amy P.
Overweight all my life. Playing seesaw with my siblings...them on one end to me on the other. Add to the weight of contstantly moving due to my father's job and it just made everything worse.
I've tried just about every diet at different times in my life.
I don't l ike to cook and I don't enjoy spending any time or effort on cooking. I do usually cook 2-3 "big" meals a year, but for those, I purchase everything from Whole Foods and just coordinate the reheating the items while I set the table.
I started looking at WLS when a good friend, Jenn, got her lapband. We went on a trip to France/London and I got to see first hand what it was going to be l like. She's at 2 years now and still doing awesome.
My doctor wasn't so up with the idea but after working with me for 3+ years, she was ready to conceed that diet and exercise wasn't working.
Technically, my insurance would have covered the band & by pass, but the process to make it happen was just about impossible to get pre-authorized. My doctor's take was that I'd have to pay thousands out of my pocket to do the specialized diet where you meet with a dr., exercise person 3 times a day so my efforts can be recorded, and a mental health councelor a few times a month. By the time I did this for a few months, it woudln't be worth it financially.
For me, I didn't think the lap band would have worked. I lilke sweets too much and the BPs, etc would have driven me nuts. So at the beginning we were looking at the by pass.
Then the drs. office I was going to go with started offering the sleeve. It's the only place right now in the state offering this proceedure. The dr. who has the experience in doing them came from the clevelena clinic. He's a brilliant guy. I really liked Dr. Landerholm and Dr. Landers! I wouldn't hesitate recommending them!
I had my proceedure on the 17th of December. They scheduduled out 3 hours instead of 1.5 since I had a hill proceedure in February of 2004. They actually left it in place so that acid reflux would continue to be controlled. I also had Pyloris Stenosis when I was 4-5 months old. They worked around this scar tissue as well.
I'm not clear exactly how long it took...because I was out of it! I woke up in the recovery room and they gave me more pain meds. Then i was off to my room.
Monday night, I had some pain and even the tiniest sip made me want to toss my cookies. My sister, a nurse, requested they put me on the pain pump instead of shots as needed, and that worked SOOOO much better. The steady minimal dose controlled the pain. I was quite "fussy" that first night. Nothing could happen fast enough, I asked for a pain shot and they gave me one to stop throwing up.
The good news is that the next morning, I was doing really well, I drank brooth for breakfast and lunch. I sucked ice chips and sipped tea and water.
I was able to get around pretty easily starting the next morning.
I wasn't going pee so they wanted to put in a cathator (sp), but I said no. I never have to go pee after a surgery, and it goes back to normal within a few days. They also gave me my HCTZ which helped pull the water off of me.
I went into the hospital at 275.4....I weighed 288 after on the day I went home.
I've contninued to pee and drop the weight. I'm currently down to 275.8...so .4 pounds differenece at 3 days out.
I'm taking 2 weeks off work. The first day was the morning of the surgery. The rest of this week, I'll be "hanging" out at home. On Sunday the 23rd, I fly to Detriot to visit my parents. I come back home the 29th. I'll have one day and then back to work for a day before the final holiday of Jan. 1st.
The biggest surprise about everything so far...it's really hard to focus on small type - in a magazine, on the computer, in a book. It's reather weird, but I'm guessing it has somethiign to do with the pain meds, advil, etc.
I'm ready to take on getting to 140 pounds!
