Fanny Adams

Hi Shalee, They took 3 of the 4 drains out on the day after the op, with the 4th one coming out the next day. I have an incision that runs 360 degrees around my torso and another that runs up the centre of my belly from pubes to breast bone. The boobs were done with an anchor cut (around the nipples, vertical line down and half circle underneath each boob) that runs a little extra into the armpit to minimise the armpit boobs.

So it's been a week today since the op and I'm going into the doctor's office to have the dressing changed and get fitted for my compression garment (doing it the old-fashioned way here :willy_nilly:). What advice can you experienced ladies offer me? What can I expect over the next week? I've been swelling up more and more every day and currently feel like a balloon about to pop. How long will that go on? It should peak soon, shouldn't it? How long before I can stand up straight? My back is killing me with this hunched over position.

You just had your first episode of getting stuck. It's something you want to avoid at all costs, especially so early in the healing process, so here is my advice: Once you have gotten stuck and/or thrown up on any given day, hold off from eating or drinking anything for a couple of hours, then switch to liquids for the rest of the day. Your stomach swells whenever you get stuck/PB, so it will be more sensitive immediately afterwards and you run the risk of getting stuck/PBing again and again if you continue to try to push more solid foods. In the mushie stage, even a chunk of soft chicken in chicken soup needs to be thoroughly chewed until it is liquid in your mouth. You should probably not risk chunky style Soups at this stage but run them through a blender first, so they are thick mush, not liquid and chunks. Over the next week you can gradually make the transition from mush to soft casseroles, etc, but be sure to really chew every bite and take a couple of seconds rest between each one. Good luck and remember to chew, chew, CHEW!!

Hi mrgrta, I had implants with the boob lift and I'm so glad I made that choice. I was originally a DD-E cup before I got fat and ballooned up to a G-H cup. When I lost the weight, I was back to an E cup but (as you can see from the before pics), it was an "E Long" LOL! I had to roll them up to tuck them into the bra! If I had just gone with the lift, I would have been down to a small C and I haven't been that size since I was 12, so I just couldn't fit that in with my self-identity. The implants have filled me back to an E cup - I may even still fit all my fancy new bras, it's just that they don't flop down to my waist when I take the bra off :thumbup: I'm thrilled with the results for my thighs, bum and mons too. That's all part of the torso lift - there's been no work specifically on them but everything has been pulled up tight. I think the results are wonderful. At the moment, my waist is still really swollen, so I don't have a good sense yet of what shape I'll be (hoping that I'll have a bit more curve in the waistline than I do right now) but overall, I'm stoked in everything my doc has done - he's a genius!

I've uploaded some pictures to a Private Album, so I think you need to be on my Contact list to view them. PM me if you want to look. I warn you though, they're not pretty!! My back is a real mess - the surgeon believes in pulling the dressings so tight that they tear the skin and create a whole bunch of abrasions :rolleyes2:. Apparently this holds the scar itself so flat that it doesn't pucker up and go lumpy and he says it is a small price to pay for the long term benefit. I'm prepared to pay the price but the nurses at the hospital were shocked and took a bunch of photos - it looks pretty nasty back there with Patches of skin ripped off and oozing :w00t:. Oh well, they are surface wounds and they'll heal cleanly and if they mean the scars will look better long term, I can put up with it... Don't focus on those - check out the before and after of my boobs! They were so revolting before - drooping down almost to my belly button UGH! And they're all perky and full now :w00t: YAY! I love my boobs!

Well I'm home now and settling in to bed. My honey is running around organising things for me and I have all the mod cons within reach. He's being a bit odd though, and I don't know if it is just that I am being overly sensitive and emotional because of the operation or if he is covering up his fears and concerns by being gruff. It's starting to upset me a little though :rolleyes2: Some examples: He asked if my phone was within reach and I said "no, it's still in my handbag". So he found my handbag and put it at the foot of the bed. When I asked if he could please move it up to where I could reach it, I get the eyeroll look and the distinct impression that I'm being "demanding". It's his step-father's 80th birthday today and the family is having lunch out at a restaurant, so he needed to get me home from the hospital and settled in time to go to the lunch. I'm all settled in, there's plenty of time so he's not running late, when he came to me to ask "So have you thought about what you want to do for lunch while I'm out?" Well no I haven't... I have only just gotten home, I don't know what's available and I'm now all nicely settled in bed and I would have thought that YOU would have thought about this for me at some stage during the past week! I know I would have had it planned and organised had the roles been reversed. (I only said the "No, I haven't" bit out loud.) So he made me some cheese and crackers and a cup of coffee, which was lovely and he didn't seem to mind making them, but seemed resentful that I hadn't gotten it sorted out before. It's weird... he is flipping from being sweet and lovely and looking after me, to really giving the impression that I'm an inconvenience. Do you think this is just me being silly?

It can be odd what gets stuck but eggs are pretty common, as is dry chicken. Cereal is a grain and you may have trouble with a lot of grains. It's not the chewing texture so much with them, but that they glug together afterwards in your stomach and turn into glue which plugs up the stoma (think of making glue when you were a kid, with flour and water). With grains, the finer the grain is milled, the more likely it is to turn into glue and cause problems (i.e. white breads more than wholegrains, rice bubbles more than muesli). Good choices for Breakfast that are less likely to give trouble are yogurts, jellies, baked Beans, soft poached eggs rather than scrambled, boiled or fried, really lean bacon (I love the deli shortcut of bacon), mushrooms (the ones canned in butter are actually REALLY low in calories and fat - the butter is a misnomer). Porridge is an iffy one - I can handle it more easily than processed cereals but it can still give me troubles if I'm tight.

Would love to have helped but I'm in WA and I got banded 2 years ago, so too soon for your needs. Good luck with it though.

My surgeon says (and I agree) that any time you feel like pushing the plate away, do it. Never force yourself to finish something just because you think you should. You can always put stuff in the fridge and come back to it later, if you have a real problem with throwing food away, but that's a habit we need to break too, in the long run. I have found it SO hard to learn to throw food away. I was raised to "clean my plate" and save all leftovers in the fridge and make sure nothing was ever wasted. I've had to really work hard at changing that mindset and throwing food into the bin, so that I don't eat it an hour later when I don't really want it but am not so full that I can't eat it... I would feel so guilty about it, too, but I'm gradually learning to put less on my plate so that I don't have the leftovers any more.

Hi Kate, I'm glad to hear you're doing well too. We were done on the same day and I'm loving my new boobs too - I keep wanting to show them to people, LOL!!! My dad (who is 70) strangely did NOT want to see them, heheheh :rolleyes2: I did manage to restrain myself and spare him but my daughter copped the eyeful whether she wanted to or not!

Allie, you sound so happy and so excited!! I'm thrilled that things are working out so well for you and hope to be as happy with my new bod too. Thanks for all the support in my thread!

Wow Skinnyjeans! I can't believe you went home the day after surgery and have done all your recovery on your own. And back at work after only 2 weeks - WOW! I had my operation on Monday and I'm going home tomorrow (Saturday) and was feeling all good because I felt I could cope after only 5 days, not the full 7 days that I was allowed. I can't imagine having gone home on Tuesday!! I've also been worried about going back to work on Jan 11th, after a 5 week break, thinking that was pushing things a little and maybe I should have taken 6 weeks. I'll be telling myself how lucky I am and not to be such a wuss now! Hope everything continues to go well for you.

I think Ivy Rose has hit it on the head. When we go up in sizes, we put it off until we absolutely have to, wearing our clothes stretched way too tight because we don't want to admit to the size change. So dropping clothes sizes generally means dropping at least a size in fat, so that you actually fit into the number on the label before you can drop enough weight to go down to the next number and have it fit when new (i.e. unstretched). I know I had a mix of 22, 24 and 26 clothes in my closet when I started this journey and on occasion would still try to squeeze into a beloved shirt in an 18 or 20.

While you don't have a lot of restriction, use this time to learn the different sensations of "feeling full" compared to "feeling not hungry". They are quite different. Try to make your calorie intake up from foods with a lot of bulk and fibre, like meat and vegetables, and avoid foods that give a high calorie count in a small volume. For example, choose a large bowl of raw salad veges (carrots, tomatoes, celery, sweet peppers, etc, etc) with 2 ounces of lean Protein for lunch and munch and crunch your way through them for 20 minutes, eating as much as you want. After 20 minutes, stop and put whatever is left in the bowl in the fridge and tell yourself "I can finish that later if I need to". Listen to your body. You probably won't be feeling "full" but you probably won't be feeling "hungry" still either. Go off and distract yourself by doing something - housework, office work, go for a walk, anything. After an hour, stop and listen to your body again. If you are really feeling HUNGRY, have some more of your lunch, eating for up to 20 minutes. If you aren't hungry (forget feeling "full"), see if you can go another hour before you really want to eat the rest. Repeat that throughout the day, till dinner time and do it again with dinner (i.e. chew for 20 minutes, stop and put it away, come back in an hour and see if you "need" the rest). You'll find that you can eat several bowls of salad veges if necessary without going over your calorie limit and the bulky food will stop you feeling hungry. Come dinner time, make healthy choices but include a balanced diet that will give you some bulk with your calories. The idea is to take advantage of whatever little restriction you have. If you are wide open and can eat anything, you need to fill yourself up, so that you don't have the Hunger Demon raging at you and tempting you to make bad choices. Don't worry about quantities at this stage and don't try to get by on liquids and Protein shakes or aim for 1/4 or 1/2 cup meals. They won't stay in your pouch and you will feel hungry all the time. You need solid foods that will work with the band to help make you feel satisfied, until restriction kicks in.

I pay the same as TeaganRheana for fills (I'm also in Perth, Western Australia). I was self-pay on the lapband and the followup fill visits cost $150 with our Medicare system rebating $113 of that, so total personal cost is $37. $500 for a 10 minute visit and a quick needle is INSANELY expensive!

That's not a problem, Loulou!! That's the name of the game! My surgeon says to take full advantage of those times - if you don't feel hungry, DON'T EAT!! It rarely lasts very long that you don't want to eat at all and the reality is that most of us could safely live for days at a time without food - that's what our fat reserves are for! So if you don't feel like breakfast, don't force yourself to eat it just because you think you "should". Wait until you are hungry and then make the good choices. Stop eating when you are no longer hungry - don't wait for the "full" feeling, as it feels different now and you probably won't get there. Just try not to eat unless you are actually physically hungry and the weight loss will come easily... Good luck with it all!

I work away on the mines and I eat salad just about every single day for lunch, as it is one of the only good choices I have available (mine food is generally very stodgy and fatty). This is what I would eat: Take a plastic food container measuring 5" x 2.5" x 1.5" and stuff it as full as I can of the following chopped/sliced veges: tomato carrot celery cucumber sweet red bell pepper fresh mushrooms bean sprouts beetroot drained canned pineapple lettuce (only a half to whole leaf or so) or baby spinach leaves (half dozen leaves?) To that I would add any TWO of the following Protein options: 1 slice lean fresh ham 1 hard boiled egg 1 oz cheese (soft camembert or hard cheddars) 1 oz drained tuna in springwater 1 oz mixed nuts (walnuts, almonds, pecans) This makes a large meal that makes me feel full all afternoon, I never get stuck on it and it is less than 300 calories (almost all in the 2 protein options).

Toh-may-toe, toh-mah-toe, eh Jachut? I never get used to the idea that US people will talk about a "salad" and then you discover they meant "lettuce and dressing". That just doesn't cut the mustard for a salad here! To me, a "real" salad has a heap of veges in it and the dressing is incidental/optional (and mostly I don't bother). "Real" salads, with their carrots, cucumber, celery, capsicum, etc, etc, are really filling and SO good for you! :eek:

Hi Angela! Well done on the 25kg in less than 6 months!! That's an AMAZING result!! Congrats!

I used the nicotine Patches for a couple of weeks prior to and after my banding surgery and found that they really helped. I have always had a problem distinguishing between craving a cigarette and feeling hungry, so I found that the patches helped me stick to the pre-op diet and the banding helped me not smoke afterwards. I did go back to smoking after the 2 weeks post-op period was up but I had cut my intake by half (i.e. down to about 8 cigs a day) and it never went back up again. Then, 12 months ago (which was 12 months post-op), I met my non-smoking boyfriend and that was the motivation I needed to give up fully. I haven't smoked in 12 months now and have been surprised at how easy it has been. I did the full 10 week course of patches to give up and haven't looked back. I'm sure the band actually helped, because I wasn't mistaking hunger pangs for cigarette cravings or vice versa, as I used to on previous quitting attempts.

I think you'll find that you are reacting to that slice of deli chicken. It might have gone down easily at the time, but you now have restriction and it's not going through the band easily now. My surgeon (and most surgeons that I have heard about) says to do liquids only for the rest of the day of a fill (creamed Soups are good - nutritious and filling and tastier than Protein drinks), do mushies on the next day and back to solid foods on Day 3. On the first couple of fills, when you don't really have much restriction yet, you might not have seen the necessity for this and so may have forgotten that advice but this time round, the restriction has kicked in and that's what you're feeling. If you've been getting stuck and PBing since the fill, give yourself 2 days on liquids then a day on mushies. If you can't go back to solids on day 4, get 0.25 taken out.

Good luck Stevee, you can do it girl!! Now if you find that the first fill doesn't give what feels like good restriction, here's what I would do... suggestions only but it's how I would tackle it. Find a calorie counter web site like www.fitday.com, record everything and be HONEST. Aim to eat between 1000 and 1200 calories a day and make them consist of "bulky" foods, ie, meat and vegetables, etc which have a lot of fibre and will fill you up. This way, you will be able to get some use out of the band, even though it's not cutting your portions down to tiny sizes - you will still feel satisfied on relatively small portions of good solid foods. Use this time to learn the difference between the body sensation of "feeling full" and "not feeling hungry". They are quite different. If you chase that "full" sensation all the time, you can still overeat when restriction is low, but if you seek "not hungry", you will find that you can live quite happily with smaller portions even when restriction hasn't really kicked in. Try this trick: Serve yourself a good healthy Breakfast, e.g. a poached egg with 1-2 oz of baked Beans. Lots of Protein and fibre in that, will satisfy the hunger craving but probably won't make you feel "full" - and only 150-200 calories! Serve yourself a lunch of whatever your favourite "diet food" is, aiming for "high bulk/low calorie". Time yourself while eating. Chew very thoroughly and slowly, taking 30 seconds between each bite and then STOP after 20 minutes. Put anything left on your plate into the fridge and tell yourself "that's fine, I can go finish that later if I'm really hungry, I'm not wasting it..." Listen to your body. You should find that while you don't feel full, you don't feel ravenously hungry either. You could finish the plate if you want to but it shouldn't be hard to just leave it for a while... Then go do something else to distract yourself (go for a walk, do some housework, go back to work, whatever). After an hour or so, listen to your body again. Are you HUNGRY? If you really are, eat the rest of your lunch (for 20 mins again). If you're not really craving the food, leave it and tell yourself you can always finish it later. Do the same with dinner... Eat for 20 minutes, chewing slowly and thoroughly and then STOP. The aim of this game is to get your body to recognise what it is like to "not feel hungry". Forget trying to "feel full", we're aiming for the band to give us self-control, not shut down hunger altogether. It is perfectly normal for you to feel hungry just before you eat your dinner. But stop and reassess after 20 minutes, and then again after an hour. If you are craving "bad" choices, make a promise to yourself that you will wait until AFTER you've eaten everything else on your meal plan for the day, in the 20 minute timings. If by the end of the night, you have eaten everything and really can't stop yourself, allow yourself a small taste but try not to go overboard. You should find it much easier to resist the temptation to overindulge if you've played this "game" with timing throughout the day. When your body learns to recognise "I'm not hungry" and you can apply that to not eating food you don't really need, it is a wonderful feeling of freedom from the Hunger Demon who has been ruling our lives up until that point. Good luck!

Laurie, once you have started to PB on any given day, stop all food/fluid intake for a couple of hours and then stick to liquids ONLY for the rest of the day (Soups are good - nutritious and low fat). Your stomach swells every time you throw up and it needs time to heal. If you keep trying to force food down, it will get worse and worse over time. If you have done this but when you try to go back to solid food the next day you are still having problems no matter how finely you chew your food, then you are actually too tight and it will only get worse if you get more fills. The band works to curb your appetite, it will never reduce it to zero. When you get so tight that you have trouble with most solid foods, you tend to switch to easy "slider" foods that go right through it. They don't make you throw up but they don't stick in the pouch either, so you get hungry again quickly and can eat a lot of them. They also tend to be creamy/fatty foods (icecream and chocolates are classics) and you won't lose weight when that is what you are eating. Get a small amount of fill taken out - 0.25mm - and try to eat more solid foods. You'll find that if you can eat lean meat and vegetables without getting stuck or throwing up, those foods will satisfy the hunger cravings far more and you will be able to resist the temptation to eat high calorie junk. If you can't eat the good food, your body doesn't get the nutrients it needs and it will keep sending out "feed me!! feed me!!" sensations even when your stomach can't tolerate anything more than liquids. That's a terrible place to be in - frustrating and dangerous for your health. Try the liquids only for 24 hours and then see how you go with solid food. If you can't tolerate it, get a small amount of fill out! You will feel SO much better when you can eat properly and will feel much less hungry.

I guess we can all have different definitions for things. To me, a "slider" food is one that dissolves to liquid and slides through the band, eg chocolate and icecream. Lettuce is composed of mostly water with a little fibre. When chewed, the water is released and will go through but the fibre is left behind and fills the pouch. To me, that means it is not a "slider". It just takes a LOT of lettuce to create enough fibre to get a sensation of fullness - hence why you can eat a lot of it. I would also have a different definition of "salad". Lettuce and dressing simply don't qualify in my mind. If you say "salad", my mental image is of a proper garden salad with a variety of veges, as mentioned previously. Hence, if you ask "is lettuce a slider food", I might say "technically not really, but I can see why people might think so" but if you were to ask "is salad a slider food", I will answer "no, it's not".