onikenbai

My hair started falling out in handfuls the second week of my pre-op diet. So far I've lost about 1/3 of my hair and it's not slowing down. At this rate I'll be bald by fall.

I was on it for a while to relieve the pressure in my head. The only relief I got from it was the day I stopped having to pay for it. Otherwise it was a really expensive tic tac. My dose was fairly low though.

I've heard a good pair of Spanx does help a bit to keep the skin in order while it's shrinking. Unfortunately there isn't a cure-all for it and you may have to treat yourself to some plastics afterward. On the upside, the people I know who've had tummy lifts did get a bit of the thigh problem taken care of merely by doing the panni.

I say call her on her rudeness and call it a life lesson for her. Yes, it would be a tad rude on your part but c'est la vie. Possible comebacks: Wow, does it make you feel better to make others feel like crap? And your medical degree came from....? No, I think misery would be to stand around here listening to you any longer. You did the lifestyle change? Aren't you special. My personal favourite is to just break into tears and to leave the room sobbing. Then she feels like the tool she is and you don't catch the flack for being the crabby one who can't control herself. Slightly passive aggressive, but soooo fun.

60 days?!? You officially win the award for longest pre-op diet ever. That's insane.

Did you have to put on those oh so comfy compression stockings? I had to put them on before my surgery and I wasn't allowed to take them off for five days. Clot potential is minimized by walking often and keeping your feet up while you're sitting down. So lounge on that couch! That's an order! FYI if you got a shot of thinner during your surgery (which the vast majority of people do) stay clear of your dentist for the next three months if possible. It has a very long residence time in the body and the bleeding during your cleaning will be crazy. You may even find that your gums will bleed very easily when you brush your teeth for a while after surgery.

Rice I haven't even tried because it seems like tempting fate, but I can do mashed and boiled potatoes, but french fries are a no-go. No loss, I was never a fan of them anyway. I can do Pasta in the form of lasagna or something else baked with lots of liquid, but regular pasta not so much because it continues to expand a bit after you eat it. Regular doughy bread no. Pitas sometimes. I tried pizza once and that didn't end well. Actually, now that I think of it, I had rice in a soup. Again though, it was already expanded to 100% of its potential volume. I probably wouldn't tackle a bowl of it, especially if it were the Japanese rice I'm most used to. As rude as it is to refuse rice in Japan, it's probably more rude to throw it back up on somebody.

I disagree. I can completely feel the tightness. The intensity varies from I can feel it but it's not really uncomfortable to holy crap I'm completely and totally stuck! Take your thumb and press it against your sternum and that's sort of what it feels like, only from the inside. I have the former when I wake up and I can feel that I need to get some fluids into me before I even think of eating anything, and I feel the latter when... well when I'm stuck. Why the feeling is in the chest as opposed to the stomach though, still a complete mystery to me. When you wake up in the morning everybody is slightly dehydrated from not drinking for 8hrs or however long you sleep. Hence the tightness. I also get the same feeling if I've been out doing field work all day and haven't had a lot to drink. There's no way I could come in from a day of field work and have a good meal without a lot of Fluid replenishment first. I got my band in October and, like the previous poster, am still working out the kinks. Since no two people react to the band in exactly the same way it does take time to figure it all out. You can get all the direction in the world but it's one of those things you have to work through yourself.

A lot of the pre-op weight loss was water. When you starve your liver, for every unit of energy you shed you shed two units of water. Now that you're likely eating carbs and sugars, your liver will bulk up again. This is expected and what should happen. But you're also replacing that water and water is heavy. If you put on 10lbs even, most of that is water. 30lbs on the other hand, probably not all water...

I'm betting the tummy ache is directly related to the coughing and sneezing you've been doing. Even before the band I got a stomach ache from enough coughing, especially since I often coughed enough to throw up. I haven't been really sick yet since I got my band (yay! knock on wood) but I've heard that you can end up sliming and PB-ing just from the excess mucus produced by the cold. Hot liquids never hurt!

Mine is about 1 inch below my xyphoid process, right smack in the middle. I've never heard of any other doctor putting them there but mine.

I agree with the above poster who said that weight loss that fast can't and shouldn't be done for very long. For one thing, you'll be completely bald in a matter of weeks! More importatnly it puts a lot of stress on your heart. In times of rapid weight loss your body will get its energy wherever it can, including from your muscles if your liver doesn't have enough to make it happy. The heart is a big muscle. Now that you're back on actual food, it's higly likely you will not lose, or even will gain a bit, until you start to get fills. It happens to most of us. It's because your liver takes on a lot of Water when you start eating carbs again and water is a lot heavier then most people give it credit for.

The moral of this story is to hide in the bathroom until you get rid of the offending item one way or another, and to NEVER get behind the wheel of a car if you've got something stuck. You're a safety hazard to yourself and those around you. I think we all do it at least once though...

How do you know when you have bunch of viola players at your door? They don't know when to come in. I always wanted one of those fish cases for my violin...

Yeah, that's not going to do it. I was strictly banned from all fruit juices during the pre-op diet. Even natural sugars are sugars. As much as aspartame isn't the best stuff in the world to survive on, it is your friend during this time. Embrace the Crystal Light. Kool-Aid also makes an excellent sugar free grape. To get the liver to give up the goods, you have to starve it of all quick fixes of energy... carbs and sugars. Whether or not they're natural is irrelevant. Wave bye bye to fruit too. Protein is harder to digest and is therefore not a quick fix. I'm a bit of a special snowflake in that I'm allergic to ALL the Protein shakes. Vegan, lactose-free, soy-free, I've tried them all. My pre-op diet had to include actual food as I couldn't very well not eat for three weeks. I ate a truckload of plain chicken, plain fish and veggies. I missed fruit like you wouldn't believe! All the tea in the world I could drink but no honey or sugar in it for sure. I drank truckloads of Crystal Light. I should buy shares in Crystal Light.

Search ketosis on google. Your liver holds the body's short term energy resources that, if we were still hunting for our food, would see us through those no food days. It depletes fairly quickly, causing the liver to shrink. A lot of the pre-op weight loss is actually Water loss from the liver, not real weight. The pre-op diet is simulating the famine time. After the surgery when you start eating carbohydrates and sugars again, expect your liver to plump up again, and expect that you may gain weight as your liver stores lost water.

One of the weirder things to win on a radio show if you ask me... but yay you! I would love to have been in your shoes. On the upside, people's attention spans are pretty short so, while there's all this hype right now, it should die down fairly quickly as something newer and cooler comes up. Move to Canada. Winnings are tax-free.

They are all classic symptoms of the body's reaction to ketosis. Contrary to what you may believe right now, they are a good thing! For what it's worth, my GP had a go at the pre-op diet just for the experience. She said she was lucky she didn't throttle somebody as they would have taken away her licence. So if the doctor feels like crap and can't handle the pre-op diet, I wouldn't feel all that bad that you're not a merry beam of sunshine right now.

If you stick with the diet and don't consume sugary drinks, the hunger should go away in about 3 days and you'll be fine for the rest. Yes, the first 3 days suck monkey butt, but we all have to do them. The headaches may stick around a bit longer though. Have some Tylenol handy.

Try some gatorade. Muscle aches often happen when you're not getting enough potassium. It can also be the body's reaction to the stress of the surgery. I'd say a hot bath will do it but it's a little too early for you to be sitting in the tub. Got an electric blanket?

You should be on 100% liquids for at least the first 24hrs because of the swelling your stomach can do when it gets a fill. You went directly to solids and probably irritated your stomach, causing nausea. Go back to thin liquids. Hot tea or broth may help. I have problems with nausea after fills too but it does go away in a day or two.

Unlikely that you are allergic the band itself. More likely the problem is from the morphine or the surgical tape or one of the drugs. It's not uncommon for an allergic reaction to hang around for a week or more. If there's no improvement at the end of week two, or if it gets worse, then I would inquire more deeply. In the meantime ask your doctor if there is an antihistamine you could take. I found my whole stomach itched like crazy for about three weeks after my surgery, but it's gone now.

I've had both. My nurse was wanted to try out the standing technique and she used me as a guinea pig. She didn't get a clean stick while I was standing up and she decided to root around for my port rather than pull out and try again. The rooting around did not please me one bit and I would have been very happy NOT to have been standing at that particular moment. I think I prefer them lying down. I find it hard to keep my balance when the nurse pushes in on my abdomen to find my port. Maybe if I were leaning against a wall it would be better....

The amount of caffeine in green tea is barely worth metntioning, and no sugar or milk is supposed to go in it. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't add it to the list of things to drink. Mugi-cha, or barley tea, is also quite pleasant. It makes an excellent iced tea in the summer.

So last week I wrote about not being able to keep even one bite of food down at a time and I could actually feel the pills I take going down, but barely. I could actually feel the pills going through the stoma, which gave me an idea of how small a hole it was. Anyway, I got an unfill of only 0.5cc and I'm back to not feeling restriction:frown:. Obviously I must have some if only a half cc more makes it impossible for me to eat, but why can't I feel it? Granted, I haven't tried to find out my limit of how much I can eat because that would be dumb. How small a change was it between not feeling it and getting good restriction? Do I wait a while before even attempting another fill to put back the 0.5cc or do I try again in a couple of weeks and have do them in 0.1cc increments?