DangerMouse007

Yeah, I had the same feeling about 2 months before my surgery. I started freaking out and googling RNY Complications which made it even worse. I ended up getting over it after a few days though. I had never had any kind of major surgery before; I hadn't even ever been to the ER for anything in my life. So I was definitely scared of the unknown. However, my surgeon was amazing, the surgery itself went smoothly, and I'm fairly happy with the results.

Just realized I started this thread just a little over a year ago. Nice! Unfortunately I haven't had much to add. I gained a little bit of the weight I lost from the wisdom tooth extraction nearly 2 months ago, but nothing major. My weight seems to be fluctuating between 249 and 253. I've noticed that when it does get up to 253, then I'll go a few hours of urinating like crazy and end up around 249 or 250. As mentioned before, I'm a little disappointed that this seems to be my "equilibrium" weight for now. I've been around this weight for nearly 4 months now so I imagine now it's a matter of more exercise and maybe stricter control of my diet (which I've said before). While I am happy to be down to a size 44 waist (down from size 64 two years ago), I still have a lot of belly fat. A lot! It would be nice to get rid of as much as possible. Anyway, Happy Holidays all!

Hello, my name is Ed aka Danger Mouse. I'm originally from Austin, TX but currently live in Upstate NY outside Albany. My surgeon is Dr. Baranov in Saratoga Springs, and I had my RNY Gastric Bypass surgery on August 10th, 2015. This is my story. IN THE BEGINNING I posted the meat of this in another thread a week or so ago, but I figured it's a good way to start out a thread on my story and use it as sort of a living diary I guess post op...as long as I can keep it up. So I start at the beginning... When I see pictures of myself when I was younger (before 9 years of age), I was very skinny. Before that time my parents would send me to after school daycare. There they would feed us a small snack and then send us outside into the playground until our parents came to pick us up. When I was 9, I started walking the mile home from school. Even with that exercise, being home alone for a couple of hours before the parents got home opened up the entire refrigerator for me, leftovers and all. I still remember when I turned 13 years old, I had to take a physical to play football. On the paper I turned into the coach I was 5'10" tall and weighed 215 pounds. I never grew another inch as I still stand 5'10". Strangely enough I was a pretty decent long distance runner. I loved it! I remember clocking in a 6.5 minute mile which seemed pretty impressive for my size and age at the time. When I got to college, we had to take a couple of PE credits, and I elected to do weightlifting. Our pass/fail grade was based on how much weight we could bench press and leg press divided by our actual weight. That was quite an incentive to hit the weights hard and lose some weight. I started my first freshman semester at 265 pounds and got down to 238 pounds a year later. I would do the weightlifting class Monday and Wednesday afternoon then head home and run 3 miles. Then my sophomore year, it all fell apart. I became a delivery driver for Papa John's. Oh, yeah! Free food!! It was all over after that. I never ran again and very rarely lifted any more weights. Unfortunately I don't have any weight statistics from when I was 19 until I was 31. I never went to the doctor or made any effort to weigh myself. My guess is that I got upwards of 350+ pounds before 2003 when I started exhibiting symptoms of diabetes. I didn't recognize those for what they were though, and I really loved the weight loss that came with being a hardcore diabetic. I remember running into a woman at the time who I had known before the diabetic weight loss, and she mentioned that I looked really good. I felt like I looked good, but oh man, was I feeling crappy in other areas: constantly thirsty, dry mouth, constantly urinating, etc., etc. However, since I had no idea I was diabetic, I was continually downing sodas and just about everything else with tons and tons of sugar. When I finally saw a doctor in 2006 I was 300 pounds with blood sugars in the 300's. He immediately put me on insulin, and I gradually got up to 390 pounds in a year. I've documented what happened next in other threads, but I stayed at around 390-400 until late 2010. I was put on Victoza and lost about 60 pounds over the course of a year. Then I put it all back on in 2012 and then some. It was in October 2012 when I went to see my cardiologist at the time that I realized it was probably time to do something. His scale didn't go over 400. They couldn't document my weight at the time, and when the nurse left me in the examination room, I lost it and broke down. That's when my cardiologist recommended WLS. It was something I thought about afterwards, but I really am so commitment-phobic, I just wasn't sure I wanted to put that kind of commitment in myself. In July of 2013 I lost my job of 15 years due to a reduction in force. That certainly didn't help matters, and I became very depressed. It took me a few months, but I ended up taking a job 1800 miles away from where I lived in Austin, TX to where I now live in Upstate NY north of Albany. That was in February of 2014.

Twice? Damn. I live in Upstate NY, and I want so bad to go, but those ticket prices are ridiculous.

This is how it worked out for me: Month 1 - Meet with surgeon; Meet with Pulmonary/setup sleep lab study Month 2 - Met with cardio to set up Stress Test; Meet with nutrionist; Sleep Study; Meet with psychiatrist (some require 2 visits; mine was only one) Month 3 - Meet with Surgeon's PA Month 4 - Meet with Surgeon's PA; Received CPAP Machine Month 5 - Meet with Nutrionist; Do Stress test and follow-up with cardiologist Month 6 - Follow-up with Pulmonary on CPAP usage; Pre-procedure blood draw; Meeting with Surgeon's PA If that gives you some idea.

I imagine everybody goes through them in one form or another. I believe it's the body's way of adjusting...scientifically speaking. I think there's some kind of post or article detailing the reasons...scientifically. I know somebody where I work that lost 310 pounds with the gastric sleeve in 2 years. He told me he refused to deal with stalls so he did whatever he could to break out of them as quickly as possible whether that was increasing physical activity or changing the way he ate, etc. If it works, great, but I'm not too sure about that. Stalls really do suck and are very discouraging...until all of a sudden the weight melts away again...

Oh, yeah. Next week is my regular six month endo appointment. I already did my blood work last week (after the oral surgery because I totally forgot it needed to be done). I received the results Monday morning online (thank you, Labcorp for setting that up and for doing it so quickly since it normally takes more than a week!). My A1C was 7.0 which is the lowest it's ever been since I was first officially diagnosed with Diabetes 10 years ago (and probably my lowest A1C since at least 2002/2003). Obviously it's still not ideal...not by a long shot since it highlights that I'm still rather dependent on insulin medication. Everything else on the lab report was normal although it mentioned that I might be a little dehydrated. I'm not sure how it's measured, but I did the blood work two days after my oral surgery, and I can tell you I was in no mood to drink much of anything after my wisdom teeth were removed.

I discovered a new diet! It's called The Wisdom Tooth Extraction Diet!! I've had amazing results in just one week post-extraction. I've lost 6 WHOLE POUNDS in 8 days! Ugh...all joking aside, the weight loss I've experienced after my wisdom teeth were removed last week has me wondering if I was really in a stall or maybe just eating too much, if that's such a consideration as gastric bypass patient. After the removal, the first day I was told to just eat cold, liquidy foods. I mainly ate yogurt and Protein smoothies mixed with blended frozen fruit. I was told I could switch to smooth foods on the second day, but I was really in too much pain. I also didn't really have much of an appetite. Even now, 8 days later, I really don't want to eat. I have to force myself to eat. I still feel some discomfort chewing as well especially on the lower right side of my teeth; not really painful, just annoying. I had a couple days where I guess I bit my inner cheek which became swollen and made the whole ordeal even worse. As a result of that chewing discomfort I would end up swallowing my food without chewing it well. This resulted in my feeling fuller way faster than I normally would. Thus I would eat less. So why question the stall? Well, eating much less with no appetite these last few days did result in a 6 pound weight loss. I had been stuck pretty much in the same weight range for two months before the teeth removal. Would I still have lost 6 pounds had I not had the oral surgery? I doubt it. As I do get my appetite back, and ability to chew without discomfort, I'll see if I end up gaining that six pounds back. In the meantime, I'm left to re-evaluate if even the little food I had been eating during my stall was really too much still.

I think the Vitamin Shoppe has them as well. They were my only choice during those post-surgery days. However, I would highly recommend trying a few flavors before hand even though there's a chance your tastes will change right after the surgery. I liked pretty much all but one of the flavors I tried. Unfortunately I can't remember offhand what that was since it was over a year ago.

Not much to update. I'm now nearly two months into a nice long stall. I hit 247 back in early August, bounced up to 260 inexplicably, and I've been hanging around 249-253 since then. It's incredibly frustrating especially since I still have quite a bit of fat around my stomach that I really, really just want to go away. And it's just not going anywhere right now. Tomorrow, 10/4, I'm going into get my wisdom teeth removed...something I was told needed to happen 21 years ago. With the weight loss, I've also committed myself to getting other things fixed including my teeth. I don't have any pain, but I had gone to see a dentist a few weeks ago for the first time in...well 21 years. He gave me a list of several things that needed to happen to get me back to truly healthy teeth. One of those required that I get at least the bottom left wisdom tooth removed. So I'm getting all of them removed. It seems the post-op diet is pretty easy; cold, liquidy foods, then smooth foods, then eventually working myself up to normal foods. I'm nervous but feel good about doing this. It'll be interesting to see if I do end up losing a little weight after my appointment tomorrow, at least for the next week or so as I recover.

My visit with my surgeon's PA ended up being a bit more in depth than I thought it would. We spent most of the time talking about my goals and my eating habits. I told her that I felt like I could eat more and more especially the foods I eat which consist mostly of ground meat. She reiterated eating more solid foods and trying to replace ground meat in my recipes with beef strips or tips, or chicken, of course. At the moment, I can't think of making that replacement in any of my mother's recipes! She also mentioned that no matter what I think I could eat I should stick to just eating a one-half cup of food per meal. Now THAT could be interesting. She felt that this, along with increased physical activity, would help me get to my own personal goal meaning losing another 50 pounds or so (if not more). She did mention the low Vitamin D number and prescribed me something that is a once a week 50,000-unit pill. I'm to take that for 2 months and do a Vitamin D test in 3 months. As far as the A1C, she said that people with Diabetes for more than 5 years can usually take a long period before they're essentially off the insulin. Since I've had Diabetes at least 15 years, I very well could still have to take insulin the rest of my life...or get into a more controlled diet situation. That was yesterday, September 6th. Today, she left me a voice mail saying that she had talked to my surgeon after my visit. He recommended possibly taking Saxenda to help lose even more weight. If I was interested, I just need to call them back. I haven't yet as I do a little more research on the drug, but I'm a little...hesitant at the idea of taking something like that AFTER WLS rather than before. It sounds a lot like Victoza which I took in 2011 and lost 60 pounds with before gaining all of that back in 2012 when the Victoza stopped working. In any case, I am thinking about it. Just not sure I want to go back to taking a prescription that's going to cost me a lot per month; currently my copays for the Levemir and Novolog I take is just $10 each. My next check up will be six months from now in March.

I'd be interested to find out if anybody is using Saxenda AFTER having WLS? I had my one year check up with my surgeon's PA yesterday (9/6), and we talked about how much more weight I wanted to lose (I've currently lost 177 pounds but would like to lose another 50 at least). We went over some things to help achieve that goal, but she mentioned at this point the weight loss would be slow at best. Today I received a voice mail from her that when she talked to my surgeon about me later in the day, he recommended possibly taking Saxenda. If I was interested in taking it to contact them back. I haven't yet contacted them back, but I did think it seemed odd to consider taking it now over a year out of WLS.

Today is my annual check-up. I've already seen my lab results for my blood (thank you, LabCorp for providing results online for me to view as soon as they're ready!), but will see what they have to say in the office. I expect it to be a pretty quick appointment. As for the weight, this last Saturday, September 3rd, I had to urinate a lot. A lot a lot!! Sure enough, some of the excess weight I had measured came back off again. I have no idea why I had to use the restroom so much. On Sunday I was back down to 247 on my scale (my lowest to date and what I had originally recorded on August 10th). Unfortunately I bounced again and am back up to 251 as of this morning so I've got that stall bouncing thing going again that I've experienced with every stall. This weekend I also got back on the workout and run pattern that I had abandoned around May do to some outstanding issues. I ended up having to completely restart the C25K program. Last time I used it I was in Week 5, but just completely restarting running again there's no way I could have gone back to that. Week 1 was kicking my butt again this weekend. So I have that going for me once again. Will see what the surgeon says, or at least his PA's. I'm relatively healthy (with a slightly elevated A1C), my blood results are good unless there's something they see that I don't see (I'm not a doctor obviously), and so I don't expect much really.

Yeah, I had lost 13 pounds on the 3 day liquid diet prior to my surgery so I freaked out a bit when I came home after surgery to have gained all of it back. But as others said, it disappeared rather quickly, re: I peed a lot those 24 hours after coming home!

While my one year surgiversary was August 10th, my annual check-up with the surgeon isn't until next Tuesday, September 6th. Last week I went in to get my blood drawn for the appointment and found out that the lab I go to now allows online access to the results. I signed up for it and was able to get all of my lab results since I first started going there back in June, 2014. On Monday I received the results for last week's blood draw. Just based on what I see (and the "normal" readings indicated on there), all of my results were great...except for my A1C which is still elevated. I have a feeling that my diabetes will be with me for life despite the surgery. The only other reading that was off by 1 unit was my Vitamin D. Was a little surprised by that; I went back to all of my Vitamin D readings in the past, and this was the first time it was lower than "normal". As far as the weight goes, I'm still yo-yo'ing a bit, but I haven't gone back down to 247 like I was on August 10th.

What I usually do on my appointment days with my surgeon is weigh myself at home nude (which is what I consider to be my official weight since I've been doing it that way since my first appointment with my surgeon six months before my surgery). Then I will weigh myself just before I leave for my appointment fully clothed shoes and all writing that down. Then, of course, is the weigh-in at the surgeon's office also fully clothed. I kept that record since I first started just to get some kind of a good idea of just how much my scale and the surgeon's scale is different. But yeah, my weight at home nude is what I consider my official weight since I do that way more often.

The bounce back down to 247 and beyond continues. I was at 252 this morning. This particular weight swing is driving me nuts. I'd hate to think, one year out, this will be my "equilibrium" point since I have so much more I want to lose. I'll just have to keep the faith and keep on top of my food and liquid consumption.

Quick update...weight on the scale this afternoon was 255 so the weight is coming down again and hopefully continues back to 247 and lower. I'm still at a loss at what caused the huge upswing. I've had 4-5 pound swings whenever I hit a stall, but 13 pounds was a bit of an overkill and scared the crap out of me. I did drink a ton of Crystal Light yesterday; more than normal...had to be around 100 ounces...or at least 96. I ended up having to urinate constantly during the day so if the weight gain was through Water retention I don't know what caused it. One of these days I'll have to study up on the actual science behind weight loss.

Yoga is something I've wanted to try for quite some time. One of the local studios is doing a Yoga for Beginners Workshop tomorrow morning. I don't know...I feel like I would be more comfortable if I could go with someone rather than doing it alone, but seeing as how I've done just about everything in life on my own not sure why it's such a hangup for me.

I self adjust based on my glucose levels with the Novolog and Levemir. They've been good.

That's what I thought as well...retaining fluids...I had that problem when I was put on new blood pressure medication 2 years ago, but other than my insulin, I don't take any prescription medicine currently. Nothing really changed from last week to this one. But I'm fairly regular still, no issues urinating rather regularly or anything unusual that I've noticed. I do have my annual appointment with my surgeon on September 6th. If I continue at this weight or gain much more, then I'll definitely let them know. Even if I don't I'll let them know that I somehow added 13 pounds in a week.

I've been in crisis mode the last couple of days. Last week, on my surgiversary, I weighed myself at 247 pounds. On Sunday morning somehow I was back up to 260 and have stayed right there since then. I'm at a loss to understand or even reason out how that happened. I thought maybe my scale was broken, but I'm not sure I can blame it on that. I haven't eaten any more or less than I normally would. The only Snacks I eat are the 100 calorie packs of almonds or peanuts or the small dill pickles I keep in the fridge, and I never over indulge myself at those. I did cook some dishes with Beans so maybe I've been a little more gassy than normal, but I don't know that could be the cause. So I'm at a loss. Within a matter of days I've somehow undone nearly 2 months of weight loss. Hopefully this is something that doesn't last long, but I don't know what to think at the moment.

I'm celebrating one year since my surgery today, but unfortunately I still do have to take insulin albeit much lower amounts than I took pre-op. I've written about it before, but I started feeling symptoms of diabetes around 2002/2003 (dry mouth, thirsty all the time, constantly urinating, etc.), but I never went to the doctor until 2006 when I was officially diagnosed. I too am waiting for that magic time when I won't have to take insulin, but I fear the years of diabetes I had especially that 3-4 years with medicine will mean I'll still be diabetic for life.

Today, August 10th is my one year surgiversary! I'm down 122 pounds since that morning before surgery and 178 total since I first met with my surgeon 18 months ago. I'm still 9 pounds away from my highest recorded weight as an adult (September 1994), but I feel good. Definitely good and very happy with the results so far. According to my doctor I should bottom out after another 27 pounds, but I do feel like I could go much lower. Time and effort will certainly tell.

I should have waited to weigh myself an extra day. Now down two more pounds to 250...just 12 pounds away from my next milestone (238) which is also the lowest weight I've recorded as an adult. It's so close I can feel it!