Mystik

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Some times things change in a moments notice & there’s nothing you can do but just sit back, try to relax, & accept the path you’ve been abruptly dropped on.

Of course my recent experience is not nearly as traumatic as many whom have been affected by a statement such as that above, but this is my personal lil story:

About 2 weeks ago I awoke one morning to our dog Orly whining to go out at about 7:30am. I jumped up out of a sound sleep and quickly let the two dogs out for bit.

As I stood at the back door waiting for them to do their business I became acutely aware of an increasing pain in my upper belly. It felt at first like a cramping sort of feeling & I thought maybe a lil snack & a drink well I waited for the dogs would help. So I went off to the kitchen, had a granola bar & a few sips of juice then got the dogs back in & went back to bed.

Laying in bed I curled up in a fetal position, the pain progressively intensifying. I started visualizing the call I was going to make to Roy at work if it didn’t soon stop & it hurt more to even whimper. I feared I wasn’t even going to be able to explain to him what the issue was if the pain got any worse but thankfully it slowly started to disappear once again & I drifted back to sleep.

Then there was nothing, until a week later which just so happened to be last Tuesday. I’d had a relatively uneventful day at home & when Roy got home from work he stayed with the girls, who were napping, & I ran out to the grocery store to stock up on some things we needed.

When I returned home about an hour and a half later I could feel this cramping sort of pain returning. I put the groceries away, sat down for a lil while, then went off to make dinner for everyone.

Slowly the pain worsened.

By the time I’d finished making dinner and had sat down to my own plate I could barely touch it. I just picked at it for a while whimpering to Roy about my dilema & waited for the girls to finish up then managed to shower Alanna since I’d given Brooklynn one just the night before then left them to play for a little while before bed.

I sat back down to attempt to finish my dinner & the pain started to then become agonizing so I decided to try laying in a fetal position on the bed as I had done the week before hoping it would just pass like the last time & thinking it felt oddly familiar to the gallbladder attacks I had been experiencing earlier in the year, before it’s removal in late February.

After laying on the bed for a while Roy came to find me & suggested that if I was in this much pain maybe I should consider going to the ER.

For most people this might be an easy decision but it’s something I always struggle with. I know that a typical ER trip lasts hours & it was already after 9pm by this time. The following day was also the girls first day back to school & I didn’t want to go to the ER get stuck there for hours, get told it was nothing major, be sent home in the middle of the night & then end up having Roy wake up the girls, load them into the van, pick me up, load them back into their beds & then expect them to get up for a full day of Preschool, after all summer off, with an interupted night of sleep.

I also didn’t want to have to find someone willing to come in & babysit on only a moments notice for half the night while Roy stayed with me. So, after much agonizing concideration I finally decided that if Roy & the girls could just drop me off so I could at least make sure it was nothing serious then I would take a Taxi home when I finally got released so that I didn’t have to disrupt the girls or anyone else.

Yes, I think of all these things despite being in severe pain & my worries are almost immobilizing. I am just so grateful that this time (unlike a major gallbladder attack I had back in January) Roy was actually here to stay with the girls so I could seek immediate medical help.

Around 2 or 3am, after some lab work & a CT Scan, the ER Doctor decided I had a bowel obstruction & admitted me telling me there was a possibility I may need a tube down my nose or possible surgery.

Moments after updating my Facebook status to keep Roy & my now concerned family members in Canada, all in the loop, the nurse (who had already blown a vein in my arm while roughly trying to insert my IV) returned to announce she was going to be shoving the dreaded tube down my nose also.

I. Freaked. Out…. Completely!

Not just because she was “rough” but I had already had a previous nose tube experience after waking from my Gastric Bypass surgery back in 2009 & I knew it was far from pleasant. The difference however is that in my previous experience I was unconscious from surgery when they inserted the tube & this time I was wide awake. I begged her for some sort of throat numbing spray or sedation of some sort & she just shook her head no. So like any other mature adult I broke down & bawled like a baby.

Seriously.

She left for a while as I tried to compose myself, frantically Facebooking an update of my impending trauma that was about to ensue.

When she returned with a second nurse she produced a bottle of throat numbing spray & told me she could in fact numb my throat for me a little bit. So she gave it a spray & both nurses moved around me until I had one on each side. They then produced the long tube & a cup of water with a straw telling me the best thing I could to was swallow when they told me to in order to help it go down.

The rough nurse held the tube, while the other held the cup with the straw in my mouth & each of them put a hand on the back of my head holding it so my chin was against my chest & then the rough nurse with the tube began shoving it home while they both barked at me to swallow.

I did. Frantically! Up until the tube began clogging my throat making swallowing nearly impossible. They just kept barking the order at me while I spewed water everywhere exasperatedly trying to explain that I couldn’t!

Finally the tube bottomed out once it hit my lil stomach pouch & they backed off to test & make sure by pumping a syringe of water into it causing me to belch as my lil pouch suddenly filled with a blast of air & water. I was horrified, humiliated & definitely a bit traumatized fearing what the night with this thing was going to be like.

Around 4am I finally got taken up to my bed on one of the upper floors where I got very little sleep for the next night & following day. I think the tube was only in for that one night (it’s all a bit of a blur now) but it turned out to be a waist of time since it didn’t do anything they’d hoped & the Xray which I had the following day showed there was no blockage there. So they weren’t sure if it had somehow passed or if there was another issue we were dealing with.

Apparently some of my laps were showing elevated levels such as in my liver & after my assigned Doctor & hospital surgeon consulted with one another they decided what I might actually have is a left over stone in my Bile Duct left over from my Gallbladder removal. They ordered some sort of special MRI to be done on my belly, which ended up taking a day & a half for me to get in for & I’ve since been waiting over a day just for the results of it.

If it is a stone then I will aparently need surgery but because of my Gastric Bypass they will not be able to go in through my mouth like they normally would & the surgeon here is claiming it can’t be done Laproscopically either so I’m possibly looking at major surgery which means a big(ish) scar & a lengthy recovery. Not to mention all the added risks that go along with it.

I’m considering contacting my Gastric Bypass surgeon if it is indeed a stone because he knows exactly what’s going on with my insides & he is a professional at the Laproscopic surgeries so he might be able to do it that way for me. That would however mean having to go 3 hours away for it to be done.

Ideally I hope it’s not a stone at all but the question then is; what is it?

I’m still experiencing pain although not as severe as Tuesday night & I know my body well enough to know that what I’ve been feeling is definitely not normal for me. So I’m also a lil afraid of just being sent home if it shows nothing because they don’t know what to tell me & then find myself back here in another week or two when it reoccurs as severely once again.

Tomorrow I hope to have answers… but it may take till Monday since not a whole lot tends to happen on the weekend.

Fortunately, Roy’s chain of command gave him the immediate time off he’s required in order to take care of the girls while I’ve been holed up here for the past 5 nights & all without forcing him to take any personal leave for it. If I do require surgery they will also get him on a longer term family medical leave in order to get us through it.

I’m saddened however, to of missed the girls first day back at preschool but thankfully, Roy took pictures for me & the girls have thoroughly enjoyed their time back.

I am extremely grateful for my wonderful MOPS group & Roy’s squadron spouses group who together have come together to create a meal sign up & have been bringing wonderful home cooked meals over to Roy & the girls in my absence. I feel truly touched & blessed by their support during this time & I know Roy & the girls are truly grateful for it too.

 I think I'm pretty well done with my weight loss now, at least until I have my plastics done to remove all the excess skin on my tummy, arms, & inner thighs, I plan to get my breasts augmented too because they're nothing but pancakes now & I hate them. I'm not sure if I'll do anything about my butt. We'll see.

I haven't innitiated anything as far as a consult yet for the plastics though because my husband & I were hoping to go on a fertility journey via IVF & I thought it would be best to wait to have my tummy & everything done until after we conceived a child. Unfofortunately, it turns out we're not only dealing with a low sperm count & motility but I apparently only have half a uterus (called a Unicorn Uterus) as well. I could still conceive but the risk for pregnancy loss all the way into the 3rd trimester is quite high & the more I think about investing the thousands of dollars IVF takes to possibly only come out at the end with a broken heart & a lot of debt made me more or less drop the idea & we've moved onto adoption again, however this time we're going to do it privately instead of via the State like we did for our girls.

Anyways, without the plans of getting pregnant on the table any longer I plan to get a referral put in for a plastics consult soon. I at least want to find out how much our insurance coverage will be & how much we need to save up for out of pocket. I know my insurance (Tricare Prime) will cover the tummy tuck & possibly a breast lift due to skin issues but everything else will be on me. 

As for my weight loss, I've been pretty well stuck fluctuating between 151 & 149 for the last 5 months. I finally saw the scale drop to 148 about 5 days ago & then yesterday I came down with an awful stomach flu (first experience with one post RNY) & it's been AWFUL. The only perk is today I saw the scale drop 2 more lbs so now I'm officially at 146 & just 11 lbs shy of my goal. Sucks it had to take a nasty stomach flu to get there but I just hope once it's over I don't bounce back up to 150. Either way I'm happy with where I'm at weight wise & just looking forward to getting rid of all this excess skin so I can feel good about the way my body looks at this weight too. It's been a long journey but so totally worth it & it's not over yet!

 You know... That one we all hope to fit into one day?

Well, I fit!!!! 

 I just realized I never wrote a follow up post so here it is!

On February 21st I had my Gallbladder removed labroscopically by the same surgeon who did my RNY. I could of gone with someone more local (my surgeon is 3 hours away!) but I felt safer about having him do it since he already knew what he was dealing with when it came to my rearranged insides & whatnot.

The surgery went well. I was checked into the hospital around 8am & checked out again about 6pm. For whatever reason they let me sleep in recovery for a long time. I woke up on my own around 3pm & the nurse looking after me said something about me sleeping quite a while. I don't remember a whole lot but there was no complications other then my blood pressure being quite low & they kept pumping me full of IV fluids & telling me to remember to take deeps breaths to raise it but every few minutes it would drop again & the monitor would start beeping.

The low blood pressure is something I've been dealing with for quite a few months now. I never had this problem prior to my RNY but the issue has come up a number of times & for now the doctors are just chalking it up to not getting as much fluids as I should be.

I was quite worried about the possibility of having to have tubes down my throat or nose again like with the RNY but fortunately none of that had to happen with this one & the pain although severe when I first woke up wasn't nearly what it was with the RNY. Also, they wouldn't allow me to check out until I could successfully pee in the bathroom & for whatever reason (the anesthetic I guess?) this ended up being very difficult to do. I tried at least 3 times before I could do it successfully & to do it I had to sit there with my hand under the tap running warm water on it! They finally released me after that but this difficulty lasted just over a week before finally returning to normal. I don't recall having that trouble after my RNY but I did have difficulty with a BM after that surgery. It took 9 days before I could finally have one (TMI, I know... but some people reading this are also glad for the details).

I mentioned in my previous post that I was really worried about needing to have my Gallbladder out due to the fact my hubby was deployed. Fortunately (and with great effort) I was able to get him sent home a little bit early & he arrived home at around 11pm on Valentines Day!!! It was the best Valentines gift EVER!

He was quite surprised at my progress as he hadn't seen me since August. Of course I'd shared pictures but he said they really didn't compare to how awesome the reality was. He said he felt like he had a whole new wife & couldn't believe I was his. 

In other news I'm on the longest plateau ever too. I've been stuck fluctuating between 149 & 154 lbs for over 2 months now. I don't know if this means that this is it for the weight loss until I get my excess skin removed but my surgeons goal for me & my goal too is to reach around 135 lbs. I realize I'm not that far off but I really wanted to get into my lower 140's before surgery. 

It could still happen though as I don't plan on having plastics for probably another year & the reason being is that the hubby & I have decided to pursue fertility treatment in an effort to conceive. I'm really hoping I do get pregnant & figure it's best to wait to have my tummy tuck until sometime after that so I don''t go stretching my skin back out all over again with the pregnancy since that would be a real waste of a tummy tuck. 

So that's where I'm at with things. Overall I'm extremely happy with my progress. I feel awesome & continuously find myself looking at my reflection when I see it & thinking wow... just wow... this is ME!!!

I've been having some pretty serious pain episodes in my upper tummy for about 3 months now. The pain seems to stay right in the center below my sternum & between my ribs. The episodes started out as mild discomfort but are now lasting longer & becoming more excruciating as time goes on. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s absolutely awful & debilitating. The last one I had lasted over an hour & was so intense I could hardly walk, talk or breath & I had to pick the girls up from school & mail some packages to my hubby (who's currently deployed) throughout it all. I literally thought I was going to collapse while at the post office & was having visions of them calling me an ambulance & not knowing what would happen to the girls if that happened. It was pretty scary!

Today I had an ultrasound & the Radiologist basically said between her & I that I had gallstones & she could clearly see why my pain was so bad. She suggested if I didn't hear anything within 2 days that I call in so they can get this taken care of ASAP & she would do her best to have the results expedited.

So I guess I have another surgery in my near future, which sucks. I was really hoping to avoid this issue but know it's extremely common in post ops to end up with this. While surgery alone sucks what makes this even worse is the fact my hubby is currently deployed & I'm alone with my 2 three year olds. We're stationed thousands of miles from any close family for support through this & I'm not sure if my hubby will be able to get some sort of humanitarian leave to come home & help take care of me & the kids.

Guess we'll see how this all pans out over the next few days....

So it’s been 15 months since my Gastric Bypass Surgery which has been by far one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m down a whopping 121 lbs now & only have 26 left to lose to get to my surgeons ideal goal weight for me. I’m pretty sure at least 8-10 lbs of that is excess skin too.

My gramma took this latest pic for me but unfortunately, her camera isn’t the greatest in low light so it turned out a bit pixally. I still think it’s still a cute pic however & next to my starter weight loss pic for comparison I’m once again blown away by the dramatic change I’ve made.

My hands look so tiny!… and I guess the rest of me is starting to get that way too. It’s hard to believe I used to be the person on the left & yet even harder to believe I’m really the person on the right now too! It’s really a very strange feeling that I can’t quite explain.

Today, well lazing around the house in my new Christmas PJ’s (size large & big on me!), I was investigating the loose skin of my belly in the bathroom mirror when I noticed that if I pushed it out of the way a bit I could see an actual flat belly. It was so shocking to me I literally started bawling. I don’t remember ever having a flat belly & to see what it’s going to look like once I finally get rid of all this loose skin was absolutely amazing.

Well this isn't the best progress pic but it'll have to do. October 6th, 2010 was my 1 year surgiversary & I'm down 108lbs with 39lbs left to go to reach my surgeons ideal weight for me.

It's hard to believe just 1 year ago I weighed nearly 300lbs... I feel GREAT & couldn't be happier with my choice to have my RNY. My only regret is that I waited so long  & missed out on the majority of my teens & 20's to obesity.

Currently I'm stuck at 174-176. It fluctuates back and forth but never below & has been this way for nearly 2 months now I think. It's extremely frustrating as I really want to get to my goal & am starting to wonder if that's really going to happen... I think this is the longest plateau I've had.

I have started walking & using the elliptical at a local YMCA & try to put in my 30 mins 3 days a week. It doesn't always happen but I think any exercise at this point is better than zero.

But....

For the last few years I’ve noticed “Skinny Jeans” becoming more & more popular. The more I saw them the more I hated them. Why on earth would anyone want to walk around in skin tight JEANS?… and more importantly why do people who definitely DON’T look good in them feel the need to try & stuff themselves into a pair?

At Target yesterday I walked past a rack of the dreaded jeans & pondered… Would I actually fit in these ridiculous things? Are they too “Teeny Bopperish” for me at nearly 30 if they do in fact fit? Do I REALLY want to wear the one style of jeans I’ve hated since the first time I saw them come into style?

For reasons I don’t really know I did go on & decide pick up a pair in a size 16. I brought them home to try on since I had the girls with me & was not going to attempt trying clothes on with the 2 of them running all over the change room & peeking underneath.

Low & behold when I tried them on they actually fit! I was shocked!

Whether they look any good on me is yet to be decided & I don’t know if skin tight jean fabric is really all that comfortable either. I haven’t yet removed the tags & am pondering whether or not to keep them. My cousin also says she has a couple blue pairs that she doesn’t like & will give to me so I may return these black ones just in the interest of saving money.