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The time has come to pack up and go back to Australia, no more extensions to our "2 year" contract.

 

After more than seven years of calling this our home and growing very fond of it, we have to pack up and return to our other home.

Hopefully our tenants will leave our house in time for us to move back in.

 

We get to have our trip to Germany (July 17 to August 12), and then we start packing up.

 

We don't know the exact date yet, but we will leave some time between August 31st and mid September.

 

I will miss a lot of people,  my home, the pretty Washington State, and more…….. heck,  maybe I'll even miss the rain at times.

 

I will miss support groups, because I don't think I'll have much luck finding them in Oz. I have no idea how I'll go finding protein shakes and all the other stuff, either.

 

We are all very, very sad - nobody in my family is ready to leave, we would have so loved a few more years over here.

On oh.com I'll keep hanging around the WA board, just because I'll leave such a big chunk of my heart over here and I'd miss you guys too much.

 

If you ever want to come visit Brisbane, Australia, make sure to drop in and visit. You'd all be welcome to our guest bed (one at a time, please, don't jump the line and push others out the way, ok?).

Thousands of people, all in a great mood, amazing weather, gorgeous sunset and stunning fireworks........ what a day!

If you'd like to see the photos in a bigger size, hover your cursor over the slideshow, then click on the full screen icon (bottom right hand corner).

I have no clue why, but it seems that my avatar video has disappeared off this page (unless I keep looking right past it).
I know it has helped quite  a few people, so here it is again:

I hate the way oh.com turns my perfectly clear photos into a fuzzy mess, but here it is anyway:

Sometimes I get notified about a message board post that was actually meant for the original poster, but was accidentally addressed to me.

Its a very easy mistake to make - the two "reply" buttons are nearly right next to each other.

Here is a quick screenshot to explain the difference:

I had a very easy and quick recovery and absolutely no problems at all.
Seems I'm not a dumper, my taste buds haven't changed, and so far I haven't found any food that is a real problem, although I have learned that I need to eat certain things VERY slowly or they'll get stuck.

I have nowhere near the amount of restriction I had hoped for, so I have to always stop eating long before I feel like it. A few minutes later it catches up with me and I know I'm no longer truly hungry, but I'm never really full, either  :-(

To my happy news: Today I'm 7 weeks out and have lost 50 (FIFTY !) pounds - 27 before surgery, and 23 in the 7 weeks since then.
Despite the medial bypass I am losing much slower than everyone else, but at least it IS going down. As long as I get there in the end, I don't care if it takes me 3 times as long. I am starting at the gym today, so that will speed things up, at least for a while until my body realizes what I'm up to again.

My clothes are getting much looser, my ring will fall off soon, and I can definitively see a difference. I'm a happy camper!

I find them annoying enough to skip over the posts using animated gifs as avatars. Other people love them, but don't know how to do them, so here is a tutorial.
First of all you need to prepare the photos to avatar size - if you need help with that, watch the next video, below this one.

 

I have noticed a few avatars/profile pics that are distorted or just don’t look as good as they could. 

Since I love working with photos, I thought that could be a way for me to give something back to this lovely community.

So, if you’d like some help with your photo, get in touch with me. I’ll probably ask you to send me your best photo and to tell me how you want it to be cropped.

If you live anywhere near me, I’d be happy to arrange a little photo session to get you some new shots.

Here is a video I created to help you resize photos yourself:

 

Phew, I made it!
Surgery day was Tuesday. I arrived at the hospital at 5:30 am and went "lights out" by 7 am. It took nearly 6 hours, but Dr Srikanth managed to do it laproscopically, even though mine was a medial GB (i.e. much more bypassed).
The rest of Tuesday was a zonked out blur. I was aware of people around me and their talking, I knew my husband sat with me for many hours, but opening my eyes and making sort of intelligent conversation was a HUGE effort.
By late afternoon I was taking a walk or two and kept that up during the night. Being woken up every few minutes all night long by either a nurse or some beeping alarm was exhausting, no wonder I felt out of my tree all Wednesday.

I needed three IVs put in, because my veins kept shutting down. The afternoon nurse was great, the night nurse was a sweetie, but a total klutz, I could not believe how much she fumbled, knocked over, bumped into my rather sore IV sites, etc etc etc.
The morning nurse was...... ummm..... let's say "catty" (if I wasn't such a lady, I'd use a different word). I was NOT impressed with her, or the (very very tiny) room I was in.

The pain meds syrup in the hospital was incredibly disgusting (95% sugar plus 5% pure torture), and sadly enough the stuff I had for at home wasn't much better. I took 3 more doses of that stuff just to be on the safe side, but after that I decided that pain was the more merciful option compared to having to put more of THAT in my mouth.
I weighed myself on Thursday, after a stern reminder that I HAD been warned about a weight gain. Sure enough……. I weighed about 12lbs more than on Tue morning. Thank heavens for all you guys telling me about this! Today, Saturday, I was finally back to surgery morning weight.
At no stage was I in agony. I sure felt under the weather, zonked out, tired and sore, but nothing I couldn’t cope with, yet still I get moments where I do wonder if I made the right decision.
The whole thing felt and feels like somebody inserted an echidna into my belly. Sometimes he curls up and sleeps and is quite bearable, other times he gets cranky, makes odd noises, bumps and scratches around, and generally just misbehaves. I haven’t made friends with him yet, but thankfully it feels like he is getting a little smaller and tamer every day.
I am sleeping in the guest bed for now because it is easier to move around in and to get out of than our water bed, and I am quite comfortable sleeping on my side, although the echidna does complain for the first moment whenever I turn over until he settles into the new position.
My abdominal muscles (plus some others, too) feel like I suddenly decided to do 10.000 sit-ups one day, and I’m still paying for the consequences.
In the mornings, I am usually a bit uncomfortable even with sips of water, but that gets easier as the day goes on. I am so glad I’m done with those Phos K packets, now I can’t wait to get rid of everything else that’s in chewable form. I am so sick and tired of artifical flavors, it is hard to force all that stuff down.
There is NO way I can get in 80 ounces of water, but I’ll keep trying to drown myself as much as I can.
I’m feeling little aches and pains but I don’t always know how to interpret yet. Seems like it will take while to figure it all out – hopefully a good deal of it will be gone in time once everything is healed. A new sensation started last night…. I’m thinking it is hunger, but I really don’t know my way around the echidna good enough yet. For now I’m getting ONLY fluids, not even protein,  but I only have a couple more days of that….. by now I’m almost looking forward to the protein shakes. From then, that’s all I’ll get for the next three more weeks. Roll on baby food!
There……. I think that covers it for now.
I am now ready to take my seat on the loser’s bench.
Thank you all who have helped by sharing your stories and wisdoms. You have helped me to prepare for this, and you are continuing to help me get through it.