Sajijoma

Went to my first appt today! Talked with the NUT and I LOVE her! She isn't covered under my insurance, but her fees are reasonable so I'm paying to see her for sure instead of using my PCP. The shocker for me was that I AM on the 90 day fast track *gulp* so now I'm all jittery excited. I was expecting 6 months, but this will actually work great because I can drag this out til Dec when my hubby is off work and not have to take any of his vacation days for my recover so that's a bonus! I have to meet with the psych for an evaluation, but other than that, and blood tests and maybe a sleep study it should be very straight forward! I'm so happy to get this started and less afraid of being away from my kiddos after he said he'll let me go as soon as I meet the criteria and that it should be similar in recovery time compared to my gallbladder surgery!

@@The Candidate I'm so looking forward to this. I'm afraid to get too used to this "ease" of getting through stuff though because it feels like I have hope right now of being "normal" and usually whenever I have hope, someone comes and busts my bubble. Could be the psych eval. I'm a total lunatic! ????

@@Dub yeah I'm really excited at the smoothness so far. Generally when I'm involved it usually hits anywhere from 10 to 20 snags along the way! Haha I can't wait to be able to steals daughter's clothes. For years I've been buying her the stuff I really want to be wearing but doesn't come in plus size, so maybe when I hit that goal I'll just go shopping in her closet! ????

I use Splenda and monk fruit as my sweeteners. stevia tastes funny to me and aspartame gives me migraines and Xylitol leaves me gittery like I'm going hypoglycemic. Agave nectar is ok, but expensive.

I'm on the 90 day plan, but even still they said that I should plan for an entire month after completion to get approval, so I would think logistically it would probably be Jan/Feb for you, but there's always a chance. I'm wanting Dec myself instead of Oct because my husband's work shuts down for 3 wks before Christmas and that way he won't have to use any vacation time and I won't have to worry about him teachings our home schooled kids while I'm down recuperating since we take mid Dec off as well.

I think it's natural to be a little scared. I mean this is a big deal! There's no going back once it's done and that is exactly why I am doing it. I'd rather not go back to this miserable state I'm in now. I thought about this when I was in my 20's and backed out because mentally I wasn't "there" yet, but God, I wish I could have been "there" and done it, because I would be so much healthier now if I had. No one can tell you when the right time is, but I will tell you that I've lost valuable years I can never get back being stuck in this fat suit unable to do what I want because I was too afraid. I'm not afraid now (yet anyway) although I did have heart palpitations the moment they said 90 day pre operative routine instead of 6 months physician supervised diet.

It's not so much that I worry about not being emotionally ready for the surgery itself, but emotionally ready to kiss my kids goodbye and drive to the hospital. I can count the times I've left them on one hand. Even when I've had their siblings, they stayed with me as long as possible in hospital and I'd fall apart when they left to go home at night. I hate being away from them. At least I know they can visit me after the operation, but I'm sure I'll think of everything that could go wrong a thousand times once I know how long it will be. With 6 months I can tell myself "we've got plenty of time to think about that later" at least for the first 4 months, if it's 90 days I'm certain I'll think about it from the moment I hit the elevator to leave forward.

I'm so excited! My first official appt is tomorrow! I have a meeting with the NUT and then my surgeon to discuss our plan of attack. I'm excited and kinda nervous. I keep wondering what if I don't really need the 6 months of supervised diet. What if they put me on the 90 day fast track, will I emotionally be ready by then or will I need to slow the process down to mentally cope. I guess we'll wait and see what tomorrow brings! I also get to find out how much of a lying sack of crap my scale is tomorrow and I'm afraid it'll be worse than I even know. That scares me more than all the other stuff put together!

Sending love and prayers. I think for all of us, this is something we really will struggle with. I've been severely overweight most of my life. I don't know anything else. I'm not sure I'll know how to deal with people and the world as a whole without my fat suit. It'll be like walking around naked! All I can really suggest is that you take it one day at a time, one problem at a time, and use your support. Get involved in a post op support group through your hospital and really just stay with them and use them. Many of them have been where you are and can help you navigate that territory.

I took topamax for severe migraines and stress induced seizures in 2006 and that stuff really helped me lose weight. I mean, I didn't want to eat EVER and the weight just fell right off, but the problem is, at least for me, that when I quit the topamax because I was having a bad interaction with the maxalt my neurologist had also given me(you would of thought he would have known that was a bad combo but whatever), that all that weight came back with a cruel vengeance and some friends. So just be aware of that should you need to wean off of it for whatever reason.

insomnia drugs such as Ambien can actually make you sleep eat or sleep walk. After my late term miscarriage, I couldn't sleep and took ambien every night and I gained a crap ton of weight really fast and I was always complaining about the jerk who ate all the food and left handprints in peanut butter all over the counters the walls etc. My husband swore it wasn't him and the other kids were too small to do most of this stuff. Eventually, one night during a sleep stroll I fell down the stairs and of course that woke me up! LOL I realized I was the jerk eating all the food and slobbing up my house for myself to clean. It can be very dangerous. If you are taking those kind of drugs and have a history of this problem, you might want to talk to your doctor about alternatives. I think the biggest issue would be your safety. I mean, if you are eating in your sleep are you eating safely? Are you chewing it correctly for your procedure? Are you going to eat sugar and wake up in severe pain with dumping syndrome? Could you fall down the stairs and break your neck like I almost did? These are the things I would worry about most. I don't know if you've ever tried it, but maybe before you go to bed, right before, have a little snack, maybe the cucumbers are vinegar or pickles or just a little something to maybe tell your body you don't need to get up. If that doesn't work, maybe keep a protein bar on your nightstand so if you wake up you can just nibble a little and go back to sleep. I ended up quitting all sleep aids except some natural melatonin and it took me about 2wks after that before I could sleep again it was pretty rough.

This is actually what I hopefully will get mine covered with post weight loss. I have a pretty huge fat overhang as is, after having 7 kids, so if I lose weight, that skin isn't going back, it's going down further and at some point that baby could be rubbing the knees or lower(scary thought) but my insurance does have a surgery they will do to correct that because of the skin infection risks and "loss of quality of life" so I'm hoping to pay for my breast lift/augmentation and arm and thigh lifts at the same time. I wish they offered the same for a saggy bottom, but who knows! LOL I have noticed that most plastic surgeons I've been looking into do offer financing so as long as you've got decent credit it wouldn't be too hard to get one of those finance plans.

I take Garden of Life for women vitamins. Right now since I'm finishing up nursing I'm still on the prenatals, but they come in capsules and if you can't tolerate the capsules, you can open them up and take it in juice or mix it in a smoothie as well. I had esophagilitis from some antibiotics I was on and for awhile I couldn't swallow anything with any kind of size or texture without severe pain so I'd open them and blend them in a protein smoothie. They don't taste super great, but they blend in well enough that it wasn't too bothersome.

I haven't done the preop diet, but I did do Joe's juice diet from Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and the first few days were very painful. Headaches, body aches, feel like you have the flu and that's from your body detoxing. If you can fight through it, in a couple of days you should feel pretty good. If you can't, you can slow it down by taking a piece of bread, crackers, or eating something with some sugar although it being your preop diet, you really shouldn't be taking in sugar or carbs since it's to help shrink your liver. More water will help to flush it faster too.

I'd like to know as well. I use ibuprofen-5 caps at a time- to deal with migraines in between my other meds since I can only use them 2x a week because of toxicity. Especially now, while I'm weaning and my hormones are all over the place-I use it almost daily for migraine pain. I can't imagine living life without my giant bottle of ibuprofen. What do people use?!

You nailed it with that post. Summed up many of the things I'm experiencing as well. Hoping to see if the medical issues melt away along with the fat. Oh God I hope they do! I'm lucky in that at my weight and size I don't have diabetes or high blood pressure yet, but it's just a matter of time. I had gestational diabetes in my last pregnancy and they usually say that if you don't change your diet and life around that within 5yrs of that you will have diabetes, so I've got less than 4 years now(baby just turned 1) to figure this out. I know I don't want to spend the rest of my life poking fingers and feeling miserable.

thank you Chrystee! There are some days it really gets to me and then there are days that I say "hey! That was then and this is now. I can't wear it as an excuse my whole life!" I've got 7 beautiful kids and a husband and if I want to eat a whole box of brownies, (and I certainly could)...no one is here to stop me, but I don't because I know I shouldn't and I try....TRY real hard not to be a bad example for my kids. I don't want them to ever feel like I did. In a way, though, I got to redo my childhood through them and the second time around it has been absolutely amazing (except that I can't fit on the slide or the swings anymore. ) I'm hoping by the time our littlest is 3, I'll be fitting on that swing and racing him to see who can get the highest. That's my goal. Not a pant size or number in particular, but fitting on the swing.

Have you been to a seminar yet? At our seminar, the surgeon went through each one and which one was best suited for which situation. The lap band or realize bands he said were good for about 60-70lbs but more than that it wasn't going to cut a significant amount of weight and did have issues with long term loss. Like people learned how to eat around it I guess. then he showed us the sleeve and said it's good for 100+lbs weightloss, but a lot of times again, people find ways around it's usefulness and end up with a weight gain and eventually if they have a significant weight to lose will have it switched over to a bypass. It also tends to come with GERD/acid reflux and it can be very painful to deal with that. The bypass he referred to as his "gold standard" in weightloss because it has shown to work long term, the weight loss experienced is quite dramatic and fast and for the most part, a person with bypass can expect to lose 70% for their excess weight in the first year and maintain that loss or improve over the next 5 yrs without slipping backwards. He also cover plication and some new battery operated thing that shocks the vagus nerves causing them to not send the message of being hungry. I forget what it was called, but it was neat. It's not really good for someone in my situation though, I think it was comparable to the lap band in weightloss. I went into the seminar thinking sleeve seemed the way to go because I didn't want anyone fiddling with my intestines and dumping sounds REALLY painful, but by the time we left, I had really committed in my heart to the roux en y because I really don't want to do this again. I want to do 1 surgery and be good for life. I find out for certain what the surgeon thinks is our best plan of attack Fri. I'm pretty sure he's going to suggest the bypass though. At my weight and with my history, I'd be shocked if he didn't.

I really like these ideas! I haven't really thought about the idea of rewards along the way, but I DEFINITELY like the sound of it.....I could see maybe starting a charm bracelet or something and maybe getting a new charm for each milestone. Like maybe a shoe charm if I start running, a tennis charm if I take up tennis again, a bicycle for the first bike ride, or other things relative to the journey. That would be fun. I think when I finally reach my goal weight and after I've gotten rid of the excess skin, I think my big thing will be to have a real full body nude photo taken. I never take a full body pic even with clothes on, so I think that would be a cool thing to do.....maybe like one of those boudoire photos or something for the hubby....I keep telling him that his investment in this process will be like he gets a brand new wife.

Oh gosh I hope I have that problem when it's my turn! LOL Is it miserable or is this just one of those side effects that has a pleasant outcome like it sounds? If it isn't a bad thing, I wouldn't mind having that extra help for sure. Of course I've got 7 built in reminders to eat(my kids) so I in theory can't forget to eat all day because I have to fix them meals. I could always send them to your house if you get too skinny!

You see, you say you "lack the willpower" but it's not the willpower that's the problem. It's the disconnect in the body. Like you, I KNOW what I'm suppose to eat and how much to the point, I actually corrected my nutritionist when I had gestational diabetes about portion sizes when she misspoke the portion sizes I was allowed and she stopped and looked at me blank faced and then said "oh, you're right!" I guess she didn't expect big old heavy me to know anything about nutrition! We know the score, it's our bodies that don't seem to understand. Willpower has almost nothing to do with it....maybe a little, but for the most part I don't think it's fair to yourself to say it's your lack of willpower to make it happen when your body is screaming "WE'RE STARVING! EAT OR WE'LL DIE!!!"

Oh god, I've got a list..... broccoli salad. It's basically blanched broccoli, cauliflower, in some mayo/cream sauce with a ranch seasoning mixed in. We used to sell this at the grocery store deli I worked at(schnucks if you are a midwesterner in the St. Louis area) I thought it was healthy so I'd buy that, but OMG the facts on that one I would have been better off and probably less hungry if I had eaten a whole rotisserie chicken! In that same vein is 7 layer salad. lettuce, mayo, peas, cheese, spinach, and some other stuff I can't even remember layered up like a big giant lasagna. I thought "hey it's salad it has to be good for me" but I easily put on 10lbs eating it. It's all the yummy fat and mayo and cheese that sink that one, but makes you want to eat it. Also melba toasts. I convinced myself that by putting ham and cheese on melba toasts that I wasn't eating that much, but would blow through literally a pound of meat n cheese combined before I was done, when if I had just made a regular 4oz meat and 1 slice of cheese sandwich I would have been full and done. On the subject of what mom fed us that turned us the way we are....my mom has and always been mentally ill. She's schizophrenic and hears voices in her head that tell her to do things that she wouldn't normally do if she were in her right mind. She's a loving mom when she's well, but when she's off her meds it's a whole nothing creature. I've come to a place where I understand that now and have forgiven her, but the damage was and is still something I suffer from her illness. When I was 4yrs old the voices in her head told her I was going to be fat! HUGE! Just like my brothers. They were all well over 300lbs by freshman year in high school that I can remember. So she put me on a diet that the voices in her head gave her which consisted on 1/2c cottage cheese and one half of a cling peach from a can. That's all I was allowed to eat once a day. If I snuck food and got caught I was given a punishment of several days with no food at all while they ate infront of me big giant meals and taunted me with how delicious it is and how I couldn't have it. I went from being able to eat whatever I wanted and never gain a pound and never hungry to a stark raving starving hungry person who gained weight at the snap of a fingers who went to my grandparents houses and first would hide from food and then shoveled food non stop. I went from being slighly under weight and taking up to a few days to eat a package of M&M's to severely overweight and ravenously ripping the package open and swallowing them all at once literally overnight. In essence, her illness started me on the road to a life long battle with weight and the inability to get the starvation mode turned off. Then when I was taken away by CPS from time to time when they bothered to follow up, the fostercare people would feel sorry for me and stuff me with yummy stuff I never had before like oreos and ice cream and potato chips and brownies and cakes for your birthday just for being alive(who knew about these things!) and it was the first time I had froot loops or Burger king or deep dish pizza! I fell in love with that stuff and as I got older and bounced between home and fostercare, those special treats became my comfort and it's amazing how our parents or even well meaning people can really screw us the hell up with food! I still want the comfort of stuffed crust pizza after a bad day and I still want a bowl of ice cream when I really need a hug instead. It's a process to break those associations for sure! I'm struggling now with the help of a good shrink to undo the damage, but cottage cheese to me always equals punishment. I've struggled with that my whole life and even though I bought some this week to try to develop a new association with it, I can't bring myself to open it. It's just sitting in the fridge taunting me! I know this is one I have to get past because I've read the post op diets and cottage cheese is a huge component in the soft food stage plans I've seen, but my body is already rebelling at the thought.

There were several things I looked for. First was a TEAM to help and not just a surgeon. I need a whole team of people from NUT to psych to surgeon. I also need them to be friendly. Even in bariatrics you find some surgeons and doctors who are very condescending and look down upon overweight people, like they think they are your super man saving you from your bad choices and you should be grateful to them for your existence. UH UH that doesn't work! I also need a surgeon who is honest and open about the not good sides. Like for instance, and this is probably why a lot of people don't like me, at my seminar, I asked the surgeon what was his death rate. I think I phrased it something like "how many patients under your care have you lost as a result of complication after surgery" and he was open and honest and told us about the numbers. That kind of openess is very much needed if you want the pleasure of rooting around inside my body one day making new express lanes and tole bridges. LOL They obviously also have to be able to handle my odd personality that only gets weirder the more they know me.

Have fun at the seminar! I didn't really want to go to it, because I figured I had researched everything and knew the in's and out's and for the most part I did. What I REALLY got out of the seminar was that I got to meet the lady who will be my face to face for the whole process and scheduling appts and dealing with insurance and everything and we hit it off great. She's a great lady and I got to meet my future surgeon Dr Chae and our personalities seem compatible which for me is a huge thing! If I perceive that someone is judging me or being rude and condescending, I can't cope and I am totally out the door, but after meet them both I was very much at ease and know I chose the right office. Plus my hospital where I'll have surgery is only 6 miles from home so I won't even have to stress a long car ride when the day comes and work myself into the Cowardly Lion by the time I get there! hhaha

Yeah, healthy and skinny I need.....sexy I've already got going on! LMAO