Cervidae

@@Myka99 most people take months to feel normal, even 6 or 8 months. It was about 7.5 months for me. Your body heals externally within about 3-4 months but it takes an entire year to heal fully internally. So be kind and patient with your body. it has been through a huge, traumatic thing! Work on your health and the weight loss will follow.

Make sure you have wipies, chapstick, and a pair of slippers (if you like wearing slippers. I hate it but most people find them comforting). You're not going to be able to drink anything right out of surgery to quench your horrible cotton mouth so chapstick helps, and the nurses may be able to give you a little sponge and a cup of cold Water just to wet your mouth. Most people are not allowed to shower while they are in the hospital, so the wipies will feel amazing. Other than that, it's nice to have your phone/mp3 player, if you enjoy those things. Generally you're going to be really out of it and sleepy. I brought a book and a tablet and a ton of stuff with me and never used it because I was druggy and sleeping most of the time. Then I was home and it felt amazing. Hope this helps!

I did it sometimes preop, basically whenever I thought about it or could, so like one meal a day. I think it was probably easier to slowly ease myself into it than to add yet another huge lifestyle change on top of everything else after surgery. I just didn't do it religiously preop; only enough to teach myself how and to get used to it.

following!

yummy! I like spicy everything and I've been obsessed with eggs lately. thanks for sharing.

The information the profile is referring to is a short blurb, I believe, not the all the starting/current weights and the rest. Also, your ticker and side panel information is showing kgs to us. So perhaps it's just an issue with the page refreshing. Hope this helps.

Glad to hear your health is improving! It only gets better from here. Thanks for sharing.

I take a chewable probiotic called FloraVantage Chewable. It's from the Bariatric Advantage brand. It has really improved my digestion/bathroom trips. Also, Smooth Move tea. Works wonders and very gentle on the tummy!

thanks for sharing! I hope to feel this confident someday. And yoga is a dearly beloved activity for me... I've always dreamed of joining a group or class!

Update! http://imgur.com/NOpEeIs In less than two weeks, I will be nine months out from surgery. There are about 160 pounds and 10-11 pant sizes between the pictures! 2 more pounds and I will have lost 200 pounds from my highest. Surreal! Keep up the amazing, inspiring work everyone! <3

Oh, also - about the hair falling out: you can't stop it. People always think there is a way but they always find out in the end that it happens no matter what you do. You can, however, take biotin to help it regrow quickly. I get mine from Costco but you can also get it from CVS and basically any other drugstore. The one I take is dissolvable and tastes like grapes.

Just curious, but was the juice you had diluted? How many grams of sugar were in the juice you drank before you felt sick? You may be experiencing dumping - a weird form of it. I find it strange that the hospital staff was giving you juice, considering its high sugar content and acidity. As for cream soups, I discovered I had similar issues with cream of chicken. I strained it exactly like I was supposed to and thinned it with milk, and still, it made me pretty nauseous. I tried a low sodium one, since high salt levels can be a culprit behind tummy issues, and it was even worse. So I stayed away from cream soups for a long time. Now I can't find one that doesn't have a ton of preservatives and gross junk, as well as tons of carbs and salt. Hope you feel better soon! Sip Water sloooooowly, and if the pain continues, maybe give your doctor a ring. Can't be too careful. Perhaps tea would soothe some of that discomfort?

you lost 24 pounds in 11 days? you lost over 2 pounds a day and you are worried about a stall?! I think you could benefit from taking a step back off the scale and looking at this objectively. Can you recall what two pounds of meat feels like in your hand? Or a two pound weight? Your body has lost that EVERY DAY for 11 days. A stall is not only normal, but necessary! Right now, your body thinks it is starving and dying. It's in panic/survival mode. It's also dealing with the enormous trauma of major abdominal surgery and the loss of parts of your digestive tract. Give the poor thing some time for a breather! I was here worrying and posting about stalls too. Most people were at one point or another. But do yourself a HUGE favor and don't allow yourself to obsess about this. If you lost two pounds a day for months without a break, you would be incredibly sick, maybe even so sick you'd need to be hospitalized. It may be normal for wls patients to lose quickly in the beginning, but it is in no way normal for our bodies to be losing weight like this. Obsessing about it is not only not going to change the fact that stalls happen and they need to happen, but it's also detrimental to your emotional (and by extension, physical) health. Did you do this just to lose weight or did you also want to get healthy? I'm betting you really care about your health. We did not become obese in a few months and we sure as hell aren't going to become "normal" in a few months. So don't sweat the stalls, embrace them! It means everything is working correctly. I stall for weeks - sometimes close to a month - every single month around my period, then have rapid loss for a few days, then go into another stall. Yet, despite all of that, here I am less than 9 months later and down 143 pounds. It all adds up, it all evens out, and in a few months you're going to feel silly for worrying about this. Trust me! Get in your Protein and Water and Vitamins and all the other good stuff will follow. Hang in there!

I took my vitamins religiously and I felt like utter crap for the first... 6 months or so. Now I'm almost 9 months out and I feel great. This is a huge, major abdominal surgery you've just been through. Your body is going to take its sweet time healing and perking back up. It takes about a year to fully heal inside, anyway. Hope you feel better soon! Take care.

I'm almost 9 months out from the bypass, and I'm down 143 pounds. My blood work shows all levels are perfect and I feel amazing. I will say the first several months were tough, mostly in terms of finding foods that work and getting in enough calories. But now I'm doing really well and easily getting in the calories I need. I also had no complications, so generally I am very, very happy with my whole experience. I would recommend the bypass if you have a significant amount to lose, or if you want the extra accountability (I did and do, and it's honestly made transitioning into this healthy lifestyle so easy). You'll get good results with either. I chose the bypass for the above reasons and because so very many sleevers end up revisioning to bypass anyway... why go under the knife twice? Why risk the gerd/acid reflux? It was worth going the extra mile, in my case. Hope this experience helps you. Edit: I either have never dumped or only had one experience that was so mild that I can't even tell if it was dumping... if you follow your food plan closely and try new things carefully, it's not even a problem.

@@Sophie74656 that's ridiculous. At almost 450 pounds, I was not diabetic. The ignorance of some doctors would be funny if it wasn't so terrifying - these are the people we're supposed to entrust our health to? I've been lucky to find a gyno/pcos specialist/primary doctor who are all much more experienced and understanding of me than the idiots my well-meaning but totally misguided mother took me to as a child and young adult.

I can SO, so relate to everything she wrote about. It's like a mirror of my life. Great essay, thanks for sharing.

I had the RNY in August of last year. Then, in December of last year, I got an impacted wisdom tooth out, and I discovered soon afterward that I no longer absorb hydrocodone! That was an extremely unpleasant trip to the ER, dealing with a fresh wisdom tooth extraction and no pain medication. They switched me to oxycodone, which worked perfectly for some reason (something about where in the digestive tract it is absorbed vs. the hydrocodone... strange!) The oxycodone that worked for me was in a pill form too. I think it's less about needing a liquid and more about having a med that is not absorbed in the stomach, because our stomachs are just too small and things pass through them too quickly now.

By making your decision for you (that's essentially what she is doing by separating from you "for your sake" instead of letting you choose or working through it together) she is showing that she doesn't have a whole lot of respect for you. I'm so sorry this is happening to you after building a life for 21 years, but perhaps God is closing doors that were not working for you, leaving room for new doors to open into a whole new life. I wish you the best! Whatever life brings you from here will almost certainly be better than this.

If what she means by "the new you" is that you are getting healthy and changing appearances and striving toward good habits, then it's HER that is doing something wrong. A person who truly loves you and is good for you and your life would be happy and proud of your accomplishments, not bitter and insecure. I'm sorry this is happening to you but (without any further information) it seems she's just as toxic as the food that was making us sick and the fat that was killing us if the new healthy you is something she doesn't like or want.

Stalls are normal and necessary! We've all worried about them. I had more than average, most likely due to my PCOS, and I was here making similar posts, scared that I would be stuck at whatever weight I was forever. In fact, I have a 2-3 week stall every month, that's just my body's "normal". And yet, here I am less than 9 months later and down 143 pounds since surgery. It all adds up, and worrying about it is just needless and adversely affects your mental and physical health anyway. Just keep up with your Water intake, Protein, and Vitamins, and soon you'll feel silly for ever worrying about this.

@@Heather I - I couldn't agree more!

I would be absolutely livid and completely miserable and frustrated. I would honestly be a wreck, the way I felt leading up the the moment of surgery. So sorry you have to deal with this! the mixup will be resolved, and surgery will happen for you soon. Hang in there!

@@RNY-Gal here's a current picture, taken this morning. It shows my current shape and size much more clearly. http://i.imgur.com/m3LC2Ef.jpg

Hearing stories like this always frustrates me. I was 21 when I first started thinking about wls, 23 when I had it, and now I am 24 and 198 pounds down from my highest weight. It's true that we don't have the same amount of life experience as someone 20 or 30 years older. We have, however, had plenty of experience with being fat and seeing just how much it limits us. In some ways, the very obese young who seek out wls have a unique and important perspective. We haven't been living this way for decades, and so have not experienced the decades of routine bodily abuse and psychological damage many older patients have. We don't have the safe, routine life, a stable job yet, or a family, or even a spouse in most cases. We haven't had time to settle into our bad habits and continue it for many years, but have had enough time to see just how damaging obesity is and would continue to be if we don't seek change. It seems to me that young people who get this surgery are made of two major groups: those who are wiser than their years due to the difficulties we face at this young age, and those who get wls for all the wrong reasons and far before they are actually ready. For those of us who are successful, we are lucky enough to be where so many older wls patients frequently lament they cannot be. How often do you read of or hear a person say "I wish I had done this years ago!"? Not to mention, I have read MANY stories just like hers from people of all ages. You don't have to be young to be doing this for the wrong reasons, or to think it will solve all your problems, or to pick up a transfer addiction. In fact, of the few people my age who have gone through with this, I've seen a much lower "failure" rate than the rest of the population. I suspect this is because people our age face an entirely new and very difficult beast because we are so young, because we are unstable, and because we must be desperate to risk our lives at such a young age just to be healthy and normal. I think this has little to do with her age, and a lot to do with the fact that she was just not approaching wls from the correct mindset. She thought it was a fix instead of a tool. It's a sad story, but I highly doubt we won't be hearing more like it. The good news is, more people succeed than fail, so that's always encouraging.