Sambrettsmom

I posted this on another gals site, but wanted to post it for you too.
Hi! I just wanted to reply and let you know what you have to look forward to. I am 14 days post-op today. I am 45, just turned, and was 241.5 pre-op. I had my surgery on 9/27/11 at the University of Minnesota. It was a 3 hour surgery and all went well. I had previously had my gallbladder out and they also cleaned up some scar tissue, so they said. I was admitted about 11:00 a.m. and surgery was to be at 1:10. Surgery ended up finally being about 4:00, I was about going crazy... I got to my room about 8:00 p.m. and was pretty out of it the rest of the night. I do have high anxiety and was pretty nervous the whole night with all that anesthesia on board. They said it takes about 18 hours for all the anesthesia to wear off. The next day I pretty much laid in my hospital bed, got up for a couple of walks and to go to the bathroom. They took my catheter out in the morning. I was then able to order some broth, Water, juice and popsicles. I couldn't eat much and was just sipping on stuff to see how it felt. It gurgled a lot, but really wasn't any pain. That night I was up a little more and my family came to visit and I pretty much still just laid around. By the 2nd morning I was ready to move a bit and get a shower. All went well. They had a chair in the shower and it felt nice to have the warm Water run on me. I had quite a bit of stomach pain with 5 little incisions, 3 were 5mm and two were 15mm, the bigger were about 2 inches above my belly button. Those are the two that hurt for pretty much 5-6 days before the pain decreased by half. I also had a cough and it hurt very much to cough. Be prepared. I finally took some Vicks 44 cough Syrup all day and evening for 3 days until the pain lessened to help subdue the cough! It went down just fine. I was discharged on the 2nd day then about 2:00 and came home to hit the couch for another 2-3 days and also slept on the couch as it has recliners on each end and was much easier to get in and out of.

By about 6 days out I was able to lay in my bed, I didn't move much and couldn't really get on my side for another 2 days, but was able to sleep well in my own bed. On day 9 I was able to wear my CPAP again, I might have been able to wear it sooner, but I didn't try til this day. I put it on and thought if there was extra air going in with pain, I would remove it quick, but I must have fell asleep as I woke up in the morning and still wearing it!

I am now on day 12, drank Clear liquids and Jello for 6 days and then added in some cream Soups, pudding, mashed potatoes etc... I have been trying a few other things, just really chewing it very well. I am to be on pureed for 2 weeks now, and then have my 4 week follow-up on the 26th of October. I ended up taking 5 weeks off of work, wanting to be good and ready to go back and know about my new diet, plus I love this time of year!

Well as of today I am down about 24.5 pounds, 14.5 of that post-op in 12 days. It is amazing. I was really feeling sorry for myself the first few days in the hospital thinking what the heck I had done, but now am feeling better and have more energy already and feeling so good! I was very lucky also that my insurance covered this procedure.

Good luck to you and I hope that all this information helps you! If you want to know anything else, feel free to ask me. You can use my private email too: peines4@comcast.net.