VSGAnn2014

I don't know for sure what you mean by "ulcerated," but if you have stomach ulcers that condition is often treated by antibiotics. Stomach ulcers are often / usually caused by the bacterium H. pylori. http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/h-pylori-helicobacter-pylori

SMH.

Pain in left shoulder ... could be a leak. Call your surgeon immediately. NOW!

I think you're struggling with trying to balance "a full life lived normally in stages" while also "understanding what love is and what it encompasses." When people are improving their lives after WLS they often destroy their old lives. Sometimes it's for the better. Sometimes it's disastrous. Just be glad you don't have children together at this stage. Protip: Nobody had a perfect childhood. Everybody thinks they missed something important. Even the skinny bitches.

I can't believe it. We agree! LOL!

Actually, I'd like to validate your WTF?! feelings. Some people really do blurt out the most hideous crap at the worst times. 35 years ago when I called my parents to let them know I was getting divorced (my soon-to-be ex husband had fallen in love with another woman and had left me) -- my mother, upon hearing my extremely brief and highly sanitized version of why we were getting divorced, said, "Oh, no! You're not going to become one of THOSE DIVORCEES!" I just gulped and said ... I honestly forget what I said. Bottom line, people are always interpreting your adventures through the lens of their own experiences, as little as their experiences line up with ours. Frankly, I think it's a miracle we EVER make intimate contact with another human being. Frankly, I think your friend's an idiot. But that doesn't mean she might not still be a worthwhile friend down the line. Still ... this is going to be a big, big deal for you -- the WLS, the weight loss, the new lifestyle you need to build to become successful long-term. And it's very possible all the changes you go through (including some you instigate about what you will and won't put up with and how you let others control or influence you) are going to be hard of her version of your old relationship. Finally, I knew very early on pre-op that my best friends (yes, really, my best friends) who are all brilliant, charming, attractive and SKINNY were completely unequipped to understand my WLS journey at all. So I've not told a single one of them about having had WLS. And now they just think I've finally figured out how to "eat healthy." Actually, they're right, but the sleeve is the tool that has made it possible to eat healthy long-term. It's so hard to understand how people who are otherwise bright folks can be absolutely stupid about something that obsesses us so much and that is destroying our own lives. I suppose it's like the non-alcoholic dingbat friend who says to an alcoholic, "Oh, come on -- it's just one glass of champagne." That's not a very good analogy, but it's pretty stupid. As the second rule of life says: "I promise you: Nobody is thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves--just like you."

"Let's all learn to say no!" Amen. No to our old bad habits. No to well-meaning friends. No to people who are used to us saying yes in the past. No to assholes who want to control or sabotage us. And as on other topics, no means no.

One word: Bad Lighting. The lighting in those two photographs is hugely different. In the second one, it's from up above, which drops shadows on either side of your mouth and elsewhere. If you took a photograph of your face right now with no glaring light dropping down from above (as the light was in the pre-op photo) I think you'd see a very different kind of image. As Elizabeth Taylor said, when asked the difference between the movies and real life: "Bad lighting and no score."

Deleted ... wrong thread.

I can tell you what my experience has been post-op (next week I'll have been sleeved one year; I'm 7 pounds below my weight loss target; I'm 69 years old, 5'5" tall). Starting with your last comment first: I'm already having a hard time with the liquid diet. I'm on my 2nd day now and I feel HORRIBLE! Yeah, the liquid diet sucks. And Day Two is the worst day. Maybe Day Three. After that, if you're like me and most others, things get easier. (I had to do the liquid diet for two weeks; the last week and a half was a lot easier than the first 3 days.) 1. True/False: My doctor says my taste buds may change after surgery and foods I love now I may not like. True -- up to a point. Early on after surgery, my taste buds almost disappeared. Yuck. Drinking was a challenge. But when I finally got to eat refried Beans and scrambled eggs -- it was like ambrosia. As the months went along and I tried "new" foods (again), I sort of had to get used to them. After all, I'd not had a lot to eat, and my taste buds needed reawakening. And now, most foods taste pretty good to me. Needless to say, I'm on maintenance and able to eat anything I choose to eat. 2. Will my appetite REALLY go away? Will the feeling of being hungry all the time disappear? Aaahhh ... the $64 million question! Hard answer is for most people it'll go away for weeks, months. But it does come back. And you have to learn to distinguish between real hunger and "head hunger" (as some people call it). When it comes back -- or I should say the rate at which it comes back -- varies a lot. 3. I'm totally addicted to food. While I have been able to mostly control it over the past 3 months, there are times when I have NO WILLPOWER and stop at Culver's on the way home from work for a big, greasy double cheeseburger and a soda! Will I be able to break this after the surgery? Yeah, and no. Have you heard the saying, "The sleeve is only one tool you will have post-op. You have to build other tools to be successful long-term." Those other tools include eating slower and chewing better. Another one is eating more Protein (and eating protein first) so you won't be as ravenous as you were before. Exercise helps, too -- it gives you some happy chemicals that replace the fake happy feeling you think fast food will provide. Environmental controls are tools, too -- don't buy Cookies and crap food for the house; you'll wind up eating them. Nutritional education is a critical tool -- learning which foods are nutritious for you and which ones aren't -- I learned that mostly by tracking everything I've eaten (still do that) and use www.myfitnesspal.com . Have you also heard the expression "They operate on your stomach, not on your head"? Binge eating and self-medicating your discomforts (physical and emotional) with food is what they're talking about. If this is a big problem for you, you'll want to add the resource of therapy / counseling (individual or group) to understand your triggers and to build different responses than eating. I wish WLS were a magic wand. It is not. The sooner you know that, the more serious you'll get about building and using other tools that you need to be successful. But please know this: You have a lot better chance of being successful after WLS than you had before trying to just diet and exercise. If we had a 5% chance of being successful with diet and exercise alone, consider that we have a 50% chance of keeping our weight off long-term after WLS. But it's all still up to you and the energy and commitment you bring to this process. Very, very best to you. And hang in there.

What a good article. And what a good writer!

Congratulations on your weight loss and your returning good health. Since you asked, at 17 weeks post-op, I had lost 58.6 pounds -- but had lost 20 of those pounds pre-op. Everybody loses at the rate they lose at -- even if they're all equally compliant with their surgeons' instructions. People lose faster post-op if they're male, younger, more muscular than others, heavier to begin with, and didn't lose a lot of weight just prior to surgery. At the end of the day the only thing that matters or that we can control is what we DO (eating, drinking, exercise, etc.). Our scales will respond appropriately in their own good time.

Yup -- meat Protein is DENSE. That's why everyone says: Eat protein. And eat protein first. That's how to activate and maintain your sleeve's restriction.

I'm impressed, @Aribay ... I doubted you'd actually track. But you did! Respect! I honestly don't know how people can guess about this stuff and succeed long-term. Guessing is what got us in this mess in the first place.

Don't even worry about "full" now. Nothing is normal now. Your stomach is terribly swollen. It's nothing like it will feel in a month or three or six or twelve months. It's much smaller, traumatized, with severed nerves and blood vessels, newly stapled and newly stitched. It's freaking out! For now, concentrate on taking small sips of Water all day long. Also, as long as you're on a liquids-only diet you likely won't ever feel full. Only when you start eating solid foods (and your stomach is healed a bit) will you start feeling the restriction of your smaller stomach. But your body's diminishment of ghrelin (which was produced by the part of your stomach they just removed) means you shouldn't be feeling real hunger right now either. Seriously -- this is a time for recovery from major surgery, not trying to identify what "full" feels like.

Nope, didn't have a drippy nose. And for a minute there, I thought this thread was about incontinence.

Sure. But not now, for goodness sakes! I started drinking wine at 5.5 months post-op. Many others waited a full year.

I waited until 5.5 months post-op to have a real glass of wine (a full 4 ounces). I'm glad I waited, because after that I started having a glass of wine 5 nights a week. Actually, it didn't slow my weight loss at that point, because by then I was already up to 1,000 cals/day. But at 800 cals/day (what I was eating Months 2-4) I think I'd have lost some necessary nutrition. But that was just my experience. You do what you think you should do.

Wonderful essay, just wonderful!

Yes, there will be some discomfort, perhaps even some pain. But the severity and duration will really vary greatly. That's what pain meds are for. And it goes away. Then there's the "gas pain" -- they pump your body up with CO2 so there's room in there to navigate around and operate without nicking a nearby organ. It takes up to 5 days for that gas to dissipate. That's why you are supposed to walk around a lot right after surgery until the gas is gone -- walking helps the gas stop being a gas and dissipate. Good luck to you. If your surgeon is good, you'll probably be happy to discover how little pain you feel.

That's an awful list, @@WL WARRIOR ! Amazingly awful.

@amazyme ... how much are you moving / exercising?

I didn't have any diarrhea post-gall bladder surgery.

But chicken was the first dense Protein I pureed -- adding it to non-fat refried Beans and cheese nuked in the microwave. Salmon was the first fish I tried that worked for me. Tuna just felt too dry early on. I have NEVER thrown up.

I know a lot of people from these forums who started at your size and have lost all their excess weight -- if that's what you're worried about. I also know a lot of people from these forums who started at your size and lost down to around 200. And, of course, some people are so uncompliant after WLS that they don't lose much or quickly regain their weight loss. I expect there are many reasons why people don't reach their goal weights, most of which boil down to their not being "compliant enough" post-op. However, there are surely others for whom losing weight after WLS just doesn't work as well as for others, no matter how compliant they are. I know people who are compliant as all get out, but for whom weight loss is just a lot slower than for others -- and I can't tell what the differences between them and me are. Other factors that should go into your decision about which WLS to choose are the specific comorbidities and diseases you suffer from, e.g., diabetes, autoimmune diseases, etc., and the medicines you have to take for those. As you probably know, nutritional and Rx malabsorption problems are greater after bypass surgery than after sleeve surgery.