terry1118

I have BCBSRI - I was approved in one week. :-)

Holy macaroni! You are doing awesome!! I'm five weeks and down 20lbs - and happy about it! I haven't lost anything in a week, but I know it'll go eventually.

I have gallstones so I asked my surgeon how I could tell if I am having pain from rny complications or gallbladder pain. He said Gallbladder pain is on the right side radiating outward and pain related to rny surgery is felt primarily on the left. Hope you feel well soon!

Sounds like a good choice. Do you take cream in your coffee? If you do, you could try phasing it out to save calories. I like my iced coffee black w/2 Spenda, but I like my hot coffee with a little cream and a quarter packet of Spenda. Weird, but true!

Give it a try. It tastes like regular frozen yogurt, but a little less sweet and it has some protein. :-)

Same here, severe ulcerated acne. I took Acutane for five months in the early eighties. And it was one of the most miserable times in my life, but it worked.

I have left shoulder pain, too. When they took me into the operating room and strapped me down they had my arms strapped outward to either side. When I woke up after surgery my left shoulder was screaming in pain. It has been hurting to some degree or another ever since. I had a serious bout of tendonitis in my left shoulder last summer. I assumed that having my arms tied like that brought it on again. Maybe not? I'll have to ask my surgeon next week at my six week follow-up...

We never discussed goals and no one set one for me. My only real goal is to feel better, be healthy, do things with my husband, and enjoy my life.

You look amazing! Like a totally different person! :-)

The Chinese place near my work has 'diet delight' meals - plain rice, Chinese veggies, with chicken, beef, scallops, or shrimp (or a combination of these) with your choice of sauce on the side. A girl at work and I got it last week. I had a scallop, a shrimp, and a couple little chicken strips with some veggies, drizzled with a little Chinese hot sauce. It was good, just enough, and my friend didn't even miss the little I took!

I don't know if it's normal but it can't hurt. I wish I was like that - I tend towards constipation. Very unpleasant!

Oops! :-)

A piece of fish (broiled with a little lemon) and maybe a cup of chowder. Then leftovers for lunch tomorrow. :-)

A piece of fish (broiled with a little lemon) and maybe a cup of chowder. Then leftovers for lunch tomorrow. :-)

I wasn't embarrassed. I didn't want to hear any negative comments about something that is nobody's business but my own. I don't have to defend or justify my decisions to anyone else. A big factor in deciding who to tell was my not wanting to be the subject of gossip. At work my support people knew. As far as anyone else knew when I talked about it I was having major abdominal surgery and the type and reason for it was personal. We talked very general. Somehow or other the one single coworker in our branch who is a malicious gossip found out it was WLS surgery (I think she eavesdropped on private conversations held in our vault room). She told everyone else, and the floaters who filled in while I was gone, and some of our credit union members. I actually caught her telling someone I didn't know when I came back. I was livid!!! Giving my personal info to anyone with ears when I never even told HER! I gave her a piece of my mind, told my manager, and filed a complaint with HR. We have a very strict privacy policy, both for our members and CU employees, which we receive training on every year. Just thinking about it makes me angry all over again.

And the potato salad. I make a killer potato salad... at least, I think so. There's never any leftover. :-)

I'll be five weeks post op tomorrow and I have to say I've been doing well. No food problems whatsoever. I was feeling pretty 'normal', like nothing had changed. Until this week... All this week I've been in training for our system upgrade. Monday was good - we went out for lunch and I had some great tilapia. Tuesday I brown-bagged it. I brought a few crackers, one of those envelopes of tuna (2 1/2oz), and a square of cheddar. After eating 1 1/2 crackers and half of the tuna I started to feel pain just below my breasts, which was quickly followed by nausea. I ran for the ladies room but nothing would come up. It was horrible! It felt like it was stuck. Terrible pain and wave after wave of nausea. I felt that if it would only come up I'd feel better so I tried sticking my fingers down my throat but all I got each time was gobs of foamy saliva. It was terrible! The only other time I felt that bad was when I had a gallbladder attack, but this had nausea on top of the pain. I spent almost TWO hours in that ladies room, pacing or bent over a toilet, waiting for it to subside. I missed half of an afternoon's training and I was embarrassed. I've had tuna before, no problem. But this time I didn't have mayo in it. I ate it right from the package. I thought being packed in Water it would be moist enough but I was SO WRONG!!!! So, when my instructions say soft, moist foods, it means soft, MOIST foods! Lesson learned...

So 'too dry' and 'not chewing well' have the same terrible effect?

Tilapia is my best friend. Which is good because I love tilapia. :-)