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@@newnewme4 Wow, I sleep on my side and couldn't even manage that for a couple of weeks! I slept in a recliner chair for the first week and a bit because our bed is quite high (hip height on me and I struggled to climb on to it for a while). @@onmywaytobeingfound is right though ... check with your surgeon. And if he or she says it's ok, then good for you! If that's going to give you a decent night's sleep, it will help you heal faster.

Exciting news ... good luck on Monday!

Another Kiwi here ... a Mainlander.

I bet I'm not the only one who took way more stuff to the hospital than I actually needed! As for the stuff I did use: I'm an avid reader and took a book with me (normally read two books a week), but found trashy magazines were better ... easier to pick up and put down because my brain is always a little fuzzy after an anaesthetic and I find it hard to concentrate. I wore a hospital gown but my own dressing gown, and had some slip-on scuffs so it was easy to get them on when I went walking. Moisturiser and lip balm. If you have long-ish hair, take a headband ... you won't be wanting to fluff around with your hair after surgery and a headband will just keep it out of the way without any hassle. I also took my iPad, so I could check emails, news websites and play games; and a pair of fingerless gloves because I always feel absolutely freezing after surgery. Clothing-wise, soft, loose track pants, a comfy T-shirt and don't forget the big undies! You'll want them to either sit below your tummy, or be big enough for the waistband to sit above your incisions ... something I remembered from an earlier surgery. As for the walking, you'll be up and about in the hospital ... short walks, that will become more frequent and longer and the days go by. Your first walk will likely be just around your bed (or from your be to the loo!), and you'll feel much more human once you've been up on your feet. Just keep plugging away with the walking once you get home and you'll be all good. Best of luck with your surgery.

@@Justin1524 Hope everything goes well for you today with your surgery ... and with the associated side effects (I've been on no medication for diabetes since my surgery 2 and a bit years ago and am now testing as a non-diabetic).

My reason for the lack of photos? I just hate having my photo taken!

@@Daveo ... also meant to say, happy birthday for next month! When in September is your birthday? It's a popular month (nine months after Christmas!) ... I'm a September baby, too.

That was exactly how I took mine for the first little while: bashed the living you-know-what out of them with a large spoon (which was actually quite therapeutic at times), then mixed it with yoghurt to mask the nasty flavour. My surgeon said I had to crush them for the first week. In fact, I still take my heart pills with yoghurt because I'm one of those weird people who finds the tinier the pill, the more likely it is to get stuck in my throat. And damn, those things taste nasty if they get stuck! With the limited capacity of the pouch, I can't always down a big glass of Water to move a stuck pill any more, but they always go down first time with a teaspoon of yoghurt.

I love my slow cooker and it was a godsend after my surgery, especially in those first few months. Beef and chicken slow cooked in stock with veges and herbs ... comes out tender and moist. \ If you're having Cereal for Breakfast, it can be high-Protein if you choose the right one. I can't do eggs in the morning, I find they are a bit "heavy", but my nutritionist is happy for me to have cereal because I go for low-sugar cereals and add in extras to make it more bariatric-friendly ... bran flakes, special K etc with low-fat yoghurt instead of milk, some chopped almonds (I buy whole, unsalted almonds and roughly chop them as I use them so they are quite chunky), chia seeds, whole flax seeds (good fibre, keeps you regular!) Depending on the time of the year, I might add fresh blueberries or chopped strawberries, frozen raspberries, a couple of slices of tinned peaches in no-sugar-added juice, half a banana. The end result is a crunchy bowl of goodness that will keep you full until lunchtime. Other options I had early on (and still have now on occasions) included soft scrambled eggs, baked Beans with cottage cheese (even early post-ops can have that, blitz with a stick blender or in a Magic Bullet if you're at the puree stage), bean and tomato Soup, oatmeal with chia seeds for extra protein, and a sort of crustless quiche ... about 250g cottage cheese with 4 eggs, a bit of low-fat cheese (mozzerella or edam), mix everything together with whatever quiche-y bits you like/can tolerate (tomato, chicken, onion, garlic, capsicum, herbs, ham etc) chuck in a quiche dish and cook at about 275 deg celcius for 20-ish minutes. You can also make smaller versions in muffin trays. Oh, and if you fancy it having a little more of a crust, add in a heaped tablespoon of flour when whisking the eggs.

I envy anyone who can do Zumba, or even aerobics ... I'm so unco-ordinated I'm a danger to myself!

There's some good advice here ... just concentrate on being happy and living your life for yourself. When you're happy in yourself, that's when you are best equipped to be happy in a relationship. Funnily enough, after a run of bad relationships a few years back, I decided to focus on my son, my career and myself. And wouldn't you know it, a couple of months later I met a bloke and the rest, as they say, is history. Next March we'll have been married for 20 years and sure, there are times I'd happily trade him for a box of Valium, but we're pretty happy 99 percent of the time!

It's very normal to be feeling a bit twitchy leading up to your surgery. I'm two and a bit years down the track and have absolutely no regrets. After getting pre-approval from my insurer, I then had a health problem crop up that delayed my surgery by two years. Then I got a call four days before my surgery date to say the anaesthesiologist's father had died and so they'd have to postpone ...by that stage the nerves were gone and I was just excited about the whole process so I was more like a kid on Christmas eve! Good luck to everyone with dates this month, enjoy your new lives.

@@Alex Brecher I'm partial to ice cream, too ... I discovered Zilch low-fat, reduced sugar vanilla bean ice cream a few months back and always keep a container of it in the freezer. It's fairly pricey, but definitely worth it: real vanilla instead of just vanilla flavour, soft and creamy and the sugar stats are way better than the Weight Watchers vanilla ice cream. I'll occasionally have a scoop of that with some frozen raspberries, or a "healthy" affogato, with a shot of decaf espresso.

I had them twice a day in the hospital (they kept me in for two days after surgery instead of the usual one day because of my dodgy heart), then once a day after I came home for 10 days. They feel like bee stings and like the other ladies here, I bruised like crazy. I also had a weird reaction after the injections finished: I came out in red welts on top of all the bruises. My doctor reckons it was a reaction to the carrier used for the clexane (blood thinner), rather than the clexane itself. I was looking quite colourful for a while, with my bruises and welts.

I was the same ... couldn't imagine anything worse than something pressing on my stomach. My surgeon didn't use stitches, he used surgical glue, and I had a mild reaction to it, which felt a bit like sunburn. I couldn't even handle holding a pillow against my stomach when getting in and out of bed/my chair for those first few days.

I was so lucky when I had my bypass ... my surgeon uses glue, so I had no stitches, no bandages, no drains and no catheter. That meant I was able to get in the shower without any hassles the morning after my op, and it felt soooo good! Isn't it amazing how good that first shower is? Makes you feel much more human!

@@BLERDgirl is so right ... plug yourself in to your favourite music and just ignore the rest of the world. I walk for exercise ... started when I was working 7am-3pm so had plenty of time to walk after work (we have great walking tracks around the beach and bush areas near where I live), but I'm working different hours now, plus it's the middle of winter here and I'm a sook! I don't do the gym thing for no other reason than the fact that I'm so unco-ordinated (if being a klutz was an Olympic event, I'd take gold). I bought myself a decent treadmill and it's upstairs on the mezzanine floor overlooking our main living area, so I can hop on there and watch a movie to fill in the time if I don't want to listen to music. I'm not not a major fan of exercise (unlike my gym junkie brother), but I know exercise is important and am happy to do it if I've got something to distract my brain from it all!

Pleased to hear you're doing well @@The Candidate ...keep up the walking, and the sipping. Keeping moving helps to, well, keep things moving, if you know what I mean! Both gas and, er ... other things! If you have any problems with constipation in the coming days or weeks, I recommend kiwifruit (or kiwi, as you guys call it). I know some people swear by prune juice, but I found it a bit too sweet. I bought packs of frozen kiwi fruit puree and had kiwifruit slushies ... refreshing, tasty and effective. Are you finding actually getting up for the first walk of your day is the hardest part? Everything's a bit stiff and sore, but once you're moving it's all ok? I didn't need a lot of pain relief by the time I got home, but made sure I took something before going to bed at night (well, before settling down on my recliner!) so I'd get a decent sleep, and before getting up and about at the start of the day.

That so perfectly sums up why I told just my husband, one of my sisters and my son. There us so much negativity out there from people who make assumptions based on what they THINK they know about this process, and the fact that someone in the medical field can get it so wrong just makes my head hurt! I'm a very private person and decided early on in the process that I wanted to keep it under my hat. Also, when I'd lost weight in the past (about 25kg a few years back through diet/exercise), every second person seemed to think it was OK to interrogate me about how much I'd lost, what I weighed now (which I came to the conclusion was their round about way of saying "so just how fat were you?" without actually asking the question), what I was doing to lose the weight, etc. The questions and comments didn't come from just close friends and family, there were people who were friends of friends, people at the office who were in different departments and probably barely knew my first name, the girl at the local coffee shop ... and they all had an opinion on what I was doing right (or wrong). Oh, and if I had a dollar for every time someone said "you're doing it the 'right way' so you'll keep the weight off" I'd have quite a healthy bank balance! Besides, I figure the "right way" is any way that actually works. That 25kg weight-loss didn't stick, the weight loss I've had from surgery (14kg in the leadup to my op, 40kg since) has stuck. One of my colleagues -- someone who doesn't know me well enough to have met my husband or socialised with me outside of work -- sat down across the table from me at a senior staff meeting a few months ago and asked straight out: "how much do you weigh now?" My response was to ask if it was a round-table discussion on our weight, and if so she could start us off by giving us her weight. She's not asked again since. I really don't understand why people think it's ok to ask something so personal, and so publicly. Anyway, that's how I handled it. And when I get the inevitable questions on how I've lost weight, I just give the honest but not particularly detailed answer: I'm just working on having a healthier lifestyle.

Congrats guys ... hope you both have a hassle-free recovery.

I was at work today and you suddenly popped in to my head: I remembered you saying on another thread that you were having your op today and I was wondering how you had got on. So pleased to hear all went well ... stay ahead of the pain, sip that Water and enjoy your gentle but regular walks. You'll be amazed by how quickly you get back to normal.

Straws aren't a good idea for those of us who've had our innards rearranged! As Djmohr says above, you'll end up swallowing lots of air. As for the noises, yes ... the pouch can get a little chatty! I'm just over 2 years out from my surgery and it's not so noisy all the time, but there are still days where the gurgles make themselves known, usually after drinking Water.

I guess what you spend on clothing is all relative ... $30,000 is a fortune to some, a pittance to others. I probably spend more on handbags than any of my friends, but that's my little weakness and I have no other vices so can afford to pay $1000-plus for the occasional designer handbag. This is all good advice, though ... you tend to change size so rapidly in those early months that you will never get your money's worth out of clothes you buy. And shoes are the same: as I lost weight, my feet also got smaller. I bought some cheap but comfy slip-ons to tide me over until things stabilised. Boots were also a little more forgiving because even if they did end up too big, I could wear them with some nice woolly socks to help with that.

I always get a little sensitive after surgery ... minor things hurt like a biarch for a month or two. I think all your emotions are a bit heightened after as well. And I was absolutely freezing all the time post op, although mine was at the start of May, so the end of autumn (fall) here. That first winter was awful ... I had to invest in thermal underwear!

I started losing hair at around two months post-op. My hair is fine, but there's lots of it, and it's generally quite curly (in my profile photo, it's been treated with hair-smoothing shampoo and conditioner, and I generally let it grow a tad wild so the weight pulls out the curl a bit). Anyhoo, I had quite a lot of hair loss, which was probably aggravated by the heart failure (according to my cardiologist), so it was a bit of a double whammy. I ended up getting it dyed purple and cut a bit shorter, and when the moulting didn't slow down, I bit the bullet, had it chopped back very short and got green and blue streaks added. I figured if it was going to bug me so much I might as well make it interesting to look at! Oh, and the hair lost finally stopped just a few months ago.