crazygoose

Hi so the person I was making arrangements with to help me right after the surgery won't be able to as it turns out. I'm afraid that I will have no family members or friends that would be able to. So I am wondering just how much help does one require after the WLS? How long will it take until you can drive after surgery? Can you drive yourself home from the hospital? (I know its probably a dumb question but I'm serious.) Or do you have to have someone take you home from the hospital and if so do you need extra care and assistance getting into the car and getting out and walking to your home? Would a cab or something like Uber be okay to pick you up from the hospital? When you're home do you need someone to fix your meals for you? Help you with medications? Assist you when you get up and have to walk around and such? Do you need someone to check on you? If so how often? How long will it be before you can do something like go grocery shopping? What are other things you would need help with?

Thanks to everyone who replied to this thread! Your responses were all very helpful and I'm glad I won't need as much help as I initially thought. I guess I just need to prepare my liquid "meals" and what not ahead of time if I can and make sure everything I need is all within reach. I'll need to arrange for someone to drop me off and pick me up from the hospital and have someone call me twice day to check on me 2-3 days after surgery and as long as I don't need anything heavy to be lifted I should be good to go.It's going to be hectic before surgery, I will be moving into a new apartment April 4 same day as my pre-op appointment and then two days after that will be the day of my surgery. Not to mention I need to do some shopping for for my surgery and my new place around that time. I could really use a clone.

Congratulations! I know it wasn't easy but you fought hard for this and now your goal is within reach. I hope they book your surgery soon.

On my first visit to my surgeon he said I can never have carbs, bread and soda ever again and that my diet would have to be strict in order to work with the sleeve. Since then I decided to say goodbye to my favorite foods and made a bucket list of things I wanted to eat for the last time because I know I would have to make a big lifestyle change once I go on the two week liquid diet leading up to the surgery. My plan was to enjoy it while I can because I know I can never eat these foods ever again. It's like a bachelor on the night before his wedding day, enjoying his last night of freedom. However as I've stated in another post, my family does not support me having the surgery. For years they have criticized and made fun of my weight and now that I want to do something about it, its just been nothing but discouragement and opposition from them. What they fail to realize is once I have my mind set on something I give 100% and I know I will reach my goal. A long time ago I went on a diet and lost 70lbs. At the time I wasn't nearly as heavy as I am now but the reason why it failed is because once I reached my goal weight I wanted to stop losing but didn't know how to transition into eating normal to maintain a healthy weight plus at the time I was young and not mentally ready and I was terrified of my new body. But now I am ready and mentally prepared, heck I passed my psych evaluation for Christ's sake! So back to the main question of the topic. While I'm having my food funerals, if I have a can of soda my family freaks out and says: "See you shouldn't have the surgery!" A few days ago I quit drinking soda for 5 days just to see if I can do it and I did it easily, but made a conscious decision to start back drinking them because my liquid diet starts next week, 6 days from now and I will never be able to drink soda again so like I said I want to enjoy it while I can. In the mean time I am preparing myself for the life style change in other ways like researching my diet, buying things I need for my diet, looking up gyms and exercise programs I want to get into and getting my ducks in a row, heck everything I watch on tv has been nothing but weight loss shows. So is it okay or normal to have food funerals?

Hello welcome to bariatricpal! Everyone's experiences are a little different I think but there might be someone with a similar insurance who could tell you their experience. My first consultation, I went to the surgeon's office, he evaluated me and recommended the type of surgery he thought would be best for me which happened to be the laparoscopic gastric sleeve. He told me what it entailed (cutting my stomach and making it smaller) and of things I could expect, what I couldn't eat anymore and the type of lifestyle I would have to adapt to after the surgery. He also told me I would have to see a bunch of specialists that my insurance covered, an endocrinologist, gastroentrologist, psychiatrist, cardiologist, respiratory doctor and nutritionist. I had to be cleared by all these people in order to be approved for the surgery and it took roughly 6 months to complete this process. Then he'd have to submit all that information to the insurance company to get it approved. He also told me I had to go on a liquid diet 2 weeks prior to surgery and had to pay $300 out of pocket for the program fee and food they were to give me during that time period. Some people have to go on a 6 month pre-op diet but I didn't have to. Anyways I wish you the best with your consultation and hope everything goes well.

I don't blame you for being afraid, but just hang in there and know you're life is about to change tomorrow and the steps you'll take thereafter you will no longer be a prisoner trapped inside your own body. You've come this far for a reason you can do this. Heck I commend you for sticking to the liquid diet for 3 weeks you've won the first battle, you went to all your appointments saw your specialists and did everything required of you and that was not easy. I wish you a successful surgery and a painless and speedy recovery.

I don't feel ready either to be honest and my surgery is on April 6 but I plan to try to get ready or do whatever I can to put my mind at ease such as devour as much information from my pre op packet and from this website, watching videos on youtube and write out a plan, things that are within my control around the time of the surgery and after. I don't know if it will help you or not but maybe you can come up with a plan for yourself, a checklist of things you need to do and learn before the surgery things you need to do after the surgery, all the stuff you need to get etc. I wish you luck and hope everything works out.

I don't know what is wrong with me but as the surgery looms closer I can't sleep at night. So anxious and excited. Keep thinking about my future, I've never been so optimistic and filled with so much hope. So many good things happening at once. First and foremost I'm thankful to God, without him with the way things were going last year I would be dead by now for sure. I was on the verge of being homeless, constantly sick and being diagnosed with more health problems but now look at me, I could possibly get my own place this week, this week is also when my weight loss journey kicks off. I hope I can do this upcoming liquid diet Wednesday. 2 weeks of no solid foods just liquid, then bam! Surgery time then more liquids. I know it won't be easy. I can't even stand the feeling of being hungry, it drives me absolutely crazy and makes me really grouchy and mean, but just to think a year from now I could very well be half my size! I think about this lifestyle I want, I want to be healthy. Having a place of my own will give me that advantage. I won't have to look at a fridge full of tempting food that would throw me off course, don't have to choose foods I don't even want when grocery shopping because I have to compromise and share the grocery bill with other people. I can eat whenever I want also and I no longer have to be ashamed when I eat around people because whatever I'll be eating would be healthy and within the parameters of my required diet and my sleeve would restrict my portions. I would like to get a little dog to take on walks, and actually utilize the gym in the apartment building I'm moving into or go to a regular gym or both. I want an active lifestyle, try things I can't do now like maybe go hiking even though nature and I don't necessarily get along, (I'm scared of insects, snakes and mountain lions) but I'll give it a try. I also used to love bike riding (until I rode off a curb one day and broke the bike in half), I want to try indoor rock climbing, maybe join a dance class -just all kinds of things I can't even think about now because I'm so big and out of shape, but maybe even do the little things like going to the beach and walking across the sand without sinking ankle deep each step. I want to spend the next two to three years years getting to know myself and becoming my true self. Who I am right now is not really me because my life has just been so restricted because of my weight and other issues I've had to overcome. I've been through hell and now things are changing for the better and I just want to seize the opportunity to live life to the fullest and function like a well adjusted healthy human being for once. The scary thing is I haven't confronted all my demons yet, namely the ones that have triggered my binge eating and overeating all these years and the one that equates a belly full of big greasy double cheeseburgers and soda with a loving hug from my mother who rejected me. But you know what? I'm putting on my fighting gloves and when my poor tummy roars from thinking I'm punishing it by feeding it only liquids I'm going to arm myself with self-help books and prayer and I'm going to confront this motherfucking demon head on and defeat it because that's all I can do. I have my mind set -I'm going to have this surgery April 6 and its going to hurt a little bit, -maybe a lot, but as they say, anything worth having is worth fighting for. I'm spending the next few days learning all I can about this surgery, about my diet and getting in tune and mentally preparing myself -things I probably should've been doing all along but I just never thought this surgery was actually going to happen even though I've went through most of the process. I've had all these people I'm related to whom I expected to be my cheerleaders say nothing but negative and discouraging things to me about how I won't be able to do this. All I really got egging me on is myself and some of the nice people from bariatricpal. Some of these people have experienced the same things and things I haven't experienced yet but will go through. I can learn a lot from them.

Hi welcome to bariatricpal. Good luck with your journey!

I was about 6 years old engaged in a school activity, I think the high jump when a kid poked me in the stomach and called me chubby. Shortly afterward it was my turn to do the high jump and I couldn't do it, just knocked the bar over. There were several other instances in my child hood where me being fat definitely got hammered in my brain such as my family making fun of my weight throughout, or the time when I was 10 years old in a bounce house and made it tip over with the other kids inside.

Welp you left us with a big cliff hanger here Fireman and I'm on the edge of my seat in suspense, did you go through with it? If so I hope you pulled through and everything went okay.

Congratulations! Sounds like you are very happy with the results. Enjoy your new life!

Thanks for posting this thread Andi I'm finding the information to be very useful. Yep, going to steal some of the ideas here, like drinking water, try the firming lotions and try to get as much vitamin E as possible oh and pray. If that doesn't work I'm going to have to invest in a lot of shapewear until I can magically afford plastics.

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this all to me. I really wish I had joined bariatricpal sooner. I think you are absolutely right and maybe I have been looking at this the wrong way. I will try to work on my relationship with food because I think that's been the real problem. I feel like I'm missing a lot of useful information and will spend the rest of the week trying to learn as much as I can. My surgeon told me that if I drank soda I will explode and die and that really freaked my sister out and some how the whole family is convinced I will mess up and kill myself. I really want this to work and become fully committed to the lifestyle change again thank you so much for explaining this to me.

Maybe you should talk to someone about it if you can like a therapist or counselor or get in tune with yourself or Higher Power if you believe in one and try to work through the situation that way. Maybe just write about it in a journal or a blog and try to get the feelings that keep haunting you out of your head and put them into perspective. I start the liquid diet next week so I don't know what you're going through yet but it sounds like you're going through a test. Just stay strong and don't give in. You can do this!

I am pre-op so I can't even imagine what you're going through and it's probably not in my place to try to give you advice but I will encourage you, I just want to say don't give up on yourself, you still got this you might just have to try a different way of doing things. Maybe you can try putting bottles of water in the freezer until they turn into solid ice and maybe carry around another bottle to pour some of the melted ice into. Anyways I wish you luck and hope you get through this.

I will pray for you! I hope everything goes smoothly.

Well congratulations! I'm so happy for you. Glad everything worked out.

You look great and much happier. Congrats!

I really must say I am liking this group more each day and amazed by how you've all come together to support Diva and encourage her not to give up on her quest for WLS. As they say anything worth having is worth fighting for and this is one of those things. I pray that everything works out.

I'm glad it went well with you. Sounds like you're off to a good recovery.