kyethra

Today I went to the ER for the stomach problems. I was on my way to class but since I kept retching, my DH took me to the DR instead. THey wouldn't see me in conveniant care so we went to the ER. There I had all sorts of tests done, including one where I had to have blood taken from both sides of my body to compare results. At first the doc suspected it was my gall bladder since when it gets pressed on it hurts and he thought it felt a bit inflamed. But the ultrasound looked ok, so it got the all clear for now at least. I got some zofran, an anti nausea medicine, and that really helps. So looks like it is the stomach flu. I guess it has been going around. Follow up with my regular docs. By the time we got out it was too late to call my surgeon-- I will do that Monday. I think I have apointment comming up anyway. And also see PCP for more tests and stuff unless I just happen to get better. I'm hoping I just get better.

Oh mine have been greenish too the past couple of days! And I thought it was wierd! I was going to tell the doc today when I was at the ER but then I forgot. If it helps initially my gall bladder is something the ER doctor suspected of having problems but the ultra sound looked good. I need to follow up with my regular doc.

Sometimes treatment of H Pylori can cause weight gain. Its true! It happened to me. I was not symptomatic but I've had GERD forever so I was tested for it and then treated for it. After that I gained a lot of weight. My family thought I was crazy until I showed them a study proving that what I said can happen. it affects the metabolism or something. And they won't give you H Pylori back either... ( I miss mine).

What about rinsing the mouth out after you eat if that is part of the problem? I too am having a hard time with this. And waiting so long to drink! I have a dry mouth (its a side effects of some meds I am on too) and normally pre banding I would drink at least three drinks with a meal regardless of how well I would chew. After I eat I have food in my mouth and of course it drives me crazy, not being able to wash it down. So I think that maybe rinsing with something and then sucking on something might help.

There are other things too that can put a person at risk for apnea that you wouldn't think of, like facial structure. Apparently a small chin and/or nose can put a person at higher risk (I have those and my doc said it put me in that higher risk category). So can having asthma. Also the shape and size of the neck. Allergies, etc. sleep studies aren't so bad. I've had three in the past year I'm one of those rare people who was actually misdiagnosed as having apnea. Its not usual, but it does happen. Part of the reason for this is due to my moaning/groaning in my sleep. Another odd thing-- it looks like snoring on the vibration mic that most sleep centers use. So if you moan or groan in your sleep, theres a word of caution. It could be something like catathrenia which can look like apnea. I did CPAP for a couple of months, but it was riddled for misery for me (DR accidently prescribed high pressure when he meant to put me on lowest pressure, etc). I highly suggest that apnea patients who are having weight loss surgery look into autopaps. An autopap works like a cpap only instead of having a set pressure, it sets the pressure based on how you are breathing. This means that the pressure is typically lower than it would be on a CPAP. And since it is adjusted to your needs, if as you lose weight your apnea decreases the machine will detect that. It will also store information about your AHI-- a measure of how severe your apnea is. Instead of having a sleep study every thirty pounds or so, that might be more conveniant. An Autopap is also usually tolerated better. Some docs are more fond of them than others. I did an autopap trial fairly recently to rule out upper airway resistance syndrome. It was much better than the plain old CPAP I thought. I have narcolepsy and other sleep disorders-- hence my familiarity with sleep clinics and so forth. My hoops were pretty minimal. I was lucky in that regard. Also because I have chronic health conditions I have pretty regular monitoring and stuff already. For example, my last upper endoscopy was only about a year ago (I have GERD).

stick to public for now. If you are going to be alone together you might want to wear lots of layers. lots and lots of layers. With many many buttons and hooks and stuff. I hear they do make modern chastity belts Maybe kissing and cuddling aren't such good ideas... Or you could keep a ruler with you for slapping away wandering hands. I remember when my DH and I first started dating. And making out. And how I would have to slap his hands away from under my shirt until I was ready for them to be there. Good times... This is why I like masturbation. I swear it really does help control those urges.

http://www.locateadoc.com/articles.cfm/850 Has a bunch of terms and photos and doctors and lists the average cost. I thought it was interesting.

Rate of weight loss also makes a difference. Nice and slow (as opposed to really rapid) is going to mean less loose skin. My mother lost over 100 pounds a few years ago and says she doesn't have much loose skin, just a little on her stomach and upper arms. I do think a lot depends on the person. I suspect that I will probably have to get my arms done at least by the time it is all over because I already have loose skin on them (not a lot but some, crepe like stuff)-- did before I even started losing weight. Of course I am going to work on toning those arms and doing what I can, but the loose skin won't shock me. My breasts have also been heading south since I was 15. I used to think the song, do your ears hang low, was really about breasts and ears was just a polite euphemism. At the rate they are going, it won't be long before I can tie them in a bow! Maybe I'll also want to do my thighs and tummy. We'll see when i get there. I have to lose the weight first. So drink the fluids. Keep your skin moisturized. Tone up those muscles! And good luck.

I've been fired before for being sick. I had gotten really sick and needed to take a month off ( I got the ok and everything before hand). Then I came back to work, but I requested accomodations while I was recovering. Sure they said. Then they picked an excuse and fired me. And I could have complained or whatever but I didn't want to work with those people ever again.

potatoe was not something my stomach liked. Things are going down just fine and I still have restriction. Its after they've been down that my tummy gets unhappy. It is not thrilled about the digestive process. Blech. I hate being sick like this. I have stuff to do. My stomach can handle ice cream ok though, go figure, but it still lets me know I need to find something better if I am determined to eat. I think also remember my doc telling me before that bread and stuff is better than diary to start out on with an upset tummy even though I digest dairy super well. I'm going to ask DH to bring home some bread from work. If I don't toast it it will be soft and if I chew well bread goes down just fine. I need something I can take my pills with so they aren't on a empty stomach. Sometimes when I get sick things hang on for a while. I have CFS/Fibromyalgia. And recovering from something like surgery, even if it is minor, can also make my immune system a bit lower. About a year and a half ago I had pneumonia a couple of times and after I got over that it took my immune system several months to get back up to normal. So I am just trying to get my fluids in and rest. Lots of rest.

Taking mint orally should be avoided on a regular basis because mint can lead to reflux. While it does help short term, after a while it acts to loosen the esophagial valve. Ginger is better for longer term or regular usage. I learned that from my gastro at Mayo.

Right now this stupid stomach bug is really getting old. Its also getting better though, but it sure could go ahead and get better faster. The other day my fever was higher, but still it wasn't a high fever. Oddly enough, that was good to see. Having my fever go up confirmed for me that yes, I am sick and that there is a problem with my stomach and not my band. So now that I know my band is all good for sure I can relax about that. I think it might have gone down as I slept through Wendesday (was really late getting to bed on Tuesday night) and I'm not sure where I put that thermometer... I'd love to be able to have some saltines. But I'm still on mushies. I wonder what the mushie equivalent of crackers is? Maybe some potato? I could just stick to liquids but sometimes I think a bit of a bland solid can help settle a tummy. I dunno... I just want to eat something and not feel worse after I eat I don't feel like I will throw up so that isn't really a concern, but nausea, dizziness, gas all are.

Today I had my anual gyno exam. Fun stuff, huh. I was supposed to have it a few months ago but the Doc canceled and I had to reschedule. So I guess it was a semi official weight. In my clothes, but with no shoes, I weighed 261 so that is what I put on the ticker. Naked on my scale at home last nightI was 260 and my scale at home usually seems reliable as long as I keep the board on it (I have to have a little board on it to stabalize it because I BROKE it by stepping on it a few months ago. It cracked the plastic around it. And that scale is supposed to support up to fourty pounds heavier than I was). And the gynecologist nurse practitioner asked how the band worked so I got to tell her about it-- I like to spread the word. Also my blood pressure was ok today and I have lately been taking a lower dose of my blood pressure medication because my doctor said I could try that after the surgery. We have a blood pressure thing at home, I should monitor it with that. As far as getting calories in, I don't worry about it (or try not to). I sort of keep track in my head right now, but I'm not getting anywhere near 1000 calories most days and the past few days I haven't even looked at 500. So I'm losing weight at a pretty fast rate right now. But the nutritionist didn't tell me to eat a daily minimum, just to eat 1400 a day or less. And I imagine I will eat more when I get to solids in about a week.

This is good to know. Now I know that when I go back I have to wear the good undies and not the "but this is the last clean thing and you should be grateful I bothered to wear undies at all undies". And I guess it won't be one of my thong days either. This is laundry date for me and the washer and dryer. And yes I have had enough of those days... Thats how I ended up flashing the EKG tech when I went in for pre op stuff. I think my incisions look good. There are only two that I can really easily see anymore. The other day someone asked me how I was doing after my surgery and I said great and I pulled up my shirt so they could see my cool incisions and how small they were, and then I demonstrated how far away from my waist my jeans will go. Later it occured to me that maybe people dont want to see my incisions (or my flabby belly). I also have some scars from the blisters I got around the incisions due to my allergic reaction to the tape. Those look a lot worse than my incisions. I'm using my mederma on them.

I was really tight right after surgery. I had to take to small sips and then wait a while. Drinking too fast made me PB. About a week and a half after the surgery I opened up some and I could actually drink a glass in less than an hour. Now I can actually gulp liquids if they are not overly thick and I am not having any problems with mushies either.

I think I have a bit of a stomach bug. :sick Yesterday I just wasn't hungry and then late last night I was uncomfortable due to bloating and some reflux and also gas. This morning I was running a low fever and more gas. I took my morning pills with some activa yoghurt cause I didn't want to put them in an empty stomach. I'm all gurgly. And I'm gassy from both ends. I just took some gas X. That usually helps. I took a bit of kaepectate too this morning to help and it did. Right now I'm at the point where any tummy problem makes me initially think of the band and speculate on the chances of something having gone wrong with it-- like a slip or something. I realise that the chances of that are pretty low. And its not I'm throwing up or anything else I would think is a sign of a slip. To me I have all the signs of a mild stomach bug-- just like the sort of thing I might get pre band. So I'm going to take it easy today and work on getting better.

I suppose I would have liked to know the anatomy of a PB, so to speak. For example, my second day post op, I threw up foam! Lots of foam. Having foam comming out of my mouth was pretty freaky at first.

I am the same way. getting enough Water and fluids in is important. I take miraphen-- its a combination of sudafed and guiaphenesen (mucinex) every 12 hours. Big pill, but I can swallow it now.

I think DH and I would be ready to have kids in probably about two years. Ideally I will be at goal then, so waiting until after shouldn't be an issue for me. At least not then. But what if we decide to have a second child? I know I don't want kids who are close together in age because I do not want to have two very small children at the same time. So after I have a kid, if I need a tummy tuck or something like that I would consider just getting it depending on how much loose skin I have. The more I have at that point the more likely I would probably be to get it. I could see waiting if I planned on getting pregnant in just a couple of years. But what if I had a kid and had large amounts of loose skin (and if it really bothered me-- of course thats a huge factor, how much it would bother me). Would I want to live with it for several years because I might have another pregnancy? I think that is the sort of thing that is good to talk to the surgeon about. And also depends on cost and personal preference and how much loose skin and so forth bothers a person.

I've read on a couple of websites its best to wait until after pregnancy if possible because a pregnancy can undo the effects of a tummy tuck, maybe even muscle repair. So then you would have to do it all over again! Now I imagine it depends how far in the future any possible pregnancy would be and how much any previous pregnancies affected one. I wonder if someone had something like a lower body lift and then got pregnant a few years later if she did a tummy tuck again, how extensive of one would it be? Smaller than one after reaching goal? (cheaper?) Probably depends a lot on the patient. One of these days we are going to perfect male surrogacy. I know it.

Jodie, age can also be what is affecting your cup size. Birth control can also do that. When I first went on birth control mine went up a full cup size, and have stayed up. derrick, I'm not sure what is in involved with the men. But I do know on some plastic surgery websites they give overviews of different procedures and what they involves, price range, and pics. Try googling plastic surgery or that particular procedure maybe.

No, not pharmeceuticals. And perhaps limiting the quantities would be a good idea. I didn't think of that.

I'm not sure. I think a swat on the bottom for small kids who won't get anything else, rarely, is ok. But that is all that is ok, to me. Only kids don't know what the line is. Sure, there might be a day in school when kids are told the textbook definition or given a pamphlet. But that is it. No one is questioning kids about how they are punished, and if they are hit, where and how often, and how hard, etc. I used to think getting slapped, kicked and so forth was normal. My mother said it was. One time I think I threatened to call the authorities when I was a kid and I was told good luck and think about how I would like a foster home and how they probably wouldn't treat me very nice, etc. I can't recall I single time I actually learned anything from being spanked or hit other than that I was terrified of my mother and that I was stupid and incompetant. The last time I got spanked on the but when I was a little girl was because I was painting my nails (or trying to at least) and I promised I wouldn't spill any polish on the carpet, but I accident got a drop on the carpet. Since I got some on the carpet, I got spanked. What did that teach me? I didn't mean to spill any. And I was already being careful (as careful as a clumsy child of that age can be). The screaming sessions weren't exactly helpful in shaping my behavior either. I remember one time when I was a teenager and my mother broke her back scratcher on me. She really liked that thing, so I felt great that she had broken it even if it did draw blood. Maybe I learned defiance and anger. But I thought that sort of thing was norrmal. It wasn't until later, after I grew up, that I learned it wasn't so normal. Kids don't know that stuff. So what one kid thinks is just a normal physical punishment might not be. So maybe thats why it is better to not have it at all. Or define what is ok very exactly.

I was rather young during the gulf war. I don't remember much about it except that on the school bus we would say that Saddam Hussein really meant Sad, Dumb, and Insane. I know I learned that we got in the war because he had invaded kuwait and we were allies of kuwait so we had to help defend them. And we did and he promised not to invade anymore countries or else everyone would attack him again, and that was the end of it. When I got older, in junior high, we learned more about it. I was taught that we couldn't just go in and take out Saddam Hussein because he was a bad guy. We couldn't do that because if we did do that we didn't know what would happen. A even worse person could come into power, or there might end up being a civil war or something. And that would be irresponsible of us-- to get our people involved in another country's civil war, let alone to be the cause of it. I learned that that was what had happened with Vietnam, we had gotten involved in some other far off country's civil war, where we had no buisiness being. And that we had lost and it left a lot of people demoralized. When I got older I learned pretty much the safe things, in more detail. Then in college I took a class on the Vietnam war-- it reinforced how bad our decision to get involved was. I also took courses on World War I and II. (BTW I found it interesting to learn to perhaps if we had gotten involved in WWII earlier it might not have been as devastating as it was-- we might never have needed to drop the bomb.) A year after 9/11 I even took a class in middle eastern politics. I learned we had supported Iraq before when it was in conflict with Iran, because America was afraid of Iran. It seemed like a touch and go thing we had there. But no nuclear weapons were found. No link to 9/11 established. And I figured that given everything I had learned over the years we wouldn't want another Vietnam. I thought everybody learned the same things I had-- and my education was pretty basic too growing up. I guess not.

I think we should have the same sort of regulations on drugs (such as meth and pot) that we have on alchohol and tobacco. That way people wouldn't be consuming stuff made from paint thinner or of unknown strengths and toxicity at least and I think it would be a big improvement in the distributation of where drug money goes. The illegality of the substances obviously hasn't prevented their use.