AvaFern

@@dcd1397 Your word was offensive because it was politically incorrect. The "r" word is associated with medical conditions related to cognitive challenges. I understand what you meant to say is "That person is an idiot." or "That person is a dumbbutt." In the current environment, what you actually ended up saying is roughly equivalent to: "That person is mentally handicapped." This is very likely going to get me in trouble, but think of the way the "n" word was used 200 years ago. It wasn't at the time something that was inherently offensive, it was just a synonym for a "black person". In our current times, the "n" word is a good way to get into a fight if you happen to throw it around because it has negative connotations. 20 years ago I remembering using the "r" word to describe things as being stupid..."that's retarded" was a commonly accepted phrase. It isn't acceptable anymore because the association with the word has changed. So, I think we all need to relax a little bit instead of assuming that this person was intentionally being ignorant. Not everyone recognizes that the "r" word does not have the same indications it did 10 years ago. Now that this person knows, I'm sure they will recognize this in the future and choose a word that is more appropriate in our current social climate.

I don't really feel hungry very often, and while I generally don't forget to eat, if I'm busy and doing stuff, I only really remember I should probably get some food when I start getting a headache feel a little woozy. As an example, usually I have granola for Breakfast, half a sandwich for lunch, a cup of Soup for dinner, and some crackers, turkey, or other Snacks in the middle. This morning I was working on a project with someone and I only had a few meatballs for lunch because we took a lunch break and I figured I should eat. I didn't have time for breakfast, and it's not 5:00 and while I'm not really hungry I figured I should eat some crackers so I don't start feeling sick. I think mostly for me the lack of hunger comes from not finding any emotional connection to food. I don't eat to Celebrate, or because I'm sad, or because I'm stressed...sometimes I eat when I'm bored at my desk, but food is now pretty much just fuel, so there is no psychological craving for it, and so I don't feel hungry very often. There are times though when I've gone a few hours without food and I get this "must eat RIGHT NOW" feeling and some crackers or turkey makes the feeling go away for maybe 200 calories or or less. I think I don't deal with hunger because my relationship with food is changed.

Lol, I am so not good with bra calculations. I eventually got fitted in Dillards one day because nothing in VS fit me correctly. Technically my band size is a 32, but then I end up with like a G cup, however if I go up to a 34, I can fit in a DDD and if I got up to a 36, I can fit in DD. Interestingly despite the 32 being the right band size, I am way more comfortable in a slightly looser, bigger cup, 36 than I was in the 32's. I feel like finding the right bra is this huge process of trial and error. If you're looking though, Wacoal, which is a brand I had never heard of until recently has AWESOME bras. They are so comfy. Amazon has them way cheaper than department stores, but you can always try them on in the store, figure out your size, and then order online.

So, I had to google what a "poly" was, lol, but hey I learned something today! Good for you for writing about that- a lot of people need encouragement to move to a point where they can live more authentically around their family and friends. Also, I am human too...I had Red Bull for Breakfast and will have goldfish crackers for lunch. Healthy living right there!

Ok to be fair, if you brought me to HR over a comment like that without talking to me about it first I would make your life miserable. Lol, when I was done you would actually be harassed. Don't be a tattletale before you act like an adult. Go up to her and say, "look, your comments are getting on my nerves. This is the one time I'm going to ask you- don't comment on my weight, or anything related to it. This is a courtesy, next time I go to HR." That's still a little harsh, but once you've given fair warning if she keeps it up, then the consequences are her problem, not yours. This person is stupid, but I don't think she has any idea that what she's doing could get her in trouble and I doubt she is doing it to be annoying and hurtful. Sometimes people just make comments to have something to say. On the slim chance she is intentionally being a jerk, the trick with bullies is to be the bigger one. Give her fair warning that you're tired of the comments, preferably open with something like "your comments are really bothering me" and then progress to "stop your crap or I'm going to get you fired" if you need to. Sometimes people don't realize that they are being stupid and hurting them professionally can accomplish much less than if you just confront them first.

I had Blis, although I wasn't given options. Mine cost $1200, and I never used a cent of it. I felt horrible on my last day in the hospital and wanted to say a day longer, and my doctor gave me such a whopping attitude about it, that I just went home and felt miserable there. I got the impression that if you actually use the insurance the doctor somehow gets dinged for it. If you can afford it, I would honestly get all of them. Your chance of a cardiac issue or a blood clot is fairly slim, which is why the cost is only half of the bleeding/infection/leak one, which is also fairly slim, but why not get it and cover yourself? I would also get the 30 months coverage for the stricture, primarily because I didn't develop a slight stricture until almost a year out from surgery. Mine isn't bad enough that it bothers me and it generally keeps me from eating too much too quickly, but for an extra $265, why risk it? My Blis only covered complications right after surgery to my knowledge. I think though that 90 day coverage for the top 2 is more than enough. After that point you aren't going to have a clot or cardiac issue that results from the sleeve, and while you can still technically have a leak, the chances are really almost nonexistant after 3 months. The only reason I would suggest getting the stricture coverage for longer is purely because I was fine for the first year and then after that started puking everything I ate, so despite the fact that this is also a fairly rare complication, you're buying piece of mind. My logic was that when I'm paying for surgery of that expense, I should be willing to pay the extra for insurance coverage. I knew I would be FAR more worried about complications if they were not something that was insured, and after surgery you feel badly enough- no need to add stress to the mix.

So his comment sort of made me laugh, because I feel like it is something I would say to someone if I was super SUPER jealous and I either couldn't afford the surgery or my insurance wouldn't cover it. Throwing in a rude little qualifying comment like that had nothing to do with you and everything to do with him and I would be willing to bet if he had the option to have surgery instead of going to the gym he would have taken it in a second. He said that to make himself feel better, not to intentionally make you feel badly, although likely there was just a bit of a desire to knock you down a little bit on the process. People have their own agenda- enjoy your loss and ignore him.

I had the sleeve 3 months before I turned 30. I ended up looking like a big, empty sack of deflated person. Even before I had plastics though, I would far rather be saggy than be fat. I had three separate surgeries to repair the skin and for the first time in my entire adult life, I feel very confident in how I look. You can fix the skin, but you can't worry about it until you fix the fat, and to be fair, your skin isn't going to give you a heart attack, a stroke, or diabetes, so the aesthetics of how you look are less important than how you will feel when you are at a healthy weight.

I cannot STAND when people do not reply promptly. My logic is, if you ignore me for longer than a day, you lose my business. I own a business and I would never ignore someone for longer than a few hours and usually I reply within an hour. I feel like people don't want money...it's like they are far too busy for you until suddenly they have no work and then they come crawling back. You want my rant about contractors? My realtor referred a guy to me to fix some woodrot and add an outlet before I closed on my house. He very much overcharged me, but at the time I asked him how much it would cost to do my floors. I wanted the carpet ripped up and wood floors put in. First, he was like "you don't need that my family has had carpet their whole lives", which umm, I don't give a crap about your house and it should not impact mine" and then he quoted me something like $6 a square foot, which is about twice the norm!! I think he was under the impression I didn't have money, or he was just lazy, but he lost thousands of dollars in work because he wanted to act like he was superior. On another note, I have a guy who did some monograms for me. I emailed him Sunday asking him what day would be good to drop off a few things and today is Thursday and I have no reply. Guess who no longer gets my business? There are dozens of people where I live who can do the work, so if you can't call me back or email me back, guess what, you don't get my business. Man, I hate people who can't be professional and if they just don't bother to show up and waste my time, I will never EVER use them again. I had a car detail guy who was consistently late and never once apologetic. I no longer use him. I think the only exception is my handyman who can be kind of a flake, except he's really cheap and generally does what needs to be done within 24-48 hours of when we agreed to have it done, and I think he's a nice guy so I tolerate it...that is the rare exception to my rule about people wasting my time.

Ready for advice everyone is going to say is awful? You don't need those Vitamins. As a disclaimer, "you should tell your doctor the vitamins aren't working out well and see what he says" and "I am not giving you medical advice". That being said, your body is only short on nutrition for a few weeks and those disgusting bariatric vitamins are not making a big enough difference to matter. Take the B12 sublingual you get from the store, because your new stomach needs it so you don't end up anemic, but otherwise, you're fine without them. I base this on the fact that I was a cash pay patient and no one told me I needed to take special vitamins (and to be fair, vitamins make me nauseous so I just didn't take them). I took no vitamins the first year, except sometimes B12 when I remembered, no vitamins the second year, except again B12 sometimes, and in the last 4 months or so I've tried some vitamins and ultimately I pretty much take Iron, B12, and Biotin because that combination works for me. Multivitamins and Calcium make me sick, although the latter of the two as long as you're taking the Calcium + Vit D version is generally good for women to take. My blood values were all right in the middle of normal ranges at every blood test I have had (1 year post-op and 2 year post-op). Your body has a great way of compensating for what you do to it and this surgery isn't really any different. Taking three of those vitamins a day is good medical advice, but in reality, it's not going to hurt you to only take one or two, or in my case none. You'll be back to normal food quickly enough that your body is not going to suffer any major long term consequence if you skip the gross vitamins. I would probably at least take one, purely because it's good for you, but if you weigh the misery of taking them with the value you're actually getting from them, eh, three of them isn't worth the difference to me. Past the bariatric vitamins though, some supplementation is good for you. When your stomach is healed, play around with multivitamins and calcium, to see what works. B12 should always be included after the sleeve surgery. I take iron (the stomach friendly kind) because I started feeling tired, although I had a blood test around the time I was tired and my iron levels were fine, so it might just be in my head. A Multivitamin is a good idea. I don't take it because I have tried them all and they all make me barf, no matter when I take them, but in general, multis are good to take. So, I'm not saying don't take vitamins at all, because you totally should, but if the bariatric ones are horrible, and you'd be missing out on some vitamins for a few weeks, it's not going to cause any damage to cut your dose down to one a day until you can take normal vitamins again.

Right now all you can do is eat your Protein and take Biotin, although the latter of the two is debatable as to how well it works. As your body recovers from being terrified that you cut out your stomach and only fed it liquids and soft food for awhile, it will eventually divert resources back to your less important areas, like the skin and follicles in your scalp. In theory, losing hair as a result of stress or nutritional changes is your body trying to save you from death- it sends the important resources to your vital organs. I suppose its rationale is that you can be bald and alive, or you can have hair and be dead, and while it's kind of an extreme analogy, that's the "thought" process of the body when it goes through major trauma and nutritional change. That being said, now that you are done traumatizing your body it will eventually realize that you are not trying to kill it and it will slowly give you back your hair. The better you feed yourself and keep up with your nutrition, the more quickly your body will relax and think "ok cool, we aren't dying, let's have pretty hair again". My body did not decide to give me back my hair again for awhile, lol. I lost hair I think around 5 months, and it stayed thin for awhile, probably almost 18 months. Then it started growing back and at 2 years, half of it fell out again, although I'm pretty sure that was more just stress hair loss than anything to do with my sleeve. It has now been about 8 months since my last "omg I'm going bald" incident and I can feel that my hair is thickening. When I brush it there is a giant poof around my ears where the new hair has grown in and the older hair is still thinner. I've also paid a lot of attention to Vitamins the last few months because my thin hair bothered me. I'm not sure if biotin works or not but I've been taking a lot of it and it's not like it's hurting me, so maybe it's working. At any rate...your hair will slowly start to grow back and the best thing you can do is eat well, be kind to your hair, and maybe invest in a hat. Jk on that last one, lol.

Yay! Congrats! All of the hard work paid off and you also looked fantastic crossing the finish line! I usually look like I'm going to die and you looked all in-shape and athletic, lol. A half marathon is a huge accomplishment- good for you!

You are going to have a miserable time finding themes across those questions- why not use a quantitative design? If you check out Miss Mac's link you'll have a lot better of an idea how to make your questions a little more narrow in scope. At the graduate level your professor is generally just happy if you turn in a group project that isn't terrible, and there are very rarely any verification processes that determine the validity and reliability of your methods, so ultimately it doesn't really matter much that your questions are not really great for actual qualitative research (no offense). On another note though, you know no one actually collects real data for those projects right? If you read the link you'll be able to make up enough answers to write a decent paper and you don't have to worry about the fact that you are never going to get anything remotely resembling a representative sample from this forum with that survey. At least with the link you have an idea of what the answers would have been if enough people had taken the survey and you can synthesize your "results" from that. Good luck

Hahaha, I also have this problem! I turned an extra guest room into a closet because my regular closets were full. I LOVE shopping!! My logic is that as long as I can sustainably afford it, why not give myself the joy of buying new clothing? I worked hard for the right to wear a size 2, why shouldn't I get to buy it in as many dresses as I happen to want?

I lie. As far as I'm concerned it is not a man's business until at the minimum he is my fiance, and even then I'm not sure I will tell him. I had a tummy tuck though so my sleeve scars are gone, but my plan before that was to simply say I had my gallbladder removed. The only person's business it is is yours and until you are in a sincerely serious relationship where they might have to make life or death medical decisions for you, my rationale is that it's mine to know and there's to maybe at some point find out. Everyone has secrets; there's nothing wrong with yours staying that way.

I can appreciate the lifetime commitment fear, but it's kind of like getting married to your best friend- the best friend who isn't a doormat and periodically puts you in your place. You aren't sentenced to a life of drudgery and misery, just a life of balance that pre-marriage might have made difficult. To get out of my analogy, I've had my sleeve for 2 years and 8 months and I was also afraid of the forever commitment. I can completely say though that this isn't something I regret and I ended up with a sleeve that still makes me puke a few times a week because it doesn't like oil, sugar, or milk. Most people have about a year of major restriction, a year of not being able to eat certain foods, and then they pretty much either learn to stick with the small portions diet naturally or they learn to eat around their new stomach. I know that I can eat Wheat Thins by the box without ever feeling sick, so I just don't buy them. I know that my stomach doesn't love sugar in baked goods form, but it is just fine with chocolate, so I don't eat that either because I just really don't have a craving for it any more and being thin is better than eating Peanut Butter cups. At this point, I still put my food in MyFitnessPal, but it's mostly because I've been on like a 250 day streak and I don't want to mess it up. I don't ever look at the nutrition section anymore and I rarely pay direct attention to the calories I'm eating. Sometimes I will gain a pound and then I pay attention to what I'm eating for a few days and I drop right back to where I was, within 2-3 pounds of goal. Our bodies are kind of awesome in how they learn to adapt. People have been having their stomach cut out for other reasons for decades and yet we don't generally read stories about how they are forever stuck eating tiny portions. They learn to eat more slowly, but you can still pack in a ton of calories eating slowly. Your stomach also learns to adapt to its size, so most people don't get sick or overly full after a year or two. The whole idea of the sleeve is that you get about a year to change your life, and after that you can pretty much go back to old habits or have a brand new way of living. As far out as I am, I still pay attention to what I eat, but in the way normal people who don't eat entire boxes of brownies in one night pay attention to what they eat. The sleeve has given me the freedom to think about something other than weight. I was just thinking this morning about how my entire life is different because I don't have to wake up every morning and think about how I'm going to lose weight. I don't dread stepping on the scale, but I do every morning because it is a great way to stay on track. For the first time in like ten years I can focus on a future that doesn't involve being fat, spending all of my time trying not to be fat, and telling myself that when I am thin, THEN I will deserve to do something other than workout and starve. The sleeve is as much of a lifetime commitment as a modern marriage. You can stick with it, get through some rough Patches, and often find yourself better off in the long run, or you can get a divorce after a year or two and go back to the single way of life. You aren't signing a "til death do us part" deal when you get a sleeve because you will be able to eat around it and do whatever you want with your diet eventually. It's more of a "if you love and cherish me, I will love and cherish you" kind of deal.

@ No, depo is not contraindicated before surgery. The clot risk only applies to oral contraceptives, because they generally have estrogen, while depo is progesterone based. The risk also applies if you're on estrogen replacement therapy. Also, to be fair, the clot risk is not huge with estrogen, but the goal is to avoid placing you under any more of a risk than necessary. Most patients who are obese are not very mobile, their weight places them at a higher risk for clots, and they are generally a higher risk patient. If the doctor can knock out one potential cause of a clot by taking the patient off estrogen before surgery, it's just safer to do so. Since I feel like I need to add a disclaimer, make sure your doctor knows you're on depo. He should know it isn't contraindicated, but worst case he can google, lol. Also, if your doctor isn't talking to you at a level you understand, tell him. He's had to take classes on health literacy and he should be making sure that you're understanding what he's telling you. Sometimes doctors are so used to talking to other doctors that they forget that most people don't have the same background and don't use the same jargon. His job is to make the care about you and to make sure you are 100% informed on what is going on and what you need to to. If this isn't the case, let him know that you're "concerned about being able to provide informed consent because you feel as if this has not been a very patient-centered experience". "Informed consent" is a big keyword, as is "patient-centered care"...drop either of them when someone is talking over your head and they will quickly start doing a better job in their healthcare communications.

@@4MRB4PHOTO It also demonstrates how people who are working in the medical field are not always accurate. Oral contraceptives are not contraindicated two weeks after surgery, even a high dose like the morning after pill. The poster was not wrong- oral contraceptives slightly increase your risk for clots, however it is only relevant before and immediately after surgery because you aren't mobile. Not a full two weeks post-op when the patient is active enough to be having sex.

Relax, you're fine. You're two weeks out from surgery, the risk of blood clot is slim to none. They take you off birth control before surgery to avoid any potential issues with blood clots- weeks after surgery is not the same issue. Also, taking someone off birth control before a surgery is a luxury. Think of all of the people in the world who need emergency surgery...does the doctor say, ok so you're going to need to stop your oral contraceptives and then we can fix your heart/brain/spine? No. Oral contraceptives just give you a higher score for a potential clot and it is rated before surgery, not two weeks after. You develop clots when you aren't moving around- like on a really long flight or in the days after a major surgery when you can't walk much. That's why they put those things on your legs that massage your calves, so that it somewhat duplicates the effect of simple walking. At this point you're getting laid, so obviously you aren't bedridden and you're moving around like normal. A high dose birth control pill is not going to give you a clot this far past surgery, especially given your mobility.In terms of absorption, also probably fine, but worst case, failing to be fully absorbed really isn't going to hurt you it's just not going to make the pill as effective. On another note though, why didn't you call your doctor originally? I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you would run it past your surgeon and/or OB and not just listen to the people who post on here. It's natural to be freaked out after surgery, but pay attention to your body. Is anything really wrong? No difficulty breathing or sudden fatigue? None of your extremities feel or look any different? (heat, redness, pain, swelling, etc) Then you're fine. Your anxiety is going to kill you before the pill has a chance to.

Ok, to give it to you straight, if you're snorting the coke and smoking the pot, it's your lungs and your circulatory system being impacted, not your stomach or your digestive system. The alcohol is the only one you have to worry about strictly as a result of the surgery. In terms of cardiac issues from the coke, that is a different kind of problem. Smoking pot is pretty much not going to hurt you, but skip the special brownies for awhile just to be on the safe side. Obviously avoid booze until your stomach is healed and after that understand your stomach is smaller and many of us have a reduced tolerance. Now, as a disclaimer, drugs and booze are bad for you. Also, while I generally say "ask your doctor" definitely do not do that until after you've had surgery or he might be ethically obligated to turn you down for the procedure. After you've had surgery, you're pretty much clear to ask him whatever you want because HIPAA keeps your records confidential and honestly, I would strongly encourage running it by him at a point when you can no longer be rejected for the procedure. Also, obviously lie about that part during your psych consult. Also, you don't find medical studies based on coke, pot, and other illegal substance abuse after WLS because no IRB is ever going to approve a study with human subjects that watches what happens when you give them illegal drugs after they've had major surgery. It would be a gross violation of pretty much every aspect of medical and research ethics. It's less because there is a huge issue with it and more because it's not something that can be legally or ethically researched.

In regards to the other post discussing what people should and shouldn't be saying in forums, as I originally said, call your doctor, but the information I provided is based upon being a licensed medical professional, so I didn't just pull it out of my butt. Sometimes people on forums actually know more about specifics of certain diseases than do doctors who are specialized. As an example, my surgeon didn't realize that the depo shot was not contraindicated in the same way that the pill is. Given the few people who take depo compared to oral contraceptives and the fact that he is a bariatric surgeon and not an OB/GYN really doesn't make it a big deal that his patient knew more about a drug than he did. Asking questions in online forums can give you a huge variety of answers that let you better research the issue and discuss it in an educated capacity with your physician. Should you rely 100% on something posted here? Of course not, but this is still a valuable source of information especially given that plenty of people on here are actually people who work in healthcare.

You should be fine taking the pill- it doesn't act on your stomach at all and it's just absorbed like a normal pill you might take for other things. It might cause cramping so try not to get freaked out about that part. This is also a very normal question to ask your surgeon, so give them a call today to confirm. You have a small window of time where it will work, so I would call your doctor now and then go visit the pharmacy ASAP.

You are allowed to feel however you want and there is nothing that says you need to tell anyone. In a town that small if you tell one person everyone else will know by noon, believe me, I know, I grew up in a small, judgey town. I now live in a huge city but I chose to tell no one about my surgery until after it was over and then I only told my 3 best friends. I am 2.5 years post-op and no one else knows. I wouldn't say I'm ashamed of my choice, I just think it is my business and I knew I would get mad when people gave me their opinion about it. It's your stomach and your life, don't feel like anyone has any right to know any more about it than you want them too.

Did you have bypass? If you had the sleeve and you're a few months out from surgery NSAID's aren't contraindicated anymore. I take Advil fairly regularly, and Excedrin- both work fine and I've had no issues. Ulcers are more of a concern with bypass than with the sleeve. Most doctors no longer tell you to not take NSAIDs after you have healed from the surgery. Don't just trust me, google it, lol.

I don't know if you and I have comparable issues, but I am 2.5 years out from surgery and while I can generally tolerate crackers and cereal, a lot of Protein oriented foods tend to make me sick. I notice that as long as I focus on eating really slowly, the healthy things I can eat without barfing. If it has oil, sugar or some types of dairy though, I can count on getting sick. I don't mind...it keeps me at my goal weight. I also use Fair Life milk- great way to get in a lot of protein!