Braven05

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my very first fill.  But shit, did it HURT!  Holy crap.  Everyone else I've talked to has had no problem with it whatsoever and of COURSE, mine has to be like torture.  The part that hurt the most was him pushing on my stomach which I have been very protective of since surgery.  Then he couldn't get the needle into the port.  I could hear the noise as he broke through scar tissue (its what he told me the noise was anyways) and I could feel him pushing at the port but it wouldn't go in.  He then had me lift my head and shoulders off of the table and I was in the position so long I was shaking and he took the needle out once, put it back in, dug around some more and finally got it in.  He put in 2 ccs.  I was freaking traumatized.  I don't want to go through that again.  Of course I will, because I'll have to, but it really sucked.  Oh well moving on.  I'm hoping I'll have restriction with this fill and that I won't need many of them.  I was also kind of scared that the reason he couldn't get in was because the port had flipped.  He seemed a little nervous too that it wouldn't go in, but it also seemed like he didn't want me to see that he was a little thrown off by it.  I didn't notice till afterwards that he had gone in through my incision, exactly what I hoped he wasn't going to do.  If I had seen him doing it at the time I would have FLIPPED out! lol Oh well, adventures in Band Land.  Alls well now.  My next fill is scheduled for July 18th--6 weeks from now.

Today is my two month bandiversary!  Thats exciting.  I can't believe its been that long already.  I'm very pleased with how things are going so far, aside from the fact that I'm still spending a lot of time in the evenings hungry.  But I'm hoping that my fill--scheduled for Thursday--will help me with this problem.  I think I am of the frame of mind that I don't want to get too tight, ever.  I'm still steadily losing weight with no restriction--I'm down 36 lbs in 2 months, thats nothing to be ashamed of and technically thats a loss of 4.5 lbs a week (even though the first 20 lbs were lost in the first 1 1/2 after surgery).  Anyways I know a few fills will help me lose weight even faster maybe but I have restriction now,  pre-fill, so I don't think I'll need many and I'd still like to be able to eat certain things on occassion.  It seems that some people fill too much and too fast and can't eat anything.  If I ever got to the point where all I could eat was fish, I'd have to have this thing removed! haha.  The biggest thing I need is to be able to get rid of the evening hunger and the ability to eat loads of food at night.  Other than this my journey hasn't been too rough.  I'm exercising 4-5 times a week...I know I need to step it up but a couple of things are holding me back--my ankle injury makes it uncomfortable to walk, and I injured my tailbone on my bike last week so I haven't been able to ride it since Thursday while I heal.  So there we are.  2 months out.  Hoping it will only continue to get better from here! 

Oh, and my BMI when I first started this journey back in December was 58.7...my BMI now is 49.6!!!  Not too shabby!

Today is the year anniversary of my father's death.  It feels so weird to say that because it definitely doesn't feel like a year since I said goodbye to him.  Him and I didn't have a typical father/daughter relationship but we were starting to over the last few years make some effort towards getting to that point.  I know he loved me, and all of his children, and he wanted nothing but the best for us even though he couldn't express it to us.  A year ago, just after my father died I wrote a blog here about how much I wanted to get this surgery because I wanted to make my father proud.  He wanted for me to be healthy and for me to feel good about myself and he was always so encouraging whenever I would diet.  He believed in me and told me I needed to believe in myself.  A year ago I committed to having surgery and being successful and I am recommitting right now on the day of my father's death.  I know he would be so proud of the weightloss I've had so far and I wish so badly that he could be here to see it and to see the final product.  I know deep down that he can see me and he is proud of me, but I just wish I knew absolutely that he was up there looking out for me and watching my success.  A lot has happened in the year since I lost my father, good things, bad things, but most of all I've changed my entire outlook on life.  Life is too short.  I know that I need to spend as much time with the people I love as I can and to let them know how much they mean to me.  And to do that I need to be healthy.  I'm on my way.

I think this was a scary weekend for people all around, myself included.  I am just about at 8 weeks out now and according to my NUTs info I can start adding anything I want, as tolerated.  I was quite bold this weekend.  On Saturday night I had grilled pork chop for the first time and broccoli for the first time, no problem with either except the pork took forever for me to eat.  Sunday we had a cookout at my mother's with family and I had half of a coney on a toaste bun, and some homemade macaroni and cheese and to my surprise everything went down just fine (of course I chewed everything REALLY well). Yesterday we had a small cookout at our house and I ate almost a whole turkey burger with cheese on a toasted bun.  I felt like a normal person, it was great.  Of course, on my mind the whole time was the repercussions I'd have on the scale...but I woke up this morning down a pound.  On Friday afternoon I bought a bike and on Saturday my roommate bought a bike and so we spent some time bike riding and I think that balanced out some of the not-so-good food I ate this weekend.  In no way did I go overboard with my eating, because I just couldn't go overboard, but I'm sure the extra activity helped.  I also printed out new pictures to compare and I can even see a big difference between now and two weeks ago and its only a 6 lb difference.  I love this band (so far) lol

I have a history of having some pretty strange dreams.  But they are usually pretty directly relational to whats going on in my life.  So last night I spent the entire night dreaming about fills.  The first dream I had I dreamed that I went to the hospital for my fill and for some reason I had to stay overnight.  So then we were waiting around for the surgeon to come in and I looked behind me and could see his office and he was in there watching tv.  So the nurse went and got him and he came into the room to supervise the fill but not actually to do it himself--his nurse was going to do it.  So I sat up and she stuck me and the needle went right through my incision and hurt like hell and then she was digging around in there and couldn't figure out if she'd made it into the port, but she injected the saline anyways.  I thought that was a little strange!  Then I woke up and fell back asleep after a couple of minutes.  This time I dreamed that my surgeon was giving me a fill himself and he injected the saline and then sucked some back out and he exclaims, "Oh!  I gave you too much!" because he had a whole huge syringe full of fluid.  So he puts some back in and I say, "Are you sure that wasn't in the band already, like from surgery?  Because I didn't see that much saline in the syringe before??" and he says that there definitely wasn't that much in the band already.  I was really worried though because I thought it was there already and he was taking away all of my restriction.  How weird of me to dream about fills and I haven't even had one!  I can't wait to get one though, I know that much!

The past 3-4 days I've been absolutely ravenous in the evenings.  I usually eat a half a packet of oatmeal for breakfast, either leftovers or 1/2 can of tuna with crackers for lunch and I'm fine until dinner...no problems making it through the day.  Then I get to dinner time and I can really pack it in and I'm STARVING!  I usually eat dinner--something like a meat/potato casserole or a chicken breast, something like that and I'm getting to the point where it takes a lot to make me feel satisfied.  I ALWAYS need an evening snack.  I usually opt for crackers and light peanut butter or a weight watchers ice cream bar.  Maybe I should be making better snack choices.  I just need my first fill so bad, I feel like its been forever.  I'm 7 weeks out...I have 14 days still until my fill.  I'm nervous that I'm going to stop losing and/or gain in the next 2 weeks leading up to my fill.  This really is HELL.  I experienced it a little a couple of weeks ago and then it seemed to go away.  Now I'm just worried that I'm eating too much...evening though I'm still keeping my calorie count between 1000-1200.  Maybe I just need to aim for 1200 and I'll be okay.  I tend to want to stay on the lower end but maybe I shouldn't be doing that!  Ha, oh well.  I'll get there eventually.  I just don't want to gain.  I seem to be optimally losing 1-2 lbs a week as long as I exercise.  Would be nice to see the scale move a little faster though, but I can't complain about 1-2 lbs a week!

Over the weekend I passed the 30 lbs lost mark...thats amazing.  30 lbs in just 6.5 weeks.  I think back to the past when I've worked SOOOOO hard and lost maybe 30 lbs (if that) in 3-4 months!!  Not that I haven't been working hard!  Last week I walked a total of 10 miles/180 minutes (not including walking throughout the day) and it felt awesome.  I brought my roommate with me to my usual walking spot and she was panting and sweating and I was out-walking her...she weighs 100 lbs less than I do!  Its been great having more energy and just the 30 lbs lost has given me so much confidence.  Everyone tells me how good I'm looking (I've decided not to take offense to the fact that I looked GOOD before, haha, jk) and how much my face is thinning out.  It feels nice to get compliments. I'm not used to compliments.  Anyways, just thought I'd share my success

This past weekend was mother's day.  I, of course, spent most of the day with my mother trying to make her feel special.  This involved taking her out to an italian restaurant where she enjoyed a lovely plate of lobster ravioli and a few pieces of the most delicious-looking bread I've seen in a long time while I, on the other hand, enjoyed half of a plain baked chicken breast (which the chef, presumably with no tastebuds of her own, had crusted with black pepper), a couple of thin slices of honeydew melon, and the broth from some italian wedding soup...all for the low price of just 14.99!!  ANYWHO.  It was what it was.  Can't stress about it.  All that mattered is that my mother enjoyed her day.  That morning I had my roommate take pictures of me.  I know in my head that i've lost 29 lbs in 6 weeks, but I sure as heck don't feel it.  So we took the pictures and I printed them out next to my old pictures from 2 weeks pre-op and I definitely could see the difference.  First off, my freaking head has shrunk!  Thats just a little weird.  My arm fat has decreased even though when I went shopping on friday (and bought size 20 shorts!!!!) I felt like my huge arms were making it impossible to find a shirt to buy...my width has decreased, and I now have more of a chin.  Not dramatic results but I think if I photograph every two weeks I'll see the difference more and more.  It made my day a little bit.  I've been getting out and walking most days and i've started lifting 5 lb weights to work on the batwings.  Unfortunately the walking-thing is hindered by my crazy mystery ankle which I hope to be resolved sooner rather than later.  I walked about a mile and a half yesterday around this pond and I had enough energy to go around a second time which would have been awesome, but my ankle just wouldn't let me...and I'm giving it a break today.  Hopefully I will get back on track once we figure out what the problem is!

So I guess I should be thankful that I'm only just now entering bandster hell at 5 weeks out (today!) but I'm not really, haha.  Yesterday was a telling day, here's what I ate:

B: 6 oz fat free yogurt, 3 oz. cinnamon applesauce
L: Small square (maybe 1/4 c.-1/2 c.) egg, cheese, sausage strata, 1/2 piece watermelon
D: 1 small chicken breast marinaded in citrus dill, 1/2 c. mashed potatoes, and 1/4 cup french style green breans, and 1 tsp mayo (for chicken)
S: 1 weight watchers cookies and cream ice cream bar
S#2: 1.5 chocolate graham crackers with 1 tsp peanut butter

HELLO...thats a lot of food for me.  I think I've finally lost all of my post op swelling-restriction...and I still have 4 weeks until my first fill.  I'm going to have to work really hard at making GOOD choices in the evenings when I still feel hungry after dinner.  I don't think for one second that I should be ignoring my hunger, but I SHOULD be eating good things when I get hungry.  I jokingly told my roommate last night that I thought the band was bringing out anorexic tendencies in me because I felt like I ate like a pig yesterday.  In REALITY...that all added up to about 1000 calories...and thats less that half the amount of calories I used to consume pre-surgery.  So its nothing to stress about..and I know this period is called HELL for a reason.  I just need to make it through the next 4 weeks and make good choices.  And I know that I have the ability to do that.  But I think for my mental health I also need to not beat myself up over 1000 calories.  Like seriously.  To even imagine doing that pre-surgery?!  I remember dieting one time where I tried to go down to 1200 calories and I couldn't make it more than a day because I was STARVING.  So this is nothing to stress about.  Anyways.  Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

So, on my four week anniversary since surgery I said hello to a new friend.  Someone I haven't seen since 2000...eight years that is...since I've seen a "2" in front of my weight.  Eight years ago I was 300 lbs...I got a summer job at a camp which required me to do a whole lot of walking, a lot more than I was used to.  Over the course of the summer I lost 20 lbs.  That was the last time I was under 300 lbs, and of course I gained it all back plus a whole lot more.  I stepped on the scale this morning not thinking I was going to get there...to my mini-goal...and low and behold I was 299 lbs!  I know it seems silly to be celebrating about such a big number...but still...its a BIG accomplishment for me!  I of course called my roommate into the bathroom to make sure I wasn't seeing things.  She goes, "Nope...thats definitely a two..." with a big grin on her face.  I'm so happy.  I only hope to be able to continue with the weightloss.  I don't want to jinx myself but it seems too good to be true.  Yay.