caffeine

Well, I now have a Realize-C in me. All I can say is ... WOW!!! Went something like this: Woke up at 4am. No breakfast. Met my wife, mom an stepdad at NYUMC at 6am. Met with anesthesiologist (scored brownie points by talking to him in my broken Russian) at 7am. Met with Dr. Ren (surgeon) at 7:30am. At 8am, they put me in the OR, which was buzzing with activity. There were 4 people in the room, and I didn't see the surgeon yet. They numbed my left hand with an impossibly tiny needle. It was so small, I literally felt nothing. I mean that. A mosquito bite was more painful than the needle they put into me. At 8:15am, they put the IV in me and started to drip the anesthesia. I started chatting with the anesthesiologist. We started to talk about college. I told him that I've been in college for over 20 years and did my doctorate in physics. We started talking about physics education in Russia vs the USA. He said I could call him "Gene" if he could call me "Peter," since "Dr." such and such was so long (my last name is only 2 syllables, so it's not that bad, but his was pretty long). I laughed. I closed my eyes just for a second and the next thing I knew, I was in a different room. I drifted off to sleep in a matter of seconds. I didn't make note of the time. I awoke around 10:30am. I noticed that deep breathing was painful. There was a female nurse next to me. She told me that I'd be released from the recovery room based on my heart rate and my level of breathing, so to breathe as much as possible. I noticed she was reading a book, and although I didn't have my glasses on, I distinctly recognized seeing a carboxyl functional group diagram in her book. I didn't see well enough to see what the rest of the chemical was, but I recognized the COOH instantly. I weakly said "Are you taking o-chem"? She said she just got accepted to Columbia anesthesiology nurse school and o-chem was kicking her ass. She asked me if I knew o-chem and I told her I loved that class. She asked me if I could help her with her homework, to which I said yes, but I drifted back to sleep a second later. There was a young boy on the bed next to me. Maybe 6 years old. Hispanic. He was crying, and I overheard that he had leukemia. I felt really sad for them. He was a cute kid, and his parents looked calm, but you could tell that was just exterior for his benefit. You could see the deep sadness in their eyes. I drifted back to sleep. At 11:30am I woke back up and my wife was there. We spoke for a bit and I drifted back to sleep. I awoke. The boy had stopped crying and was talking to his parents. They were speaking Spanish too quickly for me to understand. The nurses finally moved me to my room around noon. It was private. On my way out, I gave the boy next to me a smile and a thumbs up. He smiled and waved back to me. They gave me some kind of "mineral water" with too much aspartame and very salty broth for lunch. I was told I could go if I could eat lunch, pee at least 300mL, and walk the length of the hallway twice. I had only 2 holes in me -- top was smaller, bottom was larger. I was surprised because I thought they'd be making 5 holes. Maybe I was so faithful to my pre-op diet the surgeon only needed one hole to get the job done? I dunno. Drifted back to sleep. Woke up to the nurse looking at my bottom dressing and noticed that it bled through to my night gown. She and another nurse changed me. A momentary flash of modesty came over me and I felt a little sheepish having someone other than my wife see me in my birthday suit, but I noticed that I was in pain so my mind didn't focus on modesty. I asked for more morphine, which they gave. I noticed my throat hurt quite a bit, and I felt like I had been yelling; I was hoarse. It was due to a tube they put down my throat during the procedure. I listened to Abbey Road, Magical Mystery Tour, and Revolver. I drank their lunch, and noticed I was literally stuffed afterwards. I peed, which made the nurse very happy. I went home around 6pm. For dinner, I had Progresso pot-roast Soup (7:30pm), strained of everything except for carrots and string Beans, which were very mushy. I promised my wife to chew them copiously. Followed by a small cup of coffee. I could barely finish the soup for dinner. I was (and still am) stuffed to the gills. I have a feeling I will never order a venti bold from Starbucks again. Point of information: A can of soup *never* filled me in my life. Strained at that!!! I usually have 2 cans of Progresso soup supplemented by a large salad and oat bran/flaxseed crackers if I have "soup" for lunch. I can hardly believe it. Being full on such a little amount of food is just ... breathtaking. It's an emotional experience for me. It's now midnight. My throat is doing better, although it still hurts a tad. My stomach has a very small dull ache. My wife needs to put on/take off my socks and shoes because it hurts when I bend very far. I need help getting into and out of our sofa. I'm still full and the thought of eating more is simply odious to me. I managed to take all my liquid Vitamins. Dr. Fielding (my surgeon's husband) was 100% correct. This is the first time I've ever had a small amount of food, and with slow purposeful eating, I feel completely satisfied. If anything, I think I might switch to Campbells. Progresso cans are currently too big for me. I just took some more codine for my stomach and throat. Waiting for it to kick in. I never did help the nurse with her o-chem hw. :wub: I'm a "belly sleeper," and need to make a concerted effort to sleep on my back. I was told that deep breathing is important for people with this procedure. Deep breathing is a common painful thing for us immediately after the procedure, but lack of deep breathing can cause infection and pneumonia. They gave me a small apparatus to help me breathe correctly -- I need to inhale in order to keep a ball within two markers for a number of seconds. I can easily keep the ball near the target point for near an amount of time they want, but it's slightly painful to keep the ball there for exactly the time they want. However, I'm getting better at it as time passes. And that is my lapband procedure story.

My surgery was today. It went without a hitch. It's life changing. I feel great. Good luck to both of you.

Just out of curiosity, why did you choose just one co-morbidity? You are making a case. You are basically arguing with someone, trying to convince them that you need something. Even if it says "one" co-morbidity, you want to give them a hundred co-morbidities. You want to show Cigna that if they DON'T pay for your surgery, they will end up paying a SHITLOAD of money to treat your joints, coronary disease, diabetes, etc. Remember: You want to make an economical case, not a health case. An insurance company is a for-profit business. You want them to shake in their boots about not giving you the procedure.

I have to agree with Kate. One co-morbidity you can claim is weight related joint pain. When you pass a certain point, your ankles, knees, and possibly hips hurt on a day to day basis. It was true for my case. It can be true for your case. Just document it with your PCP and bariatric surgeon's coordinator. Another is hypertension. I've never met someone with a BMI of greater than 35 that did not have some form of hypertension. The great thing about hypertension is that although it is a *spectrum* (you can have kinda high, high, very high, dangerous, etc) on most doctor forms, it is stochastic: you either have it or don't have it. If you take something like hydrochlorothiazide, then ipsofacto, you have hypertension. Perhaps it would be appropriate to talk to your PCP about getting you on a "baby dosage" of hydrochlorothiazide? I had slightly elevated heart rate and my doctor prescribed 12.5mg/day, considered a "baby dose". For me, there were no side effects at this level (the main side effect being having to pee a lot).

Can someone please describe to me what happens if we swallow something that's not sufficiently chewed or otherwise won't pass a band at all? This was the closest I've come to understanding what happens: Wishful Shrinking: PB isn't Peanut Butter in LapBand World but she doesn't describe whether the food eventually went down or came up. It sounds painful whatever happened. Can someone describe in frank graphic detail what I should expect? I assume it'll happen at least once in my life. I'd like to know what to expect beforehand. Is it vomit/burping? I expect it's not as traumatic as normal vomiting because it hasn't been mixed with gastric acid and partially digested. Can one induce PB if one feels in trouble like that woman did? Or does the body pretty much do everything it needs to in its own time? Thanks!

Very useful info. Thank you! From your profile I see that you spent a day in the hospital after your procedure. My insurance authorized me one day in the hospital, but my current plan is for my wife and mom to drive me home the same day of the procedure, if I feel up to it. How did you feel after you were fully awake from anesthesia? Did you feel well enough to walk? Sit up at a desk? Or were you pretty knocked out that first day? I assume that everything about our procedure will be the same. Actually, I'll tell you what finally got me to go down the LB route. It was your doctor, Dr. Fielding. I was watching his videos, and he's a pretty fit and trim guy. Looks FANTASTIC for his age. There was this one point where Dr. Fielding is talking about the adjustability and he says something like "... and when I had my Lap Band put in ... " and I did a double-take when he said that. After hearing that, I immediately signed up for the NYU info-session. LOL. Dr. Ren said that occasionally he'll want to skip dinner to do something else and she's like "What about me? I'm hungry!" :-)

Hey Amy, My procedure with with Dr. Ren, the wife of the person who did your procedure. :thumbup: When you say "throw it up," do you mean like the kind of throwing up you do when you have a stomach virus or too much alcohol? And does it come up on its own? How quickly between eating the food does throwing it up happen? Is it like a few seconds? A few minutes? Half an hour?

Very, very useful. You definitely took some of the scary aspect away for me. I was envisioning honest to goodness vomiting and heaving. Would it help to carry around a paper napkin until I start to learn what I'm capable of, or is there too much slime for a paper napkin? Thank you *so* much for replying. This is the one thing I'm a little nervous about, and it feels better facing it, knowing, rather than having not a clue what to expect. I'm going to assume it's kind of like falling off a motorcycle -- everyone has to do it a couple of times to learn it's not something you want to happen on a regular basis, so you live (hopefully unscathed) and you learn.

Hey Tracy, Thanks! It's really luck that I was able to do this so quickly. My health insurance required a 6 month demonstration that "medically supervised diets" don't work for me. What a joke... Switched jobs, got another insurance, and they only required 3 months. I know I'm not going to look the way I want to this summer, but I'll look better than I've looked in years. Maybe a decade. I'm sure you'll do OK on the diet. You know how they say "time heals all things"? It's kinda true for this diet. Here's what helped me through it: 1. Time. The first few days you're going to be tired and disoriented (at least I was). The first week or so will be very difficult. But after that, it *really* does get easier. 2. My boss. Don't know how to put this delicately, but those shakes ... umm... don't agree with me very well. I explained everything to my boss, and he let me work at home in close proximity to my bathroom whenever I needed it. :thumbup: 3. My wife. The lack of variety really killed me. So did the sickeningly sweet shakes. I wish they had roast beef flavor or something. But she tried very hard to make variety in my dinner, and it helped a lot. My mother made some home made broth. Put some capers and hot sauce, and you feel almost half-way normal. 4. My work. Delving into work REALLY helped. Weekends were the worst. I guess this translates to "keep busy" with whatever you do. I think that's part of the reason why I'm writing so much. It keeps my mind off food. :-) Good luck with your meetings, insurance, and everything. If you're banded in June or July, It sounds like you'll definitely reach your goal next summer and we can both post about all the groovy summer clothing we've bought. Oh, also time isn't the only thing that helps with the diet -- no fat salsa does too. :-)

LOL. That's a NYC habit that I can't seem to shake. We refer to a slice as a "pizza" and a whole pizza as a "pie". :-)