MacMadame

We need to come up with a name for the various "stone" milestones. :confused1:

Having it done laparoscopically makes a HUGE difference, LAN2k. I had my gallbladder out open too and nothing compares to that pain when you first wake up and have been split open.

Don't you wish the staples were too??!!

I'm going to do it every weekend! But you can still answer the questions from this time.

But gauze and glue dissolve. Those staples are in there forever. I know they are necessary, but it bugs me. I'm still annoyed that I have surgical clips in me from getting my gallbladder out. :001_tongue: Also, if you aren't going to use the buttress stuff, you should probably oversew and then you have stitches (that also dissolve eventually). So you get extra foreign crap in there regardless... :wink: My take on it is, every surgeon has their own little voodoo they do and you go by their stats. If they have good stats, their voodoo works for them, and the details don't matter so much.

I'm tell you guys, it's ketosis. Classic symptoms. :001_tongue:

I think how my program recommends we do things really helps with this exact situation. We start out on liquids, mostly Protein stuff. Then, we gradually substitute a "meal" for some of the protein supplements. In the beginning, the "meal" may only be 2-3 bites of food. It's just for practice and progression. It's not for real nutrition. The protein supplements do that. Then, as we can eat more, we gradually turn the Protein shakes and drinks into non-calorie liquids. So eventually it's water/crystal light/etc. but, in the beginning, most of our calories are from liquids -- which always go down.

I got it pre-op. Surgery is distracting.

It's a protein powder I like. The Orange Creme tastes like a Dreamsicle!

Whey isolates are the most bioavailable.

Well, eat more. :confused1: I know it's not quite that easy, but one thing I did that worked well was to increase my intake 100-200 calories a day for a week and then see what happened.

It's LapSF. The SF stands for San Francisco. There are similar guys on the East Coast... Dr. Gagner who is either in FL or back in NY is one. My doc has done over a thousand.

Well, in the early days, you just can't eat much. There's no room. It's only for a few months. I don't think it causes any permanent damage. We evolved from hunter/gathers who often alternated eating lightly with gorging. It's kind of like sex... if you don't enjoy it, you aren't doing it right. :confused1: Most people have this limited idea of what exercise is and that doesn't help. Really, anything you do that is active is exercise. So find something you like to do and call it a hobby! Some ideas: ballroom dancing, kick boxing, gardening, pole dancing, joining a softball/vollyball/soccer league, bowling (if you can stay away from the chips and beer), yoga, pilates, karate, ice skating, roller skating, riding bikes with your kids, ultimate frisbee, swimming, horseback riding.

It's a common side effect of being in ketosis. It should go away when you can eat more and your carb intake goes up.

But it's not 2 oz. by weight. It's two oz. by volume. That's 1/8 of a cup, if you need a visual, btw. I am trying to get some variety for my pictures. I'll do a bunch of stuff tomorrow, whether I eat them or not and then make an album.

Falling isn't going to hurt your sleeve. Some surgeons are conservative about getting back to exercise. My surgeon told me to knock myself out. :confused1: I was back in the gym on the stationary bike at 2 weeks and took up running at 1 month out. But anything that worked my core was too much. I waited about 2 months for that. It sounds like your surgeon is conservative so I can't begin to guess what he'd say about a bike ride.

I lived in SD for 11 years and the weather is definitely awesome!

I had to take them out. :confused1: I was eating too many. I still eat them sometimes but I was eating them every day! Sometimes more than once a day! The big thing for me was how to deal with the calories from exercise. I didn't want to get in the habit of eating a candy bar every day because I can eat 1800-2000 calories a day and not gain. But I was consuming too many liquid calories during workouts in a vain effort to replace every calorie I burned. So I cut back on those too. It's all a big balancing act.

I order mine from Express Metabolics. I get my Chike there too. They have the best Chike prices on the web.

LapSF is publishing their results right now in a peer-reviewed journal. They are in the editing phase, I think. They don't oversew (some docs think that stresses something or other too much), but they use this material (Buttress?) that's kind of like a gauze and the staples go through it. Then they go back and glue around the edges. About testing the removed stomach.... that isn't going to show all the leaks. Something can be not lined up right on one side but okay on the other. IMHO.

Well, if you are 6', I bet your stomach ends up bigger than mine. So maybe you'll be able to do it! Though, I never could finish a 6" pre-op. I'd eat all the insides, most of the bread and then a cookie. I'd rather have the cookie than all that bread! :drool5:

Some do leak tests and some don't. LapSF used to do leak tests in the OR and after. But they never found a leak that way. Then, people would leave the hospital and a few days later, they'd have a leak! So they speculated that something about the leak test in the OR was stressing the staple line and they stop doing them. They'll do them after, if you request it or you have certain symptoms. But they don't do them regularly. And, since they made that change, they haven't had a single leak! It's been almost 2 years too. They still do leak test in the OR and hospital for DS and RnY but those guys have a different kind of staple line. (Plus, Dr. C hand-sews some of the trickier connections.) So the leak tests don't seem to stress the staple line in the same way. He's never had a RnY leak, last time the subject came up.

Hey, just wanted to say that it's been getting easier.

I have used it. It's okay. I like Whey Low better. That's my favorite.

I never add it to anything and I can taste it in stuff and it bugs.