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Recently we were on vacation, and while walking in a quaint shopping district, I notice a woman's reflection out of the corner of my eye......I did a double take when I realized.......that's MY reflection. My poor husband....I stop and ask "do I really look like that?" He puts his arm around my shoulder, smiles, and kisses the top of my head I'm wearing 12's and 14's, loving it and being able to easily find clothes I like that fit, love being able to move easier, in less pain......I even wore a bathing suit and swam in public while on vacation LOL Even with my bat wings and flabby thighs.......it's all good.............BUT....... Somehow I'm still trying to shake that larger image of myself that is tatoo'd on my brain -- like everything else, I'm a work in progress, I guess....

So I thought I would post some pictures. The one with the dinosaur is pre-surgery. In April Size 26W. The one with me in the mint top is a couple weeks post surgery 24W pants and 2x top. And the one in the dress is from today, in an 18/20 dress. And with curly hair. The top of the dress is actually a bit loose. I might be more like a 16 in the chest area. I miss my boobs. LOL! So that's that.

When i made the call to the bariatric clinic in February I wasn't sure how this journey would turn out. I wasn't sure if my insurance would cover it, I wasn't sure if my family was going to accept it, I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. As the days progressed to weeks and then to months, I'm finally at the tail of the process and the beginning of the real adventure but it seems things have s l o w e d down considerably. I flew through the initial part of the process and everything went swimmingly until the sleep study which was a bit of a delay. Then my pre-op appointment was still several weeks from then (and still several weeks from now). So now I wait. And as they say: And idle mind is the devil's playground! I find myself going a little wild in my waiting time. I was so focused at the beginning of the process but now that i have a few weeks to go I'm eating things just because i know I can't eat them for a while. I think I've gained some weight and that can't be good since in my pre-op they may require me to lose more weight before surgery. I've decided that today is the day. Not tomorrow, not Monday, but TODAY I'm going to start making sure I have my water in, eating things that will help along this road, and really re-focus because I don't want to go this far and then discover that my surgery will be delayed because I wanted to indulge myself. I've spent the last 30 years indulging myself and it's time for a change. I'm going to weigh myself today and set a 10 pound goal for my pre-op appoitnment on August 18th. I'm going to accomplish this by drinking water, walking, and planning my meals and sticking to the plan! Did anyone else go completely off the rails during this time frame?

So I had my psych eval this afternoon. I found myself wondering on the drive there what kinds of questions they would ask. I really didn't worry about it but I was curious. Since I wasn't a patient, I had to fill out all the new patient stuff...but it was kind of cool because it was all on a tablet and went pretty quickly. The Dr. was able to see my responses as I entered them and since I was the last patient of the afternoon I actually went in about 10 minutes early. I'll try to list as many questions as I can remember: 1. How long have you been married? 2. Why are you here today? 3. How long have you been considering WLS? 4. Which surgery do you think you want? This one was followed by a discussion about talking to the surgeon, what did the surgeon recommend...etc 5. What are the cons to the surgery? I started with the medical ones...he pushed towards the "other ones" things like changing behaviors, social situations, family issues.... 6. What are the pros to the surgery? 7. How long has weight been an issue? I briefly wondered if this was a trick question....like "when did you stop kicking your dog...lol 8. What else do you hope to accomplish with your surgery? 9. Have you ever been in a psychiatric hospital? 10. Tell me about your depression. (self reported by me, have been on anti depressant for about 6 years and it runs in my family) 11. Tell me about your family's weight/relation to food. Then we did some memory stuff...he asked me to remember three words, then asked me to spell world, then spell it backward (harder than you think under pressure ), who was president..before him...before him....and then he asked me what the 3 words were. I can only guess that this was to make sure I was able to follow things???? 12. Have you ever binged and then purged? 13.Ever been treated for drug or alcohol abuse? When we were done he said he thought there were 4 main reasons insurance companies require the psych eval: 1. To ensure the person has a good understanding of the commitment level/risks (although the surgeons office also assess this I would think especially if you have a supervised diet period) 2. To ensure that there aren't any environmental issues that might keep you from being successful 3. To help ensure you are able to follow instructions/guidelines 4. To help ensure that you will be a good patient for the surgeon (although he didn't elaborate on that one). All in all easy peasy. Next Monday is a busy day for pre-insurance testing...I have my second NUT apt, an upper GI, an EKG and my cardiac clearance apt! Beth