crosswind

Thanks all . Hey Serna, we had the same sleeve date!

Heh. Happen to be there this very moment, typing in the gloom. I miss coffee badly. Badly!

Uh huh. Don't tell me...Minnesota? Lol...

So it's day five and things seem to be going okay. I check my temperature once or twice a day -- normal or low -- especially first thing in the morning. I dont have any pain but every once in a while there will be a kind of an ache on my left side near the drain incision site. I'm sleeping great. I lost about ten pounds maybe. But I am hungry. Let me qualify that. I *feel* something in my general abdominal region that I used to think was hunger but I know that's impossible, First of all my belly has to be swollen from surgery and it's the size of an acorn compared to what it used to be, so what is this gnawing feeling there? Sometimes taking a few gasx strips helps but generally it feels like my belly is hugging my spine almost all the time. I am really aware of my staple line and I could not imagine putting a single bite of food in my mouth right now, but it translates to a kind of restlessness and an ache, maybe like a headache only in my belly. I was thinking about one reason I wanted to get this surgery. I was pretty healthy going in compared to some people, but I was getting sick. I was anemic, My Vitamin counts were low. I was smoking * a lot* more and I was depressed. I had no energy to get up and face the day. And I was 100 pounds overweight. What people usually tell you to do in that case is improve your diet, right? Eat more meat. Get more Protein. Take a vitamin supplement. Buy some miracle juice. Take Vitamin C. Go to a health spa and let them feed you. Or eat comfort food. Or eat wheatgrass. Or eat vitamin-infused Peanut Butter smoothies. Take something and put it in your mouth seems to be the commercial solution to failing health. But as I was lying in my bed one day this winter it occurred to me that what I really needed to do was to put *nothing else* into my body for some period of time. Like say a month. In alternative healthcare they put people on juice or Water fasts -- not to get people to lose weight but to reduce the strain on the internal organs so that they can regenerate -- ESPECIALLY the liver. If you are sick and overweight and depressed and nothing seems to work to help you...maybe you don't need medicine. Medicine goes through the liver. Maybe you don't need more fruits and veggies and complex carbs. Maybe you don't need Prozac. Maybe you need *nothing* in your mouth for a month. Most people in the general population think this is a crazy idea -- it's starvation, it's a fad diet( lIke there is anything else left besides fad diets anymore.) It doesn't serve the commercial world for people to go on extended fasts because they can't sell you anything to fix your problem. I have bought thousands of herbal preparations over the years because I thought they would make me either thinner or happier. But basically they don't do anything because the body is a machine and the machine has to work right, and if your body is working wrong you're going to get sick. This is, among other things, a medically supervised fast. It is actually a protein sparing fast. I thought back then, a couple months ago that this surgery would solve two problems -- one that I was 100 pounds overweight, and the other that I was getting sick: and also that even if I took on this "crazy" idea of a longterm fast once I stopped fasting I would probably gain the weight back again. There are studies coming out now that say that one way to extend the lifespan is to reduce daily calorie intake drastically. Why? Less wear on the system. Filtering and clearing mechanisms are in peak condition. Internally, you start to work better and better. I am not entirely that excited about losing weight -- or at least not at this point when I have 100 pounds to lose. But I want to feel that way, light and energetic and alert and alive. I knew I could never do that without help. Now as long as I heal up correctly: it's inevitable. I can't wait for that

Disney I think they put us on a wing they don't normally use. Dr. Aceves said the hospital was a bit more crowded than it had been in the past and there was another space in the hospital they kept bariatric patients more often. I think. I might have been riding the blue pill when I heard him say that... Oh edit -- When I had my mini-conference with the anesthesiologist he said -- our goal for you, for tomorrow, is no pain, no nausea, and no vomiting. I said, hooray! I love that goal!( I think in fact when he told me I was getting a morphine mix I gave the guy a high five.) He said one reason for all that was that of course getting your stomach cut out under normal conditions would hurt like Jesus Mary and Joseph and a person in pain doesn't breathe right. Shallow, panicked, breathing, tons of stress hormones. Etc. He said that was one big contributor to pneumonia. So I don't think they manage the pain like that because they want to give the Americanos a good time. I think they do it because it's better for the outcome.

Go to Dr. Aceves? He'll finance you. If your doc is amenable he can write any subsequent claims and checkups as routine for something else. In fact if all goes well and you go down there the Insurance Borg doesn't even have to know you're missing part of your stomach for a long, long time.

I had a thought like that -- that I just would not be able to eat as much. What I finally concluded was that "eating normally" for me is apparently normal also for a linebacker or a Russian lumberjack. I'm not really a food addict -- you know how peope say oh my gosh, however will I live without my chocolate and all of that? I can live without chocolate. I can live without anything really. I just have a little problem putting my fork down. Over time, you won't really miss your appetite, is my theory. Or my fondest hope, you pick.

When I made the mistake of getting on the scale in Mexicali I was up about three pounds after surgery. I'm a little confused about my scale: my scale thinks I'm a lot thinner than I apparently am by something like fifteen pounds, which is always comforting except, you know, when you step on somebody else's scale and feel like your reality has been stabbed with a dull knife. However, I think I finally lost a little weight. Maybe ten pounds? Hooray!

. Just wanted to thank those who opined positively about my writing. I don't do it for a living. I'm from the Midwest and I'm over 40. Anybody who is from the Midwest and over 40 is a pretty good writer. I think it's because our public schools back in the day were full of failed novelists. We were therefore encouraged to express ourselves as unique beautiful DNA from the stars and so forth. I know they didn't do that when my mom went to school and these days if you feel a need to express yourself you can put it on a facebook page with a video of your cat and all the songs you like. It's much cooler to make an app than it is to write a sentence. I'm an accident of history .

Lol, that was a great thing to say.

Yeah there was something about that apple juice, man. It's like this new discovery for me. Apple juice on the plane, two glasses, and then there was apple juice in the house when I got home. Hey! Apple juice! Yay! And it's best with lots of ice. It's completely weird. Just tried my first swallow of Isopure blue raspberry zero carb whatsis. That stuff is probably repackaged antifreeze. I hadn't had any Protein in five days though. My brother said I was on it like a steak.

Hey Indiana! Glad to see you guys made it back okay. I was in Walgreens today buying...stuff...gauze and tape and a thermometer and the lady behind the counter told me that when she went in to have her "easy" gallbladder surgery the surgeon nicked an artery. She started bleeding out and almost died. Later the surgeon said, " You know, for someone who almost didn't make it, you look pretty good." I instantly thought, hell, if I ever need my gallbladder out I'm going back to Mexicali . Good to see you on here. I had such a...well, I had such a not-exactly-good time the past few days I'm thinking about going back to get my 3 month checkup at Almater. Never did get to see Seaworld. Let me know if you two are up for that later on .

I am sitting here with a mug of Knox chicken bullion and it's got to be the best thing I ever tasted in my whole life. I also had an ecstatic bliss experience over iced apple juice and cherry sugar free jello. Even water tastes amazing. Am I losing it?

CRAP. I'm hosed. Okay, problem solved and real Isopure obtained. Wow, that was tricky -- I had to go to another GNC. Boys and girls, don't let this happen to you!

Hey there I am...wow, four days post-op. I ordered

I think there's a method to it though. The stomach is a stress organ. If you're upchucking, exhausted, scared, freaking out -- that has to translate into complications at least sometimes. A blissed out stomach is probably best

. Oh I forgot one more thing: I also mentioned before I left that I had tried to time the surgery so that I would not have my period -- I made a specific effort for this not to happen, so, of course, it did. And I am not a dainty bleeder, let me put it that way. Most people here reassured me it wouldn't make any difference. I almost cancelled because of that but I pressed on. Anyway, it really was kind of a drag. And once you got the blood thinners, well...good thing I was unconscious through most of that. However, within two days I was already out of pads. I figured they would have something in the hospital lying around that served that purpose but it turns out they did not. I asked the nurses, they looked around and in fact started digging in their purses. Then you know what these girls did? They went out to the pharmacy and bought me some, never charged me, never brought it up again. I thought that was impressive. In the US it would have generated a charge for seven hundred dollars on the itemized bill.

I told my brother and my son. Mostly because I realized there was no way I could hide something like that since I was leaving the country. But they are not big talkers and in a way..in that sort of kind way men who are not your husband have...they don't care that much. It's my stomach. I noticed the other day that I joined vst in January of this year. I had no idea it had been that long that I was thinking about doing this. Other than those two I told no one and probably never will. I didn't want to argue for permission from anyone. It was my decision, my stomach, my risk and my life. I was actually carrying on conversations with people in my hotel room about the weather and the news of the day by telephone and *never once* referred to the fact that I was about to have or did just have major surgery. There was something about this I really wanted to be *private*.

So Im back. I was meaning to do more updates from my well-appointed hospital suite in Mexicali Mexico but I was actually too high to type anything. Anyone who is considering going there must consider this first: their drugs are amazing. Also once you're embroiled in something so wildly outrageous there's not much time to put too many sentences together but I didn't forget about you guys. I am...sleeved. In an earlier post I mentioned that I was late to my surgery, which does not bode well for how timely I'll be to my own funeral. I woke up late. The bus was leaving the hotel without me. I told them to go. And I had a good twenty minutes to recalibrate my options. I am alone in Mexico in a pretty nice hotel. Shaping up to be a pretty gorgeous day with some bright golden sun whizzing down off the mountains and a bottle of unopened Water on the desk still cold from the air conditioning. Cervezas by the pool? I could probably pay somebody to take me back into San Diego, check out Sea World, go see the beach... And then the phone rang and it was Yolanda and she scolded me and told me to get my ass downstairs to catch the shuttle so...that was that. I was back on the grid. So since I was late, the first thing Lucy did was march me into x-ray and have me stand in front of the...radioactive chalkboard thing without my bra on. Then she dumped me in my room, gave me a gown and something she called a bloodthinner in a shot above my hip bone. It might have been called a blood thinner but I will call it Oblivion Elixir X because suddenly it did not seem odd at all that I was in a Mexican hospital in a gown about to have my stomach cut out. No, not at all. People do this, right? All the time? The hospital was actually kind of cool. It reminded me of something out of a movie ( not, like, Apocalyptic Zombie Wars) or something from the 40's. It was intensely clean, with lots of marble and dark wood. A bank of pay phones right before the marble staircase that took you to the upper floors. It was kind of attractive in a way but clearly...you know, you're not in Kansas anymore, okay? This was not an American hospital. It was Somewhere Else. Another hint regarding that would be the fact that basically nobody but the doctor and the people who worked for Dr. Aceves spoke much English at all. I've read accounts of getting sleeved from other posters who must have had an entirely different staff than the one that was on that week because *no one* I spoke to there knew more than what you could spoon out of a medical phrasebook. Now here is the thing about people who do not speak your language. They are annoying. They are just as annoying to you as you are to them. How fun is it really to have anyone charge at you with their mouths moving and this gibberish coming out.? And don't get me wrong -- these were nice people. Nice, professional, clean, concerned, hard-working, and intent on communicating but..no ingles. This was an inconvenience that ranged from merely a nuisance to verging on infuriating ( I think, but as I said I was too high to really notice much of my internal state) so if you go there -- COME PREPARED or at least more prepared than I was. Also, when I say the staff was concerned and professional I'm overlooking the time I came out of my room at four in the morning looking for a pain pill and saw no one behind the desk, until I came closer and saw this kid in hospital whites who had fashioned a kind of a bed out of three or four office chairs behind the counter. One of the chairs sat lower than the others so he looked like he was sleeping almost upside down, like a bat. But, you know, no harm done. I woke up Batkid and got my pain pill and all was well. The other problem was NOISE. In SPANISH. The hallways of the hospital are broad and sparkling marble, and right at the end of the hall was what appeared to be a chapel and an intensive care unit, divided from us by one thin glass door. My room had a window that looked out onto the hallway and for some reason, no matter what time of day it was, people wanted to collect right under it and conduct their business on their cellphones or in groups of four or five. There were also construction workers fixing stuff, some sort of frankenlab across the hall that had to be hosed down with a pressure washer, and various day-to-day conversations going on with the nurses at all hours about this and that. Part of the problem was the acoustics -- how quiet can you really be in a cavernous marble hallway? This is the kind of architecture you can do experiments with where you whisper at one end and the boyscout on the other end can hear you say, " eat my shorts" with perfect clarity. So as far as peace and quiet: no hope. If you are planning a trip to Hospital Almater I'd ditch the heating pad, which I did not need, and invest in an electronic spanish phrasebook and something you can stuff under the door. My cellphone worked. Internet was out: I had to use my handy dandy Verizon wireless card which turned out to be even better because Amazon digital and Hulu were then on National Access and did not know I was not in the US and could not have House or Black Swan or Saturday Night Live. All right, so after Oblivion Elixir X we the sleeve specimens were gathered into a room and Dr. Aceves came in to give his talk. He clearly gives this talk a lot. He talked about eating after surgery, using the sleeve as a tool, and etc. There was nothing that made it more clear to me how many of these things he's done because he had obviously given that talk about....who knows? A hundred? Five hundred times? It was a good talk but it mostly reassured me that this man was not *kidding* about his ability to punch my torso open and remove most of my stomach. He knew how to do this. If you need somebody to come around and take your stomach out, this is the guy to call. It was decided that someone else be the first to get sleeved -- I was actually last because I got there late. Didn't bother me, I was on Oblivion Elixir and I just went to sleep -- and this was even *before* the real elixirs began to be handed out. So about...I don't know, three o'clock, Lucy woke me up and told me it was 45 minutes til my surgery. Then she gave me a pill. Okay, this thing was like the Matrix pill. Mine was not either blue or red but it sent me down the rabbit hole. Suddenly I wasn't even remembering that I was supposed to have surgery. I was on Planet Ten. On Planet Ten I supposed they did this sort of thing so I just went with it. I know I had to have gotten on a gurney at one point but I don't remember even that very well. I always saw people on tv getting wheeled down hallways on doctor shows and thinking geez that must be awful. Not the way they do it. I was just watching the lights go by. Then suddenly I was in this room and above my head was a light fixture that looked like a pretty spider. I felt something a little cold in my IV. Fade to black. I mean: BLACK. I mean, don't even fade, okay, just: BLACK. I know they gave me fentanyl and propanol and I also know they intubated me because they told me that before the procedure, but I had no idea it happened except when I woke up my voice didn't work right really for a couple days. I said when I woke up. Which was not in recovery. It was not even after recovery. It was like eight hours later and the thing that woke me up was I had wet the bed. Actually I knew something was sort of wrong with my bed for a long time before I even bothered to wake up. I'm not real proud to admit that but...oh my god, what was in that stuff? Not even my bladder woke me up? THAT is some good shit people. So I got out of bed. Sore in the upper left ribcage. There was a kind of pain that felt like someone was taking the two edges of my stomach and pulling it apart. Not terrible, I'd give it a four. I could feel the drain in my abdomen -- also uncomfortable. I called Batkid with the nurse call button ( and by the way -- get that thing in a position you can REACH it) and he looked at my bed. Pee pee? He said. I nodded. Lo siento! I also said " I have pain" and he filled up my IV bag with a blissful shot of morphine, which is what you get in your IV for pain until you're off the IV. Worked fast, worked like a charm. No vomiting, no nausea. I went back to sleep. For the next two days it was a little difficult to sleep on either side. My belly was still tender and the drain was still in, but I managed to be passed out at just about every opportunity. I didn't really do a lot of walking -- I mean I did enough -- but mostly I wanted to sleep. This was when the NOISE started bothering me and I would dart out of bed with a snarl on my face to stare at the...I don't know what it was, a party? A meeting? Under my bedroom window until these people went away, which really meant they edged slightly down the hallway only to seep back up again under my window for some unknown reason. It was surreal. There was even a *sign* in spanish in plain view which said something like " no molesta la fat people" that nobody paid attention to. I finally employed the nurse, who would tell them -- no molesta la fat people -- and they ignored her too. After the IV came out Breakfast lunch and dinner was chamomile tea, chicken broth, purple gatorade and diluted apple juice. The chicken broth was GREAT the first day and then sort of wore on you after a while. I stopped finishing it and drank water. I *loved* the apple juice though for some reason. I drank apple juice with lots of ice on the way home. I am a fan. And then the drain came out and I could take a shower. Bliss, bliss, a Mexican motrin and more sleep. I got a picture taken of my new tummy, which was sort of a yawn since I have no idea what my old stomach looked like; they could have made it into some kind of internal topiary and I would not have known the difference. However, one thing that was really helpful was to get an eyewitness account of my internal organs. You don't run into too many people who have seen the inside of you and I thought it was a good idea to get a report. My liver was " a little fatty" -- other than that -- perfecto. No gallstones or gallbadder issues, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, all with excellent margins. My bloodwork came back okay too -- I'm a little anemic but other than that, I'm a healthy girl with fifteen percent of her stomach. Dr. Aceves and Dr. Campos came by three times a day, every day. Yesterday morning I woke up at 5:30, took a shower, picked up my breakfast to go of chicken Soup, chamomilla and purple gatorade ( also a big recommend) and went downstairs to sit outside and wait for Ernesto. He was delivering another crew of fat people to the facility and one of them looked at me and said, hey what procedure did you get? I told them the sleeve. They said, wow, you look great! You don't even look like you had surgery! And I said, well, listen -- don't worry.The drugs they have in this place are fabulous. A couple hours later, I was on my way home. I did not need the gasx strips I made a point of buying. I did not need anything special -- there was a starbucks right by the gate and I got a big cup of plain chamomile tea with splenda and that held me over until Apple Juice Time on the plane. The movie was The Tourist. It was *terrible*.

. hey all. I'm in the hospital. Hospital Almater in Mexicali Mexico, and of course because it's me everything happened this morning was random. The shuttle was supposed to pick up all the fat people at the hotel at 7 AM ( I keep thinking about this vanful of overweight americans on their way to get weight loss surgery and I wonder how we're described every once in a while, privately, in spanish. Hey, got another busload of fat white people from the airport, where do you want me to put them?) but I was not among them because I asked for a wakeup call at six and slept right through it. I told them to leave without me and so for about half an hour I was floundering outside the system with the recurring thought that I could just leave. I missed the bus! Missed the bus, couldnt make it to have my stomach cut out, sorry. The problem was that I had not slept at all the night before. I was so tired by time they released us to the hotel last night I was crosseyed. They told us we could have anything we wanted to eat and drink - I could barely even make it downstairs so I sort of used exhaustion as momentum to propel myself to the restaurant bar. " Okay listen," I told the lady behind it. " I haven't slept in 24 hours and I haven't eaten all day. I've got no juice to even order off this menu so could you just feed me? " So she did. In minutes I had these awesome quesadillas and a cheese plate and bread and some kind of chiles in front of me, plus a nice hefty glass of cabernet of which I had two. It was green and manicured and pretty outside the plate glass of the restaurant, and some of the other people from the group, couples, were eating too, far in the distance in a place my legs would not take me to even to say hi. When I was done I weaved attractively back upstairs to my room and turned on the tv. It was seven oclock. I remembered to put everything in my bag, call for a wakeup call, charge my phone and take my two mgs of ativan and then friends I remember no more. The Crowne Plaza is okay. I'm not a fan of big industrial hotels. They have a kind of signature darkness to them. There is a cavernous marble entryway that seems way too big for the furniture in it, or maybe they sold off the stuff they used to have. There are two restaurants, also cavernous - one was closed and one was empty. However the grounds were well watered and cheerful and the pool glittered blue and sterile. It smelled clean. All the staff would approach you in Spanish but when you answered in English they'd answer back perfectly as if they were from Manhattan Kansas. The walls and decor on the residential floors were a dusty pink, probably the same color they painted then in 1982 when the place was built. Rooms were huge, also dark, lots of dark wood everywhere. But like I said: Clean. And I didn't care, anyway, I was drunk with exhaustion with the whole time I was there. Anyway so back to this morning. I was lying there on a bed at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Mexicali Mexico. The sun was clear and bright outside the window and I thought, you know....this is a pretty nice place...I could use a beer....I could just stay here for a day or two and then get someone to drive me back to san diego, hang out there for a couple days and catch a plane home....yes that's what I'll do, I missed the bus, I've been left behind...oh well, I'll call them and get my money back, they can have the deposit... Then the phone rang. It was Yolanda. She said -- WHAT are you still doing at the hotel??? I said...um... She said, well you need to get here AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, the internist is going to be here before eight. So that was that. No shower. I swished some Water in my mouth, brushed my teeth and went down to the lobby. The front desk receptionist told he'd be there in a few minutes so I took the side door past the man who was cleaning the walk and my foot slid way way past where I expected it to go and I fell right on my face into the parking lot. The guy who was cleaning the walk studied me with scientific interest. And then the shuttle came. I walked in, asked the front desk for Dr. Aceves' and got Dr. Campos who handed me off to the nurse, who got me x-rayed and settled in my room. We had our 45 minute speech from Dr. Aceves and it was decided that one woman would go first. She's already gone. So here I sit on my hospital bed, locked into my fate. I called my brother and told him I had made it here. He said, what are your thoughts? I said, I am trying not to have any thoughts. So far none of this stuff has been the least bit uncomfortable. I had a blood test, an x-ray, a conference with the anesthesiologist and a nice drive through san diego. If I hadn't been so exhausted and freaked out, not to mention menstrual, it actually would have been kind of fun. So far.

Thanks so much you guys. Okay, I'm halfway packed, and I'm about to go digging around for a heating pad. Thanks for that suggestion. I also bought a gophone. And checked to make sure they work in Mexico. Dammit, I can't believe how much money I spend on phones. One thing I did was I asked my brother to drive me to the airport. He's a GREAT brother and he'll always help me out if he can, but the thing is he has to take off work to drive me there. Soooo...if he gets me in that car and I change my mind it's kind of a huge waste for him and that will pretty much get me on the plane. The fact that it's first class will stop me from freaking out and making them turn around because I want to get off. Plus, you know, who wants to be out that much money AND go to jail? So that gets me to San Diego. Solution for San Diego to Mexicali? Ativan.

Okay, this thing is tomorrow. I am sitting here blowing up balloons. Wouldn't you know it I got my period TODAY and I lost my cellphone yesterday. And tomorrow I am going to Mexico to get my stomach cut out. I am sitting here thinking...maybe I can just go on another diet. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe I'll get to Mexicali, get on that table, and there will be a huge earthquake while I am under anesthesia and I will wake up in the rubble with no painkillers. Maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I should go on a huge diet and lose fifty pounds and eat wheatgrass and Water before I do this so I'm like really REALLY healthy before I go. Maybe this is all a internet scam and what's down in Mexicali is a tin shack and some upsetting looking types who are in the kidney business... Help help help get me off my ass and packing please....

Oh, man. Good to know!

Yeah there is that.

I know, it's just going to make the whole thing suck that much more...