StephF89

Initially I had an issue with shin splints, but I learned some amazing stretches that I do before hand and I haven't suffered since! I did a 5k back in April, I was 257 then and it took me nearly 2hours to complete (I walked about 99% of it and it was an obstacle run) but now I can easily run 5k (3.1 miles) in about 30-45mins without feeling like I'm going to die. I live about... 5 blocks from a large mountain type.. thing... and I make the kids jog it with me once a month. The way up they are major cry babies about it, on the way down they are all giggles. It's been an amazing journey so far!!

Checking in with everyone. I am 33weeks out today (the 14th will be my 8th month mark) and I am down 121 pounds. Things have been pretty smooth for me, thank goodness. I have taken up running (yes, omg running!) When walking used to get me winded at my peak weight the fact that I can run a couple miles without dying blows my mind. Yay for our new and healthier lifestyles!!!!

Checking in with everyone. I am 33weeks out today (the 14th will be my 8th month mark) and I am down 121 pounds. Things have been pretty smooth for me, thank goodness. I have taken up running (yes, omg running!) When walking used to get me winded at my peak weight the fact that I can run a couple miles without dying blows my mind. Yay for our new and healthier lifestyles!!!!

Initially I had an issue with shin splints, but I learned some amazing stretches that I do before hand and I haven't suffered since! I did a 5k back in April, I was 257 then and it took me nearly 2hours to complete (I walked about 99% of it and it was an obstacle run) but now I can easily run 5k (3.1 miles) in about 30-45mins without feeling like I'm going to die. I live about... 5 blocks from a large mountain type.. thing... and I make the kids jog it with me once a month. The way up they are major cry babies about it, on the way down they are all giggles. It's been an amazing journey so far!!

7 and a quarter months post-op. 85 lbs down. Apparently, jogging burns more calories than drumming. Maybe I should play faster. LOL. Good work all.

Stats:
Surg date 2/14/2013
PreOP 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 218.8
Down 100lbs in 5 and a half months!!
Next stop Onederland!!! 18.9lbs to go til then.
All together 33.8lbs til goal. (I may or may not adjust when I get there)
Hope everyone is doing well!

Stats:
Surg date 2/14/2013
PreOP 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 218.8
Down 100lbs in 5 and a half months!!
Next stop Onederland!!! 18.9lbs to go til then.
All together 33.8lbs til goal. (I may or may not adjust when I get there)
Hope everyone is doing well!

Stats:
Surg date 2/14/2013
PreOP 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 218.8
Down 100lbs in 5 and a half months!!
Next stop Onederland!!! 18.9lbs to go til then.
All together 33.8lbs til goal. (I may or may not adjust when I get there)
Hope everyone is doing well!

Sleeved 2/22 down 100

Hey Fellow February Sleevers!! Just wanted to check in and let y'all know how I'm doing.
I was sleeved 2/14/2013
SW 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 228.0
Total loss 90.8lbs
Inches lost
Neck - 1.25 inches
Waist - 11.5 inches
Hips - 9.25
Total inches gone (from when I started measuring and limited to just the areas I've measured) 22inches, ALMOST 2 FEET, of me gone.
So that's my update! Love reading everyone else's as well.. Keep up the hard work Feb-Sleevers!!

Hey Fellow February Sleevers!! Just wanted to check in and let y'all know how I'm doing.
I was sleeved 2/14/2013
SW 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 228.0
Total loss 90.8lbs
Inches lost
Neck - 1.25 inches
Waist - 11.5 inches
Hips - 9.25
Total inches gone (from when I started measuring and limited to just the areas I've measured) 22inches, ALMOST 2 FEET, of me gone.
So that's my update! Love reading everyone else's as well.. Keep up the hard work Feb-Sleevers!!

Hey Fellow February Sleevers!! Just wanted to check in and let y'all know how I'm doing.
I was sleeved 2/14/2013
SW 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 228.0
Total loss 90.8lbs
Inches lost
Neck - 1.25 inches
Waist - 11.5 inches
Hips - 9.25
Total inches gone (from when I started measuring and limited to just the areas I've measured) 22inches, ALMOST 2 FEET, of me gone.
So that's my update! Love reading everyone else's as well.. Keep up the hard work Feb-Sleevers!!

Hey Fellow February Sleevers!! Just wanted to check in and let y'all know how I'm doing.
I was sleeved 2/14/2013
SW 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 228.0
Total loss 90.8lbs
Inches lost
Neck - 1.25 inches
Waist - 11.5 inches
Hips - 9.25
Total inches gone (from when I started measuring and limited to just the areas I've measured) 22inches, ALMOST 2 FEET, of me gone.
So that's my update! Love reading everyone else's as well.. Keep up the hard work Feb-Sleevers!!

Hey Fellow February Sleevers!! Just wanted to check in and let y'all know how I'm doing.
I was sleeved 2/14/2013
SW 318.8
DOS 308.8
CW 228.0
Total loss 90.8lbs
Inches lost
Neck - 1.25 inches
Waist - 11.5 inches
Hips - 9.25
Total inches gone (from when I started measuring and limited to just the areas I've measured) 22inches, ALMOST 2 FEET, of me gone.
So that's my update! Love reading everyone else's as well.. Keep up the hard work Feb-Sleevers!!

Sleeved 2/12 and down 51 pounds..coming up on the five month mark!
I am halfway to goal and hope to reach it by Thanksgiving!

I hit Onderland today!!!
Sleeved 2/12/13
Surgery weight 238.5
Today weighed in at 198.4

Today I am 3 months out, I was sleeved on Valentine's day and I am down 68lbs. I am about 3 pounds past my half way to goal mark.
I think we are all doing amazing!!

I don't know if many of you realize this, but we are all making approximately the same progress. Most of us in this thread were sleeved the latter part of February and are approx 50 lbs lighter. It doesn't matter which week you lose the weight (What I call "stall panic"), as long as it keeps coming off!

SW - 318
DoS - 308
CW- 257
Surgery Date 2/14/13
Down 61lbs! Almost halfway to goal 5.5lbs til I'm halfway there. Whew! What a journey.

HW 320
DOS 310 2/14/13
CW 270

Hit 6wks out Thursday and down 45lbs on the nose. I only started taking measurements at 1 month 4days out, but have since lost a total of 9 inches off my neck, waist, and hips (combined). Water intake is so much easier as I can drink easier these days. I don't really don't drink much else, but I will have an occasional glass of skim milk. I've gotten the husband to alter his eating habits slightly (replacing ground beef with found turkey for recipes, skim milk, more veggies and lean protein) so this has been a family journey pretty awesome so far. Hope everyone is doing well!!

I'm also LDS and came across this situation regarding sacrament this past Sunday. I just took a small piece of the bread and nibbled a tiny bit and let it dissolve in my mouth. The Lord knows our situations.

I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We use bread & Water for the Sacrament. We have quite a few members in our congregation that have gluten intolerance (including me) & they bring their own bread & have it blessed with the rest on a special tray that is passed just to them (we pass trays around the congregation). I hadn't really thought about it after my surgery (it's scheduled for 5/14), but I agree with others - I don't think it'd hurt as long as you make sure it's really liquidy before swallowing it.
I also agree with "red_delicious" that it's really the spirit of the act of Sacrament & Heavenly Father knows your situation. If you can only take the water (or whatever your church uses to represent the blood) or even if you can't handle taking any of it, He knows your heart and what you can handle & He will understand even if those around you don't get it! I know some of the people with gluten intolerance that don't want to bring their own bread, so they just take the water.

Hey all, Got a nice little nap in and decided to just type this up and post it. Sorry if its a little long winded
Hey all just wanted to post my sleeve experience. I was sleeved March 11th with Dr. Garcia at MiDoctor through Ready 4 a Change. I have lost 13lbs in the first week
I know a great deal have had wonderful experiences and mine for the most part was ok, but far from wonderful.
The majority of my issues with the experience were with the coordinators and the nurses on staff at MiDoctor, and well the hospital building itself.
Instead of going into a play by play of things I will just organize things into subjects.
Coordinators:
The coordinators at r4ac started out being wonderful but as surgery day approached and I needed more concrete information it was hard to get. I was told I would receive a call from the driver prior to driving into San Diego, but never did and called him myself (no biggy, BUT when I am told I can expect a call I kind of expect it LOL)
I was under the assumption that the day prior to surgery I was to do the liquid fast because I would be going to the hospital that day for pre op testing (as I have seen many other sleevers do)
Once I made it to the Marriott I was told another coordinator would come to my room to explain things to me. I waited in my room for several hours with nothing, I saw I had a blinking message light on my phone, asked a hotel attendant how to receive messages and was told that messages are not a service the hotel provides. After asking several other hotel staff I figured out I had a message and a folder downstairs for me. The folder had a note about who to contact and when to be picked up and said “no, nothing after 10pm”
I then tried contacting the coordinator to see why I wasn’t doing pre-op testing that day. With no success for a few hours I emailed another coordinator my same question-who’s email response was less then polite and basically said had I read the info packet I was emailed 3 months prior I would have known that pre op testing is ALWAYS done the day of surgery. Well this seemed inconsistent with what I had heard from other sleevers but oh well and while I was in the hospital saw a couple of patients come in the day prior to surgery for testing…. I’m not a big fan of inconsistency so this was irksome.

Anywho, when I read the packet again I saw it said:
You may have nothing to eat or drink after the midnight preceding surgery or 8
hours prior to your surgery. If you are a Same Day Surgery arrive with an empty
stomach. If you are coming in a day prior you may have dinner but nothing after
midnight.
That along with the “no, nothing after 10pm” letter I ordered myself some room service around 4pm.
When I finally did hear from the onsite coordinator that night, she informed me it was her day off and that I wasn’t supposed to eat at all. Oops! A little too late, thanks! Thankfully another VST (lexysdad) was in the hotel and kindly gave me a bottle of magnesium citrate to clear my system. At this point I’m beginning to realize communication between coordinators and I wasn’t very clear and was inconsistent.
Aside from this day I had no issues with the coordinators and contacting them the rest of my stay.

Day of surgery was fine, met the doctors no biggy, nurse got the IV in one try.
A few things I hadn’t been expecting:
Something I’ve never seen mentioned is peeing oneself in the recovery room. LOL embarrassing? Yes. But truth. I woke up in a puddle of my own pee and I’ve heard others say the hospital doesn’t have washrags which may be true because when I asked for one I didn’t get one and when I had my first shower they gave me a big gauze pad to wash with.
Another thing I hadn’t known was they make you crawl from the recovery bed back into your own after surgery. A little odd to me considering I just had stomach surgery and lifting a patient with a blanket is fairly simple…but ok. When they asked me to crawl from one bed to the other right I asked them “seriously?” LOL
And I’m not sure if it was due to the gas or the IV fluids but for several days after surgery my breast felt huge and numb. Not painful just really odd heh.
Nurses and hospital:
Being in the hospital IN MY OPINION was horrible. The nurses, though nice, weren’t as on things as I had hoped. The first night the nurse spoke very little English when I gestured to her that I was going to vomit she said “ok, medicine” and never came back. I ended up going to pee and while sitting on the toilet vomited some black stuff on the bathroom floor. Once I got her to follow me back to my room and showed her the throw up she threw toilet paper on it, I later ended up swiping it up with my foot so I could use the toilet. She did eventually give me nausea meds.
I know someone said there’s a paper in the rooms that helps translate but I didn’t have one in my room.
The majority of the hospital stay I was in excruciating pain, which made getting up and walking unbearable (which really the halls were so small I could never really get walking before I had to make a turn, and with 3 of us up walking at a time it was even harder to walk the pain out). The pain meds they gave work but they weren’t giving them often enough. Bottom line, my pain was not managed AT ALL. In the two days there I maybe had a handful of hours of pain relief and spent the rest of the time miserable.
Getting a nurse was difficult, when I was in pain rolling myself out of bed to go waddling out to talk to a nurse was difficult. They have no nurse call buttons and I yelled NURSE a lot but that never worked. (NOTE: I did go with my mom but she stayed at the Marriott at night so I was on my own at nights)
I ran out of IV fluids more times than I could count, my blood would often flow back into the IV and my hand and arm were very swollen and numb.
The hospital was freezing the entire time. I was on the 4th floor and two rooms away from mine was a room under construction that had no ceiling. Construction workers would work until midnight and one morning I was up around 5 to walk and could smell cigarette smoke on the floor-yuck.

In the end:
This may all seem minor, but while I was in pain the little things did make me feel worse. I don’t have any major issues with the doctors other then I saw Dr. Garcia for less than 10 minutes my entire stay (briefly before surgery and even more briefly the day after) I’m guessing he was really busy but it would’ve been nice to have more time to discuss things with him.
Also the other doctors on staff saw me more often but would often say they would go get something (pain meds, spirometer) and be right back and then never come back. That kinda sucked. And asking to see a doctor was useless, I did ask to see a doctor about my pain meds but never did.
I have asthma and actually never got a spirometer until I was being discharged. AND they made me do some breathing treatments for my asthma, and I noticed after the 2nd one that my lungs were raspy; I was coughing and could feel mucus in my lungs. I am a week out, still coughing and can feel the mucus
Anyone taking a support person and worrying about their comfort? Don’t my mom was so nervous about her safety/comfort but ended up having a blast and lovvveeeeddd it. LOL, Wish I could share her sentiment. She wants to go back and well I’d like to visit TJ again, this time without the surgery
Would I recommend this doctor and coordinator? Yes BECAUSE I think my experience was the exception to the rule, and the things I found unpleasant may not be a big deal to another.
Would I recommend this hospital? That’s a resounding no, while it is better than a strip mall or some other places I’ve heard about in MX it really, in my honest opinion, is not good enough. While I wouldn’t recommend it I would say to anyone going, you can tough it out for a few days because once you’re out of the hospital you will feel a 100x better.
Would I do this again? Now that’s hard to answer, because to say yes would mean I would be willing to go back through the two days of hospital stay and I am not far enough out to say I’d do that again LOL. BUT now that I am home and can rely on myself for care I feel COMPLETELY better. I’m sure as I progress along and lose the weight and feel more and more better I will come to a point where I can whole heartedly say I would do this again. But at this moment, truthfully, I’m not so sure

And finally, please remember, this was MY experience. MY feelings and MY opinion on things. What was horrible for me might be a breeze to another if you have any questions feel free to PM me.