At my 4-week followup on Friday, I weighed in: 354. That puts me down about 48 pounds from my heaviest and about 18 since surgery. I'm happy with that, I suppose. Except that I'm betting most of that weight came from my boobs. :( But the comments have started coming, that I look great, etc.

Not much else to update on since last post. I am allowed to start swimming though, so I might do that one of these days. Oh, and apparently I'm allowed to take pills again in a month or two! That's going to make my life so much freaking easier! Can't wait!

Yesterday was my one-month surgiversary. In an ironic turn of events, I got accosted by a group of preschool kids while waiting at the bus stop. Upon seeing me there, one three year old boy pointed at me and said quite loudly "that lady's fat!" which of course led to the subsequent pointing and whispering of the entire gaggle of twenty children. Oy.

In other news, things are going all right, I suppose. I think I eat too much, although I still have to make a conscious effort to make myself stop, even after I start to feel full. I definitely am not doing a great job getting my vitamins in, although I do now take at least my multi every day, as well as my D and B-12 most days, since that's what I was deficient in from the beginning. My energy isn't too bad, all things considering. I feel like I'm improving, at least. I walked to work last week and even though the 1.5-mile trip did wear me out, and did take a bit longer than I would have liked, I made it. I've also made plans to go to the gym on weekdays with my friend, so that should be good, right?

I still haven't the slightest clue how much I've lost. I guess I'll find out at my appointment on Friday, though.

So I haven't been blogging much, either here or in my personal blog, in the past couple weeks. I think it's mostly because I don't have many nice things to say. I managed to keep most of the nastiness confined to one friends-only post about a week back. If you haven't (or can't) read the aforementioned post, rest assured that you probably don't want to. I know for a fact I managed to offend one person. Nothing has really changed since then except for my emotional state. I'm calmer now. Still not exactly happy, still struggling with self-doubt and self-loathing, and still wanting to eat more than half a freaking scrambled egg, but not so hyper.

I don't know if I've lost anything. The last time I weighed, I managed to break my second scale, which told me before it died that I had gained a pound since surgery. I nearly threw the lying bastard at a wall, but instead I cried. And since then, I have no idea. I wish I did. Either it would tell me how badly I'm screwing this up (hopefully not) or it would give me some assurance that this is actually working for me. Not knowing either way kinda sucks.

Protein always makes me vomit. I've tried two dozen kinds and I'm always immediately in the bathroom with the porcelein goddess. I can't do it and I know that's bad but I don't know what else to try. I guess the next step is to try an idea I've had for a while and freezing the protein into ice cubes and swallowing whole ice chips. Might hurt but I've got to get the protein in somehow, right?

Yesterday morning I started having some excrutiating pain. It would come and go intermittently, with the episodes lasting about 20 minutes each time. The best way I can describe the pain is if a menstrual cramp and a diarhhoea pain had a baby in the form of a cactus. I like to think I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, but despite my best efforts to keep it quiet, I was screaming and crying and honestly thought I was going to black out.

My dad called the hospital even though I told him not to. Pain was something I expected going into this. Granted, I had never anticipated anything quite that severe, but I figured there was nothing a hospital could do for me. Nevertheless, he called and an hour later we were in the emergency room.

I had to go through a series of complicated, painful, and quite frankly, humiliating tests. Along the way, they discovered a bladder infection as a result of the catheter, which had been causing some discomfort but which I overlooked in the face of the overwhelming stomach pain.

6 hours in the hospital, a CT-scan, bloodwork, morphene shots, botched IV-s, and other things unmentionable later, and what did they discover as the source of the pain? Nothing. Not a word about it. They couldn't explain it and implied that I was being a baby about it. Yes, I was upset.

Now I'm on antibiotics for the infection and got some more Vicodin for the pain, but still fuming a little bit about the lack of a diagnosis. I'm seeing Dr. Oh tomorrow or Wednesday, so we'll see if he knows anything else.

Things kinda caught up with me again soon after my last post. Mainly I just got really frustrated because I couldn't even take a drink of water without it hurting. I was taking the smallest sips I could manage, not swallowing air, and I tried every temperature I could think of, and still every time I took a drink, it would feel like I was trying to swallow an egg. Not pleasant. I wound up doing a few different things to fix it, and I don't know what did it, but it was either the water with lime Dr. Oh suggested or the switch from Percoset to Vicodin or it was just one of those things that took time.

In any case, I wound up crying uncontrollably, which is really weird for me. It was more of a case of my emotions getting away from me than it was anything indicating the severity of the pain I was in. It wasn't THAT bad, I just got upset and that led everyone to think I was in horrible pain.

Anywho, I've discovered the majesty of SF popsicles (I resisted them before since I don't really like cold stuff much but hey, you make sacrifices :D) and like I said, Vicodin > Percoset. I can't really shake the urge to eat though. I really want to eat, not gonna lie. I have the randomest cravings. (Cucumbers? Weird.) I can't wait to just have a bite of something. Srsly.

And I'm planning to weigh today or tomorrow. Maybe it's a bit early but I'd like to see something to indicate that this is worth it.