CrankyMagpie

October 3, here! 👋

The only October 2018 gastric sleeve group on Facebook, right now, is for Australians. I'm afraid I'd die of jealousy about their health care system, so if your September group grew to include October sleevers, @KatallacStrong, I'd join it. (If you want to stick with just September folks, that is also totally cool and fine. I am capable of creating my own group, if I really need one, or waiting until someone else does. 👍)

@photogirl70 please share what worked for you?

How much you lose is dependent partially upon what you do--how well you stick to the plan, how much exercise you get--and partially upon your starting weight. (The rest is effectively random, because bodies are complicated.) My team says it's reasonable to expect to lose 30% of your excess weight (weight on day of surgery minus ideal weight) in the first 3 months. 6 weeks is half that. So if your excess weight is at least 130 pounds, yeah, that's a super reasonable goal! If you have less than 100 pounds to lose, it is probably a less reasonable goal. And I don't know about you, but focusing entirely on the scale is a recipe to make me crazy. I need to focus on the things I can control--what I eat, what I drink, what exercise I do--instead of my weight, which isn't entirely up to me.

I'm playing with the idea of saying "I'm really uncomfortable talking about my weight. [Obvious subject change]" Because I am, and because it's really rude to comment on/ask about other people's health. And maybe a gentle push will help people behave better. What the subject change is will vary with context. At work, I'll ask some question about a work project or redirect back to whatever we were talking about before. With friends ... well, with close friends, I actually won't have this problem, because I'm being honest about what's happening in my life. But with friendly acquaintances, I'll ask them what TV shows or board games they're enjoying lately, something like that. With family... that's going to be hard. I don't see most of them that often, so it'll be a bit of a shock when they see me, if I'm suddenly down 100 pounds (not outside the realm of possibility, with my in-laws--I see them once a year). I might get my spouse to run interference with that side of the family, to avoid awkward conversations. My brother knows I'm planning to do this, and so does my aunt. My mom... oof, that's going to be an unpleasant conversation, probably. I'll see her a little under 2 months after the surgery, so the loss (and my changed eating habits) will be noticeable. (I might not even be on solid foods yet? So. That's fun!) Anyway, what I'm saying is, it's your choice what you tell people. I'm not willing to imply that I did it all with willpower alone, because that is cruel to other fat people. But I'm absolutely willing to deflect and refuse to answer.

OK, I don't promise that I will ever actually post to it (nor do I promise that I won't), but I'm on insta as crankymagpie

This is an oddly specific question, but I'm just wondering: post-sleeve (and I don't mean immediately, I mean longer-term), are you all able to eat maki (sushi rolls)? I mean, probably not an entire roll to yourself, but part of a roll? Those are real big bites, which seems problematic for a bariatric patient. If you are able to eat it, are there any special things you do? Take bites, even though that's super awkward? Deliberately find smaller rolls to order? Make your own, so you can control the roll size? Obviously, if I'm weighing getting my arthritis under control versus eating sushi, it's clear which one wins. I'm not canceling my surgery if everyone says "Nope, can't do it," or "can only eat sashimi." (Not my favorite, honestly. I'd rather have the miso soup than the sashimi. And I do realize "only the miso soup" is an option, though the wait staff will be confused and potentially appalled.) But sushi is on the healthier side of restaurant foods (especially if you can find a place that will let you sub in brown rice) and is a date my spouse and I really enjoy. It's a food I like. So it's something I wonder about. Thanks! 🍣🍵

Y'all. Y'ALL. Do you realize that (at least at my surgeon's practice) you get to move on to fairly serious exercise at the 4 week/1 month mark? You can swim and lift weights at that point!* We are going to beat the "resolutioners" to the gym! (Or back to the gym, if you're currently up for that! I'm not, but I realize a lot of people who do WLS are.) (I'm a very anxious person. This is a thing I was low-key worrying about, when they were talking about doing my surgery in late November. I was high-key stressed about getting bronchitis and being pushed off into 2019 and having to redo tests and restart on my deductible, but I was a little stressed about doing the surgery on time and then going to the gym a month later and people seeing me as the fat resolutioner. Instead, I'll be the fat normal gym goer in November and December! ) *If cleared. I am not a doctor. My doctor clears people by then, but maybe yours is more conservative. Do what your doctor says.

I just got my surgery date! (It's been a wild ride, with scheduling it, so this is BIG news for me!) 10/3/18! That feels so soon, since I only just found out about it! I am anxious! But I'm ready. I've done so much preparation, so much reading, so much mental work. And on the physical preparation side of things, I've got some homemade bone broth in the freezer (might need more than I have--maybe I'll order some of that powdered stuff I see other people using), I've got lots of comfy yoga pants and loose shirts, I've got two pairs of walking shoes, I've got a couple of kinds of protein shake (not the "nectar" ones that people on here seem to like so much, but I'll make sure to get an order in before my liquid diet week). I'm ready! Let's do this! ... in a month and change. 😁

OMG LADIES GUESS WHAT! Guess who just got their surgery date! I wrote a long, impassioned plea to my surgical team--who were holding off my surgery until I hit 10% initial weight lost (I'm at 5%, will be below that by another several pounds after a week of liquid diet)--to please try to fit me in before flu season gets going and I get bronchitis and get stuck having to put off my surgery until May (I get bronchitis every winter, and it holds on for months; this is one of many issues I hope will clear up, somewhat, when I am at a lower weight). I don't think they had realized I'd cut back my work hours (I work at a public service desk on campus, where people literally walk up and cough on me -- I've taken leave from that part of my job until after surgery, which leaves me with very few hours per week and a feeling that my employment is in limbo and my coworkers are angry with me), or just how much anxiety this whole shifting dates thing was causing me, because I don't always express myself well on the fly, in person. (Those of you who have seen my long, rambling posts are going "or in writing, either," and I hear you ) They just called and told me they'll give me their first available, which is ... so much better than I had hoped for! I am so happy! And suddenly, just, kind of jittery, because it feels so SOON. The first week of October!!! That is so much better than I'd been expecting/braced for. SO MUCH better! I am over the moon, y'all!

Thank you all! This is great and helpful information! I can work with this, definitely. (Happily, I hate mayo -- lucky, I know -- and have never tried a deep-fried roll and therefore wouldn't know what I was missing.)

Is there a product called "dry mouth spray," or are you all just taking little spray bottles with water in them, or what? Aside from that, here is the list I've decided on, some unknown number of weeks(? months?) out from my own surgery: Phone & charger (long cord) Headphones Dry mouth spray(?) Lip balm Sandals/slippers Sleep mask Ear plugs Pillow to protect surgical sites from car seat belt and to help with sleep A lavender sachet and bottle of lavender essential oil to refresh it Yoga pants, underwear, at least one easy-to-wear bra and shirt Hair ties Tea bags (link to a forum discussion) (may not be used, but I really like tea)

My people! Hello! It is so nice to see this thread! (I am not exactly a gal; I'm non-binary, but I was assigned female at birth and pass as female in spaces where I don't feel comfortable being "out." I hope it's OK if I hang out here. I have about had it with dudes, right now.) I don't put my weight in my profile, because, I'm not sure why. I feel like my writing style is pretty distinctive, and I worry that someone will identify me based on what I say here and then will know what I weighed? ... Look, anxiety isn't rational. Anyway, I started just under 350. I set a goal weight for myself based on the BMI chart (even though it is ridiculous and unscientific), but honestly? If I get under 220, I don't think there's anything I will want that I can't have. I'm not even really having this surgery explicitly for the weight loss; I'm doing it to get my arthritis under control. (The weight loss is part of that, and believe me, I'm excited about it. But I wouldn't have signed up for it if not for the arthritis.) I'm self-pay (which will completely clean out my savings--probably with some debt to boot), so I don't have a mandatory insurance waiting period, and I just wrote a really long message to my bariatric team, begging them to reconsider their "you must lose 10% of your starting weight before we'll operate on you" policy. It isn't science-based (I didn't tell them that; I wanted to convince them, not make them mad), and it is making other parts of my life significantly more difficult. I get bronchitis every single winter, and if they push my surgery off until mid-winter and I get bronchitis before then, 1) I can't have surgery until probably at least April, and 2) my deductible will reset. (The surgery isn't covered, but it'll still count toward what's left of my very, very high deductible.) Also, my clearances will start to expire, which is expensive and time-consuming. Also, I've gone back to school, and my easy classes are this semester; I can't miss 2-3 weeks of class, next semester. Anyway, if they hold fast on their arbitrary numbers, I think I will start investigating other surgical teams in town. So, hi, that's my life story. Nice to meet you all!

I haven't had the surgery yet, but I'm really appreciating the responses to this question. Thanks for asking it, @KymmerShimmer! I can say I chose the sleeve over the lap band mostly because of statistics. The failure rate on the lap band is high--not even all that much better than diet and exercise alone (which has a 95+% failure rate, just btw); the failure rate on the sleeve is so much lower. The risk of complications on the band over time is comparatively high, too. The chance of scarring on the outside of the stomach is something I couldn't handle (which is maybe a weird stance for me to have, since I'm fine with them chopping out part of my stomach and making a line of staples ... OK, I am freaked out by there being metal staples in my squishy organ area, but I'm less freaked out by that than I am by a band full of saline floating around in there). And my sister in law had the lap band, lost a lot of weight, had complications, and has regained a bunch back. She's planning to get a sleeve, but she's having trouble finding a doctor who'll do it, since (some stuff that's specific to her, PLUS) it's harder to make the staple line close up cleanly after someone's had a lap band. So, there was a personal story to go with the statistics, you know? What I'm saying is, I never seriously considered the band. Which is for the best, since my surgeon also doesn't offer it. The bypass is considered the "gold standard" of bariatric surgery, and the sleeve is the most commonly performed bariatric surgery nowadays; at the risk of making some folks mad at me, I'll be honest and say that, having seen the statistics, I think it's a little unethical for a doctor to even offer the lap band, anymore.

A little tea tree (melaleuca) oil and a little cedar oil (very small amount of each -- I'd start at 1% and never go above, say, 3% by volume of your deodorant mix) would add a bit of an antimicrobial boost and also make for a slightly more masculine scent, if you're looking for that kind of thing. (I don't know about mosquitoes, but moths hate cedar. I can't imagine cedar would attract mosquitoes, so it shouldn't hurt your odds of avoiding them, either. :))

Did the article really say "men don't pay more at all"? I feel like it said "plus-size people are being charged unfairly high prices, especially women," and since most men don't need bras at $60 a pop and don't have to walk quite the same fashion lines women do (let's argue about what constitutes "business" and "business casual" for women, especially fat women! that'll be fun! and what is appropriate to wear to a wedding, versus a rehearsal dinner? and how office wear is different from what you wear out in the evening?), I don't see how it's unfair to suggest that women pay a disproportionate share of that price. I look at how many clothes my husband requires, versus how many I'm expected to have, and ... it's just no contest. Even if men's plus size clothes are marked up at exactly the same rate (and in that one store, it seems they were not), women are paying more. And then you combine that with the "woman tax" on everything else. Like, I'm sorry that the men felt left out by something in the phrasing of that article, and nobody's suggesting plus size men don't also have a tough time. But when it comes to finding clothes for a fat female-coded body? Dudes, you don't even know.

I'm going for the sleeve (and I am over 300 pounds and shorter than you and also not male), because I need to be able to take NSAIDs and probably methotrexate for my arthritis. (Sometimes WLS clears up arthritis. That's why I'm seeking it, not the weight itself.) With the bypass, NSAIDs are off the table for, as I understand it, forever. And Tylenol does almost nothing for arthritis. (Also, I'm self-pay in the US, and the sleeve is less expensive; I have enough money in savings for the sleeve, but I do not have enough money for the bypass, I suspect--I didn't ask for a price, already having made up my mind. Also, the sleeve has a lower rate of complications. Not enough lower that that alone should be the deciding factor, but it certainly factored into my decision. The long-term difference in weight loss is only about 10% of excess weight, on average--50-60% for sleeve and 60-70% for bypass. I can live with that difference; it'll still be life-changing.) They'll know after they do the upper endoscopy whether you have GERD or not. I had a little damage on my esophagus, and they couldn't tell if it was esophagitis or GERD. (It may also have been due to the massive amount of NSAIDs I took for several years.) Since it was a small enough amount of damage, I'm still cleared for surgery and still planning on the sleeve; I'm just starting the PPI sooner than expected. I know they'll keep me on them for 3 months after surgery, but I'm OK with the fact that that could turn into a year or (I hope not) forever. Ultimately, everyone in this forum is going to be invested in their own choice, the same way that newly married people try to push all their friends to get married. (I can say that without getting in trouble. I'm married. ) We all had good reasons for what we picked, or maybe we didn't but now that we've picked it we need to believe it was the best possible choice. You probably knew that coming in. But just a reminder: this is up to you, and you've gotta do what seems right for your body, in consultation with your surgical team. 👍

Sorry for reviving an old post, if that's a thing we aren't supposed to do. (Some forum communities really frown on it, while others are fine with it. I'm new enough not to know the norms, here.) I just wanted to see if anyone who has had the surgery since this went up has anything to report back. I did a ton of research about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (I have both), and in several small studies (aren't all the PsA studies small? it's so frustrating... but then, I guess it's not a very common disease!) the results were really astounding. Enough so that I'm surprised more PsA patients aren't being pushed toward the surgery, with its one-time cost, rather than biologics which can be something like $4k/month forever. Since I'm allergic to several of the biologics, and methotrexate isn't quite enough for me, alone, WLS is my best shot at getting my arthritis under control. That's why I'm doing it. I might talk, in some other threads, about things like fitting into airline seats and buying smaller clothes, but honestly? The pain is awful, and if I'm in the lucky group whose PsA is driven into remission, my life will be so much more amazing, even if I only lose like 10 pounds. If I'm in the unlucky group, but I lose a lot of weight, I'll still have a lot less pain in my feet and knees, even if the arthritis stays bad. So it seems like a good decision for me, either way. I have scalp psoriasis, too, so I'm hopeful that I can prevent massive hair loss. It's a risk, definitely. Anyway, thanks for any information any of you have! <3

Other pre-op people: do yourself a favor, and do not go read the forum I'm going to link. Just... look, we all have time before we have to think about that part, and it's not worth stressing ourselves out. Post-op people who want to start investigating plastic surgery: there is a whole forum on this site about this topic! https://www.bariatricpal.com/forum/393-plastic-reconstructive-surgery/ (To be clear: I'm not saying "get out of here with this discussion." I'm just making sure you're aware that there is a LOT of discussion happening already, in case it'll help you out! Carry on. )

Your family is hardcore! Mine would never be so direct. It sounds like you had all your facts and figures straight and were able to redirect a lot of their concern. I hope they are as active in supporting you through this as they were in expressing their fears, before you educated them! The advice to educate ourselves and really know what we're talking about, with this, is really good. I mean, it'll only help us, to know what to expect and to be able to really weigh the risks and the rewards for ourselves! ❤️

I use WonderSlim or ProtiDiet oatmeals (if the brand is important to you, I'm happy to double check -- I get them from Diet Direct, and they sell a whole variety of brands), and I've had a lot more luck with heating the water up, then adding it into the oatmeal and mixing it up than trying to microwave a mixed up bowl of oatmeal + water.

My nutritionists wanted me to do several things: 1) Focus on getting a protein as part of every meal. Ideally a lean protein, but they never balked at peanut butter on an apple as a snack. Low-sugar yogurts are good. Light string cheese is good. Eggs are good. 2) Get a fruit (up to 1/2 cup or 1 fruit) or a vegetable with each meal. 3) Switch from simple to complex carbohydrates. If you're going to have bread, make it whole grain--and after your protein. They weren't like "take away potatoes" (though they did encourage me not to count those as a vegetable :)), but they were like "switch from white rice to brown rice." 4) Take small bites, chew a lot, eat mindfully, put the fork/spoon down between every bite. No wolfing down food in the car, no open bags of chips in front of the TV. 5) Get 8 cups or more of water per day. If it has Mio in it, or it's an herbal tea or a decaf coffee, that's totally fine. Sugary beverages are a big no, and caffeinated beverages don't count. 6) Stop having carbonated drinks. (This is the one that I balked at the most, honestly. I knew I'd need to give them up post-op, but I had really planned to keep enjoying them until I had to stop.) If you really must have that diet soda, let it go flat first. And I mostly followed that -- I won't lie: at least two croissants, no small amount of Chicago style popcorn, and several servings of pizza crossed my lips over the course of the two months I mostly-followed these guidelines -- and lost 6 pounds each month. I need to lose a bit more quickly, so I've changed things around a bit -- doing a low-fat ketogenic diet which has me down near 1000 calories a day -- in order to meet my doctor's arbitrary weight goal in time to get my surgery this fall. But the rules above were pretty good, and the flexibility to break them--just a little, and only very rarely--was nice. (I hate keto. I hate that a single piece of fruit will wreck up my system for over a day. But it is a very efficient way to lose weight with mostly manageable hunger. And those refried beans in the mushy food stage will taste SO GOOD to me. I miss beans.)

Whew, I feel this post, friend! It's a bummer, feeling like you need to keep something like this from people. I have no idea how my in-laws will respond. They will probably have a bunch of opinions where I can't hear them, so I guess I can live with that. My blood family, though... they can be vicious. I know my mom opposes me taking this step, and I'm not sure if it's not wanting me to be healthier (probably a little; she has always seemed threatened when I lost too much weight) or if her entire problem is the part she actually expressed, which is fear of the risks of surgery. So I'm not going to tell her until it's done, and I'm past the liquids-only phase. And she'll be angry that I didn't tell her, but ... I'm an adult (and have been for about two decades)? This is my body? I have to live in it? And I can always fall back on "I didn't want you to worry." Which is a nice thing to say to anyone you neglect to tell before the procedure, which should probably be ... basically everyone you won't see day-to-day during the recovery period. Anyway, I'm really glad you have a good support network outside of that one person! That's going to help a lot. And if this person really bothers you, maybe some of your supporters can help run interference with them?

Thanks, @ellie123! It has been really frustrating for me, yeah. But it also sounds like you've had your share of frustrations, and you're getting through it! I'm glad you get your revision next week!

Probably not until late November. I can't pin my surgeon down, to get a date. They keep moving the goalposts. ("Lose 15 pounds by September, and we'll schedule you." "Ah, you lost 6 pounds between June and July; lose 6 more by August, and we'll get you in for late September/early October." "Oh, no, actually, Dr. Eid wants you to lose 20 more pounds, so if you lose 8 between now and your September appointment, we'll put you on the schedule for, let's say, the week of Thanksgiving." Ugh. Anyway, I'm at 7 out of those "8 more pounds," a couple of weeks after that appointment*, and well on my way to the "20 more total," so I'm going to do my best to get them to put me on the schedule, for real this time, so I can know when my surgery date is.) *I am cheating by doing a low-fat keto diet. ~5 of those pounds were definitely water weight from switching into ketosis, so as soon as I eat some fruit or something, they'll come back. Cheating or not, I'll meet their goals so that I can get in and get the surgery this semester. (I work at a college and take classes. My whole life is in semesters.)