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.