Donna4545

Oh, and I didn't drive to Mexico, I drove 100 miles one way in my home state. I just noticed the Mexico part.

My surgeon said you could drive as soon as you were off pain meds. I stayed in a hotel for 4 days after surgery before driving home, and I'm glad I did. I went through the surgery alone. Other people might have different perspectives/recommendations, but this is how it worked for me.

I didn't get any bad reactions from the refried beans, but something did give me gas on the last day of mushies--but I don't know what it was. I seem to be doing better now, and I'm on soft solids--it's so much easier to be in a good mood when you can eat something good.

As long as you walk every hour like he says, you will probably be fine. I would let the flight attendant know that you just had surgery and will need to be up and walking.

It sounds like a thoughtless comment, but not an intentionally mean one. I think she just doesn't understand what you're going through. Maybe she won't be someone that you can share that part of your life with. See what happens if you hang out and focus on other things. It's a disappointment, sure, but people have their limitations, and aren't always as mature as we'd like them to be.

Thanks everybody. I felt 100% better today. It's funny how fast moods can change.

OMG I made this tonight and it was heavenly. I substituted yellow squash for zucchini and shallots for onions. You really have to chew the basil to break it down but it's worth it. It also makes like a week's worth, lol! Be sure to drain the liquid before adding the cheese and basil.

I just started a blog that might be helpful for pre-op newbies. Most bariatric food blogs are written by RNYers, who don't absorb calories like we do. This one focuses on food, recipes, and life in the kitchen. I'll be adding more recipes as time goes on. You can find it here: Gastric Sleeve Foodie

Thanks. I am going to bed hoping that tomorrow will be better.

Ask your doc for prescription Protonix, it works really well (at least for me). Prilosec is no match for really bad acid, in my experience.

The coffee thing isn't forever, but give it up now so you won't be going through caffeine withdrawal post-op while you're dealing with everything else. I re-started coffee 3 weeks out, and it doesn't sit well. I have to drink it very slowly.

I was working my university's booth at the State Fair. The booth faced the entrance so it was great for people watching. As I casually watched people/families come in, I noticed a couple of interesting things. First, most people were overweight/obese. Maybe 20% weren't. And of those who were overweight, about half looked like they had BMIs of over 40. I had the Fair brochure that listed all the food booths available, and out of about 50 choices, only two were reasonably healthy (kebabs and fajitas). The rest were full of sugar/fat and/or fried. I thought--"look how ingrained unhealthy food choices are in our culture--people couldn't make a healthy choice here even if they wanted to". I then thought about all the fast food and restaurants in town, and even our own university cafeteria--and the situation is just about the same. The State Fair was a mirror of larger life. The reason that the unhealthy food is so successful is that cheap ingredients are high sugar/fat/carb so it's a great profit-maker for food businesses. Therefore they promote these items heavily; people respond to the advertising, eat the food, and get addicted to the fat/carbs/sugar, and eat more or at least regularly, driving the profit machine. Because they are addicted to this unhealthy food, economically they create a demand in business and a habit in themselves. Most of what is available for us to eat is no longer nutritious food. We get fat; business owners get rich. Our children learn to like the first foods they are exposed to that hit the magic nerve centers of sugar/carb/fat. They create a larger demand, and they pressure their parents into buying them unhealthy food. Our schools serve pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs to our children for lunch. It's cheaper for the school that way, and once it is available to the students, they get addicted and demand is created. I think we as a culture could learn something very valuable from French food culture. American culture emphasizes portions. When talking about restaurants, Americans say things like "It's really good, they have huge portions" as if the amount of food is more important than the quality or taste of the food. In France the opposite is true. They grow their vegetables for taste rather than size. We breed huge tasteless commercial tomatoes, Beans, everything with size, color, and shippability in mind. We are concerned with everything BUT taste. No wonder the kids don't want to eat their vegetables. Their vegetables are tasteless! French schools don't serve junk food. They serve real food, a great variety, with plenty of vegetables cooked in interesting ways (not canned, not boiled, not tasteless). Kids are the opposite of picky because the culture encourages them to try a little of everything. And a "little" is key. The French are satisfied with far smaller portions, and emphasize taste over amount of food. This difference in the food culture is the reason that they, as a nation, eat extremely well, don't deprive themselves, but have lower obesity rates and a longer life span than we do. They revere food. We scarcely care about food as long as it's warm, comforting, and there's a lot of it. This is fundamentally unhealthy and leads to obesity. We have to fix our food culture. It can only be done though the media and through education. We are treating the symptoms of our food culture with Photoshop, Jenny Craig and other useless diets that don't work, WLS, and eating disorders. We need to treat the cause, and that is junk food in our schools, fast food culture, and the commercial food producing practices that value color, size, and shippability over taste and nutrition. It requires a shift in culture and a shift in the way the food business operates. "Super-size it", cries the billboard and we say yes to double the fat and calories. Having McDonald's offer a salad does not change the fact that that most of what they are selling is high-fat psuedo-food. Why are they selling it? Because people think they like it, creating demand. Why do consumers think they like Big Macs? Because they don't have better tasting healthful alternatives in reasonable portion sizes. Because they've been raised on high fat/carb/sugar food in large portions. Portions=comfort. If taste were comfort, we wouldn't have this problem. So back to the State Fair: what I saw there was a slice of American food culture in microcosm. And I pictured what could be done about it. 50 stands of food that was healthy and delicious. Rich food in MODERATION. Smaller portions. But that would be expensive! To businesses and to consumers! Why yes, it would, but can we put a price on good health, a longer life span, and less disease? As a society, would this cost outweigh diabetes, cholesterol, triglyceride, and blood pressure medication and doctor visits? Would it outweigh lost workplace productivity due to premature heart attacks, strokes, and other obesity-related illness? Maybe good health is expensive. Maybe if the demand was large enough for healthy items, the price would go down as food producers and retailers started to realize economies of scale--that's basic laws of economics. WLS is a sad reminder that our culture is sick, and as a society we have chosen to stigmatize those affected by our sick food culture, and American culture is so sick that the only option for many is WLS. Instead of fixing individual victims of the food culture, we should fix the food culture itself. So that's what my day at the State Fair made me think of.

I've been talking Benefiber powder, and that seems to be working fine for me. I wouldn't worry about not going unless you feel gas/constipated immediately post-op--remember you've been on liquids for a while and there might not be anything in there to come out.

Instead of keeping up this blog, I've moved to blogger, and started a VSG blog: http://gastricsleevefoodie.blogspot.com You can still look at the back posts here to see my experience from insurance approval to two weeks post-op. Cheers, Donna

Actually I have noticed the same thing about not waking up at 3am to use the bathroom any more post-op--which is kind of weird because I'm drinking more liquids than ever.

Pre-op, I didn't own a scale because constant weighing would just drive me crazy. Post-op I bought one, and guess what? Constant weighing is driving me crazy. In addition, my scale seems to be possessed. It seems to have a range or plus or minus 5 lbs every time I step on it. In one days I will lose 5 lbs, gain 5 lbs, and lose it again. I realize that weight fluctuates with time of day, but this is ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous is that I keep weighing myself. I swear I'm going to put the scale in the closet for a month, follow the diet rules, and just wait and see what happens. I think I will feel less crazy that way.

I have my sleeve done about 2 weeks ago. After being on "follow the surgeon's instructions" autopilot for the last month, I'm getting mentally fatigued. For the last month I have been eating, sleeping, and breathing VSG. Diets, carbs, and Protein counts dance in my head. Now, this weekend, my mind is engaging in the little backlash. It's not that I've decided not to follow "the rules" anymore, in fact they are becoming more or less automatic. What my mind is rebelling against is the total immersion into WLS issues--it's telling me "enough already!"--but I'm addicted! I find it hard not to think about it even while I am tired of thinking about it. At this point, I want to stop obsessing over every pound and just get on with my life. I want the eating rules to be habitual. Vigilance is exhausting. I want my life to stop revolving around WLS. I want out of the constant weight-worry. I just want to be happy, healthy, and focused on the rest of my life. In terms of my work life, I've lost about a month of productivity because of my surgery--not because of anything physical that went wrong, but because mentally I was totally immersed in it. For example, during my 2 week pre-op diet I isolated myself and stayed in the house as much as possible to avoid exposure to any food triggers. I didn't go to a BBQ on the 4th of July, specifically to avoid temptation. I didn't want to drive down our fast-food lines streets. That's what it took for me to get through the two week pre-op diet. In these two weeks post op, I have been completely absorbed by portion sizes, food tracking, liquid tracking, and internalizing "the rules". I started a blog that will hopefully help others (Gastric Sleeve Foodie). Now, at the end of that two weeks, I want my life back. I want to be more than a WLS patient. I think that our bariatric programs prepare us very well for the physical aspects of WLS, but not so much for the mental and social aspects of WLS. After the psych evaluation, no one really deals with emotional/mental/social issues. Sure, our programs have support groups, and we have this message board, but where is the systematic program for the mind? All of the books I have found on the subject assume that everyone who has WLS actually has an eating disorder, was molested as a child, or is an emotional eater. I don't/wasn't. I was just raised on the wrong foods, and continued in that lifestyle until I developed insulin resistance and PCOS, which make your body fight your every effort at weight loss. By the time I got educated about food, only WLS could save me. A systematic program would deal with: -American food culture and how to resist it -Social aspects of eating (how to navigate restaurants, parties, work lunches) -Social aspects of WLS (how other people react to WLS and how to deal with it; who and whether or not to tell; issues with family and significant others who are not comfortable with WLS) -Stages that we go through when "saying goodbye" to American food culture and developing new habits -Our changing feelings at different stages of our WLS journey and how to deal with them -Post WLS depression I think the reason that we have this need is because of the tendency of American medicine to compartmentalize the physical from the mental and emotional aspects of health--to separate them when in fact they go together. What happens to our bodies affects our minds and vice versa. I hope that in the years to come bariatric programs will stop seeing patients as pieces on an assembly line of pre-op, post-op, support group, and institute some kind of systematic aftercare to address the emotional/mental/social aspects of the WLS experience. Even if someone put together a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) of issues that would be helpful. We spend so much time researching our surgeon, the surgery process, carbs, protein, and other physical issues but how much is out there for us on how WLS affects work and intimate relationships, self-image/identity, and outlook on life? If your program includes this stuff, I salute you (and would love to see some of the material). If not, maybe we need to start asking for this kind of component from our bariatric programs. So anyway, if mental gymnastics count as exercise, I just spent 500 calories. Thoughts? -

Congrats on your successful surgery! I'm glad to hear you had those two leak tests--it tells me that what they're doing in Mexico is comparable to the standard in the U.S. I hope your next weeks are smooth. I have a blog for newbies that has some good mushies recipes on it (I'll be adding more soon) that might be useful. You can find it at Gastric Sleeve Foodie. If you have a blog let me know and I will link to it. It think somebody should have a VSG blog to help newbies who are thinking about/are going to Mexico for their surgery. I had mine done in the US so I'm useless on answering questions like that lol.

Sure, share away! I'm glad my rambling was interesting lol.

It's in my Netflix queue but I haven't watched it yet. I haven't read the book mentioned. I hope this stuff is being discussed in the media, but I haven't seen it, except for Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma".

Look at he band/sleeve revision threads--that should help you decide which surgery. Northern Mexico is a dangerous place to go right now. Get in and get out as fast as you can. Ask your bariatric program about costs/hotel. People who have gone to Mexico will probably give you more details. Wish I could help more.

I had a 2 week pre-op diet but was allowed an Atkins type dinner. It wasn't all liquids until the day before surgery. Every surgeon is different. My surgery went very well, no complications so his method evidently works, and I lost 18 lbs pre-op. I asked him post op about my liver and he said it was "small and healthy".

Good luck with your surgery!

The only thing that bugs me about these WLS cookbooks and they they are too high-carb and sometimes too high fat for me. But I realize that's my particular issue, right or wrong. I have to modify all the recipes. All these RNY cookbooks assume you don't absorb all your calories.

I just tell me people I'm a complete diet Nazi--end of conversation lol! They don't need to know why I'm like that.