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Lap Band Paperwork/PCP Appt.

Okay, so I went to my primary care doctor today, with all my paperwork. I was nervous to ask her for the letter of medical necessity so I talked about my foot first. Apparently I have heel spurs and she suggested orthopedic shoes. Uggh! I think I"m going to try a heel pad. She mentioned that it can come from excess weight. I think she was just about to suggest some kind of new diet....ugh..That was the perfect opportunity to bring up the fact that I wanted lap band surgery. She looked king of confused, then looked through my chart. Well, you do qualify, she said..and then pondered it. She said, well, what about RNY instead? It has more proven results. She's big on proven research. I asked her for Seasonale birth control a year ago and she said no because there wasn't enough research on the long term results. I told her that I felt that Lap Band was better for me and cited the reasons. She said she' d had two patients that it had failed on. I asked her what she meant by failed (ie. did they die or what?) She said they ate around the band and gained the weight back and you had to be very committed if the band was going to work. I told her that's me exactly. Because I am very committed. I pointed out that I lost 77 pounds two years ago on weight watchers and the gym I go to told me I'd gone to the gym more days that year than any other member. Then she seemed to get excited about it because she started typing (my letter, maybe?) and started piling up my justifications for surgery or my insurance (heel spurs now...back pain, joint pain, she said my blood pressure was borderline, I told her that my back hurt and she said, "Excellent!" She measured my waist, ordered a chest xray, ordered the Thyroid test, a diabetes/insulin test (not sure why) and a bunch of other blood tests. She wanted a stress test, but later decided they'd deny it, because of my lack of symptoms. Then she told me she wouldn't approve it unless I quit smoking. I told her I wanted to do that anyway. She said I had to quit at least 2 weeks before surgery. She told me she'd see me again before surgery and I had to quit before she'd give me clearance and not to lie about it. I agreed not to lie. I have issues with lying to a doctor who's in charge of my health and safety. I don't think I'd ever lie to my doc, what's the point? Anyway, I told her I probably needed help quitting and she suggested Chiabix? However, my insurance doesn't cover smoking cessation (i know, crazy) and i heard it's expensive, so I suggested Wellbutrin, because that's also an antidepressant, so I think they'll cover it. She prescribed that and Xanax because she said I'll be bitchy. No argument there. She made an appointment in a month and I have to have quit smoking by then and she'll give me clearance for the surgery. She's an insurance guru so I'm actually starting to believe this will happen. She also sent over a referral for a surgery consult with my lap band surgeon. WHOOO HOOOO!
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

New start

Okay, I'm gettting some new motivation. I've been hovering between 251 and 253 this week. Not bad considering I'm on a mini vacation from work and I am finally able to eat as my band has loosened up a bit. I'm determined to get under 250 (on my home scale!!). I bought a tennis racquet and two sets of tennis balls as I only had one racquet and I'm trying to convince some of my friends to play tennis with me in the evenings. I'm kind of burned out on the gym, and singles tennis is great exercise and I like to play competitive games. The only problem is that none of my friends actually play tennis, hence me buying an extra racquet. But I figure even if we chase the balls around, it's good exercise. The weather however has not been cooperating. It has been raining hard for 2 weeks straight. Even if it's not raining, the ground is so wet, it's sure to mean soggy tennis balls. I'm hoping it clears up this week so I can add evening tennis to my activities. I plan to go to the gym regularly this week, add in tennis and walking the dog, and go through my closet. Literally 90% of the clothes I own I cannot wear due to them being way too big. This is a great feeling, but also leaves me with nothing to wear. I went to Macy's for their memorial day sale and bought three shirts and a pair of pants for $50. I am in an 18W in the plus size in the tops and bottoms, though the pants are kind of big on me. As for eating, I need to log my food this week, and eat protein, protein, protein! I still have good restriction, so I should lose weight if I eat enough protein each day and exercise. I also am determined to get out of this loneliness/boredom funk by keeping my schedule busy exercising, cleaning out my closet, and I also bought a new book to read. I told my boyfriend I thought we should cool out for like a week because I've been really emotional and have been bitchy with him. He doesn't understand and asked why I can't talk to him if there's something stressing me out in my life. I plan to tell him about the surgery when we have some time alone together--which we haven't lately. We've spent alot of time together, but it's been with friends and his famly around. The time has come to tell him, I just HATE talking about weight with a boyfriend and it's very awkward for me to bring up the surgery. I also have no idea what his reaction will be or how I'm going to bring it up. I have to go back to work tomorrow, which I'm not really looking forward to, though it will give me structure and hopefully keep me busy so I get out of this loneliness/boredom funk. I work the rest of this week, all of next week, and then I'm off for a week. I don't really have any plans, as my money is tight. I'm hoping to use it as a time to get grounded and just focus on myself and get myself together. I need to get back to being the productive, motivated, happy person that I have been, and not this emotional, needy, anxious, person that I seem to have become the last couple of weeks. I need to keep focused on my goals!!!!
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

Yay!

232 today...after going from 238 on my home scale the day of my last doctor's appt two weeks ago, then going down to 234 on my liquid diet, and then back up to 240, I am finally starting to see some downward movement, even though it's only a few pounds in the last two weeks, I'll take it. I'm only 2 pounds away from hitting the 100 pound down mark!   oh and NSV--my size 18 jeans that were super tight a few weeks ago now are falling down. I need a belt, only my waist is too wide for regular sized belts right now without feeling squished. Also, a ran into an old friend last weekend who looked at me, did a double take and was like, wow, you're looking great. Now he's known me for many years, and I don't think he's seen me at my heaviest, so that's a compliment for sure.   I've gotten into a better groove with eating. I'll eat healthy 90% of the time and then allow myself the occasional fast food fix or junk food, but I look at the calories before I eat it and make sure it's nothing crazy. For example, I had a grilled chicken to go wrap from Wendy's 250 calories for lunch and another day I was going to allow myself a taco supreme from taco bell 200 calories, but then I thought it would be too messy to eat at work so I ate a healthy choice frozen meal instead. I've been trying to eat breakfast so sometimes I have a mini blueberry muffin, one day I had the low fat starbucks blueberry coffee cake which I'm sure used up the majority of my daily calories, but it was so good. I did skip lunch that day and had a super healthy dinner, so it worked out. I have to watch it right when I get home from work because that is when I'm stressed and tired and want to pig out, so I try to go to the gym or plan something with my boyfriend for that time. I eat 2 tablespoons of crunchy peanut butter some days at that time to hold me over until dinner. Dinner has been good because I get really solid protein food like chicken breasts and peas or last night it was steak and lobster tail. Since my fill is good, I can only eat a very small portion, but I'm full when I eat it, so it works out great. 3 meals and a snack in between lunch and dinner seem to keep me away from the ravenous hunger stage. I have to eat different things or I get bored and want to revert to crappy food.
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

back to basics

So since my great doctor's appointment I've had really good restriction. I'm not hungry very often and when I do eat, if I don't chew well and eat small bites, I get a very painful feeling in my chest. I thought I was going to have to throw up a deli sliced piece of turkey for lunch on Monday. I waited it out and it went down. I lost another 3-4 pounds after the fill, and then after a weekend of eating some lemon bars that I made for my boyfriend (bad idea to have some left over) and drinking three marguaritas Sat night and 1 big alcoholic drink on Sunday, I was up the 3-4 pounds again. :thumbup: I cracked down this week and am now eating like I do when I'm serious about losing and that is coffee, yogurt, cottage cheese and a healthy dinner. Last night I had broiled fish (orange roughy) and broccoli. I've been to the gym every day so far this week and am actually headed there now. I'm down 2 of the 4 I gained back. It's scary that I can gain weight so easily. I know that my weight fluctuates with water and throughout the day so I try not to be too hard on myself, but I can't let myself get off track. I think some of it may be due to only eating liquids right after a fill and then switching to solid foods. I'm staying at 1200 calories a day, so I should continue to go down if my metabolism functions like it should. It's so easy to get addicted to sweets, so I'm outlawing them again for awhile. I really have been having trouble eating a lot of different foods, but I need to just remember to eat slow slow slow. I'm going to church with my bf on Sunday and then we're going to sunday brunch, so I'll need to really be careful about eating slowly. I've been obsessing about how bad my boobs look and I'm getting saggy skin fears. I know I'm happy about the weight I've lost and sometimes I feel that I look really good and then other times I'll catch myself in the mirror and get horrified. I know I need to concentrate on losing and working out and see what happens, but my arms look really bad. They just hang. It's not all skin, there's a lot of fat still in them, but wow they look bad. If the excess skin was gone, they would be pretty small and toned right now. Oh well, I guess you're supposed to wait until you're at goal for year to give your skin time to shrink back, so we'll see. I'm just impatient and want to look good now!   Here's a new pic I just took.
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

btw

By the way, My mom took some pictures at the hospital and I plan to post them as soon as I can get them uploaded.....I'm sure they look horrendous, but that will be even better when I compare them to my "after" pics in a few months!!:thumbup:
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

Leak?

So I've had a really bad cold for the past week, so I haven't been to the gym and I've also been really hungry lately. I don't have much restriction so I've been eating pretty badly. I haven't gained any weight, but I haven't lost any either and I have yet to see 269 on the scale. I have another doctor appointment on Tuesday and I'm going to ask him if it's possible that I have a leak. I just don't get how I could barely eat any food at all three weeks ago and now I can eat anything (almost). It's also going to be one of the slower months for weight loss. I'm going to try and step it up this last week, but going from eating nothing to eating alot and not working out has not resulted in a large weight loss for the month. I'll be lucky to have lost 10 pounds, and I say lucky because it may be less. I'm going to count my blessings though and get back on it this week. I also am going to try for more restriction at the next appointment.   The guy I've been dating for the past month may know all my secrets including all the gory details of my lapband. My hard drive crashed and he helped me out by putting in the new one, but a few days later he "mentioned" that he was able to save my old hard drive--onto his computer!!! He said he didn't look through it, but I don't know that i believe him. It had before and after pictures, the letter I wrote to the insurance company to get the surgery, and a Video blog I took before I started this whole thing. It's not that I don't plan on telling him eventually if this works out, it's just that my computer had really personal stuff on it and I'm embarrassed by the fact that he may know it all now. But hindsight is 20/20 and I can't do anything about it now, so I'm going to try and not stress over it. If he did read it all, he's still talking to me but wow, I look really bad in some of those "before" pictures. I also would like to explain it in my own time rather than have someone reading through my personal journals, that are more personal than this journal by far! I'm trying not to stress over this! I'm hoping he didn't read through my hard drive!   I'm going out of town this weekend for my cousin's shower, so I'll be unable to go to the gym at my parent's house and of course they love to push food at me, but I'm determined to lose some more weight before the appointment on Tuesday. I'll keep updates on how it goes.
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

1
 

Message from 10/7/10

So I had my surgery for breast reduction and abdominoplasty on Tuesday. They said it went really well. I did have a lot of pain and discomfort, but I am also heavily medicated, so I've been sleeping all the time. The breasts really don't hurt at all, but the stomach muscles hurt a lot the first day, and the sutures have hurt the past two days. I have my follow up appointment today. They removed 11 pounds altogether. I haven't seen the results yet because I'm in this body "armor" and support bra and I can't take it off until after my post-op appt today. I'm almost afraid to see it because I know it's going to look bad at first. I did look down right after surgery and was woah!! and the nurses thought something was wrong, but I said, my stomach is gone! It was a really great feeling. My mom is here taking care of me. I think it would be almost impossible to do this without someone here because I need her help just to get in and out of bed. The stomach hurts alot whenever I move, but as long as I stay still, everything is okay. My back and neck are really sore from having to sleep in the same position. All in all, not super fun and very uncomfortable, but not intolerable and definitely worth it if it ends up looking/feeling good. I'll post more soon.
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

0
 

Only 1 drain left

I had a follow up appt. today at the plastic surgeon's office and one of the drains on my hips came out. They think the other one can come out on Monday. It's still outputting quite a bit of fluid. It has to be below 30 ccs output in a 24 hour period before it can come out. I am ready for it to be gone but I understand that it greatly reduces the amount of painful swelling. My left side has been hurting and I'm not really sure why. My new belly button was leaking some fluid and the Dr.'s office thinks that some of the fluid from the belly button may be going to my left side. They stated everything looks really good though and that i shouldn't be worried. I no longer have to put bandages on my incisions. I can just wear the surgical bra and the compression garmet. After 2 weeks, which is Tuesday, I only have to wear the compression garmet during the day, not at night. I have to wear the bra 24/7 for 6 weeks total. My breasts are starting to look really good and the Nurse Practitioner mentioned how they seem much rounder and I agree. My stomach is also starting to look flatter. I asked her if it was going to be totally tight and flat and she said that they pulled it tight and flat during the surgery, but that because of the swelling, it is lumpy and swollen. She said that it will get flatter and tighter, but that because the skin has been stretched from gaining and losing alot of weight that it loses the elasticity so it may not be as tight as it was in the surgery. I'm hoping that wearing these compression garmets will help it get tighter. I don't know if I mentioned this before but originally the surgeon said that he'd have to do free nippple grafts for my breast reduction because of the length of my breasts. In this scenario I would definitely lose all sensation in my breasts. I wasn't happy with this so he said that he would try to do the normal way which is moving the entire nipple and the attachments, but that he may have to switch mid surgery if the tissue wasn't getting blood supply. Well, he was able to do the normal one and I have full sensation in my nipples! This is a big deal for me and I am super happy about it. I definitely credit his surgical skills because I read alot about how if your nipples are a certain length from where they need to go that they have to do the free nipple graft--which is taking them off completely and reposiitioning them which guarantees a complete loss of sensation in the nipple and they will not get erect and you cannot breast feed. But, yay, that is not the case for me! He had also talked about the possibility of having to do a vertical incision to get the stomach tight which would have meant a long vertical scar. However, he did not have to do this either, so everything went really well. I'm feeling better every day and the office staff was so nice. They said I am a very easy patient. I'm super excited because I wore a shirt tonight that I have saved since I was 15 years old (I'm 31 now). It has been too small since I was 15, but it was my favorite shirt ever. I tried it on tonight and it fits perfectly!!!:thumbup:
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

0
 

plastics recovery

So plastics recovery is going well. My weight went up about 8 pounds but then went down 10 in one week. I think I was having major swelling. I went to the lap band doc and got a fill and am now super tight. I weighed myself and I am at 197.6. Onederland!!!!!! First time since I was a teenager. My stomach is looking much better. It's lumpy when I sit down, but looks good standing up. My breasts look awesome. They are still healing though and I can't wear any underwire bras for another month. It's really hard to find bras with no underwire. I'm pretty happy with how I look when I'm in clothes right now. I have alot more confidence and when people see me, they say WOW you look awesome! I am now in a large size in tops or shirts and still a 14 in pants. I'm not sure if that will change when the swelling goes down all the way or not. I am 5'9"/5'10" so that's not bad for my height. I would need to lose another 20 pounds to reach my overall goal. I've started back at the gym but taking is slowly due to the swelling I've had and the belly button issues. I go back to work next week :scared2: I've really enjoyed the time off. Things are going well though. I'm really happy about the results of my surgery!
trina4ufl

trina4ufl

0
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