Yet another pre-surgery liquid diet rant... I got FOUR weeks!

WHAT?! If I could stick to a diet of powder shakes for four weeks, my ass wouldn't be in this predicament! lol I have one more week of "regular eating" and then I start my four week liquid fast. I am trying like hell to not have a week of "one last times," but good LORD. 28 days is a LONG time.

Has anyone else had to have one this long?!

 I am disappointed - I thought Swedish doctors knew better. never heard ANY justification for a liquid diet pre-op.  low carb, yes. liquid,  NO. 

so sounds stupid to me.

YIKES... I only had to do "liquid only" for about 36 hours!!!

Mine was 4 weeks. I was allowed one meal (low fat, low carbs, small ) per day.  It was tough... but doable.  I did not cheat...
We were allowed "0" calorie food: cucumbers, celery, and pickles ... and one meal =veggies + 4 oz of protein (lean meat, fish, egg whites, etc)
Good luck. 

My understanding is that we will be allowed shakes ONLY.

Agreed. There's been no proof that the liquid diet does anything beneficial except MAYBE test a patients ability to stick with a specific eating program, but 28 days seems sadistic. I HATE that I am already thinking about doing my own thing, but good gravy. I am supposed to survive a month pre-surgery stress and anxiety PLUS that lovely time of the month with absolutely no salt or anything at all to chew?



If I were to do, say, 2 shakes a day and a very sensible meal, what would the big difference be? I could do brown rice and stir fried veggies, whole grain couscous with steamed veggies. What would really be the difference?

 There is no way in hell I would follow that diet. You need to go into surgery strong and as healthy as you can be. How do they expect you to quickly recover from major surgery when you go into surgery malnourished and weak, and then expect you continue for another few weeks on clear liquids/fulls.

It sounds like there's a fat hater in that medical group getting off on making you guys suffer needlessly under the guise of " shrinking your liver "    Pffft.

Let me preface this by saying that I LOVE my socialized healthcare! Everyone who needs WLS here and wants it, gets it. There's a bit of a wait, 3-6 months,and everyone I have met has been wonderful.

That said, that's where the problem with this program lies. There are so many people getting surgery now (The government granted a LARGE sum of money to WLS starting last year. Before that the wait was over 2 years) that you can't choose your surgeon. They choose your hospital for you and then you meet with the surgeons who choose the best one for your case. You can put in a request and they will try, but the doctor I wanted is not in the hospital I was assigned. I am holding on to hope that when I meet with the doc, he'll see I am not an idiot and we will adjust things accordingly. I will just have a problem saying, "You know there's no evidence that this helps..." when they're giving me this for free. Bah.

 Just wanted you to know that my comments to you regarding WLS had nothing to do with your socialized health care system.

Now.....OMG  I would absolutely hate it if I was not given any choice regarding which WLS procedure I wanted. Do you have an appeal process that you can use to fight for the WLS of your choice ?

Hey I love my socialized medicine too... But I got to choose the surgeon, hospital, type of surgery AND the program I attended.   And the wait was 6 months from the time I completed all the testing.

Amber, sorry you are dealing with this.  It sucks.  Just do make sure you are taking supplements and doing protein shakes so you are not low on protein as that can really affect your bodies ability to heal.  

 Did you think  I was  implying that socialized medicine was a bad thing because you both made a point of letting me know that you like/love it and I can't see where I said it was a bad thing