vikingbeast

This. SO MUCH THIS. My surgery is 48 hours from now and I am going through ALL of the emotions REAL fast. I calmed myself down a bit by sitting and typing out my meds list (my doctors colluded to make this super complex for the first week) and what I'm allowed to eat for each of the phases, even though I have a perfectly cromulent pre-typed list from my centre.

The first few days when you start replacing meals with shakes are pretty rough. Just tough it out. But it's funny how quickly your stomach will get used to less food... I had to go to a breakfast meeting and had to order something to not look weird, ate three bites of scrambled egg, and was full—and this is pre-op.

Ramen noodles are made with an extremely alkaline solution known as kansui, and if they're the kind that come in the cheap cellophane package, they're also partially fried to help them dry out. You could be reacting to the alkalinity, to the high fat content (a package of Maruchan chicken ramen has 14g of fat even though it only weighs about 65g before cooking), or to the extremely high sodium content. Or some of all three!

Did you buy new, closer-fitting clothes?

Not a ton. I had bulked up for a strongman contest in April which put me at 376, and today I was 356. I’d love to be under 350 for surgery (yay liquid diet) but if it doesn’t happen before surgery it sure as shootin’ will after surgery. Good luck lizonaplane!! I’m Tuesday so will be following any updates you feel ready to make!

Congratulations on your surgery date!

My surgeon told me to stock up on Gas-X (simethicone) and to make sure I chew it to basically liquid.

Mine is being covered by my insurance. I owe my 20% co-insurance up to my out-of-pocket max, so this should cost me somewhere around $2,000.

Thanks ShoppGirl! I got the variety pack delivered. Also some Protein2O, which is WAY too sweet, bleah. I'm having to cut it 1:1 with water even pre-op.

From experience not with surgery, but with way overdoing it with legs, it's possible that you were clenching your back or just holding your shoulders to stop your midsection from moving. Is there someone who can give you a shoulder massage? (I wouldn't do a massage gun so soon.) Can you use Salonpas patches? It's methyl salicylate, but it doesn't go into your stomach so hopefully it would be allowed.

This is an amazing story. Thank you for posting it. It gives me hope that my own issues may resolve with hard work and control of my life.

Civility on the Internet? Oh my gosh, I need to go buy a lottery ticket. (Seriously, kudos to you both.)

My high weight was 392. Currently 358 and surgery is a week away.

Quest calls it nicotine and cotinine (and expanded metabolites), and offers three ways: urinalysis, blood specimen plasma, or LC/MS/MS (liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectometry). Yes, using a patch or Nicorette type gum WILL show up on your test. Don't do it. And make sure you drink enough water, if allowed, to dilute your urine. https://testdirectory.questdiagnostics.com/test/results?q=Nicotine and Expanded Metabolites, LC%2FMS%2FMS, Urine

Oh no... here's hoping you can squeak by and get it done! I'm nervous too but our county posts the numbers every day and they've started to level off so hopefully I'm in the clear.

A lot of people don't want to be that... I don't know how to say it in English... metiche. (Kind of like "nosey" but more like "has to be involved in everything even if it's none of their business".) Even if they think, "Wow, ShoppGirl looks fantastic, she's putting in the work," they might not feel it would be polite to comment.

Those scales are notoriously unreliable, so don't take it as carved in stone.

I have not had a nicotine test, ever, in my entire life, so it's clearly not a tried-and-true insurance thing. That said, I worked for a while in a drug test lab. Nicotine and all its derivatives leave your system within 96 hours (4 days) and is no longer detectable in your urine after that. So give the vape pen to someone else for the next six days and don't fret.

I'm pre-op but have lost 17 lbs. since I started seriously considering this process (and 34 from my high)... today I had to park in a somewhat tight spot, and only had to open my truck door one "bump" to get out. Surgery is in exactly week... I can't wait.

I'm the day before you, though I'm a sleever, not a bypasser. I had my upper GI, EKG, chest x-ray, and bloodwork last week and I have my final appointment with my PCP on Thursday to clear me for surgery. Tomorrow is nearly-all-liquids diet for a week (my choice, not a requirement, but applauded by my surgeon). I am RIGHT THERE with you on the anxiety! It's been ramping up bigtime. That's why I've been posting like a caffeinated squirrel on here.

I just spoke to my psychiatrist and she put me on standard (not immediate) release bupropion (Wellbutrin) in advance of my surgery next week (AAAAAAA NEXT WEEK). I'm a bit nervous about it. But since so much of my depression is bound up in my weight, I'm hoping to be able to titrate down a bit.

Congratulations!

I am six days before you. Il n'y a malheureusement pas de forum francophone icitte mais je parle français, si tu préfères communiquer en français tu peux m'envoyer un mail privé, t'as qu'à passer ta souris sur mon nom et cliquer sur "message". 😁 (Translated so as not to be rude to English readers: "There's unfortunately not a French speaking forum here but I speak French, if you prefer communicating in French you can send me a private message, all you have to do is hover over my name and click on "message".)

Don't beat yourself up. And don't look at the past. That's not the direction you're headed. 2021's been terrible for me, lost my mom early in the year and spent a huge chunk of time across the country eating whatever the heck I wanted and doing no exercise because it was the COVID spike and everything was closed or snowy. I gained 25 lbs. in three months. And I didn't do anything about it until I started seriously looking at this in July, and guess what? I'm down 22 of those 25 lbs. Get yourself the help you know you need with stress management and stress eating, and give yourself some grace. Sure, you gained some. But now you're on it. And it will come off!

I have a whole coterie of doctors at this point, as I'm sure many of us do, to fix the various systems. One of them makes me take my shoes and socks off at every appointment so he can poke my feet to see if I can feel the poke. It drives me insane. He insists I must be at least pre-diabetic because I'm so fat, and assumes that I've just gone off and "put a bandaid on my poor diet" for a while to pass his blood glucose screenings. He also insists I tell my primary care physician that I need to be on statins (presumably also because I'm fat). When I point out my cholesterol is just fine, he comes up with some "new fact" or other; the latest was there is something wrong with the SHAPE of my fat cells or some such b0ll0cks. Well... as part of my pre-op testing, the surgeon pulled my lipids and blood glucose. Lipids were in the bottom half of the normal range (142 total, HDL 53, LDL 67, triglycerides 94, so right exactly where they needed to be), and my A1c is 5.2. I printed a copy of the results from MyChart and mailed them to the offending MD with a polite but passive-aggressive note. Childish? Perhaps. But cathartic. I cannot wait until they can't use my weight as an excuse for being trash people.