It's been a while since I posted here, but after a challenging couple of months and a fill and then taking out a bit of my fill, I think I have finally hit the sweet spot of my gastic band. I really think that I can truly say, "I am NEVER going to see 200 pounds AGAIN!"

The past few weeks have shown that lots of excercising is effective in losing weight and helping keep stress levels down. Paul and I are going to perform waltz and rumba routines at our dance studio's Showcase next weekend. We will also be doing freestyle dances (basically just dancing the moves we have learned) quite a few times as well. So, in order to be able to nail our routines, we have been having mutiple practices almost every day. Wow! What is interesting is that I am not winded or exhausted like I would have been at my starting weight. I'm tired, but a good tired.

I also ended up with dance shoes that have 2 1/2" heels. I thought they were 2" heels when I bought them and I was shocked to find that I can actually wear higher heels and not feel so off balance and uncomfortable. Of course, at this point I wouldn't want to walk around in these types of heels all day like I used to, but it is nice to feel like I don't have to wear clodhoppers if I don't want to.

I am worried about excess skin. Hopefully SOME of this will firm up as I continue this weight loss journey. I keep kicking myself that I waited so long to do something about my weight. Now that I am older, I just don't have the skin elasticity that I used to have. Oh well, Paul has been very encourageing and says we can fix whatever needs fixing when I get to that point.

One of my new goals I hope to achieve by the end of the year is to go into a mall and pick out clothes from any store I choose!

As of this morning I am SO CLOSE to being officially under 200 pounds. I am fluctuating around it, but I am not going to make it official until I go several days without seeing the number 200.

I did make it though tax season and continued to lose weight. It was a struggle sometimes, especially at night when Paul worked until 1:30 or 2:00 sometimes (ugh). Slippery foods can be my evil friend. I am so glad I made an effort to go to support meetings during tax season. The people are awesome and so supportive and can relate well to the same issues I am dealing with.

My niece, Rachel, is such a great person. She and I have talked a number of times and it is really nice that she also understands my feelings. She encouraged me to call someone when I was going through a rough patch. I still feel uncomfortable picking up the phone to say "I need help, I want to eat." I feel like I would just be bothering someone. Rachel asked me if I it would bother me if someone called me for help, and of course, I wouldn't mind if someone called me. She puts such a good perspective on things.

My daughter, Kristie, is a wonderful support person as well. She is very intuitive and comes up with some excellent ideas. She gave me a book called "My Life List" for Mother's Day (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/My-Life-List/Sterling-Publishing-Co-Inc/e/9781402762383/?itm=1). The purpose of this book is to "give you a place to think about and write down the things you want to accomplish in your life, the places you want to go, and the person you want to become." Now If I can just get the courage/gumption to actually think about this and use this book as it is intended, I think it might be something extremely rewarding.

Posting on a regular basis in not my thing, but I will try to post a little more often!

What can I say? Life happens. Lots of little ups and downs, but nothing too little or too big to make a lot of comments about (at least as far as my weight loss journey is going). My weight loss is somewhat consistent (about 8-10 pounds per month) which is nice. And, the good news is that as of today I only have 9 pounds to lose to get to my halfway point! Since I reached this halfway point once before in 2004, I think that when I pass this halfway point (again), I will truly feel that I am REALLY on my way to finishing up this part of my awful battle with weight.

It was interesting trying to determine my goal weight. I finally decided to go with a BMI calculator and determined the highest weight to enable me to be classified at a “Normal Weight.”

The ranges are:

BMI 18-24   = Normal Weight (74 pounds to go)
BMI 25-29   = Overweight (45 pounds to go)
BMI 30-34   = Moderate Obesity (17 pounds to go)
BMI 35-39   = Severe Obesity (where I am now)
BMI > 40     = Morbid Obesity ( I was at 47.7 when I started this AGB journey)

Using this method, my goal then ends up being around 140 pounds which I haven’t weighed in years and years. It sure seems low to me. I think I might be happy at around 150 pounds, but I guess I will just have to wait and see. I don’t want to end up looking old and scrawny. I want to look healthy and feel attractive.

I am concerned a bit with how my body is reacting to this round of massive weight loss. I guess since I am older, I am not firming up very well. I am not even sure if exercising will do all that much for some of this problem. I did talk briefly to a plastic surgeon who mentioned that as people age, the underlying tissue connections aren’t as strong especially when people are very overweight, and as a result there is more sagging. I just hate how the skin over the top of my knees are sagging (not to mention the inner thigh skin issues). It reminds me of when you see muffin tops around people’s waists, that’s what seems to be going on over my knees! I don’t even want to wear skirts unless they are lower than my knees because of this issue. I sure hope I will see some improvement sometime soon.

At least I have gotten rid of my larger clothes (and my closet space is much less jam-packed now). I don’t have a large amount of smaller clothing, so I keep wearing the same 4-5 outfits hoping to shrink down to the next 4-5 outfits. I am buying a few things here and there, mostly a bit smaller than I can wear now, but I think it gives me an incentive to get to the point where I can wear them! Have also gone to a couple of thrift stores and had a little success finding some nice things to shrink into.

I will plan to do an update here a bit quicker next time!

I have lost almost 36 pounds so far. I had my first fill on Wednesday. It was interesting. There was a little bit of a challenge finding the middle of the port with the needle (they gave me a shot to numb the area first and after that I just felt tugging). Once they got the needle in place things went quickly. They used fluoroscopy to watch how quickly the barium I drank went through my stomach. It was weird to watch. I have been on liquids for the past two days and am going to try some mushy food today. If all goes well, I will try some regular type food tomorrow. I have 2.4 cc's in my band now (she put in 3 cc's and then took out some).

Since my last post several things have happened. My husband (Paul) and I took a 3 week vacation (including 11 nights on a cruise) and had a good time. It was a bit of struggle trying to figure out how what to eat on the cruise ship. There was a good healthy selection of foods to chose from, so that wasn't a problem. However, I did find that I needed to eat a very light breakfast in order to make it through the day without me feeling sorta constipated and/or feeling like I had a stomach ache. For two nights Paul went to dinner by himself while I tried to relax in the cabin and went to sleep early. I felt bad about that, but I didn't want to sit there for over an hour and a half and watch other people eat and try to make conversation when I didn't feel well. Once I figured this out I did pretty well during the rest of our vacation. I even lost weight during that time (almost 4 pounds)!

Also, about 3 days before we left for our vacation I had an awful episode with having some food get stuck. I was stressed about the upcoming trip and I had words with Paul because I didn't want to go to the dance party that night. He left to go on his own and I was upset. (He had been going to dance lessons and some parties on his own for over a month at that point because I had hurt the tendon in my left inner ankle and then I fell a few weeks later and sprained the same ankle and possibly broke a small bone in my foot.) Anyway, after he left I ended up reheating 3 chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-a in the microwave. The first nugget I ate in probably 3-4 bites. I then ate the second nugget without waiting very long in between bites. I had just finished the second nugget and took a small bite of the third, when all of a sudden I felt the most intense pain and spasms in the middle of my chest just a little below my breasts. (I was surprised to find that the band was that high.) I was miserable for 2 nights. I slept with a heating pad. I called Dr. Kim and he said that I made my mistake in microwaving the leftover chicken. He mentioned that some people are more sensitive and have difficulty with microwaved leftovers (chicken especially). I was glad that it wasn't something I had to worry about while on our vacation. I NEVER want to experience that stuck feeling again.

My next challenge is to make it through the holiday season, but with all the support I am getting from my family I think I will be fine.

Well, these last two weeks have been interesting to say the least. The first week was fine. However, the day I started to eat mushies was when things went weird.

Monday afternoon after I ate "real" food, I decided to go to work for a couple of hours. I hadn't been there for 30 minutes when I started feeling pain (sorta sharp) under my left ribcage. It hurt so bad that I didn't want to take deep breaths. I called my doctor's office and it was suggested that I go home and lay down to see if that would help. It seemed to help and later I got up and watched TV with Paul (my husband) for a couple of hours. When I got up, the pain came back with a vengeance and it REALLY hurt to breathe. When I placed my hand under my ribcage to try to help alleviate the pain, I was shocked to find that it was really swollen above the port incision site. In fact, I was scared because this had presented itself so quickly (in just a few hours) and I was worried that something was really wrong.

I called the doctor's office and Dr. Kim called me back right away. He was a little concerned at first about the breathing until I assured him that I wasn't having trouble breathing, but I didn't want to breathe deeply because of the pain. He then told me that it wasn't unusual to have swelling like I described. His suggestion was to go to the ER if I wanted to have them check me out and more than likely they would give me a shot for pain and probably do a cat scan of my lung (he said it would rule out a blood clot in the lung, which would be very very rare), or I could take some Darvocet every 4 hours (instead of every 6 hours) and try to get some sleep to see if that would help with the pain. I chose to stay home.

First thing in the morning, Pam (the Bariatric Nurse Coordinator in Dr. Kim's office), called me to see how I was doing. She asked me to come in for them to check me out. I had my daughter, Kristie, take me early that afternoon. David (the Physician's Assistant) saw me right away. He agreed that my left abdominal area was very swollen. After he examined me he said that due to muscle trauma, because this was the area that the port was clamped to, I was one of those people whose experienced muscle inflammation. He talked about doing an ultrasound to check the port, but because it was so painful and swollen in that area he decided to do this, or a flouro, when I come in the next week for my first follow-up appointment.

Things have gotten less swollen and I don't have pain breathing.

So, on Tuesday I thought things were going to be better. But, I think I must have eaten too much on Wednesday and by Thursday I was straining in the bathroom. By Friday morning, I had a bloody stool and was back to calling Dr. Kim's office. Since I had an appointment with my family doctor that afternoon, they asked me to talk to him about it and then follow-up with them as to what he thought. Well, for the first time I found out that I have hemorrhoids! He said some are silent and don't cause problems, but I had aggravated them and also had a small tear. He told me to drink 8 ounces of water with a capful of a powdered laxative added to it daily for a month. Dr. Kim's office said that was fine. So, now I seem to be doing much better.

Other than a couple of episodes of what feels like really bad heartburn, and trouble getting comfortable at night sometimes because my stomach aches, I guess that I am on the road to recovery. The only other strange thing is that sometimes a few minutes after I have finished eating I have an over abundance of saliva. It doesn't last too long, but it feels weird.

Sometimes, though I ask myself if I made a mistake in doing this, but I understand that these feelings aren't too unusual. Hopefully when I go in for my first follow-up visit at Dr. Kim's office I can ask my questions and feel like I am in a better place as to my recovery.

I made it through the surgery just fine. In fact, Dr. Kim discovered a hiatal hernia and fixed it. He took a picture of the hernia, the repair he did and of my new band after he placed it.

They ran some tubing into my abdominal area that is attached to a pain pump in a small black bag that I have around my neck. There is liquid medicine inside of a baseball shaped ball inside this bag. The tubing runs from this ball through the tubing into my abdominal area. The end of the tubing (the part inside my abdominal cavity is like a soaker hose because it has little holes in it that allows the liquid pain medicine to dull the pain in my abdomen. I still feel a little like I have been kicked in the gut, but it is not too bad.

I actually had some tomato soup in a handle held container. Boy, did it taste good. It wasn't sweet like the other stuff I have been having for 2 weeks - Jello and protein shakes.

Kristie (my daughter) has been here most of the day to help. It was very nice of her to do that.

Well, here it is. Less than 2 hours until I can't have anything by mouth. I am supposed to report to the hospital at 11:15 in the morning. Hopefully all will go well and I will be home by late afternoon or early evening.

I keep trying to not think about bad outcomes. It helps that so many people have had this surgery successfully. I survived my hysterectomy back in 1999, so surely this will be much easier.