voldemort

Today I wasn't feeling like taking my early morning walk. It's been a stressful few days and I was letting it get the best of me. When someone rang my doorbell and my dogs went nuts. I have two small dogs, a black POM and a brown Chihuahua. It was the mail carrier and I had to sign for a package. My husband is always ordering things from Ebay and Amazon, so I was thinking how annoyed I was at him for ordering something else!
 
Well, guess what my little Taco did? He bolted out the door like a bat out of hell. I slipped on my flip flops and went chasing after him. Those of you who have small dogs know how quick they can be and wouldn't you know it... That little dog made me chase him around the entire neighborhood! He finally got tired about a mile away from home and I had to carry him the rest of the way. The entire time I'm cussing him under my breath. Then, as I'm walking up the finally hill to my house I realize my little doggy got me out of the house to take a walk. Not the kind I had in mind, but I still got out and walked a good two miles.
 
Who knows if I would have walked today, but because my little Taco wanted to go on an adventure I took one and sitting her now... I feel great!

I began researching WLS about 5 years ago. At that time I weighed about 250 lbs. My insurance at the time would not cover the procedure. My doctor actually told me if I gained 50 more lbs I would be more likely to be approved. At the time I was like WTF. Who says that?! But guess what? Over the next 5 years I gained 50 lbs. I ,had several Dr apppointmens for different health issues, bulging discs, sciatica, Hipertension, Carpal Tunnel, Insomnia, I just seemed to hurt everywhere. It made me feel depressed and have anxiety. I didn't want to go out and do things like I used to b/c I had gained so much wieght. I was always the happy person who loved to go out and do stuff. But...
 
In April, I took my regular medicine before bed and went to sleep. I had been given a higher pain medication that I hadn't been on for awhile because my sciatica was really bad. I could hardly walk. Well, guess what. I had an allergic reaction and suddenly became allergic to ambien which I had been taking for over 5 years. My son found me unresponsive. Needless to say, I spent 3 weeks in the hospital most in ICU b/c I went into kidney failure. I had to be on dialysis for about 7 weeks and it made me deathly ill. I couldn't eat, but I had so much fluid on me b/c I wasn't able to get rid of the fluids on my own. It was the most horrible thing that has happened to me. My family was told several times that they didn't think I was going to make it. I was on a respirator and had pneumonia.
 
SOOOO, after I recovered I didn't mess around anymore I got on all the information that I needed in order to have my surgery approved and did it. I WANT, I NEED to change my life. I'm still young and have so much more to do. I dont want to give up. I want to live life to its fullest and I need to get this weight off so I can PARTY LIKE A ROCKSTAR. Just kidding, well kinda. I am looking forward to having my daughters and son happy and with families of their own one day.
 
I'm banded and on my way to letting myself be the person whose been hiding inside me, begging to come back out! Watch out World!!

I've found that in the 4 weeks since I've had my surgery I am obsessing about how much weight I'm losing. I'm losing a decent amount, but I want to make this work so badly I've forgotten about patience.
 
Patience hasn't always been a virtue of mine, but I'm thinking this is something I'm going to have to work on. I didn't get fat overnight. It happened over years and I'm expecting to lose so much in months. Don't ge me wrong, I still think its important for me to have goals. I just need to be realistic.
 
This is not a sprint to the finish line its a life changing marathon, with hills, valleys, and bumps. I'm really appreciating the people on here who are so open and caring to give me good advice and help keep my mind straight and help me realize what's happening with my mind and body is normal.
 
Today, I am going to stop worrying. I will follow my Doctor's instructions and walk through my journey, so hopefully one day soon I will be able to help others.

And I missed it!
 
I may have a brand new band in but I still consider the 1st August 2008 to be the first day I became a bandster.
 
And despite the ups and downs, it has been a game changer for me. It transformed my life in so many ways that I can't even begin to articulate. Not just in my weight, my health and my prognosis for my future health, but in my confidence, my view on life, my career and my value in myself.
 
Happy bandiversary to me! It's been an amazing 5 years and here's to many many more to come.

Today I was fiddling with my collage maker on my phone and made a collage of one of my 'before' pics from 2003 and one of me that I took today, in 2013. I wanted to use it as my profile pic on here, so this is it:
 

 
I sent it to myself at work, had it up on my screen and someone I didn't know very well walked up behind me and said 'who is the person on the left?'
 
So I said, 'oh that's me 10 years ago'.
 
Believe it or not, she puffed herself up in indignation and looked me in the eye and said quite rudely "you're lying, that's not you!" and then proceeded to tell me that the person in the photo on the left looked nothing like me, the woman was obviously older, the skin tone was all wrong and who was I trying to kid anyway???
 
I didn't have to say anything, my colleague next to me actually said 'actually that is her' and explained about the lapband (everyone who knows me knows about it). The women then did the huge dramatic act of pretending to be hugely shocked and then interested in how I did it, completely ignoring the fact that she'd basically just accused me of lying!
 
Lucky for her, I thought it was highly amusing, and took it as a compliment, and walked away thinking it would be a good anecdote for this blog. Hey, sometimes you gotta look for the silver lining in everything, right?

It's taken me a long time to get my head screwed on right. I went from being heavy to being too thin, and after a lot of analysing, I decided that I'm finally happy with my weight. Because I'm not all about my weight.
 
This was a difficult mindset to come to. I sometimes wonder, when I was losing, whether or not I'd traded one obsession for another: food for weight loss. My whole goal was to lose, and it didn't matter what the scale said, I kept wanting to lose.
 
My best friend eventually intervened. She told me she thought I was too thin. She could see the ribs in between my cleavage, my hip bones stuck out, my head looked too big for my body.
 
My doctor did too. He said if I didn't stop losing, he would unfill me a little. So I worked to gain a little bit to get to a BMI of 23, not because I wanted to, but because I was scared that if he unfilled me I'd gain it all back.
 
Fast forward a few years, and my band starts leaking. My worst fears come true - I start gaining. I get disillusioned with my doctor's failed attempts to fix it, and I fall off the grid, and off the wagon. I start gaining and I don't care. I've given up.
 
Christmas comes around and I go on vacation to spend it with my son and when we go to the park, I realise that for the first time in 4 years I can't keep up with him. The penny drops and I remember why I got banded in the first place: for him.
 
That same moment, I make a decision to turn my weight gain around. I start tracking my calories, and exercising, and I lose weight, and I then make an appt to see my dr again to try to get back on track. At that appt, he withdraws the fill and it's immediately apparent that my band is still leaking, and we discuss what we should do next.
 
The next few weeks really confused me: Do I replace? Do I revise to a sleeve? Can I do this on my own? Am I really not capable of maintaining without the band? Am I really so hung up on weight loss that I'm going to go under the knife again??
 
And more importantly, was I really unhappy? My weight changing didn't change me, it just changed how people saw me. Did I really want to get on that rollercoaster of weight loss being so important that I'd get too thin?
 
So I made a decision: I'd get a replacement, because maintaining my weight was a lot easier with a working band, but I would not make weight loss my goal.
 
It was for this reason that I decided I didn't want to lose anymore, and instead would get lipo to 'take care' of the problem spots.
 
I'm not 5 days post lipo and by all accounts I'm exactly where I want to be.
 
So what's the point of this post? That self-same best friend yesterday asked me how much fat they'd taken out during lipo. Did I lose any weight?
 
So this morning I weighed myself. And yes the scales have gone down. And I was ecstatic. And all day today I'm thinking 'maybe I should try to lose a few more kilos, I could still stand to lose some weight' until I caught myself and shook myself out of it.
 
Body image. It's such an insidious damaging thing sometimes. Because we constantly have to convince ourselves we're good enough, that we're happy enough, that we don't need to be better than we already are and actually believe it. And it's a battle you can't ever let your guard down on. And I'm angry with myself for having succumbed to that vicious inner voice in my head today. She really needs to shut the hell up.

today is day 1 of getting back on the right track. Good so far, turned down a bad breakfast idea... good for me.
Breakfast is Coffee, 1/2 sausage patty.

My last band took a lot of fills to get me into the green zone. 8.5cc in a 10 cc band, and when I was leaking, it got up as high as 10cc.
 
With my first band, at 6cc, I couldn't even feel my band. And yet here I am now, at 6cc again with a new band, placed by a different dr, and I feel like I'm in the green zone.
 
Maybe because of my history I keep expecting it to disappear but it's been 4 days since my fill and I still feel like I can't eat more than a couple of poached eggs tops. I actually think it's not swollen or anything anymore, and I'm either at the green zone or close to it.
 
Also my hunger is almost completely gone, which is also another sign for me.
 
After 15 months of my band leaking, this feels almost too good to be true.

OOOOH HAPPY DAY! Another big WOO HOO!
Just like anyone who has an excessive amount of weight to lose, I set milestones for myself.
Starting weight 346
1 - Get under 300 - CHECK yes 299.9 counts!
2 - Get back in to my wedding ring - CHECK
3 - Get under 250 - CHECK
4 - Get back in to my size 20 jeans that I wore when I got married - YAY I DID IT I DID IT!
 
I'm so excited I started out wearing size 28s and now I'm in 20s. Let me tell you these aren't the stretchy kinda jeans these are the old school don't breath to make them fit kinda jeans. I almost cried when they zipped.
 
I laugh at myself every time i dance naked on my bathroom scale when I lose a 10th of a pound, but this morning was ridiculous. I thought OMG I look so SEXY in my pants, but it's hard to pull of sexy when you look like a baboon flailing around in excitement. I was even late for work but I think fitting in to old clothes is worth a little not rhythmical dancing and gloating! .