information overload

Apr 10, 2012

Today was a full day, in that I was at Miami Valley Hospital from 6:30 in the morning until about 3:00. It was mostly for pre-op testing. I had a full blood panel drawn, an EKG, and chest X-ray. I met with a hospitalist who recommended that I undergo a stress test at some time prior to my surgery. There was also a nursing class and a nutrition class. In the nursing class we went through all the apparatuses to get used to during our inpatient stay, such as these things they keep on your legs to prevent blood clots from forming. They gave us an incentive spirometer as well to practice our breathing and keep our lungs healthy prior to surgery. In the nutrition class we got to test different types of protein drinks. Unjury chicken noodle flavored is yummy, while some others were not so yummy. There's honestly so many protein drinks out there that I have no idea how I'm going to choose one that I actually like without shelling out money I don't have. They sent us home with five sample packets of protein, including Unjury vanilla. Hopefully I'll like that and can pick up a tub online.

I couldn't eat prior to going in, and having breakfast there reminded me of my time spent in the psych ward. Unlike the psych ward however there were TVs, and things to read/study which was good because there was a lot of down time where nothing at all was going on. Tomorrow I have to quit eating after breakfast, and then for the rest of the day I can have nothing but broth, jello and popsicles. This is in preparation for my EGD on Thursday.

I feel excited about the process atm, but I still can't help the nagging feeling in my head that this is a form of self-mutilation. I watched a documentary called Hungry for Change recently that highlights all the wrongs in the food industry. It can all pretty much be summarized by how they study obesity in mice. Mice aren't obese naturally, so to study obesity they have to make them obese. And how do they do this? By feeding them processed foods, which is what is readily available (and cheap) in our society. We exist in a culture that's addicted to salt and sugar, and we raise our kids on this crap, somehow ignorantly expecting that having little or no nutritional concepts in our formative years won't make a difference.

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