So, it’s been a while since I’ve visited VST. I felt like I was overdoing it. I needed to rest my brain a bit from all the sleeve business. I guess as I get closer I’m getting a little overwhelmed and nervous about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still 100% ready to do the daggone thing, I just felt like I was letting it consume me, and I needed a bit of a breather.

So since I’ve been here last I had an echocardiogram done. I gotta admit, I had no idea what an echocardiogram was, just thought it was a more high tech EKG. In a way it was. The best way I can describe it is to call it a sonogram for your heart. It was painless and very interesting to see the chambers of my heart and also to see it beating. I got nervous cause the tech would take snapshots of my heart from different angles, but she said “hmm” a lot during the process. I asked her if something was wrong and she said “no, I just moan sometimes”. I know that she’s not allowed to give me medical info or diagnoses, so I worried and worried until I heard from the doctor that things looked good. I also did a stress test – had to run on a treadmill that inclined and sped up every three minutes. I did pretty good, lasted about 10 minutes on the stupid thing. I was ready to give up after 5 minutes, but I wanted to prove to my doc that my heart was strong so I pushed through that ten minutes like a champ. It felt like an eternity, but I made it! LOL

The nurse who tended to me during the stress test (they strapped a heart and BP monitor to my mid section while I was on the treadmill) asked me why I was doing the tests. I explained that I was trying to get clearance for bariatric surgery. She smiled, and didn’t say anything. I could tell she wanted to say something, and I was ready for her if she was gonna give me the “you don’t have to do surgery to lose weight” speech. Instead she told me that she recently had to have her lapband removed because of the complications it caused. She tried to live with it for 11 months. She lost about 16 pounds total, and dealt with incessant vomiting and acid reflux. It finally slipped, and she decided to have it removed. She said she’s maintained the 16 pounds she’s lost since she removed it, but she would never do any type of WLS again. She wasn’t bitter, she just chalked it up to it not being for her. I told her that I was having the sleeve and she didn’t even know what it was. She said she wished that the sleeve was available when she was pursuing WLS, but wonders if she wouldn’t have had the same problems. She doesn’t regret doing it, but is pissed that she’ll be taking prilosec for the rest of her life. It was a nice conversation. AND she didn’t judge me or try to make me reconsider my own decision. I wished her luck and went on my way.

I am finally going to meet with my surgeon today *biting nails*. I’m hoping for a date in early September which is right around the corner so I have to hustle and get this psych eval done. I’ve been taking off from work so much for these appointments that I have to be really careful because my boss is definitely taking notice. The psych eval is the last test I’ll need to submit to my insurance. Gotta hurry up an git er done!

I also found a “sleeve sister”! We’ve only known each other for about a month, but this VSG journey is bonding us and is making the process so much easier to go through. We’re working with the same doctors and are able to compare notes. We have many things in common, and had a really heartfelt talk over dinner last week that I appreciated more than she’ll probably ever know.