katr1nka

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Well, it's almost six weeks out and my weight loss has slowed tremendously, but I'm still losing, so that's a good thing.  I'm down 29 lbs now, which I'm happy about, but it just makes the thought of how much longer this is going to take a little scary.  I guess I was hoping to be down below 200 by at least six months out, but if I keep at this rate i don't see that happening. 

Other than that, things are going well.  I've been experimenting with food, today I tried a sugar-free klondike bar.  It was good, but I won't do that very often, I had to forego the protein shake to have it and I know that's a big no-no.

A week or so ago I decided to order some protein shake samples from various sites, most of which though from vitalady.com.  Well, today I started using the ones I ordered from vitalady, the one I tried was syntha-6 Chocolate Peanut Butter.  It was good, don't get me wrong, but 300 calories!!!  It did have 33g of protein, but I think I could have gotten that many protein without expending so many calories to do so.  In any case, that'll teach me! 

Yeah for me!  I am now 20lbs down in 21 days!  Everything is going well.  I'm starting to feel a little pain at the incision sites but nothing major, just kind of letting me know it's there I guess.  I'm still experimenting with food.  Yesterday I ate chili without puree'ing it, which made a HUGE difference.  Today I ate roast beef hash, which looks NASTY, but it wasn't bad.  I mixed some cheese with it.  Today at work everyone started commenting on how my face looked smaller and how I looked healthier.  I do feel healthier and it is funny that people are noticing that, but in a good way.

I have to admit, I am really hating this pureed stage, and it's killing my pocket book because I keep having to buy different foods.  I'm not having any sort of reaction to the foods, it's just that after I eat them, I can't even stand the thought of eating them again.  This is the case for many things, but not all.  I can still stand cottage cheese, but the tuna, roast beef and gravy, mashed potates with gravy, refried beans with cheese, well, all of those things I can't eat any longer. Today though I tried ricotta cheese with light ragu tomato and basil with mozerella cheese, it was good, I even ate it for both lunch and dinner.  I think they call it noodleless lasagna.  Of course, the calorie count of the ricotta cheese is pretty high, but then again, so is the protein count.

I'm working now, 1/2 days which is awesome.  I get out of the house for a few hours but I still get to spend time with my daughter.  I'm a bit of a workaholic so being forced to leave after 4 hours is a blessing.  I will work 1/2 days next week as well, then back to work full-time.  My biggest concern about going back to work was just starting to eat pureed foods at the same time and not knowing how I would handle that.  But, amazingly enough, I haven't had any problems yet (knock on wood!) with the foods I'm eating.  I guess that's both a good and a bad thing.

One thing I do worry about is the amount of food I can eat, I wonder if it's just because of the consistency.  I can eat a 1/2 cup with no problem, I don't want more, but based on what I'm reading on the forum, it seems like it might be a bit more than most other eat.  two ounces is only 1/4 cup, I just don't think I'd be satisfied with that.

Ah!  I finally figured it out.  Ever since surgery I've had trouble sleeping.  I was taking Unisom, but that didn't seem to take, and I ended up suffering from restless leg syndrome, REALLY BAD!  Well, my doctor put me on Miraplex, which has worked wonderfully, this is honestly the first time that I cna remember that I didn't have RLS.  Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble going to sleep though.  Last night I think it was well after 11pm before I crashed, which is about 2 hours later than I normally go to sleep.  Well, today I think I finally figured it out.  I've been SOO incredibly bored since surgery, I try to relax but it's hard, the things that I found comforting/relaxing I just can't do any more (because they involved food).  So today I started working on the house, moving our girls around (nothing heavy, but a lot of work).  Boy was I exhausted, I almost took a nap (but my two year old wasn't having that!).  It was just such a welcome feeling because I haven't felt this way since surgery.

In other news, it looks like the weight loss is starting to slow down a bit, not the pound a day I first started with.  It's okay, it's still going down.  I probably need to listen to all the other posters and put the scale away and just weigh by the week, not the day, but it's hard to do that when you know you're losing weight.  It doesn't bother me too much that I'm not losing as much as before either.

Today I started eating puree'd food, starting with refried beans and cheese.  It was okay, not nearly as wonderful as I expected it to be.  I wasn't supposed to start until Monday, but I really wanted to start a few things before I went back to work, lord knows I don't want to be experimenting at work!  I felt a little pain in the pouch so I might've eaten too much, but it was only 1/2 cup, so it might just be that I was putting food in there.

There's no hunger, but my nose still works, and boy does that get a little depressing at times.  Smelling my family's dinner, smelling the hotdogs at the ball field, ugh, I miss what that used to taste like.  Don't get me wrong though, unlike before when i tried to diet, I don't feel like making a beeline to the kitchen and shoveling the pizza down, or sneaking a hotdog or two at the ball field, just missing the taste of that kind of food, if that makes any sense.  

I went to see the doctor today, everything looks good and I'm set to go back to work on Monday, although I am only going to work 1/2 days for another few weeks.  I just want to make sure I'm really ready for a full day before I dive back in, and hearing all of the stories and posts on this website, I think that was probably a good idea.

I'm down another pound, I'm losing about a pound a day, for some reason it just seems like I should be losing more.  Yesterday I figured out that I am taking in about 450 calories a day, i never thought I'd ever see a day when I could consume that little food and not feel like I was going to die by the end of the day.  I really love the fact that I'm just not hungry, although the head hunger is always lurking.  I finally got all my prescriptions today, they prescribed me ulcer meds???  I have an appointment tomorrow with the surgeon so I guess I'll ask about it then, I'm not sure why I would have an ulcer, or maybe it just treats pain associated with this surgery.  The pains in my side are still pretty bad, but today I guess they were better.

Well, I made it through one week and things are definitely getting better.  I still have a lot of pain in my left side, which as I've already mentioned, I attribute to gas, but today I decided to call the Surgeon just to make sure.  He ended up prescribing me Nexium and some other medication (the pharmacy didn't have it today), I'm a little confused about that because I know that Nexium is a heart burn medication, but maybe it also helps with gas, dunno.  I started driving today, I went to see my son play baseball, it was great to get out of the house without needing my husband to cart me around.  Oh, and today I tried decaf coffee again, hoping I could stand it this time around (cause I couldn't stand the stuff before I had the surgery).  It's still pretty awful, but I think I can get used to it.  I made half a protein shake and mixed it with some skim milk and water and used that as creamer and topped it off with sugar-free whipped cream, oh, and added plenty of splenda.  I'm just trying to get back to some of my normal routine, I love to crochet/knit/cross-stitch, but I usually do it with a cup of coffee.  This last week I've found it HARD to do this without it, so today, despite the fact that I didn't really like the taste, I still enjoyed being able to crochet for a little while.  

well, it's been six days since my surgery.  Friday evening (day four) was the first day I actually got out of the house, I was really starting to get stir crazy sitting around the house all day long.  It's amazing how much of my life evolved around food/coffee, and now that I'm pretty much without both, I find myself at a loss and I have no idea what to do with myself.  I suppose I'm a creature of habit.  For example, I love to crochet/knit/cross stitch, but I'm used to drinking coffee while I do so.  i've been trying to just do it anyways, but it doesn't feel the same.  I also used to love taking naps in the middle of the day, but now I can't, I suppose a part of it was that the nap always followed a meal.  It's just hard to enjoy things right now, but I know I need to figure this out now before I can actually start eating again, otherwise I may very well slip into the same bad habits I suffered from before.

So, iits surgery day, my husband and I head to the hospital, we register, and then we wait, and wait, and wait, until finally, about three hours later, I finally got called back, prepped, and then carted off to surgery.  I suppose I would have rather sat in the waiting room with my husband for all that time rather than waiting on a table to get carted back, but  man was I irritated as I sat there watching every single person who came in with me, and those who came in after, get carted back while I sat there waiting.

The next few hours were a blur.  The first thing I remember is waking up in a haze in my hospital room, I think my husband might've been there, but I don't know.  They doped me up so much that I was out of it for the next few days, I couldn't stay awake for more than 10 to 15 minutes at any one time.  I remember some of the hospital stay, mainly just when I had to go to the bathroom and then when I started feeling nauseous.  Oh yeah, the anesthesia may bring wonderful blissful sleep, but it also brings a very bad case of nausea, I was dry heaving at the hospital and when they sent me home, which was less than 24-hours after I got the surgery!  I'm glad I got to go home, but it just seemed so disconcerting.  They had me sign all this paperwork, when I couldn't even read it, and then they gave me a banana popsicle, and I was heading home from the hospital.  

I was told that I had to drink 64 ounces of water a day, and that I had to have six meals of clear liquids.  I don't know why, but I guess because I had eaten jello and drank broth prior to the surgery, the mere thought of it after surgery make me sick to my stomach.  So, it was just popsicles and water, but honestly, I just could not drink that much water.  Oh, and for popsicles, let me strongly recommend the Edy's Sugar Free fruit popsicles, they're really good.  

This is basically how the first four days went, popsicle, water, popsicles, water, etc.  By day three I was lucid and able to walk around the house, in fact, I found myself bored after a while.  Relaxing has always been associated with either coffee or food with me, since I couldn't have either, well, I found it hard to relax.  I also started feeling what I could only describe as hunger and I had a bad case of nasty mouth (even after I brushed).  I also had some trouble going to sleep that night, and even though I was frightened to take a sleeping pill, I finally caved and and cut a 25mg Unisom in half and crushed it, then took it.  It didn't really help though, but I didn't have any problems taking it.

So, that brings us to today.  After reading TONS of information on this site and others, I decided I needed to start incorporating more into my diet.  So, I started by drinking no sugar added apple juice in the morning.  A little later I took a gas-x strip (the kind that melts in your mouth) to help with the gas, because it's just been awful!  Later that day I tried some sugar free pudding, just a few bites, and that stayed down too, and finally I started drinking Crystal Light Lemonade.  Oh, and I started drinking some protein, only three ounces (I really don't like it, but I spent too much money on it to not drink it all).  I'm just going to try something new every day, well, full liquids anyway, I wouldn't dare to try to eat anything else until the third week or when my doctor says it is okay.