Me and Jeremy Gentles at the OH Atlanta Event

As usual, I'm up way too late. I'm not lacking sleep, though. I've been sleeping off and on all afternoon and evening. Just took a decongestant that seems to be keeping me up, but I hope to crash soon. I picked up a seriously nasty cold-type thing over the weekend, and I've felt like crap for the past few days. My head feels like a brick. I'm tired of not being able to breath, smell or taste. Let's hope it lets up by the weekend, when I have to spend a very long Saturday at our vending stand for the Crimson Tide home game.

Also, I hate to be burning up my paid sick leave with a cold, when I have all this plastic surgery looming ever closer. I called today to schedule my first set of procedures. I got some available dates, and have to check with hubby and my insurance company before I nail it down. But for the moment, it looks like I'll get this all started on Thursday, January 3, 2008.

In the meantime, I've got an appointment tomorrow with an endocrinologist at the UAB Medical Center. I located him by reading medical journals on diabetes and endocrinology, NIPHS in particular, and sent out a few emails to far-flung scholars asking if they knew of anybody in my area who could help me get to the bottom of my post-op severe hypoglycemia.

I am fortunate to be so close to a pretty big medical school, and by a pretty circuitous route, I did locate a sharp research doc who specializes in just what I need. He told me that they see so many RNY post-ops for low blood sugar issues that they have started including endocrinology in their routine follow-up for RNY patients at UAB. In his first voicemail to me, he said that if my doc thought I had NIPHS, I should go straight to Mayo, as UAB does not offer the treatment that Mayo does - removal of most of the pancreas! I told him I would rather not  have my pancreas cut up, but I still need and want to know what's going on with my blood sugar. So he told me to come on in. I need to remember to bring my glucometer along.

Lately I've managed to avoid any serious blood sugar drops by eating small meals every 3 hours. However, I've found myself eating rather randomly and mindlessly, crossing the line into grazing, and making some pretty rotten choices while I'm at it. I need to get a grip on all that, and I've done better this week by being sure to keep things I can eat in the fridge at work: cottage cheese, apple slices and peanut butter, almonds, SF popsicles, etc. I have a feeling I'm back up a few more pounds, and I'll know tomorrow when I get on a scale, which I haven't done in the past couple of weeks.

A great new indicator of weight gain for me is going to be my resized engagement ring. Woohoo! I got tired of hassling with the ring sizer, and I finally stopped by the jeweller and got measured for the resizing. I don't remember what size it was - I'd had it resized once or twice already - but the measuring doohickey said my ring size is...are you ready for this? I'm a 7. That's SEVEN. My ring size before surgery was 11.5! I got the ring back today, and it's pretty damned snug. I have to fight a little to get it off sometimes. I am going to drop this last 10 pounds and hopefully a few more and it should be fine for the long haul.

Last but not least, I went to the OH Atlanta event last Saturday, and it was lots of fun! The speakers were good, especially Jeremy Gentles, the resident fitness guru. His talk on post-op exercise was awesome. The shrink who talked about post-op emotional issues was good, too. Most of all, it was fantastic to see all the little faces in one-inch avatar boxes come to life right in front of me. I enjoyed meeting Amy Williams at long last - she's been an inspiration to so many. I saw some of her MTV appearance on TV tonight, "True Life: I'm Obese", and it brought tears to my eyes. She's lost over 400 pounds and is looking fantastic. She has her critics, I know, and I have been one of them at times when we've locked horns over stupid OH moderation issues. But she lives and breathes ObesityHelp dot com, and spends all of her time helping others who are on the road to surgery, or recovering. She has personally helped many people navigate insurance and hospital issues to get their surgeries, and I give her massive props for all that she does in that regard.

OK I better end here. Time for some more sleep!