james2021

I am having a different kind of abdominal pain in the last day or so near the biggest incision. Everything looks normal, it feels like soreness under the skin, like a dull pain. It's not very strong pain, 2/10, but it's different from what I was experiencing before (tearing/burning feeling around the incision when I made some movements but not this dull feeling). Almost feels like a muscle strain or something and it's freaking me out. I was thinking it could be gas but it's just on the right side of my abdomen. Is that something any of you experienced?

OK, I know I should not have done this, and I'm not going to do it again. I had a small amount of grits that were restaurant-prepared yesterday morning. They had corn in them, which I was conscious of, but I was thinking that if I chewed it really really well, it would be okay. In the two or three bites of this that I had, I maybe had like.... 6 kernels of corn? I've kept everything down since surgery and I haven't had any issues with it since, and now I'm 24 hours out. But, re: having anxiety, now I'm worried I'm going to get a bowel obstruction from this and die. SO... did anyone else do anything they weren't supposed to do in the puree stage and end up fine?

Just messaging to say I was 5/20 and I’m also 16 lbs down lol.

thank you 💜💜💜💜 yes the internet has been clear during my frantic searching this morning that corn was a particularly bad call lol

Do they know you take marijuana? Mine did and had me wait 90 days between quitting and taking a test. It's annoying that how long THC stays in your system depends so heavily on so many factors. All you can do is hold on taking any more, cross your fingers. Worst case you'll have to wait and retake your first test which might push the date, but hang in there and you'll still be able to get your surgery. Good luck.

I gained 5 pre-liver shrink overall and then lost 20 lbs on the shrink.

First of all, this is extremely messed up and inappropriate and I'm sorry that it's happening to you. Not a doctor obviously but it seems like you do fit the parameters if you want to get it, having a BMI of essentially 35 and a co-morbidity of high blood pressure. And I wonder if the requirements are that stringent even if you self-pay. It sounds like it's affecting your quality of life and you are allowed to gain control however you see fit! ❤️ Sending love to you.

Everyone is different but this sounds on track to me. Congrats!

Has anyone noticed a change in their sense of smell after surgery? Is this psychosomatic? Lol

I would ask your doc if whatever pill can be put in applesauce; thats what they have me do with the celebrex.

YES this happens every single time I do anything other than water!

This is how my surgeon's team does it --- 1. Find your 'ideal' body weight. For males, start at 100 pounds and add 6 pounds for every inch over 5'0. For females, start at 100 pounds and add 5 pounds for every inch over 5'0. For example, I am female & 5'6.5. My ideal body weight is 132.5. 2. Take your starting weight and subtract your ideal body weight from it to find your excess weight. For example, my starting weight was 355. 355 minus 132.5 is 222.5. 222.5 is my excess weight. 3. Take 70% of your excess weight (.7 times the number). 70% of my excess weight is 155.75. Between sleeve and bypass, about 70% excess weight loss is what they told me to expect. 4. Subtract the 70%, or in my case, the 155 from the starting weight of 355. This gives me a realistic goal weight of 200.

What has y'all's daily eating looked like since getting home?

I just wanted to put this out into the ether because I wasn't prepared at all for the length my hospital stay ended up being -- vast majority of people seem to be in and out. My sleeve was Thursday 5/20 at around 11am and I was in the hospital for 4 nights and 4 solid days total. I had some irregular heart activity coming out of surgery I guess (still don't have much detail on what that was about -- previous EKG was normal, all pre-op testing was normal), so the first day and night, they only let me have ice chips. Then on the second day my potassium was really, really low -- don't know why that was. They had to try a few different things to get my potassium up. Finally was released on Monday 5/24 around midday and after a couple of nights of rest at home I feel like a new person. Trying to recover in the hospital is miserable! Impossible to sleep! Anyway, I was really expecting a short stay because aside from the super-morbid obesity I didn't have any other health problems and I'm in my 20s, but that did not happen.... be warned. All this said, I didn't pack anything "to do" and didn't need it even with a long stay. I was hardly even on my phone because I was so exhausted. Did anyone else have a longer than anticipated stay? Good luck with your procedures if you are reading this pre-op. ❤️

I was under 'twilight' anesthesia for my endoscopy. Not fully put under, but I don't remember a thing. I can't imagine they would give you one without anesthesia. When I woke up, I didn't even have a sore throat or anything.

Good luck!!!

Oh that's really good to know!

TBD! I'm going to ask about it in my post-op appointment.

Mine took about 8 months from the initial consultation, including the 6-mo dietician requirement. They submitted to insurance within about 48 hours of my last dietician visit, insurance approved within 48 hours of that, and then they called me to schedule my pre-op appointment which was a week later. At the pre-op appointment, I got my surgery date, which was about 3 weeks after that. Hang in there!

Similar experience! I was on a 1000 calorie diet and had trouble hitting that. Bodies just go into another mode entirely when eating that little; it's so weird.

How long did your post-op incision pain last? I know it'll take a while to fully heal but wondering how long it just feels like having a big open cut on your body where the main incision is. Also, I have always been a stomach sleeper. I didn't get any doctor instructions about how to/how not to sleep, but have found that sleeping on my stomach/the pressure against the incision helps with the pain. But it feels wrong to sleep on my stomach. Did any of you do this? Thank you!

Warning -- I imagine this topic is triggering to a lot of people. It would be triggering to me outside of this community. But I want to create a space for people to talk about how their weights and bodies were treated when they were young and the impact that still has on them. I apologize if this already exists somewhere -- tried to do a search beforehand. Anyway. One of the primary brain things I am working through leading up to weight loss surgery is my relationships with my parents and their relationships with my body when I was young. My parents were pretty restrictive with food. There were certain designated "no dessert days" and when I was a little older, "no carb" days. There was a lock on the pantry, not in a way like I never got enough to eat, but it sent a message. We always had a lot of diet-oriented foods at home. During the summer, my brother and I would each spend a week with my grandparents, where we could eat pretty much whatever we wanted. When we got home, my dad liked to weigh us, and laugh about how much we gained. Both of my parents were always on a diet. There was a period of time before I was born that my dad was obese, and a period of time when I was in elementary/middle school when my mom was obese, but other than that, they've always been a 'healthy' weight. But -- always on a diet. Never thin enough. When I hit 10 or 11, my mom started wanting me to diet with her. When I was that age, I was not overweight, and did not become overweight until I was about 15 or 16. On my most generous of days, I think that she probably just was looking for a way to bond with me as I was getting older. That was the trauma of her generation, I guess; women bonded by talking about their bodies and dieting. I started going to Weight Watchers with her when I was 12 years old. A doctor had to sign off, and despite my 'normal' BMI, he did, and I will never, ever forgive him or understand why he did that. I guess the early 2000s were another time. Between the ages of 11-14 I did eDiets, Weight Watchers, the Zone diet, the Master Cleanse, normal calorie counting -- etc. Not for health; all because my mom told me that if I lost 5 pounds, or maybe 10, or maybe 15, I "could be a model." Or because, as she told me one day, "No one wants to be that fat girl in high school who can't get a date to the prom." On top of that, both of my parents, but particularly my dad, were always talking about other people's bodies. They were obsessed. They talked disdainfully about other relatives, especially my dad's sister, who were "yo-yo" dieters, whose weights kept going up and down. I helped out at my dad's small business one summer and went to lunch with him and two of his friends when I was maybe 13 years old, and they took turns guessing how much a table of women with obesity weighed, combined. My dad made it clear, over the course of many years, that he hated fat people, and I have no doubt this is still true -- he just doesn't say those things in front of me anymore, because I've become what he hates. There are probably a dozen reasons why I gained so much weight in my late teens and through my 20s, but the connection I feel between eating whatever I want and freedom from my parents is intertwined in a way that is painfully clear. It is all about control, and watching what I eat still feels like they are controlling me. Eating whatever I want, until I got so overweight that it was taking a real toll on me, was how I felt in control of my own life. Now I feel like I have control over almost every area except food. All of this is working together to form a really big anti-motivator for surgery for me, which is that the idea of making my parents happy (and grandma -- don't even get me started there) in the process of losing weight is absolutely repulsive to me. I am desperately looking forward to a smaller body so that I can so things that everyone else talks about here -- fit in an airplane seat, have more stamina, have an easier time exercising, reducing risk of weight-related health problems, finding clothes that fit that actually reflect who I am, etc. But I feel sick whenever I think about turning up at home in a couple of months, looking noticeably smaller, and them saying something about it. I feel like I'm not going to be able to handle it. I don't want them to say a gd thing about it. And I don't want to get into unpacking years of hurt with them. I'm already thinking of ways I can minimize my weight loss when I'm home; baggy clothes, etc. It is such a mind mangle to want the result of surgery so bad and simultaneously be dreading them. I don't want them to ever think I did this because of them. I don't want them to ever feel that they won. If you have stuff related to this you want to get off your chest, I hope you feel welcome to share those things here.

What are your go-to alcoholic drinks when out at bars after surgery? How do you tolerate them?

Helpful, thank you! I also have always been a rum and coke person which obviously, can't go back to that in a year or whatever, or however long it takes me to get a drink at a bar again. Was thinking I'll just order a drink straight??? I won't want to do more than sip on that anyway...

hi everyone, day after surgery. i will be kept for this second night and will hopefully be discharged tomorrow. just need to get in all the liquid they want; everything else is fine. couldn’t start the liquid diet on surgery day because i had some irregular heart activity when i was coming out of surgery. i can’t wait to be home