LittleBill

There are some people who know I have had this surgery, and have been with me the whole way on my weight loss journey. With the exception of a very few, the people at our church are not in that group. This is mainly because I do not know most of them very well, and discussing my personal health choices is not my idea of creating that kind of bond. So this morning I am sitting in the Sunday morning service. For many, many years, I have dressed pretty much the same, wearing a nice pair of pants, and a low key Hawaiian style shirt. This type of shirt is not only good for hiding my rotundity, it also does a good job of hiding my personal defense accessory, which goes with me everywhere it is legal to go. So far I have lost 114 lbs, and have gone through several shirt sizes. I was wearing a new one today, and it fit just a little shorter than the previous ones I had been wearing for years. As we stood up to sing the second hymn, I reached down to tug my shirt into its proper place, just like they do on Star Trek. To my horror, as I reached around to pull it down in back, I felt about 1 1/2" of holster sticking out below the hem. And as things go, the woman who sits behind me EVERY Sunday is in a wheelchair, so she has an up close and detailed view of my nether regions. Sure enough, as I was sitting back down, I felt a tap tap tap on my shoulder. "Oh, great", I thought. "Here we go!" I twisted around in my pew to face her, running through what I was going to have to say to keep her from either going off on me, or quaking in fear. "Wow, you've really lost a lot of weight! How'd you do that?" My relief was palpable. I thought quickly. "I stopped eating!" She locked eyes with me, and started laughing, nodding her head all the while. So now I am wondering. Did she see my holster, or was she so taken with my new semi svelte appearance that it went by the wayside? I am not keen to find out just yet. But, this is a NSV in that someone outside my circle of those in the know, and who sees me on a regular basis, noticed that I don't block as much of her view of the pulpit anymore.

@@doxaholic, @@MsShortyDee, @ Thank you all!

Thank you, and Merry Christmas to you too!

Merry Christmas to you too!

I thought this was going to be a post about going off the wagon and under the table. I've tried a few different ones, but I really like a couple from Gold Standard. Their extreme milk chocolate comes very close to Nestles Quik, and their strawberry comes pretty close to Nestles Strawberry, both of which I enjoyed (a little too much, apparently) before I embarked on this path. I've been drinking both for about six months now, and still have not lost my taste for them.

Thank you, Kate! Writing them is a form of recreation for me. I am glad others get a kick out of them.

This is very true. I have a hilarious story about a very similar event where the very young lady DID have one in her purse, but it only has been related orally so far. I may have to write it out.

I'm just messing with you. I have a character flaw. If I was in your class, you would have sent me to the principal's office by now.

Is this back to the future here?

I really like Quest bars. Mrs. LittleBill likes them too. I had some others a long time ago from another company. They were like eating particle board with chocolate mixed in, but the Quest bars have been really good. Of course, this is all subjective. You may already hate them. But if not, you might consider giving them a try.

If I were a betting man, I would say it is more likely corporate culture. The people who run the place determine how the people who work there treat the customer/patient. The self pay might have a bearing if they did not take other forms (i.e. insurance), because then it is all about satisfied customers.

There is always a steady supply for stories... I will warn you. This is a long one. If you decide to plow through this, you might want to get some food first to make it all the way through. Today I had the privilege of gaining a good look at yet one more facet of our medical system, and so much that is wrong with it. An acquaintance of mine who has MS was in a car wreck a little while ago, and broke his leg in three places. For reasons not germane to the story, he needed a ride to his doctor this morning, and no one to take him, so I stepped in to do a good deed. And you know what they say about no good deed going unpunished… I arrived at his house bright and early. It was so early it wasn’t even really bright yet, but his appointment was for 0830, and I didn’t want him being late on my account. I am compulsive that way. He has been getting around the house in a wheelchair, with a walker for those short bits where the chair won’t work. I ushered him out to my truck, and got him installed in the front seat. I offered to put his walker in the back seat. He said, “Oh, just leave it here! I’m not going to need it anywhere, and they have a wheelchair for me to use at the doctor’s office.” Now, I am a fan of having it and not needing it rather than the other way around. But even though I had room for about 50 walkers in the truck, I acceded to his wishes, and off we went to the doctor’s. This leaving the walker home will become important later on. We arrived at the doctor’s office in good order. I parked the truck at the front door temporarily, and went in to procure the promised chair. I eventually got the attention of the vacuous looking young lady behind the counter, and got her to bring a chair out. As I was going out with the chair, some man came striding in who looked like he had no business there as a patient. This is a pain management shop, and he certainly moved like he had no pain at all. I discovered a few seconds later that he was the Doctor Himself, and he had already chastised my passenger for parking in the no parking zone. When he discovered the need for the chair, he was appropriately mollified. I won’t go into the sordid details of sitting in the office with the TV blaring and the dedicated conversationalist sitting next to me. Suffice to say, it was not fun. But after a 30 minute wait, we were on the road again, this time to the pharmacy. He has two choices in his town. The one place is pretty efficient about filling his prescriptions, but rarely has his pills in stock. The other place usually has them in stock, but has created a whole bunch of extra rules to make things even harder to actually get your script filled. Think of the efficiency of the TSA and you will get the idea. True to form, the first place did not have the pills, so we backtracked to the second place. It was there that we discovered that the mental giant at the doctor’s office had written the one prescription for ZERO pills. This is where the real fun started. “I’m sorry sir, but we have to give this script back to you. We can’t fill it.” Now, I am sitting in the drive through window, and since I am driving, I am the one who has to carry on the conversation. “Can’t you just call the doctor?” Oh no, we can’t do that!” “Well how ‘bout we have the DOCTOR call YOU!?!?” “Oh, no, we can’t do that either. You have to go back to the doctor and get it redone.” “And I suppose it will take a second hour to get it filled when we return, right?” This pharmacy has a policy of taking an hour to fill narcotics prescriptions, under the guise of checking to see if the patient is trying to get multiple bottles of pills from different places. “That’s the way it works sir.” “Why?” People hate this question. Commoners are not supposed to ask WHY. They’re just supposed to obey! “Because sir”, she replied officiously, “We need the time to check his public records.” Yes. She actually said public records, like that would end all discussion of the matter. We just looked at one another and he shook his head. I asked him later on if there was a place we could go on the web where all the pills he took were listed out for the general public. So back to the doctor’s office we went. I parked in the same place in front of the doors, on the chance that I would have to haul him in (their chair is one with the little wheels that the patients can’t use themselves) to get the thing fixed. As it was, they remembered me. But now there was a line. Some lady came in behind me, looked at it and said, “Is this the line!?!” “Yes ma’am, and I hope you’re not in a hurry.” “You’re joking, right?” “Have you been here before?” “Yes. You’re not joking.” This with an eye roll that would make a teenager proud. When I got to my turn, I held the prescription up and explained that they had tried to fill it, but had no bottles for no pills. The woman there looked at me like I had three heads, but promised to get it taken care of “right away”. Right away turned out to be about 15 minutes. She got hostile with me when I commented about how this thing went through the hands of at least two or three people and no one checked the number of pills on it. In my head, I was thinking of the recipient as well, but who checks things like that? Isn't the DOCTOR, who insists on reviewing everything before he signs it supposed to do that? Finally, with our brand new prescription in hand, this time with an actual number on it, we headed back to the friendly pharmacy. We turned it in and picked up the first one. We got a big insincere smile, and the assurance that this one would be filled in another hour, after the required background check. Because, you know, within that last hour, we could have been all over town with fake prescriptions for zero pills. By this time we were hungry. There was a Dunkin Donuts next door, so we went to their drive through window. I decided on the turkey sausage, egg and cheese flatbread. It was awful. I had a few bites of bread, just to get some carbs into my system. It was some sort of multigrain slab, so I did not eat much. I removed the egg and sausage. The egg was like plastic. And, it had all the flavor scientifically removed. The turkey sausage had the same texture and appearance as one of the floor mats in my shop. The flavor had NOT been removed. It was truly awful. I do not know about the cheese, as it was glued to the bread, and was not coming off. But, it filled the tiny hole in my stomach with some sort of protein. At this point, my charge announced that he had to pee. He then allowed how it might have been a good idea after all if we had brought the walker with us. I had visions of having to hose out my truck. “Do you think… would you mind… could we drive back up to my house so I can pee?” His house is about five miles out of town, but we had most of an hour left to kill, so I said sure. Besides, I know what it is like to be in a spot where you have to go and you can’t. But all the while I was thinking about that walker, and how some cranky old man wanted to bring it along. We drove up to his house, took care of the needs of nature, and then decided to hang out there until the pharmacy notified him on his app that everything was done and ready. He briefly toyed with the idea of just sending me down, so he wouldn’t have to go out again. I was fine with that. The temperature had risen all the way from 8 to 12 degrees, so it wasn’t exactly pleasant for him out there with a busted leg and no real mobility. In the end, he decided to go along, just in case the nice young lady with the demonic eyes decided to jerk us around one last time for the day. We completed the transaction, and I dropped him off after 4 1/2 hours into a projected 90 minute trip. And that was just the first part of my day. The rest has been just about as exciting, but that would make this story even longer.

I am anticipating a return of accuracy both with practice and recovery. The last time I was out shooting on my own, I was only about a month out from surgery. I am working on me musckles to help make that happen sooner rather than later.

I have, but it has been mostly plinking with either a .22 target pistol or a .45 Colt. Most of it has been at steel targets. The .22s are easy enough to control, and the .45 is a cowboy gun with a very rudimentary sight. But I have noticed I am not quite as deadly accurate as I have been in the past. I can still hit COM pretty regularly, but the groups are larger. I need to get some serious time in with the carry guns, but the weather is precluding that at the moment. There are a couple of indoor ranges, but they are pretty far away and pretty expensive.

I think BP takes the prize for being the most balkanized forum on the interweb. I just found this sub forum today. Anyway, this is an essay I wrote a few years ago. I hope someone reading it will find it worthwhile. Merry Christmas! It is that time of year again, when people are happier, or at least pretend to be. For the most part they act more politely towards one another, show patience, and generally try to get into the "Christmas Spirit", whatever that might mean to them. But what does it mean? What is "peace on earth" really all about? Everyone seems to want it. At least, they say so. It is the fashionable thing on which celebrities, politicians, and news media talking heads seem to dwell. If someone asks a "famous person" what they want for Christmas, the answer is invariably, "All I want is peace on earth". That is easy for many of them to say. It is calculated to boost their appeal, and from the worldly point of view, many of them already have everything else a person could desire. But do they? How many people really even know what peace on earth is all about, much less have it? The Bible speaks of it, and since many of us are celebrating Christmas, we draw on that reference in Luke as our source of all that is good and desirable. Early on in the gospel of Luke, we read the following: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:14 KJV Peace on earth. There is only one problem with this. There wasn't any peace on earth. There was the Pax Romana, which was a sort of peace. It was an enforced peace, in that everyone behaved themselves or else the Romans would step in and settle it for keeps. That's not exactly peace, especially on the terms the Romans were dealing out. There hasn't been any real peace on earth since then, and there really wasn't any peace on earth before the coming of Jesus Christ. Mankind has been fighting and squabbling since Cain smacked Abel with what ever he smacked him with. But the lack of peace goes back even further than that. It goes all the way back to when Adam made the conscious decision to disobey God, and eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At that instant, a state of war existed. It existed between God and man. Man, in the person of our first father Adam, had made an enemy of God by disobedience. So what was the big deal, and why were the angels singing? Peace on Earth is real. It is not the peace that worldly men envision. Even many Christians are confused at times as to what it really means. It is not peace between nations, or peace between individual men or women. It is the peace that Jesus Christ brought through the atonement of His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead. It is peace between man and God, peace that is available to any who come to Him. That Peace had arrived on the earth in physical form in the person of Jesus Christ, the little baby in the manger. He had finally come to do His work, and so complete God's plan to restore peace between Himself and sinful mankind. That is why the angels were singing. This is the peace that many of us Celebrate this time of year. It has nothing to do with the violence on this earth. It has nothing to do with the wars that have been fought, and are still to be fought. It has everything to do with knowing that we are the redeemed of God, and that we now have peace through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom 5:1 This is the real Christmas message. It is my hope and prayer this Christmas season, that in the midst of all the good food and good fellowship, and while all the toys and gifts are being distributed, that many of you here will earnestly search for this peace, and appropriate it for yourself. Merry Christmas!

This is what I was told to do. I can easily lift up to 120 lbs with one hand, but I was told to do curls with 20 lbs for now, with lots of reps to tone things up. If you don't like to run, but feel the need to build your stamina, there is always this. That bear is much faster than I am! I'm definitely not a runner. That bear would be bleeding profusely from acute lead poisoning before I would be moving. My EDC is a .45 ACP, but I would be hesitant to shoot a bear with it - unless, of course, there were no other choices. All you really need though, is a .22 LR if you have someone else with you. You just have to kneecap them, and then slowly walk away.

@@Djmohr Wow. You have really been given a tough row to hoe. I can't even begin to imagine having to to through all that. Please tell your husband that I said good for him! A lot of these medical people, whether doctors or not, treat us like slabs of meat. And I know there are lots that don't, but sometimes it seems like the apathetic ones are in the majority. I've had very few hospital experiences so far. For the two times I have been in the hospital in the past 30 years, I had excellent care from the nurses. The doctors were okay. There were a few times I had to get firm, and one time I told the doc bluntly that he was working for me and would answer my questions to my satisfaction. But that was a rare instance.

I have to wonder if that is what is going on here, as it seems the Nurse Practitioners are writing the prescriptions and the doctor just signs or otherwise approves them. This guy really needs them with the problems he has. For me, I have a half bottle or two of Vicodin lying around that are both about five years out of date. I still have about half of the oxycodone they sent home with me after my surgery too.

This is what I was told to do. I can easily lift up to 120 lbs with one hand, but I was told to do curls with 20 lbs for now, with lots of reps to tone things up. If you don't like to run, but feel the need to build your stamina, there is always this.

How many carbs are you getting? I know this may sound blasphemous, but if you don't get enough of them, it will cause problems too. Cue the Oracles in 3,2,1...

I have a goal of 300 lbs. I have a large muscle mass, and I intend to keep as much of it as possible. For me it is not about weight, but rather about fat. If the fat is gone, or down to a healthy level, why worry about a number on the scale?

I hit the "like" button, but I can't really like it. At least they have found the problem and you are making progress. Good luck, and heal quickly!

Yes. Patience. I dropped weight like a rock before surgery, and immediately after. I am two months out and have hit a stall. I try not to think about it. I just keep doing all the stuff I am supposed to do, and behave myself. It will pick up again.

My first appointment was June 7. Surgery was October 11. Different groups and insurance carriers have different requirements.

Pre-op or post-op, the schedule I observe has been pretty much the same. Breakfast shortly after I get vertical in the morning, a snack halfway through the morning, lunch at or a little after noon, another snack mid afternoon, and then dinner. Depending on how early dinnertime arrives, there will be one small snack in the evening. Pre-op I had a calorie goal, so I did my best to distribute those calories across the schedule as evenly as possible. Post op, it is more about Protein goals. Calories aren't as important, or as many.