crosswind

You should absolutely call your doctor if you're concerned. Referring pain to your left shoulder could be a leak starting because that is where stomach pain refers to, but while you are CALLING YOUR DOCTOR I wouldn't be too worried. My back hurts because I'm not using my ab muscles, because I'm babying my stomach. I'm afraid to let a stiff wind blow on my left upper abs so I'm carrying my body all twisty. And a lowgrade fever is only medically significant over 101. 5 -- according to my surgeon anyway. From what I've read from leaky sleevesters, there was no mistaking what they were feeling for some otther milder problem. They felt like HELL. I felt sick, tired and rotten for about ten days too -- then I only felt semi-rotten and then I got an ear infection. You sound kind kind of like I did the first ten days and I'm pretty much okay so far. But...I'm just a chick on the internet so read this post while the phone is ringing as you CALL YOUR DOCTOR.

Thanks all I went to the store and bought some cottage cheese, refried Beans, mashed potatoes in a box, eggs, taco seasoning and salsa, and there this indian thing they sell prepackaged called Palak Paneer which is mild indian cottage cheese with spinach sauce. It's really good, nine carbs per serving and 170 cals. I can not *wait* for the mashed potatoes.

Even if it is a leak, your surgeon knows what to do. Don't be afraid -- it completely sucks to have a schizophrenic stomach but as long as you're geting prompt, appropriate medical attention you'll be okay. You know if you feel too awful between now and then you can just go to the ER, tell them you were waiting for your appointment and something bad happened so you would like your attention NOW please. What a leak is is really a very bad, very fancy infection. Stomach contents leak into your body cavity and your body cavity does NOT LIKE THAT so it attacks the foriegn matter and makes you feel like you've been invaded by aliens. It can be fixed -- either through antibiotics if it's a small leak or a repeat surgery if it is not. Scary, I know, But you're gonna be okay. EGBOK.

I tried frozen lowcarb yogurt one day and it made me sick. I didn't feel guilty, it *tasted* great, but my sleeve did not like it one bit. I could never moralize at anyone for the stuff they put in their mouths and swallow. I've been so desperate for carbs before I've eaten like, a jar of frosting with a spoon; I could easily suck down a whole pizza I ordered for myself. I didn't even feel sick afterwards -- I didn't even feel *full* half the time. Since I was a kid I've had an Iron stomach and could basically eat like a goat. What I want to say though is that the soft diet isn't for weight loss, it's to protect your staple line since you just got your innards cut in half and stapled back together with a fancy gun. Let me say that another way; PROTECT YOUR STAPLE LINE. Think of it as like a seawall or a Maginot line that keeps you from having to get wheeled into an operating room with a raging fever of 105. I'm sure it was fine you ate that but you honestly, no bullshit shouldn't do it again until your doctor says its safe. Bread products agglutinize in the stomach and become little staple-eating starch balls. And starch balls lodging into the spaces between your staples -- this is not good. This is bad. Be careful out there, k?

So Im back. I was meaning to do more updates from my well-appointed hospital suite in Mexicali Mexico but I was actually too high to type anything. Anyone who is considering going there must consider this first: their drugs are amazing. Also once you're embroiled in something so wildly outrageous there's not much time to put too many sentences together but I didn't forget about you guys. I am...sleeved. In an earlier post I mentioned that I was late to my surgery, which does not bode well for how timely I'll be to my own funeral. I woke up late. The bus was leaving the hotel without me. I told them to go. And I had a good twenty minutes to recalibrate my options. I am alone in Mexico in a pretty nice hotel. Shaping up to be a pretty gorgeous day with some bright golden sun whizzing down off the mountains and a bottle of unopened Water on the desk still cold from the air conditioning. Cervezas by the pool? I could probably pay somebody to take me back into San Diego, check out Sea World, go see the beach... And then the phone rang and it was Yolanda and she scolded me and told me to get my ass downstairs to catch the shuttle so...that was that. I was back on the grid. So since I was late, the first thing Lucy did was march me into x-ray and have me stand in front of the...radioactive chalkboard thing without my bra on. Then she dumped me in my room, gave me a gown and something she called a bloodthinner in a shot above my hip bone. It might have been called a blood thinner but I will call it Oblivion Elixir X because suddenly it did not seem odd at all that I was in a Mexican hospital in a gown about to have my stomach cut out. No, not at all. People do this, right? All the time? The hospital was actually kind of cool. It reminded me of something out of a movie ( not, like, Apocalyptic Zombie Wars) or something from the 40's. It was intensely clean, with lots of marble and dark wood. A bank of pay phones right before the marble staircase that took you to the upper floors. It was kind of attractive in a way but clearly...you know, you're not in Kansas anymore, okay? This was not an American hospital. It was Somewhere Else. Another hint regarding that would be the fact that basically nobody but the doctor and the people who worked for Dr. Aceves spoke much English at all. I've read accounts of getting sleeved from other posters who must have had an entirely different staff than the one that was on that week because *no one* I spoke to there knew more than what you could spoon out of a medical phrasebook. Now here is the thing about people who do not speak your language. They are annoying. They are just as annoying to you as you are to them. How fun is it really to have anyone charge at you with their mouths moving and this gibberish coming out.? And don't get me wrong -- these were nice people. Nice, professional, clean, concerned, hard-working, and intent on communicating but..no ingles. This was an inconvenience that ranged from merely a nuisance to verging on infuriating ( I think, but as I said I was too high to really notice much of my internal state) so if you go there -- COME PREPARED or at least more prepared than I was. Also, when I say the staff was concerned and professional I'm overlooking the time I came out of my room at four in the morning looking for a pain pill and saw no one behind the desk, until I came closer and saw this kid in hospital whites who had fashioned a kind of a bed out of three or four office chairs behind the counter. One of the chairs sat lower than the others so he looked like he was sleeping almost upside down, like a bat. But, you know, no harm done. I woke up Batkid and got my pain pill and all was well. The other problem was NOISE. In SPANISH. The hallways of the hospital are broad and sparkling marble, and right at the end of the hall was what appeared to be a chapel and an intensive care unit, divided from us by one thin glass door. My room had a window that looked out onto the hallway and for some reason, no matter what time of day it was, people wanted to collect right under it and conduct their business on their cellphones or in groups of four or five. There were also construction workers fixing stuff, some sort of frankenlab across the hall that had to be hosed down with a pressure washer, and various day-to-day conversations going on with the nurses at all hours about this and that. Part of the problem was the acoustics -- how quiet can you really be in a cavernous marble hallway? This is the kind of architecture you can do experiments with where you whisper at one end and the boyscout on the other end can hear you say, " eat my shorts" with perfect clarity. So as far as peace and quiet: no hope. If you are planning a trip to Hospital Almater I'd ditch the heating pad, which I did not need, and invest in an electronic spanish phrasebook and something you can stuff under the door. My cellphone worked. Internet was out: I had to use my handy dandy Verizon wireless card which turned out to be even better because Amazon digital and Hulu were then on National Access and did not know I was not in the US and could not have House or Black Swan or Saturday Night Live. All right, so after Oblivion Elixir X we the sleeve specimens were gathered into a room and Dr. Aceves came in to give his talk. He clearly gives this talk a lot. He talked about eating after surgery, using the sleeve as a tool, and etc. There was nothing that made it more clear to me how many of these things he's done because he had obviously given that talk about....who knows? A hundred? Five hundred times? It was a good talk but it mostly reassured me that this man was not *kidding* about his ability to punch my torso open and remove most of my stomach. He knew how to do this. If you need somebody to come around and take your stomach out, this is the guy to call. It was decided that someone else be the first to get sleeved -- I was actually last because I got there late. Didn't bother me, I was on Oblivion Elixir and I just went to sleep -- and this was even *before* the real elixirs began to be handed out. So about...I don't know, three o'clock, Lucy woke me up and told me it was 45 minutes til my surgery. Then she gave me a pill. Okay, this thing was like the Matrix pill. Mine was not either blue or red but it sent me down the rabbit hole. Suddenly I wasn't even remembering that I was supposed to have surgery. I was on Planet Ten. On Planet Ten I supposed they did this sort of thing so I just went with it. I know I had to have gotten on a gurney at one point but I don't remember even that very well. I always saw people on tv getting wheeled down hallways on doctor shows and thinking geez that must be awful. Not the way they do it. I was just watching the lights go by. Then suddenly I was in this room and above my head was a light fixture that looked like a pretty spider. I felt something a little cold in my IV. Fade to black. I mean: BLACK. I mean, don't even fade, okay, just: BLACK. I know they gave me fentanyl and propanol and I also know they intubated me because they told me that before the procedure, but I had no idea it happened except when I woke up my voice didn't work right really for a couple days. I said when I woke up. Which was not in recovery. It was not even after recovery. It was like eight hours later and the thing that woke me up was I had wet the bed. Actually I knew something was sort of wrong with my bed for a long time before I even bothered to wake up. I'm not real proud to admit that but...oh my god, what was in that stuff? Not even my bladder woke me up? THAT is some good shit people. So I got out of bed. Sore in the upper left ribcage. There was a kind of pain that felt like someone was taking the two edges of my stomach and pulling it apart. Not terrible, I'd give it a four. I could feel the drain in my abdomen -- also uncomfortable. I called Batkid with the nurse call button ( and by the way -- get that thing in a position you can REACH it) and he looked at my bed. Pee pee? He said. I nodded. Lo siento! I also said " I have pain" and he filled up my IV bag with a blissful shot of morphine, which is what you get in your IV for pain until you're off the IV. Worked fast, worked like a charm. No vomiting, no nausea. I went back to sleep. For the next two days it was a little difficult to sleep on either side. My belly was still tender and the drain was still in, but I managed to be passed out at just about every opportunity. I didn't really do a lot of walking -- I mean I did enough -- but mostly I wanted to sleep. This was when the NOISE started bothering me and I would dart out of bed with a snarl on my face to stare at the...I don't know what it was, a party? A meeting? Under my bedroom window until these people went away, which really meant they edged slightly down the hallway only to seep back up again under my window for some unknown reason. It was surreal. There was even a *sign* in spanish in plain view which said something like " no molesta la fat people" that nobody paid attention to. I finally employed the nurse, who would tell them -- no molesta la fat people -- and they ignored her too. After the IV came out Breakfast lunch and dinner was chamomile tea, chicken broth, purple gatorade and diluted apple juice. The chicken broth was GREAT the first day and then sort of wore on you after a while. I stopped finishing it and drank water. I *loved* the apple juice though for some reason. I drank apple juice with lots of ice on the way home. I am a fan. And then the drain came out and I could take a shower. Bliss, bliss, a Mexican motrin and more sleep. I got a picture taken of my new tummy, which was sort of a yawn since I have no idea what my old stomach looked like; they could have made it into some kind of internal topiary and I would not have known the difference. However, one thing that was really helpful was to get an eyewitness account of my internal organs. You don't run into too many people who have seen the inside of you and I thought it was a good idea to get a report. My liver was " a little fatty" -- other than that -- perfecto. No gallstones or gallbadder issues, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, all with excellent margins. My bloodwork came back okay too -- I'm a little anemic but other than that, I'm a healthy girl with fifteen percent of her stomach. Dr. Aceves and Dr. Campos came by three times a day, every day. Yesterday morning I woke up at 5:30, took a shower, picked up my breakfast to go of chicken Soup, chamomilla and purple gatorade ( also a big recommend) and went downstairs to sit outside and wait for Ernesto. He was delivering another crew of fat people to the facility and one of them looked at me and said, hey what procedure did you get? I told them the sleeve. They said, wow, you look great! You don't even look like you had surgery! And I said, well, listen -- don't worry.The drugs they have in this place are fabulous. A couple hours later, I was on my way home. I did not need the gasx strips I made a point of buying. I did not need anything special -- there was a starbucks right by the gate and I got a big cup of plain chamomile tea with splenda and that held me over until Apple Juice Time on the plane. The movie was The Tourist. It was *terrible*.

Lol, Meggie, causing Utter Mayhem on Vertical Sleeve Talk again I see. I had to click on your recent posts to figure out what the heck you were talking about. . Nice to know that if I actually *was* passed out on the floor with a glass of Vicodin somebody would notice. And you know, I did kind of have a thought that if I never posted again after Day 17 somebody might freak out and call the FBI... So yeah, this is interesting.. I'm one of those adults who get "frequent ear infections" but that was about the last thing on my mind. I do feel better, I do feel more like myself ( sans stomach) so one has to imagine that anyone else going through the first month post-op is *very likely* to feel a little less like a crushed mouse. Good news for everyone I guess . I sort of do not have anyone to take care of me.or any insurance. Or a stomach. Little known fact: My divorce was finalized the day of my surgery. Now is that a coincidence or what? I know it's not climbing Kilimanjaro or anything but one reason I'm posting all this is because, look, if I can do this with my savings and no immediate family or any sanctions from the Borg, y'all have no excuse. I think the "offended" poster just hadn't read the Vicodin installment. I thought it was pretty funny .

. Okay I completely missed this post. THANK YOU Meggie for the compliment. It was nice to be missed. . Not offended, glad somebody cares I'm alive. Amber -- Meggie is an absolutely darling human and you should go to her vlog and see what an angel she is. She would never ever post with anything but the kindest of intentions. But actually the reason I didnt post yesterday was because I was sick as hell. My head felt like an old salami. . Back now and LOVE you Megs.

. So yesterday at the grocery store I mulled it over and decided to give baby food a reasonable and fair assessment. On my safe food list it says that boiled pureed fruits are okay, so I bought Gerber "Naturals" baby banana puree. So it's in my fridge this afternoon and I crack one of the vacuum sealed plastic Jetsons serving pods and bury a spoon. Oddly, there are really not too many baby food choices on the shelves these days. Just a couple of old standards, stuff I remember from when my baby was a baby -- banana, squash, pear -- and by this time, considering the absolute explosion in every other grocery market demographic, including Chef Ramsay in a can for cats, you'd figure babies would at this point be controlling a whole corner of the store. When my baby was a baby, I don't think I ever tasted anything I gave him. No idea why, something having to do with the food not being for *me*, so this stuff would go from the jar into his mouth and he would swallow it and that was that. If he spit it out, well he didn't know how to eat yet, right? Now I see why there has not been an exponential catfoodesque explosion in baby food flavors. I also see I've made a massive childrearing mistake. He did too know damn well how to eat. He was right on the ball there because I have *never* tasted anything as plain old noxious as Gerber Naturals banana baby food. I did not taste anything even *remotely* like a banana on that spoon. I did not tase anything I have ever tasted before in 46 years on that spoon. It could tell you what it tasted like but I'm not going to because we're all recovering from stomach surgery and I fear the description would send half the board running for their Compazine. I am picturing my rubbery little peanut spwooshing that stuff out of his mouth with a look of utter disgust and horror as if to say, " you can can't possibly mean to tell me this is food." Which is exactly what I did. Dannon Light & Fit and cream of mushroom Soup for lunch. You know, this is a lot like trying to see how long you can hold your breath underwater, only you're never not going to be underwater, so you better start growing some gills. In other news, my back hurts. I really think it's from holding myself in weird positions to try to completely insulate my jerryrigged stomach from any trauma whatsoever. After some more mulling, I crushed up a vicodin and drank it out of a wineglass. Don't tell your kids, but that is really one dandy way to down a painkiller. There's freezing rain today and tornadoes down South. I spent the morning painting a landcape I took a picture of a couple weeks ago in watercolor pencil. Could be worse I guess but I give it a C.

Thanks wellwishers! Funny thing is, I don't feel like I had major surgery. I imagine getting your stomach removed is pretty major, but since I had been so loaded with drugs and morphine my real memory was about how wild it was to just get punched out of the unverse via chemicals. I don't really *feel like* anything major happened at all. Except that I haven't been out of the country in twenty years and I got to go to Mexico. I remember the day after surgery in the hospital. I got "Black Swan" off of Amazon digital and watched it all the way through. About a week later, back home, I realized I didn' remember how it ended so I went to a spolier site and realized I didn't remember half the movie. Or actually like...any of the movie. I apparently *had not seen* the movie. So that was how drugged up I was through this .The first couple of days on clears are a blur. And then you're just waiting out your stomach. It doesn't feel that major, frankly. In fact if this is major surgery I'll never be scared of it again. Especially once I figured out that even before they wheel you into the operating room you're already in another dimension.

I've become obsessed with my incisions. The drain incision is scabbed over and looks kind of like a satisfying knife wound, like if I had a body to put a bikini in I'd walk around in it and wait for people to ask me what happened, at which point I would tell them I got into it with a shaolin cashier. The other two are still nestled in surgistrips and I am starting to resent them. They were supposed to fall off six days ago but they are clinging to their profession for dear life. I want to see what's under there first of all and second of all I want to know what a "completely healed" incision looks like so I can look at it and put my swimsuit on. I paid a year in advance at the health club to make sure I would get around to actually going. I spent A LOT of money on stuff like this before I caved to surgery. I bought that stuff, Sensa, you're supposed to sprinkle on your food to make you eat less of it. I bought fat burning supplements. I bought a whole workout tape suite from Beachbody.com complete with rubber exercise bands, a hundred and fifty bucks, thanks, and I hated the workout, it was Tae Bo. I am even suspicious of people who say they do Tae Bo, I don't believe them. Two years of that and you'd be on a diet of aleve, good whiskey and cortisone shots every other week. . I bought special shakes. And I finally thought, seriously, fuq this. I exactly the desperate clueless consumer these salespitches work best on. Last night at Walgreens ( you wouldn't believe what I was doing at Walgreens, I'll tell you in a minute) I walked past the magazine display and there was a new copy of For Women First up there. For Women First, in case you're not aware, is Satan. Their diet of the week this week was Japanese Probiotics, which are "taking the country by storm", are "better than a diet pil", and are " a secret Japanese women have known for centuries." Now this magazine, I've decided, is actually out to destroy the mental health of American women. First, you get pages of advice about what to eat instead of going to the doctor. You can find the answers to all your problems at the grocery story. Migraines? Try blueberries. Muscle aches? Karo syrup. Blind in one eye? Canned pumpkin, which has more antioxidants than raw fresh pumpkin. Then you get to the Miracle Slimming Secret picturing one previously-fat fictional female aged about 35 in a collage with various arrangements of food, mostly Water crackers and celery and tomato slices or whatever. Then the rest of the magazine is full of recipes that have nothing to do with being healthy or slim or sane. There absolutely nothing you can do in response to a barrage of sick female foodthinking except of course make an enormous table-sized cake depicting the Battle of Gettysburg. What else, right? I mean this is a magazine FOR FAT WOMEN. IN LINE AT THE GROCERY STORE. Anyway I was pretty mad at For Women First. But the reason I came to Walgreens was for something really weird. Crayonss. I was so wiped out mentally yesterday I decided what I wanted to do is make mandalas and color. I know that sounds strange but I still get so tired around five PM. I don't have any energy left and it's too early to go to bed and TV is basically just a salesman in my living room. So I went home and made mandalas and colored and talked to various people on the phone who were unlikely to piss me off. I think the third week is going to be the hardest week. Today I'm taking it easy, gonna have some tea, lay off milk and drink some Isopure Green Apples and Bad Decisions Protein Drink. I've never had a surgery before and I'm not used to recovering from one. It really does sort of blow. Today gets a C. There's going to be a tornado later and I'm going to do Sudoku and color. This is what it probably feels like to be 110.

I'm not any more depressed than I was before surgery. I am not particularly upset to be missing part of my stomach. I am really fine except for one thing: every day since the surgery I have cried every day. I think it's the anesthesia but I guess it could be any number of things -- metabolic changes, processing physical trauma -- I don't know but this happens every single day. I just find myself on the verge of tears. And don't get me wrong, I am not crying over the fact that I have not lost any weight all week or that I can't have a cheeseburger. I do get tired pretty fast. But the other thing is...especially sometime in the afternoon, between roughly two and five, i am going to burst into tears. I was standing in line to get a train ticket and a guy told me to I had to go to another line: tears. I am sitting watching some dumb movie on hulu, not even really watching the movie, I realize I am on the verge of tears. Then I cry a little bit. Then I get better. Oh, today I was having a perfectly brilliant day full of a consultation with my hairdresser and a bowl of really abysmal strained potato Soup and then I felt myself get really tired, had to lie down -- tears. Also my temp spiked a little, to 99 -- an hour later, it was all over, I was back down to 98.6 and drained. Anybody else have this?

.You're welcome! I was understandably terrified to do this and I'm still not sure what came over me. I mean what the hell, who does this? But I did it and I didn't die and in a way...in a really odd way...it was sort of a good time. Good luck to you 2b!

JEALOUS!!!! I'm dying to get back in the pool. I am waiting for my knife wound to heal, i feel like I got grounded or put in the penalty box or etc. About the calories -- your body will let you know if you're overdoing it. Look out for a lower immune system, more frequent colds, etc. Usually when I was really overtraining, back in my Ironwoman days, I'd get hit by some hideous, gluey disease state and realize it was time to throttle back.

I've been noting that the post-op diet is all low-carb and sugar free. It would make more sense to me that in the post-op period with very few calories allowed anyway that sugar would be allowed. Real fruit juices, non-sugar free koolaid and etcetera. Does anyone know why only sugar free things are recommended?

I ate all the Nexium mups the doctor gave me in Mexicali and I am now using Prilosec caplets. I made a mistake the first time and bought the tablets -- what on earth difference would it make to them that they would make both? Anyway, so the instructions are to eat this stuff sprinkled on apple sauce. Dutifully. I cut open a caplet and pour the fairy dust into two ounces of organic apple sauce but the problem is that *half* of what comes out of it is a TABLET and not a sprinkle. Now I don't know what to do. Is it a tablet because the real medicine is in the sprinkle so they're trying to weigh it down? Why would they make a caplet with a tablet INSIDE it? Do I eat the table, crush it up, dissolve in water, discard?

. Your dog needs a thought balloon over his head that says, " Okay, that's just wrong." That's AWESOME, congrats!

Hmmmm. Thanks all. Guess I'll try a full caplet tomorrow. I have no insurance. My real goal here is -- that sleeve came out beautiful and nothing is wrecking it if I can help it. I'd drink Isostupid for a year if that's what it took.

I'm seventeen days out. I think I'm supposed to wait at least a month to swallow a pill. I know they sell the mups thingies by prescription but that means I have to go to the uninsured clinic and explain to them that I've just had weight loss surgery, which I doubt will go over well.

Thanks Rootman. I am apparently not using them as directed except I am trying to follow the directions from the surgeons office. What did you do for your ppi? Just swallow a pill?

Thanks for the offer. I'd rather learn how to operate these. I'm wondering if they're defective or if I'm missing something essential here....

It's almost two weeks until I can eat solid food again and I've been thinking about diets. Dr. Aceves' eating information is kind of freewheeling. His recommendations are to attempt to eat small amounts of Protein foods, veggies and fruit and to limit carbs because most breads and rolls and etc are hard to digest; stay away from sweets because of blood sugar, stay away from crackers, and you know -- junk. That's not exactly a low carb diet although I've read some people here who seem to be on a serious lowcarb diet and I was wondering if there was a specific recommendation from your docs about that. Also I've read almost nothing about fat. Cheeses, nut butters, olive oil, avoado and etc. So what I want to know is how many people are flat out lowcarbing and how many people are just eating whatever will fit in their sleeve and gives them energy -- and also is there a problem specific to the sleeve when it comes to fat?

. Aw...that was a very nice thing to say, thank you, I don't think they do mandalas at the Guggenheim. Although now that you mentioned this I'm getting this vision of a performance art piece about getting a sleeve. Interpretive dance, you know, with a Greek chorus crying alas, alas, their arms waving in the air whie half a stomach flies away on Spiderman wires with a little halo on..

Oh my God! I forgot about that! There was a "Shakeweight" there!

. I love coloring too. And dammit, I am 46 years old with a grown child and I just got a major organ removed from my body cavity and I am going to color if I want to. I remembered it, actually, because it's what I finally gave up and started doing a moment not so long ago when I got divorced and my mom died the same year. I found out about coloring mandalas from a new-agey friend of mine but if all they had was Disney Princess and Matchbox cars I would color those. In public. I'd just go to the damn Starbucks and start filling in the flesh tones on Ariel the Mermaid. Hey man, I'm a paying customer! Mandalas: Sometimes when I'm in an artsy mood I make my own, but there are tons of free printable onels online, You can also order whole books of these things from amazon along with the coloring weapon of your choice. One kind of cool thing to do is do them with watercolor pencil and then do a careful wash with a brush and clean Water. It's *at least* as satisfying as watching Mildred Piece in my opinion. And thank you thank you thank you for telling me I could take off my surgistrips. There was some sort of black stuff I could see under them that I thought were big beetle-y scabs but when I took em off...nothing. A touch of discoloration. A pucker. Amazing. In re the coloring. I didn't cry today -- first time since I came out of surgery. So either coloring is magic or I'm almost Soup.