phoenixgen2

So I thought I'd begin my blog by talking about what my life was like leading up to the surgery. My story is probably quite similar to many of yours. I have been overweight since I hit puberty at age 11. In that same year I was molested by someone I trusted and there was never any resolution. All of that coupled with the fact that my family (especially the southern - Mississippi family) did not have any restrictions on how much or what we ate, I was doomed from the start. I ate my way through middle school and high school. I was always the fat kid; the girl picked last and picked on. During this time, I moved around a lot. My mom and stepdad (who raised me) were getting divorced, my mom was on Meth, and life at home was hard so I tried living with family in Montana, Oregon, and Mississippi. And through it all I ate. High school was particularly troubling. I never had a boyfriend; I was ostracized by the other students at school. I was very unpopular due to my weight. I went to my prom...alone. All I wanted was to be accepted, but no one could see past the fat. My one saving grace was that I was smart and graduated with honors. I was now living in Las Vegas with my Step Dad Brian (who raised me and who I consider to be my Dad). He encouraged me to eat better, but after years of overeating, it was easier said than done. College made it worse. I started at community college and worked a full time job at the same time. Needless to say, my eating habits took a dive in college due to my busy and stressful schedule. I had moved out, took on a second job, and transferred to the university. In my desperation and loneliness, I started seeing a married man (one of the single biggest regrets I have in my life). After college, I got a job working for the local cable company, but always felt like an outcast because of my weight which had spiked at 255. Then my doctor turned me on to South Beach. At first it worked great! I lost nearly 65 pounds. I started feeling better...but as with every diet I tried, I started to plateau, got frustrated and the rate of loss, and fell back into poor eating habits. To make matters worse, during the plateau I was out of work for 4 months due to the recession and gained all the weight I had lost back and then some. I finally found a new job in HR at one of the casinos and tried to get back on track with healthy eating. I gave up eating from any restaurant with a drive through and gave up drinking soda. It worked at first and I got back down to 255, but it was short lived. My office was right across from the employee dining room and all the free lattes I could drink and brownies I could eat. In the course of a year I ballooned up to 268 pounds. My company started to offer onsite weight watchers programs so I joined up with my best friend of 14 years and we started to lose weight. She lost 60 pounds, I lost 10. Frustrating right? So I went back to good old South Beach which I had success on before. I didn't lose more than 20 pounds. I was getting very down and for a time completely gave up on myself. I started eating fast food and drinking soda again. I figured that I was one of those people who couldn't lose weight and why bother fighting it. I had flirted with the idea of weight loss surgery for about 8 years up to this point but always had a reason why not to do it. Then I had 2 major wake up calls, the first is I developed sleep apnea as a result of my weight. If you have ever had this you know how terrifying it can be to be jolted awake in the ***ht, heart pounding, gasping for breath. My doctor said the only way to get rid of it was to lose weight. The second wake up call came when I had an appointment with my OB GYN. My period had gone from a 4 day light flow to a 30+ day light, then heavy, then light flow. As it turned out I had developed menorrhagia. To top it off, my ovaries had stopped regularly producing an egg. To put it bluntly, my weight was making me unable to have children. I never realized how much I wanted kids until I was told I couldn't have them...unless I lost weight. My weight had skyrocketed to 285 pounds and I knew that if I didn't make a PERMANENT change that my life would be short and unhappy. Enough was enough. I started getting serious about the surgery option and doing a lot of research. Then after a year, I had sleeve surgery on July 10, 2012. It was time for a change. I chose the sleeve over the band because I knew myself well enough to know that I would probably chicken out at some point and have the band removed and balloon right back up to where I had been before. With the sleeve, I took that option away. I needed something permanent! I now have 2 birthdays, the day I was brought into this world, and the day my new life began…July 10th, 2012.

I had my surgery on July 10th. I had three full weeks of thin and thick liquids and am moving into the pureed stage (FINALLY). For me the physical aspect of the surgery has been going very well. I am healing great, my surgical glue and scabs have all fallen off and I am starting vitamin E oil to minimise the scarring. I do have some problems in the morning. I am tired, a bit turned off of eating or drinking anything, and feel yuckie overall. I have been told that it is my body adjusting to my new smaller stomach and that it will pass. I did feel better this morning than I have in the past week and a half. My biggest struggle is the emotional rollercoaster that followed the surgery. The day after I was released I was sent to the emergency room with as it turns out...severe panick attacks. I only found this out after 18 hours in ER and another trip via ambulance the next day. Three weeks out and I still have mild panick attacks, but they get better each day. Xanax helps a lot. I went from taking 3 a day when first diagnosed to just one a day (yeah me!). The other side of this for me was the sadness and depression. I was depressed before my surgery due to the emotional trauma of being obese, but after the surgery I started to have depression spirals...bad ones. I would cry several times a day, I couldn't think positive to save my life. I went to both my doctor and a psychologist and they said that emotional turbulance is normal the first couple of weeks to a couple of months. Part of it is due to the fact that I just hit my life physically and emotionally with a big mack truck, my relationship to food which had been a security blanket to me had changed, and as fat is consumed by the body the stores of estrogen in the fat is released causing more moodieness. The biggest hurtle I have faced is dealing with "buyers remorse". Knowing that my life will NEVER be the same again can be very scary, but I know in the end it will be wonderful. I just have to get past what I am calling "hell weeks" After upping my antideperessants a little bit, I am getting better at focusing on all the benefits that are heading my way as a result of the surgery. It will be a long road, but I know that the emotional turmoil is perfectly normal, and above all...temporary. I just take it one day at a time.

I am moving into the pureed phase of the post op diet and I am looking for some good menu plans, recipies, meals, grocery lists, etc. Can any of you help?

Thank you! It is a great comfort knowing that this will not last forever.

I am exactly three weeks out from my surgery and aside from the fact that I have essentially hit my entire life with a Mack Truck I am slowly adjusting to my new life. There is someting that has be bothering me though. Every morning from about 6am until 11am I feel really cruddy. I have zero energy, I have trouble focusing on work, I have a much harder time drinking fluids without getting neasous, and overall I just feel unfocused and yucky. Has any one else experienced this?