Well, only 3 days to go before surgery day! I got a call this morning to pre-register for the surgery. They just needed to verify information. They set up an appointment for a nurse to call me tomorrow between 1 and 2, to ask questions about medical history for the anesthesiologist. I won't know my surgery time until some time on Thursday.
After all the doubts and second-guessing, I'm finally at peace with this decision. I know it is the best thing I could do for myself. If I didn't do this, I would eventually be over 300 lbs, and have additional health issues, and probably die of a heart attack before I was 50. I can't weight to get off my medications, and get rid of this sleep apnea, and just be able to keep up with my kids.
4 days to go and pretty uneventful, but I still want to blog every day, at least until I get to a certain point.
I was down another 2 lbs. this morning on the pre-op diet. Current weight: 268. The diet is actually getting easier, now that the headaches have stopped (for the most part).
I bought a new scale yesterday, our old one was crappy, the plastic cover to the button to turn it on broke, and I had to use my toe to turn it on. This new one is actually a Weight Watchers scale, that does weight, BMI, bone density and water level. All for only $29 at Bed Bath & Beyond.
I just got back from Costco, and noticed something while I was there. I noticed that my entire outlook toward food has changed. And I haven't even had my surgery yet! Normally, I would stop at every free sample station to try them out. Not today. A guy walked by with a big slice of pizza, loaded with toppings. I looked at it in disgust! I feel a sort of disdain toward food, like it's the food's fault for letting me get to this point. I just got the same feeling when a Red Lobster commercial came on the tv. Normally, I would have been salivating, and wanting to gorge myself. But again, disgust. I'm not sure what it all means, just thought it was interesting. I suppose a psychologist could give me some insight into what it means.
First, the good news - I'm down 4 lbs since yesterday! So strange.
Before pre-op diet, I was 274 lbs on my home scale.
Pre-op diet:
Day 1 - Day 2: UP 1 lb.???? (275 lbs.)
Day 2 - Day 3: Down 1 lb. to original starting weight (274 lbs.)
Day 3-Day 4: Down 4 lbs. (270 lbs.)
OK, now the not so good news. I'm having doubts about this whole thing. Doubting myself, thinking "why can't I just do this myself?" It's just that it's all seeming like a huge diet - high-protein, low-carbs, measuring and weighing food. I've had some good success with low-carb diets in the past, only to gain it all back (plus more) when I went off them. Could I lose all this weight on my own if I was strict with my intake, and avoid such a drastic measure? Maybe. But I hope that this will be a tool to help me maintain the weight loss once I get to where I want to be. I know it will be a lot of work, and I'm ok with that. I just hope that it will eventually become second nature, and not always constantly measuring and weighing my food.
But then I see all the success stories here, and read about people who had the exact same doubts I am having. I've seen very few people say they regretted having this surgery. Even the ones who had complications are saying they would do it all over again. That is very reassuring, to know that I'm not all alone.
Two days down on the pre-op diet, and MY GOD the headache I had last night! I went to bed at 9 because the pain was unbearable. It's still there a bit today. From what I've read, everyone seems to say that day 2 and 3 of the pre-op diet is the hardest.
First day of pre-op diet done
Well, I've done a day on the pre-op diet, and realized I probably didn't need to start until today. I don't know what I was thinking, probably that I'd be doing it from Thursday - Thursday and then have surgery on Friday. But Thursday to Thursday is actually 8 days. Oh well, what's one more day! It actually wasn't that bad. I had no problem getting enough fluids in. I drank 4 protein shakes which is a total of 32 oz, at least 5 8oz cups of water, a V8 juice. Total fluids were 84 oz, well more than the 64 they want. I definitely didn't eat enough though. The diet says that on top of the protein shakes, to eat 6-10 servings of items off of a very small list. I had 3.
Here's how my day went:
8:30 am - had a chocolate protein shake. I then mixed up 16 oz of strawberry protein shake to bring to work with me.
11:30 am - I was starving, so had a Dannon Light n Fit yogurt
12 pm - Drank the first 8 oz of the strawberry protein shake
1 pm - Drank a V8 juice
2:30 pm - Drank the rest of the strawberry shake, then left work to go to my nutritionist visit (more on that below)
6:30 pm - Had a vanilla protein shake, and a packet of cream of wheat.
That was it for the day. I really wasn't hungry for more. Sure, there was a slice of leftover pizza that the kids ate staring me in the face, and cookies in the cupboard. But I wasn't tempted. Even at work, where we celebrate all of the birthdays in a month on a given day, and that day happened to be yesterday. There were bagels, muffins, cupcakes. I just walked past them to get to my shake in the fridge, no problem.
Nutritionist visit
My doctor does group nutritionist visits, so you are there with other people you don't know. This was my second visit, and it was a very quick visit (about 20 minutes). Pretty much a waste, she does nothing more than go over what is written in the packet they gave at the first visit, concentrating on the pre-op and one week post-op diets. She says that she will be at our visit with the doctor one week post-op to go over the next phase of the diet. One interesting thing however - when my wife and I arrived for the visit, the nutritionist took us in to weigh us. Somehow we both weighed exactly 6 lbs MORE than we did at our first visit a month and a half ago. Yet, I weigh the same on the home scale now as I did then. I'm not sure what to think about that. So, now I supposedly weigh 280 lbs, and 274 at home.
Sleep apnea
After the nutritionist visit, my wife and I had an appointment with our pulmonologist, who is also our primary doctor. He had given us a machine to do an at-home sleep study. I had already known I had sleep apnea, I had done a study 5-6 years ago. I just cannot sleep with that damned machine! Anyway, we got the results back yesterday. He gave my wife her results first. She had 20 incidents an hour, which is pretty bad. But he said that because she is going for the surgery soon, he will not make her do the machine. He said once she loses 20 lbs, it should go away. Me, on the other hand, had 52 incidents an hour, with my oxygen level dropping down to 83 at some point. He said that I was the second worst he has seen in his office, one person had 62. He says that even though I am going for the surgery, it will probably take at least 50 lbs of weight loss before I see any relief in that, so I need to be on a machine. He ordered me a new machine, that automatically adjusts to what level you need. The problem I had with the old one is that I think they set it too high, and it would wake me up. Not to mention the mask irritates my nose and forehead. I'm willing to give it a chance again, I don't want to die in my sleep. We'll see how it goes.
So, this morning I started my pre-op diet. I had an 8 oz. chocolate protein shake this morning, and mixed 16 oz. of a strawberry one to bring to work with me. I am trying all of the brands to see which ones I like best. So far, I've tried the vanilla from Costco, and the chocolate and strawberry are 2 different brands my wife picked up at Walgreens, I believe. I am doing the powdered protein, following the nutritionist's recommendations that it be made from whey isolate protein, and 3g or less of carbs. I liked the vanilla, and the chocolate this morning was pretty good too. I will be drinking the strawberry throughout the day today, but have yet to start that. My wife went out to the grocery store to pick up some other things for the diet (not that there are a lot of things to choose from!). I also brought a dannon light yogurt and a V8 juice with me to work. My wife said she picked me up some other 'surprises' at the grocery store for the start of my journey, but I've yet to see what those are.
This afternoon, I have to go to my final nutritionist appointment, and to my primary/pulmonary doctor for my final pre-op test - a pulmonary stress test. Then that should be it for my pre-op clearances! Thank God my job is understanding about me leaving early or coming in late, and taking days off. I only plan on being out for 6 days (my surgery is on a Friday, plus the entire next week). Hopefully that will be enough. I do have the option of working from home if I'm still having issues when I'm due to go back.
This is my first blog entry, so I will give a brief synopsis of what has happened so far.
I am 9 days from my surgery, on March 8, and will be starting my pre-op diet tomorrow. It's getting very real for me now, and I'm FINALLY starting to feel a bit nervous (and excited of course). Dr. Karl Strom will doing the procedure at Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel NJ.
My wife and I are taking this journey together, although I will have a month and a half head start on her, due to her not being able to get out of work until the end of April. We had originally decided on getting the lap band surgery, but after doing lots of reading and research decided that the sleeve was the better option for us.
I've gone for all of my pre-op testing, except for one last thing tomorrow. My surgery was scheduled so quickly, that some of the doctors were booked up and I had to wait for dates for pre-op stuff. I went for my bloodwork and chest X-ray on President's day, did an EGD 2 days ago on Monday, and a cardiac stress test yesterday. This morning I had the final consultation with the surgeon. Tomorrow I have my second and final Nutritionist visit, and a Pulmonary stress test. Then I should be done with all of my pre-op stuff, yay!
That about sums up where I'm at now, I'm sure I've left out a lot of details, but now that I've started to blog I hope to keep up with it.
