Djmohr

I think that it frustrates me the most when reading to a post where someone ate something that they clearly know they should not have 1 week after surgery is that other posters coddle them. They tell them stories about how they did something similiar and they turned out ok so therefore you will be ok. What?! Really? Just because you did not get sick and die, doesnt mean the next person won't. There is a very good reason they put you on a clear liquid, full liquid, pureed, soft foods and finally regular foods diet. Oh, and regular foods does NOT mean the crap you used to eat. Those of us that tell them to get help or questions their decisions are called haters. Hmmmm....Now I know i am not a hater but i will say I believe people who are sabotaging this early on need more help than anyone on this board can give them. They need a therapist who specializes in food issues. If you are breaking the rules 1 week out, when your stitches are still fresh, you are likely still swollen that is called sabotage in my book. Down the road, these are the same people that tell everyone the surgery did not work for them giving WLS a bad name. I know because i have a nurse (yes, a nurse) in my doctors office that blames her failed WLS on the surgery and not her own behaviors. Too many others who don't know it yet, need this cure for obesity. I will be honest, I don't want the non rule followers to ruin it for all those that need to come after us. Those of us that have followed the rules and have been successful work hard at educating people who might need this surgery down the road to survive. So pardon me if their behaviors pisses me off. It can be absolutely exhausting but someone has to tell it straight. Thanks for your post!!! I agree with you. I don't get why people do this and more importantly I don't get that they won't go get some help to learn to deal with their issues. And for those of you that won't like my response and question whether or not I followed the rules....I did pre op and post op to the letter until about 6 months post op, then i started introducing small things. I wish i never had done that because now it makes it easy to do it more often. It makes fighting the rebound gain much harder to deal with. Rant over......

First, I am not a hater. (I know you did not call me one), I am concerned for you. You state it was a very big decision for you to have this surgery? You need to find out why you did this so that you don't continue to have these problems in the future. You want this to be your chance at getting healthy, I assume. The most important reason, I am suggesting you talk to a therapist is because you said you were starving and that is why you did it. Well, the truth is that is NOT possible 1 week post wls. Your stomach was cut and the hunger hormone is not present for several months in RNY and forever in the sleeve. You can live on liquids for a very very long time before you actually starve. So this means the head hunger has already gotten to you. This is important because head hunger never goes away and you have to learn how to live with it and choose the right foods to ensure you loose and maintain your weight. I am shocked that you were actually able to eat a whole half of a sandwich at one week post op. I am two years out and if I do have a sandwich, i can eat just a few bites if there is bread. I do wish you all the best, but i advise you to get some help to deal with your food issues now, before it is too late and another person decides the surgery did not work for them when in fact they chose to bypass the rules. One rule broken will lead to another and another.......before you know it, you will wonder why it is not working for you.

@@LittleBill The in person thing works SO much better than over the phone that is for sure. My husband uses me....LOL. He will tell someone who is irritating him on the phone that if they cannot get it together, he will put his wife on and they certainly dont want that. LOL. Works for him most of the time.

When those smartphones come out where I can slap someone, i will be first on the list to buy one! 3 times today I could have used it. WTF, what is with the medical community lately???? In particular, the people who answer the phones. I am on a rescue medication for migraines. With all that has been going on lately, I am getting them every other day. I take a shot called Dyhdroergotimine. I give myself a shot and 20 to 30 minutes later i get back to my life with not even a slight headache nor any side effects. Well, they have been out of it for months in the injectable form which is the least expensive yet most effective. This has happened before over the years so I tend to order a set of 10 every month just to ensure i have a surplus. Well, in June of this year it went out of stock and over the months i went through my back stock. So, last month i called the manufacturer directly to find out when this med will become available. I was told that it is likely a ingredient that they are having a hard time getting. Of course i find this funny because you can get it in the nasal spray which by the way costs 3 times as much 3600.00 for a box of 8. The injections are 999.00 for a box of 10. The injectables work better for me. same ingredients and she never looked she said I assume this is why. Then I proceeded to call my doctor and ask her to write a prescription for the nasal spray because there is no date in sight and I was completely out and suffering from a migraine. She quickly sent an electronic request to Walgreens. Walgreens processed it and the insurance company rejected it because it needed a pre auth now. That is when the fun ensued! Ha.....My doctor immediately wrote up the request for preauth. The insurance company deleted it and there i sat for another 10 days not knowing no one was doing there job. I got another migraine so i called Walgreens and was promptly told that it was out of stock for an undetermined amount of time. See, I am smart enough to know they are not even really looking at the right medication and are simply giving me a canned answer without checking. so i say how about you look in my actual file because i think you are talking about the injectables not the nasal spray. Low and behold when they look, they see i am right. Then they try pushing it through insurance again and again it gets rejected. They say, it needs a pre auth. I say, doctor wrote for one and it should be through. They say, cant help you call insurance. Now....how many phone calls later, I am on the line with the insurance company who tells me that they cannot help me they need to talk to the specialty pharmacy. Thank goodness she stayed on the line with me for 1 hour 45 minutes. The specialty pharm lady then tells us finally that they deleted the pre auth because it needs to be handled by the insurance company. LOL......by the way, I have a migraine while all this is going on. The Cigna lady was awesome, she knew they screwed up and also knew they needed to fix it. She got a supervisor involved, and 48 hours later i finally had my perscription filled. all that time....still had a migraine. Now fast forward to last week......I was down to my last 2 nasal sprays which i hate but they work. injectables still not available. I have no refills because we wanted to go back to injectables. I call Walgreens to order a refill. 24 hours later i get a notice saying this medication is out of stock and not expected in. Hubby goes there and the (very lazy) girl that works there says, oh no problem, the drug should be in tomorrow and then we can get it filled. I think "no way, could not be that easy". After 4 days of no notice that my prescription is ready, i call said lazy tech. She informs me that this drug is out of stock (again, automatic response without checking my file). I get angry and say, I am NOT talking about the injectable, i am talking about the nasal spray and i already know they are in your warehouse because my husband checked with the warehouse. She then logs on and low and behold they are in stock. She now says the problem is they faxed a request to my doctor 3 times and so far no response. I call doctor and they inform me they have never had a request, not one. That was Thursday of last week. So, they electronically confirm the prescription. I again get no notice that my prescription is ready on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and so Monday i call pharmacy. I get the same lazy tech. She informs me they did not get anything from doctor. I call doctor, doctor has time and date it was submitted to Walgreens. Now, this is a 3600.00 prescription of which the mark up for them is 1600.00. I say how about you guys get your crap together and start taking care of your customers. (Wish i had that smart phone so i could smack them right in the face!) Well, still no notice that prescription is ready. Yesterday hubby drives to Walgreens and said lazy tech (same one) sees him coming and knows she is deep doo doo. She races back to get my prescription ready! I spoke with the pharmacist and told him I have never ever had such horrible service from Walgreens in my life. And if they couldn't figure out how to get this moving forward, I would pull my families prescriptions and go somewhere else. My husband came home with my new prescription yesterday while i was having one of the worst migraines yet. Sorry for the long post but this is one example of what is happening. I so wish I had a phone that i could reach through and slap or strangle someone sometimes. LOL. No headache today!

Stalls are normal and there really is not anything you need to do besides follow the plan. Your body will ultimately realize that you are not starving to death and you will start losing again. Dont worry and stay off the scale.

@@ryhophop Why did you do this? You need to contact your surgeon right away as you can damage your new stomach by doing this. I don't mean to be rude, you obviously know you shouldn't do this but you need to get to the bottom of why you did it so it does not happen again. Having WLS is 90% head game and 10% surgery so if you are already not following the rules, you are potentially going to have trouble following them going forward. This is just my advice but I would contact a therapist that specializes in bariatric patients.

@@teedsg Less than 2 hours from start to finish. I was shocked at how quickly this surgery can be done. Best of luck to you!

@@sugarbear234 I also want to tell you that I was anemic and malnourished before my RNY surgery. I no longer take any Iron tablets. The change of diet is an important part of how you stay healthy. Not sure if you know this or not but many many many morbidly obese patients are malnourished. This comes from eating the wrong foods. My anemia was resolved very quickly. In fact, I was shocked when they never even put me on an iron replacement after surgery. My iron has been strong ever since. Half the battle is learning that you need to eat differently. I always say, 90% of having WLS is a head game, 10% is about the surgery itself. It is ALL about changing behaviors and eating differently than you do today. It is not all about quantity of food......

In terms of recovery, everyone is different. I had RNY bypass. For me, the surgery was easy. The first night in the hospital was the roughest but that was brought on by the gas they pump in your belly during laparoscopic surgery. I would not call it pain, I would call it discomfort. They gave me liquid vicodin in the hospital for two nights and then sent me home with some. I had surgery on monday, went home on wed night. Took my last dose of pain medication on thursday and then they switched me to liquid tylenol. That stuff is awful and i chose not to take it. I just did not have alot of pain. The first week I was on a clear liquid diet and was simply focused on getting fluids in. That to me is the hardest part early on. You dont feel like drinking but if you dont, you get nauseous, weak and dizzy. If you do a good job then that feeling goes away. By week 2 i felt pretty good. The hardest part about having weight loss surgery in my opinion is getting used to the new lifestyle and wanting to eat. If i was busy, and i was i would just forget to eat. Sometimes hubby would ask, have you had lunch yet? It would be 4pm. I simply wasn't hungry but you learn to eat on time to keep yourself healthy. There are folks on this site alone that range from their early 20's all the way up to 70's+. Not sure what you looking for with meals? My nut had me on a high Protein, good carb, well balanced diet from day 7. Lean Proteins, veggies and fruits. During weight loss i was to stay away from rice, Pasta, sweets, caloric drinks other than Protein Drinks. I also minimized potatoes. I would have them a couple times a week and then only after i got my protein and other veggies in. In maintenance, I began adding whole grains in and I do eat some of those other things once in a while but i am careful about how often as I dont want to gain back my loss. As for confidence, hell yes! I carry myself different, dress different and feel fantastic. I had this surgery to get healthy as i had a BMI over 44 and was struggling with alot of health issues. It never dawned on me that I would even care about how I look until the weight started coming off and my confidence started coming back. Now, I am focused on how i look and what i wear all the time. Its weird how that works. I am 53 by the way....I feel like i lost my 30s and 40s because i was so morbidly obese that i just did not care about how i looked or the clothes i wore. Everything i bought i did it because I had to. I was working in a professional setting. Anything I bought, i thought looked like crap on me. Now, I try on clothes relentlessly just because I can and i know they will look good on me. My shopping definately changed, i love to go clothes and shoes shopping now. Best of luck, Hope we are answering your questions. Feel free to reach out if you have more.

Not sure from the title of your post whether or not you have GERD? If you do, the sleeve is likely not the best procedure for you. Check with your surgeon on this. The sleeve can make GERD worse resulting in a revision to bypass. It is the reason i had bypass, I had my heart set on the sleeve and then was told it was not the best solution for my health issues. I had my RNY over two years ago. I am 53. I had type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, severe gerd and worst of all stage 3 kidney disease. I also have psoriatic arthrits, Osteo arthritis and hypothyroid. Within 3 months my diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and severe gerd were completely GONE. My kidney disease was in remission and liver function went back to normal. Within 12 months my sleep apnea was gone. I was off all medications for those issues with the exception of my thyroid replacement and biologics for my Psoriatic arthritis. I of course now take calcium citrate, a multi Vitamin, Vitamin D, vitamin b1 and vitamin b12. It is alot less expensive for me, I lost all of my excess weight and other than my lousy back, I feel fantastic. Years younger......prior to losing my weight i felt like I was dying every day. Try not to worry, just educate yourself. Get on line, go to support groups, talk to those on forums like this. It will help you know everything you need to know to get healthy and stay healthy. Best of luck to you!

@@sugarbear234 Malabsorption was very scary for me when i first started this journey mostly because I did not understand it. It is not a side effect, it is on purpose and it helps you with weight loss and maintenance. I am thrilled that I had RNY and have the malabsorption factor. The most important thing is that you take your Vitamins as prescribed and have your nutritional panel done as prescribed. This makes sure that if you are malabsorbing vitamins and minerals that they know and you can take a supplement. I am over two years post op, get my blood checked once per year now. There was only 1 time that my blood work was abnormal and that was post op 6 months, i was low on thiamin. So now i take a B1 Vitamin everday. My blood work has been fine ever since. Dont be afraid of malabsorption unless you are not a rule follower. They told me that some people stop getting their blood work done, dont follow instructions and then years later are in trouble. If you follow the plan, it is nothing to be worried about. Best of luck to you!

@@vita428 I started losing it fast at 8 weeks post op and it continued through month 13. that said, all the while i was losing, new hair was coming in. By month 15 post op i had sprouts everywhere. It drove me nuts. Then before I new it, My hair was thicker than it was before. I did take Biotin for the first year but i am not convinced it did anything.

The survey results are very scary. Will we ever get to a point where people begin to understand this disease? Same is true of the medical profession. Having had to change insurance companies and states, I am no longer covered for bariatric services under my health insurance. Every time I see a doctor, even my own general doctor, I have to come very prepared to question, challenge and educate them on my new digestive system. I have to fight every insurance bill that has anything to do with post op care. If my doctor uses the word bariatric in coding, I have to pay 100% out of pocket. I am waiting for the day when things change but it really stinks that people do not understand this disease nor the proven cure for it.

Even from the pureed stage i was eating mexican style Proteins. Of course NO tortillas just the meat, veggies and cheese only. the tortillas, even corn will slow down or stall weight loss. At least they did for me. I am making Barbacoa beef in my instant pot tonight for dinner. Cannot wait!

@@kblanc She is still on life support and they have been testing all day. When you need a transplant they want to make sure that there are not other diseases that you might have like cancer, heart disease...basically anything that might cause you to lose (waste) an organ that someone healthy would do better with. So, today they have been running tests all day long. They did a heart catheterization as well as many other tests. They are watching the pressures in her brain and we are hoping that they do not rise any more. If they do, they will have to put a monitor into her brain to monitor the pressures and that can cause bleeding issues. When you are in liver failure, your blood does not clot so they want to avoid that if possible. They are still saying that she is not stable and we are taking one hour at a time right now. It is so weird because I knew this could happen but I did not realize how many people have lost their lives from acetaminophen overdoses. By the time they get symptoms it is too late to do anything about. They think that she actually overdoses approximately 4 days before based on her billy ruben scores. She is very yellow. She didnt feel well but the night before she walked into the ER is when she really began to complain about feeling crappy. When she woke the next morning she had alot of pain in her gut. Apparantely this is when things started to get really bad, hours later she was down and incoherent. Very very scary......I cannot tell you how many times I have taken more tylenol than I am supposed to trying to get rid of the pain in my back. Of course this and being so overweight was why my own kidneys got so bad. My husband wanted to come home and throw out the bottle until i educated him. I literally went on line and read out loud about acetaminophen overdoses and how they can happen. He gets it now but is scared.

@@danaymacklin Are you able to get close to goal on Water? That will help alot as well.

I had the opposite and still do. Plain Water or water with a lemon in it works best for me. Also, room temp water especially first thing in the am before your new stomach wakes up. I still drink room temp water today, it allows me to drink much more of it. I have a hard time with anything that is too cold.

Yes for the first few weeks it was like that. then a stall around week 3 and then it kicked back in. Don't worry, it should taper off and slow down and when that happens you will wish you were back at the days when you would lose 1 to 2lbs per day. If i could do things over again, I would better leverage the heck out of that first 6 months before hunger set back in for me. (Honeymoon period) I was pretty good at sticking to the plan but there were times where i would eat something that would stall me out or slow my weight loss. I guess the good news is I did end up losing all of my excess weight, it just took me longer. Best of luck to you and you are doing fantastic already!

Have your bowels been working up to this point? I know it took about 10 days before they did for me and that gas and bloating can be very painful. Water intake does help with it but you might need laxatives. I would not be afraid to call the doctors office.

Oh my!!! I hate that smell. Poor dog, poor Lisa and poor you!

@@summerset What is your deal? Challenge all you want, I responded to your questions. It is not necessary for me to argue with you. Clearly you have it all figured out. Also not angry, just dont need to deal with rude people such as yourself or take over someone's post with nonsense.

I have used Almond flour for making a coating on chicken or fish but not until i was a year post op. I think you could use it much earlier than that. I made my version of chicken parm using almond flour and parmesean cheese...... I never have used coconut flour but i have some in bought in my pantry. I was going to try baking something with it but honestly i just dont care much for sweets so I haven't. Its probably been in there over a year now.. LOL.

I have said this at least 1000 times. Weight loss surgery is 90% head game, 10% surgery...... I literally have to talk to myself before getting on the scale so my head is in the right game.

You need to post more! I literally find myself laughing out loud. And.....I just came from the grocery store with my (geezer) father N law. Imagine an 87 year old in one of those motorized carts. This really happened.....He plows into an entire table in the bakery section of cherry pies and they all crash to the ground. The worked comes out and starts cleaning up the mess. You would think said father n law would say something like "I am so sorry" but no....he says: "Got any more cherry pies, these ones are broken" Really, true story!