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It has been over a year since I had my lower body lift. I guess I just got tired of blogging! Overall, it was a good experience. Dr. Morrissey turned out to be an excellent doctor. He actually came to my house on Christmas Eve to remove my drains. He appeared at the door holding a doctor's bag with his name on it. He said it was a graduation present from his mom. It was just too cute. I couldn't believe he came and did a house call like that. My family was very impressed! I was too.

Once healed, I still had what you might call a "spare tire" above the bellybutton and below the breasts. Although it had been pulled as aggressively as possible, it sagged a bit after healing. So I talked to my surgeon and he agreed to do a revision which was just an abdominoplasty. This was just a day surgery and I had it done in May (5 months after the lower body lift). It didn't actually hurt at all because I was numb in the area from the LBL. So that was a perk. I healed up very quickly and now am happy with the results!

The surgery was on Thursday. 

Friday I "slept"  a couple of hours in the hospital. Was dishcharged Saturday night.

Saturday night, I was exhausted and in pain so I slept in my recliner from about 1am to 6am, then again from 7 am to 11 am.

Saturday I didn't feel that well and just kind of sat in misery. I couldn't even concentrate enough to watch TV or distract myself. I ate some soup and drank a shake and started feeling better.

The doc prescribed me 12 Ambien, and I took Saturday night and slept fro 12 hours, which felt very good. If I can keep doing that I'll be healed faster than I can imagine. Just gotta keep protein up, and I'm not eating as much since I don't feel well overall. But Saturday I had 2 protein shakes with 15g protein each, some chicken soup, some toast, some skittles, some rice with cheese. Little servings of everything. I had to take my anti nausea med once, but I think it was because I took my antibiotic without eating.

Sunday, after that long sleep, I felt a lot better. Me peeing was almost back to normal but not quite. I still had some in there after I went. It was time to shower. We decided to do it in our guest shower, farther away from my recliner, because the shower was bigger and we could both get in. I was walking better on sunday and was able to get up by myself. However, when we started peeling off the bandages, I started to get light headed and dizzy. It lasted for so long I thought I might black out. So I walked back to my recliner. Paul had already removed all the back bandages, and I just sat down. My recliner was covered with a sheet so it was ok if any crud got on it. I sat down and drank a shake while he removed the rest of my bandages. My legs were shaking, but they finally calmed down. When everything was better, I got into the shower and just let the water run over me. Paul helped me soap up above and below the incision while I held the drains. It was a quick shower and I felt so much better afterward. It had been 4 days since I had showered, and I'm a two bath a day kind of person.

Paul helped me put on the clean compression garment, the one that had previously had blood spilled all over it but that he had cleaned and dried. We buttoned it up to the pelvis then used non stick gauze pads to put all around the incision line. Paul said I had staples in the back, but I haven't seen them. When the gauze was in place, we pulled the garment all the way up. It's tight enough to hold the pads in place, and I haven't had any problems with them moving or any leaking of oozing.

Even though I'm in pain, it's kind of nice just sitting in my recliner and not being expected to do anything. I just finished my second semester of grad school and I was burned out. The surgery was literally the day after my last final. So not having to think about that til the 2nd week of January or so is a real relief.

On Sunday I wasn't in too much pain at all. There is this one section of the incision near my left hip bone, that hurts more than any other part though, and the pain comes and goes. If it wasn't for that part, I wouldn't have any other pain except for slight ab pain...like having just overly worked out to the point of not being able to move. But that little part of the incision which feels like it hurts along about 2 inches of it, when it hurts, IT BURNS. The nurses thought it was probably nerve endings, because some people have them in a certain place and the pain meds don't help them as much as everything else. Well I don't really feel like I have pain anywhere else, which considering I was sliced all the way around, is pretty good.

Sunday night I had a little more energy. I got up on my own and walked around the house. I got my own cup and poured my own drink. I picked up some mess with my finger-toes and passed them to my hand so I could throw them away. I was feeling ok, but could probably only walk around like that for 10 mins at a time before mr. left-hip incision starts to gripe.

Now it is Sunday. I took another ambien last night, but didn't sleep for 12 hours, but still got a solid sleep. When I woke up though, I felt a little sick. Probably needed to eat something, plus I'm always stiffer after not getting up for several hours. Paul is still emptying my drains regularly and I'm trying to make an appointment on Wednesday to see the doctor. He'd wanted to see me after a week, but Paul is going back to work on Thursday, so I need to do it before then. Hopefully we can get that worked out.

 

 

I was scheduled to have my lower body lift on December 13 at 8:00 am with Dr. Morrissey and Presbyterian Plano Hospital. My husband Paul dropped me off at the hopsital and stayed with me til about 7:30 when he had to go to work. We decided it was more important for him to have an extra day off work at the end to take care of me rather than wasting it when the hospital would be caring for me.

They put me under and before I knew it, I was awake and the procedure was over. I felt nauseated and said that I was going to throw up. Then I fell asleep. I found out later that they had given me a high dosage of anti nausea medicine that was extremely sleep inducing. Well it worked and I didn't have any more nausea after that time.

I wasn't in too much discomfort as long as I wasn't moving, but I wasn't able to adjust myself in the bed at all due to very sore ab muscles. I was wearing a compression garment that started below my breasts and went down to just above my knees. The doctor told me to wear the compression garment until Sunday, then I could remove it, shower, clean the incisions, and put on a 2nd clean garment.

I was catheterized so that I would not have to get up at all on the first day. I had 4 drains coming out of me., tubes that ended with see through little balls that needed to be drained every few hours. Blood an fluid accumulated in them. 

I slept about 2 - 4 hours that night and woke up a lot. I had extremely dry mouth and nurses kept checking on me. Around 8 am, they removed my catheter. Not a fun experience. Then they said I needed to pee before I could be discharged.

A technician came in to remove the fluid from my drains and proceeded to spill a cup of blood/fluid all over me and my compression garment. Because of that I had to get up and have them change into the new garment which was an ordeal. And I was still unable to pee.  By 6 pm, I still had not peed so they had to put a catheter in me again, drain, and remove it. It was a horrible experience. After that I felt like I had to pee but still could not. They gave me until 10 pm or I would have to stay another night. I finally went around 9:30 pm after trying everything and sitting there for hours.

Walking around was hard, but they had me walk once around the hospital. I have to walk completely stooped over, and it feels like a board was inserted underneath my skin. They discharged me at 10 and Paul took me home. I had to go up 3 flights of stairs, but I just did it slowly and it was fine. By the time I got to my recliner, I was exhausted from the 2 days in the hospital with bodily trauma and only 2 - 4 hours of sleep. I felt really bad, and I still had major urges to pee but could not completely empty my bladder. I was able to get some sleep from about 1am to 6am, then again from 7 am to 11:00 am. Then I had a protein shake and ate some food. I felt much better after that and the pain was even better. Until then, I had just sat in the recliner miserably, dozing off here and there, but after eating, I was able to watch tv, and get on the computer to distract myself.

Paul has been a good nurse. He has to empty my drains every now and then and record the time and how much fluid came out of them. He's gotten good at helping me get on my feet and getting  back into the recliner afterward. I basically have a sheet draped over the recliner, a small pillow behind my back, a larger one under my head and a large one under my knees to keep them bent when the chair is reclined. My thigh muscles are sore from having to walk in a perpetual squat. When I'm still I mostly don't have any pain except for a small part of the incision. It feels like 1 or 2 inches of the incision really hurts. I'm wondering if it's a drain tube pressing against the area because the compression garment was squeezing the drain tubes up my sides so tightly that they pressed into my skin and really burned. We ended up putting a panty liner between the tubes and my skin and that really helped!

I'm supposed to shower on Sunday and then put on the new garment and wear that for another day. I'm worried about showering and cleaning the incision line. He gave us instructions on how to do it, but I think it might be painful. We'll see how it goes.

 

 

I wasn't feeling good about doing just an abdominoplasty, when I clearly have sagging skin all over. So I went to a different doctor, the one recommended to me by my Weight Loss Surgeon. I was really pleased with everything about Dr. Morrissey, his staff, his personality, his prices, his qualifications. So I'm booked for December 13. 

I can hardly wait.

As I mentioned in my last post, I hurt my knee back in July 2011. I finally had the much needed surgery on it on Sept 14. It is already so much better, and I've started phsyical therapy on it.  I've just been cleared to do the elliptical again after a month of not being allowed to do anything like that.

I had my general wellness check up with the doctor. It had been 2 years instead of one due to my husband's layoff and our lack of insurance. In 2010, my cholesterol had been high. She wanted to watch it and see if it went down as I continued losing weight. Well this year, every single thing was completely healthy. So basically I was the healthiest I've ever been.

I have been pretty discouraged because over the past year, with the knee injury, the weight stabilization, the loss of insurance leading to me running out of PCOS meds (which affect my metabolism)...   I felt like everything was against me. Now I see that I wasn't giving myself enough credit. Even though I am stuck with 20 lbs that I still want to lose (possibly 30), my body was still becoming healthier inside. That's a pretty strong motivator.

I put down a deposit with Dr. Christina Stiles for an extended abdominoplasty scheduled for December 14, 2012. I'm very excited about getting rid of the excess belly skin.  I'll try to post updates about that process.

I haven't posted on the blog for a long time.

A lot has happened. I decided I wanted to be a speech language pathologist and had to go back to school for a year to get the pre-req classes since my Bachelor's is in English. So I did that for a year, then I got accepted into the Master's program at TWU.

I haven't posted about my weight, because I feel like I was pretty normal for about a year.

A year ago this past july, I hurt my knee somehow. It was a torn meniscus that required a small surgery to fix. However, my husband got laid off the very day I was scheduling the doctor's appointment. I didn't get to have the surgery. So I had to stop the running that I had just begun getting good at.

I slowly gained, or "stabilized" to put it a nicer way, about 10lbs and I have been in the 180s for many months now. I admit I have only been trying to lose the weight on and off.

I've had a couple of plastic surgery consultations now, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with Dr. Christine Stiles.

I'll have to update more about that another time when I have more details.

I just realized that my surgery cost me about $70 per pound lost based on my goal weight. Well, it's worth it. 

 Well, it's been a long time since I updated.

It's been almost 8 months. I'm down from a size 28 pants to a size 16. Family tells me I no longer look "obese" at all, although I'm still in that BMI category.

Had a 10 year high school reunion and felt great that I looked better now than I did back then. It was shocking to see high school photos of myself as fatter than I am now. I did not realize that this is the smallest I have been except for around age 13-14 when I was briefly an average weight.

A couple of months ago, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovaries Disorder (PCOS), and basically found out that it is a hormonal imbalance that causes obesity among other things right about around puberty. I thought I had it, which is why I went to a specialist for it.  I had all the symptoms. I did indeed have it and saw the ovaries on my cysts on a sonogram. I'm now on medication for it to fix the imbalance and make my metabolism more "normal."

I thought finding out about having PCOS would answer a lot of questions and that I would finally feel like I knew the reasons I struggled so much. I thought I would be more at peace about it. Instead, I went through a phase of bitterness. It wasn't too deep, but I basically felt that I was robbed of my youth due to this thing that doctors never told me I had. Not to be arrogant, but I have always felt that I possess movie-star beauty, but I was never able to reveal it due to overwhelming fat. I felt like a total failure my whole life, because while I succeeded at most things, I could never succeed at losing weight. My doctor told me that PCOS patients drive personal trainers crazy because they can do the same routine as others and the weight does not come off or comes off extremely slowly.

As a teen, about 14, I went to the doctor for these PCOS symptoms: obesity, and irregular periods on several different occasions. Instead of being diagnosed properly, I was given birth control pills and a weight loss pill that actually caused depression and never actually worked.  I do not blame the doctor, because I know that medical technology has come farther since then, but I still felt that I missed out completely on many things in youth that other females take for granted. Now I know I should count my blessings. I am on the medication now, and there are many worse things that I could have been diagnosed with. This syndrome is not likely to affect conception as long as I am on the medication, or so my doctor believes.

I still have some lingering feelings of bitterness, in particular toward my teen experience. I was bright and beautiful but never given a chance by my male peers. If I was not ignored completely, I found myself as "one of the guys" due to having 3 brothers. I am thankful to have found a true love that loved me at 320lbs and loves me now. I feel that at least I will never wonder if he wanted me for looks or personality. For him it was both, because I was beautiful to him from the start. At 320lbs, I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and he singlehandedly boosted my body image confidence. A girl who previously could not stand without self-consciously tugging at shirt fronts, or crossing arms over fat rolls, I was always at ease with him, even in the most vulnerable and intimate of states. It's strange but I feel that his un-shallowness is being rewarded now, as I morph into a more idealized form of beauty.

I am 27 years old. I had no health problems as of yet and my weight was getting out of control. I did this so I could have a healthy pregnancy in the future, increase my lifespan, and reduce chances of potential problems and diseases in the future. There are many at my support group and on these forums that say they're only doing it for health. I've even heard those say they're not doing it for looks, as though that were something to be ashamed of. I will unabashedly say that I am definitely doing it for looks. My youth pretty much coming to an end, I want to look as sexy as I can, while I can. Who doesn't feel great when they look great? The two go hand in hand, and I am not ashamed to admit it.

And right now I feel pretty darn good.

This is a project from my weight loss support group: See Thread

I guess I should update my blog since it's been about a month since my last post.

For those who don't know what the eating is like, I had to be on liquids for 3 weeks, then soft foods for 4 weeks, then I was free to eat real food.

I mentioned sticking my finger into foods and licking them in my last post. That was only because I was still on the liquid phase.

It seems like I can eat just about anything now. Nothing has made me sick. I haven't thrown up. I just can't eat very much of anything at all.  

After the first few weeks, I seem to be losing about 2 lbs per week.  I don't think I'm going to make my doctor's goal as speedily as the chart he gave me says I should. I would have to lose 9 lbs in  the next two weeks and I think that might be tough.  I'm really happy losing 2lbs a week and not even trying. I know that if I would actually start exercising, it would probably speed up.

We ordered a weight bench from Walmart.com and are waiting for it to be shipped to the store. It might take about 2 weeks. Paul and I are planning on doing the Body for Life program as soon as it arrives. I need to tone up this sagginess!