jelos98

My surgeon's instructions were "When you've been off the Hydrocodone for a couple of days, and you're not in pain". I only took the Hydrocodone long for 2-3 days, and then switched to just straight up Tylenol as needed. Basically: 1. Don't drive high. 2. Don't drive if you can't do things you need to (e.g. blind spot checks) without pain or delays.

Get a decent blender, and any soup becomes pureed soup. I did cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of potato, etc., but sent it through a blender before heating it up. I also got creative, based on my cravings. When my kids wanted pizza, I made myself "pizza soup" (was making home made pizza, so I reappropriated some of the Italian sausage + pepperoni + mushroom, heated it up in a skillet with a creamy tomato soup with basil, to get some of the flavors into it, then strained it, and ate the non-solids. Turned out surprisingly good. Get a GOOD blender, and anything becomes pureed soup if you try hard enough When my sis was here, she ordered Mexican food, and I was craving the same, so I wound up making my own "soup" out of part of an order of Carne Asada. Carne Asada + Refried Beans + Salsa + Guac + Beef Broth. Ok, so it came out more like Carne Asada Pudding in consistency, but the taste was spot on, and it took care of that craving without causing me damage, so I chalk it up as a win. This was probably not my wisest decision overall (I was considering consistency, but not really content), but it goes to show that if you're burnt out on your options, you can always create new options.

Really, all I made use of was: Phone (mostly so I could watch stuff online - woot for hospital wifi) Phone charger Bluetooth Headphones (listened to some music to stay calm before the surgery, but I wound up with a private room after, so not as useful as I'd expected) Loose, comfy clothes, that aren't going to suck to wear on the way out (pressure on your abdomen is probably not going to feel nice). CPAP Realistically, most of my time there was spent: Drifting off to sleep. Being woken up by the nurses/doctor to be poked and prodded. Taking walks (the first walk was SOOO pressure relieving internally - felt like a million bucks after it) Drifting off to sleep again Being constantly woken up by the (@_)($ heart monitor alarm because my sleeping heart rate is super low. Drifting off to sleep again Being woken up so they could give me a tylenol drip (not even tylenol with hydrocodone.... just straight tylenol, believe it or not). Attempting to eat, and getting roughly half a teaspoon of jello in after 15 minutes. Watching a little bit of Games Done Quick, since it was still going while I was there. Rinse and repeat until it's time to go the next morning. Also: people dis the hospital socks, but mine were comfy and super grippy on the bottom. Given how unstable I was when I was first walking, I very much appreciated them.

I had some extreme irritability during the pureed foods stage, but it died down, and I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it's gone. Talked to the doc and it's apparently a really common thing. Your body is going through some huge adjustments, it thinks you're starving, and you may be dehydrated on top of it. Of course you're irritable! For me: snack+drink+children's tylenol (liquid) +a nap seemed to mostly do the trick. Plus a ton of apologies after the fact

And even if it doesn't suddenly change, they can go from "tolerable but not... great" to "counting the minutes until my follow-up in the hopes that I'd get advanced to the soft food stage so I don't go insane from continuing to force this down" over the course of a week or so.

Maybe a dumb question, but have you tried eating breakfast for dinner, to help figure out if it's a time-of-day/habit issue or a type-of-food issue? One thing that jumped out to me is that the meal you list for breakfast is actually available in the "Soft Foods" stage of the meal plan they gave me (which I'm mainly noticing because I just advanced to said phase and am looking forward to making breakfast) - that is, it's something that's supposed to be relatively easy to digest Makes me wonder if it's something where you're able to break down said breakfast fast enough that the fluids flushing it through you isn't as big of a deal, vs. something heavier/more solid, which you may well be flushing through without giving it time to digest. But that's just wild speculation, and something I'd be talking to my doc about.

If you have sleep apnea, they'll want you to get a CPAP/BiPAP machine and start using it consistently when you sleep. It may slightly delay things (my doctor wanted at least 30 days of no caffeine/alcohol/cigarettes, and consistent CPAP use), but I don't know that they do anything differently per se. The big thing is: if you have sleep apnea and you don't know it, you WANT to know it before surgery. First off, it can totally wreck your sleep, which in turn means you may heal more slowly. Second, involuntarily tossing and turning in your sleep to find a position which gives a clear airway, right after surgery, would suck.

I'm not a doctor and not a nutritionist, but I like math. What you're saying doesn't sound mathematically unreasonable, if I'm interpreting correctly (weight drops a pound every ~4 days or so). So, let's consider the basics and the math: First off: Are you tracking your food with a calorie tracker (I use myfitnesspal)? When I don't for a while, and then I start again, I often find I'm eating more than I mean to. If you are tracking, then you should have a good idea of what you're putting in to your body, which is half of the equation. Based on an arbitrarily chosen TDEE calculator (https://tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&age=32&g=female&lbs=210&in=64&act=1.2&bf=&f=1), you'd be expected to burn about 2000 calories a day[1]. If you're eating around 1000 calories a day[2] for instance, you will only have a net deficit of 1000 calories / day, which equates to about a pound every 3.5 days, which is about spot on to what you described (at least as I interpreted it) Exercising helps, too, but only so much. If you, for instance, are walking a mile and a half each day at a brisk pace, you'd burn about 150 extra calories each day (according to https://www.verywellfit.com/walking-calories-burned-by-miles-3887154 at least) This helps, but would only be about 0.3 lbs / week. In short, 1-2 lbs a week sounds about right, mathematically. Think positively - if you can keep up loss that rate, you'll hit your goal weight in about a year! -- [1] Assuming you don't have a super-active job. [2] The program I got calls for 700-900 for the soft foods stage, but I'm rounding up for ease of math.

June 27th for myself, too! Coming up mighty quick. I'm finally starting to get nervous about the surgery, itself. Some of the last of my prep has been gathering and preparing some "just in case" paperwork (will, list of accounts, advanced health care directive, etc.) and it kind of shakes the nerves a bit. Months of preparation - losing 15% of my body weight, changing my diet to what they want me to aim for long term, starting to exercise regularly, etc. - means I'm feeling as mentally and physically prepared as I think I ever will be. So I guess you could say, I want to get the surgery itself over with... while I still have the guts *rimshot*.