror bc I need one to check the fit on things when I pull them out of the depths of my closet. I spent years avoiding mirrors bc they were very bad for my mental health so this is kinda big.

3 More Days of Purees

Hi Guys!

Sorry I dropped off the face of the planet there for a bit! Life was interfering but hopefully I’m getting back in the swing of things! So some updates:

I cannot tell you how grateful I was to start purées. I went to one of my favorite Mediterranean places and got a large order of my favorite hummus and their amazing baba ghanoush (sp??) and I had leftovers from that for the next week plus! Scrambled eggs have never been so exciting.

There have been some rough spots. I had to learn what full feels like again. Over eating is dramatically unpleasant and uncomfortable for hours afterwards so I am very careful about my portion sizes now and I’ve got a decent eye for how much I can eat. And I serve myself in my tiny bowls and leave the rest behind in the kitchen so I am not tempted to take even a single bite more than I should bc it’s not worth the pain. Think ONE egg scrambled with like a tsp of cheese and I’m completely full for the next several hours. 1/4-1/2 cup is about the limit.

Absolutely no beverages allowed 15 mins before to 30 mins after eating. That’s been a toughie. I used to drink a ton while I ate but it does not make my stomach feel nice if I do it so I leave my water glass in the kitchen too now so I don’t forget and reflex drink.

The other hard thing has been the swelling from my very large hiatus hernia repair has made the passage of food from my esophagus to my stomach very slow and difficult. I’m told this will improve over the next month or two as the swelling continues to go down. But if I do not take tiny bites and space them out very far apart then I wind up with the food stuck in my throat and it’s very painful and I have to just sit there and wait for it to slowwwwwly go down. It’s not pleasant. I now eat with my kids baby spoons so I don’t take bites that are too big for me.

I am 11 days into purées and today I’m officially sick of this crap and I want new food. I’ve done a good job getting really creative w seasoning and cheese combos to try to make my scrambled eggs different every day. And different soups and different hummus flavors etc. but I’m done with it now. I want crunchy veggies badly. Lol Next week I get to move to soft chopped solids which sounds amazing. Slowly, slowly I get closer to eating real food.

According to my doc my priorities right now are 1. get enough water (60+oz a day), 2. get enough protein (40+g a day) and then get all my supplements in. I think I’m doing okay on the first two but finding room in my tiny stomach for all those pills is proving difficult. I’m improving but I’m not where I should be yet.

Oh and I finally had my post op follow up w the doc. In roughly the last month I’m down 27.6 lbs and my capris are in dire need of a belt. So progress!

Also on the list of foods that don’t suck: Jello Sugar Free Pudding cups in Dark Chocolate and Chocolate Vanilla Swirl are my friends. And they’re totally legal on the diet. So there.

5 more days until Purées

Just 5 more days of this hell, y’all. Purées includes beautiful things like hummus and even soft scrambled eggs. You have no idea how exciting that is. I’m having to force myself to eat right now bc I am so tired of protein supplements at this point I would rather just go hungry.

In other news as of Tuesday, in the 3 weeks since I started the Pre Op Diet I have lost:

 1" off my hips

 1.75" off my waist

1.25" off my thigh

2.5" off my upper stomach

.75" off my chest

1.5" off my arm

.75" off my calf

That upper stomach and arm loss is nothing short of amazing bc that is the two most stubborn fat spots on my body and I swear they never move, so that I’ve lost the most there is incredible and wonderful. 

I want to tell you my pain is better but I would be lying. My incisions are healing beautifully and starting to itch obnoxiously which is a good sign in terms of healing but annoying. 

I cannot overstate my gratitude for some of the sisters from my church. Today one came and not only took my big kids to school for me, she took my beautiful baby that I cannot lift to put in her crib to her house to play all day so I could just rest. And then a second sister came over while the kids were gone and did the dishes, vacuumed, picked up and did a whole load of laundry and even folded and put it away. The company was lovely and the help was simply amazing. I am so blessed and I feel so loved. 

But for real, y’all, gaze upon the gloriousness that awaits my tastebuds next week: 

One Week Post Op

I don’t have time for the full post I had wanted and planned for today. My Grandfather entered hospice this morning and the conflicting grief and relief (I have desperately hated watching him suffer) are frequently overwhelming. 

I’m still alive. My pain levels are still much higher than I anticipated but they are improving. Current plan Bc I’m almost out of pain meds (they refilled me.... with a very tiny refill....) is to only take them at night so I can get to sleep. 

Right now I desperately hate my diet. I hate alternative protein. I would kill to just eat meat and eggs like God intended. Hell I would delight in beans and legumes. I like beans and legumes. Hell if I could marinate and grill it I would eat tofu right now. I just want something that TASTES RIGHT. I’m so desperate on more than one occasion I’ve taken a tiny to small bite of something, chewed it to bits and then spit it out in the trash can just so I can have a taste of something that doesn’t suck. 

I have also reaffirmed my hatred of “sugar free” products. They taste weird to out and out bad. Once in a great while you can find something (Diet Coke being the glaring exception to this rule) that doesn’t suck but generally my policy is I would rather have a far smaller serving of real sugar and stick to dark chocolate (less sugar!) than have all I want of the fake sugar crap. I’m definitely losing tolerance for things that taste nasty and would rather just starve than eat that crap. But I have to heal so I’m making myself choke down the bare minimums. 

I can no longer join my family at meal times where there’s something I desperately want on the menu. I used to just sip broth or whatever but I can’t eat w them bc I can’t explain to my 5 year old why I’m crying over her pizza. 

This is temporary. This too shall pass. But damn and wow it’s passing like a kidney stone. 

In good news my incision sites are healing very well. They told me 3-5 holes and he did it in 3. My surgeon is an artist. The biggest incision he put perfectly inline with the lines in my belly button so when it heals you won’t even be able to see it. The nausea is gone. The heartburn is gone. And the abdominal pain is improving. Slowly but it is. 

And in better news - it’s working. I measured tonight. I’ll give the full thing tomorrow but usually it takes me months to lose inches. 3 weeks and I have one or more inches gone in every single location I measure. 

This hell sucks. But it’s temporary and unlike every other crash diet on the planet I actually have extremely good odds of this not coming back. Ever. So keep going. The only way out is through. 

Oh and the other fun bonus- for 10 more days I get to keep stabbing myself with one of these every night. It’s a blood thinner to keep me from clotting while I heal. You’d think they were being ultra cautious bc they’re dealing with fluffy people or something. 

Kinda fun- after I give the shot, I push the plunger one more time and this like extra layer to the barrel you couldn’t even tell was there pops out to cover the needle so it’s safe to throw away! Spiffy!

 

Post Op: Day 4

Today it feels like I’m finally making some progress. I only had to take my anti nausea meds first thing this morning and then I didn’t touch them again for the rest of the day which is amazing. I am still incredibly dependent on my pain meds. But I spent like 10 consecutive hours sitting up on the sofa, obviously interspersed with walking around and eating or what have you. But yesterday sitting up for 2 straight hours was brutal, and I had to go lie down afterwards. I’m not saying it felt good or was super fun today but I did it. And I folded 4 baskets of laundry (that were brought to me) while I was at it so I almost felt like a productive and contributing citizen once again.

We will see how I feel tomorrow about everything I did today. I’ve had to be very dedicated to my pain meds. The “every 4-6 hours” has been like “oh thank god just 10 more mins and I can have more”. It’s just Tylenol 3 but it’s my friend.

I also made some progress on increasing my caloric intake up closer to what it’s supposed to be. This afternoons experiment involved adding some of the Unjury Unflavored Protein Powder to some tomato soup to see if I could sneak some extra protein in there..... the results were.... mixed.

1. Unflavored does not mean flavorless, it’s odd and hard to describe but my original plan was add 1 scoop of protein (worth like 20g) to my 4oz serving of tomato soup. That’s where we ran into problem:

2. That is one big butt scoop! Like wowza that’s a lot of powder! Geez! I don’t have small hands people.

It was like almost 50/50 soup and powder and the powder initially lumped up and wouldn’t mix smooth no matter how much I whisked it (and yes I checked the temperature was well below the 140 mark the instructions are emphatic I must stay below), and with that off flavor I was not sure I was going to manage to get that down. But I added another 1/4 cup of soup and then went to town w the seasonings making my classic Campbell’s tomato into a tomato basil bisque type experience. It mostly hid the flavor in the end. I at least managed to eat it. 

You might be able to hide a whole scoop in the entire can of condensed plus can of milk maybe but if I try that again I’ll defin cut the powder way, way back and go from there. 

Post Op: Day 3

I feel like I was beautifully prepared for the sleeve portion of my surgery and completely unprepared for the hernia repair. Also the first couple days I had this lovely little On-Q pain ball thing - basically it’s full of local anesthetic and had a couple little catheters going into my guts numbing things continously for the first couple days post op. Well my lovely ball ran dry and the catheters had to be removed (amazingly that part didn’t hurt at all) but now I definitely have more deep gut pain than I did before. So yay it worked, boo it’s all gone. Lol

My nausea is less today for which I’m grateful. Let me introduce you to the bane of my existence at the moment:

You see that wee little medicine cup there? 30ml or approx 1 oz. I drink one of those every 15 mins when I’m awake to stay hydrated. I really miss just being able to chug my ice water with a straw, thankyouverymuch. But nope. That’s it. And I’m not allowed to drink water like 30 mins before or after a meal. So when I tried some protein powder “chicken soup” mix thing today, I couldn’t rinse that taste out of my mouth between spoonfuls. Ugh. When I ate all I could stand (about 3 out of 8 oz) I actually went and rinsed my mouth out with water and spat in the sink just for some relief. 

It’s going to be an interesting couple weeks working my way up to the recommended intake for this stage of the diet. I’ll heal faster and better with more protein in my diet which is about my only motivation right now. Never thought I’d want to keep just sipping water but I’m kinda scared of food right now. I hate the sipping but the pain is such that I’m scared to do anything more than sip bc it will hurt. Badly. 

Tho I almost cried tonight when the rest of my family had pizza and I made the mistake of coming out of my room just in time to get hit with the smell and see that amazing melted cheese and it was only the promise that one bite would send me back to the hospital right now that kept me from “just a taste”. 

This cute little goober likes to sneak away from Papa and Grandma and come visit Mommy in her bed. I mostly curl into the fetal position to protect my tummy from her climbing but she’s learned she can climb my head and shoulders without too much protest (I couldn’t lift to get her off of my right now if I wanted to) so tonight she wrapped herself around my head and sang for a bit: 

Post Op - 2 Days Later

Note: I’m still on drugs so there’s little to no proof reading atm. Sorry. 

Hey y’all! Sorry I haven’t posted sooner/more. I’m okay just kinda got my butt kicked. Apparently most people with the sleeve are home the next day and need very little pain meds. But I also had a hiatus hernia repair done while they were in there. What’s that you say? Well we found it when we did the pre op scope to see if there were any surprises. Ya know how your esophagus passes through your diaphragm (that big muscle that moves up and down to make you breathe)? It’s supposed to be a pretty small passage way. Well apparently having babies really did make me puke my guts up bc mine was “really, just extremely large” and they were emphatic that it had to be surgically fixed and soon even if I decided against the sleeve I would still have to have surgery to fix that. And if you google a sleeve is supposed to take just 90 mins to perform but a hiatus hernia repair is more like 2-3 hours and apparently most people stay in the hospital more like 3 days after that one. 

So Bc of the hernia repair I’ve had significantly more pain than I was anticipating. It’s not like my poor diaphragm ever gets a break from the constant labor of making me breathe so it hasn’t been super pleased with me. And it frequently hurts to swallow like down in my chest where the hernia repair is, it’s like no I do not want to stretch and allow this sip of water through. I’m still mad at you. 

Nausea isn’t too terrible today. Had to work pretty dang hard that first day to keep from puking and tearing up my freshly repaired hernia. But I tell you the threat of having to have this fixed, again has worked wonders for my ability to breathe through the nausea. 

So I’m home where sleeping through the night with out being woken every other hour to check vitals and draw blood or whatever the hell they want to do me now all night long is just lovely. My biggest problem is my adorable 21 month old who doesn’t understand why I’m not picking her up or why I won’t let her bounce, climb or sit on my belly. Good news is she decided to love me and find me acceptable anyways. 

I’m hoping that if I continue to be good and play nice my body will forgive me soon. Right now it’s been clear liquids yesterday and today. I’m drinking from a little 30ml medicine up. Supposed to drink one of those every 15 mins when I’m awake. And it takes some doing to keep all that down so I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to manage thick liquids starting tomorrow. Think I’m going to have to work my way up to it for sure.