LittleBill

Beer. Do you know why beer goes through you even faster than water? Because it doesn't have to stop to change color!

I've run the range of nothing in one week, to a high of 18 lbs down my first week after surgery. Most weeks are somewhere in between. Good for you for putting the scale away.

The key phrase is "How I interpreted it". That was your first mistake. The second is assuming everyone who posted in response to you read every single OTHER response first. My initial response to you was not a lecture. This one is. If your skin is this thin, you ain't gonna do well on the interweb. I was corrected for the exact same thing you were just last week, by a different poster. Instead of getting all bent out of shape, I wrote "thank you". It did not demean me at all to be corrected. In fact, it improved my perspective, and will prevent me from making similar errors in the future. That is important to me. Maybe it isn't for you. And if you don't like what I have written, or anyone else has written, there is an ignore button.

I know virtually nothing about you or anybody else on this forum here. But I do know about forum interactions, having been on various ones for 20 years now, as a participant and as a moderator. The written word is woefully inadequate to convey the full meaning of a person's communication. It is always helpful to ask for clarification, and to assume the best rather than the worst, until proven otherwise. It will not harm you at all to do that, and it might very well help. Take out the "root" and I will be right there with you - on rare occasion, of course.

I told people who I thought would understand and be supportive. Some of those are friends, family, and even casual acquaintances. The rest of the world has no need to know. Some of those are friends, family, and even casual acquaintances. (do you see what i did there?) People who are negative don't get time with me to express their negativity. Life is too short to waste on people who bring me down.

I've been putting more salt on my food. I rarely used it before, except for a little when cooking. But, my blood pressure went from normal before surgery to low afterward, so I am adding more salt to my diet as well as getting into political discussions whenever possible to keep it up to a normal level.

I love rabbit too. Way back in the dim recesses of time, the night before Easter 1982, I was introduced to the people who would be my mother and father in law. They took the future Mrs. LittleBill and me out to a fancy restaurant for dinner, and I was told to order whatever I wanted. They had rabbit on the menu, and being a good ole redneck boy myself, I ordered it, not having had it for a while. They were horrified. Not only was it the night before Easter, they had a pet rabbit at home. Suffice to say, I did not make a good impression on them. But we survived that incident, and have been married almost 33 years now. It was a '99, but is long gone. The deer was still alive, so I put two slugs in its head with a .357 snubbie. The game warden accused me of speed beefing. I asked him how far away from a deer I could be and still hit it twice in the head with a 2 1/2" barrel - at night. He let it go. I haven't had rabbit since I lost my hare.

The last person to get a deer in our family was when Mrs. LittleBill took one out with the Suburban. We took what was left of it to the butcher, and got a whopping 20 lbs of usable meat. It is too scary to hunt around here anymore, but I do love venison.

You ought to try bear if you haven't already. I could bearly get it down it was so greasy. But since I was a guest in the home of some friends, I just had to grin and bear it.

Thank you. My biggest issue is old age creeping up on me. As the weight comes off, you will feel better and your joints should do better just from a lighter load. For example, my feet used to kill me by the end of the day, and I spend a lot of time standing or walking. Now, they never bother me. And the only real thing that has changed is they aren't carrying so much load on them.

I guess if you are on phone or a tablet they may not display. They do on one of these old fashioned computers, on a side bar to the left of each post. I started out at 481. I made it to 414 in just about four months preceding surgery, and am currently at 370, two months out from surgery. The past two weeks have been kind of slow, but I suspect things will pick up again in due time.

Permit me to be redundant here. Walk it off, as the coach always said. I had my surgery sometime around 4:00 PM on a Tuesday. On Wednesday morning (I am a morning person) I was up by 0500 and walking. I put in almost a mile by the time they kicked me out right after lunch. I had virtually no pain at all, and I attribute a lot of that to getting up and getting moving right away. And if you look at my stats, I am one of the largest of the large around here.

They are fun to watch, as long as they aren't costing me money (or sleep). Our dog Jester goes insane when he sees one. I almost hurt myself laughing the one time he fell down the stairs trying to run, bark, and look up in the air at one all at the same time. They are, and very tasty protein at that.

I'll tell you what else these little so and so's do. We have a second floor porch on one side of the house with a steel roof over it. It just so happens to be on the same wall our bed is, and there is a window there besides. In spring and summer, the squirrels that live INSIDE the roof of that porch come out to play. Early - Every. Single. Morning. So earlier than I would like, I am awakened to the sound of tiny claws scrabbling on a slanted steel roof. And there is no way to get to them easily. My squirrel removal tool, while accurate and deadly at long distances, is not suitable for either pointing out the window or back at the house.

I can kill one to eat with no compunction at all. But I feel awful if I run over one. Thank you. It is a hobby, and you are not the first to say so. Maybe I will be a writer one of these days.

Oh no! It's too late! Don't worry about it. The best person to answer that question is you, and probably not until after you've had it for a while. If the band works for you, then it was the best procedure. If it doesn't work, and for the right reasons (i.e. you are doing everything you are supposed to) it can always be revised to a sleeve. But if it were me, I would not start out worrying I went the wrong route. Give it time.

If I could have laid hands on him. We live on a very old farm, or what it left of it. The house is approximately 200 years old. We also own all the outbuildings, one of which has been dedicated to "The Man Cave". We had used it as the place where we homeschooled all our children, but now that they are gone, my wife told me to do with it as I wished. Anyway... We heat the building with a wood stove. There is an old chimney in the building from its days as the butcher kitchen or summer kitchen, and the stove is piped into that. Last week I went in to inspect the chimney prior to firing up the stove for the season, only to discover that a SQUIRREL had made it into his personal, brick penthouse. My first inclination was to smoke him out, but immediately thought that might not be such a good idea. I don't need to burn the place down just to get rid of a tree rat. So I called a wildlife removal expert. He arrived this morning, and with my assistance, spent the morning evicting Mr. Squirrel from my chimney. The process took long enough that I missed my midmorning meal, and am late on lunch besides. My stomach (such as it is) is not happy with me. The squirrel, though homeless, is still in the land of the living. Squirrels are not in season at the moment. Otherwise, he might be stewing in seasoning to pay for his misdeeds, squatting in my chimney like that.

I haven't watched regular TV in about 20 years. I will watch Netflix, and catch an old series there sometimes, but commercial TV is was too offensive and vacuous for me. I would rather read a book. There are no commercials in books, although a lot of the characters are eating better than I do.

Your father loves you and he is worried for your safety. That is not hard to understand. The hard part is getting past that. I think it is important for him to know that you have listened and considered his concerns. It is equally important that he know that this is your decision, not his. Life is full of what ifs. I had two friends die from this surgery years ago, which was a major factor in my putting it off for so long. But, that was years ago, and both of them were in really bad shape pre-op. When your time is up, it is up. Your chances of dying from this are about the same as dying in a wreck on the highway. As for the other complications, yeah, they are there, but there are risks we incur every day just living our lives. You know all this already. Your father does too at some level, but he has to get past the fact that it is his little girl who is going to be in danger, and there is nothing he can do about it. That is hard on a Dad, and I write that as the father of three little girls. Although they are adults, married and with children of their own, they will always be my little girls. Talk to him and put it to him this way if you haven't already. It might not help right away, but you will have done all you can to let him know you consider his fears for your safety important.

It is. A dog is not just some animal. Dogs are companions who give us unconditional love, and who depend on us for their well being. The relationship between dogs and humans spans thousands of years and hundreds of cultures.

I have cried like a big fat baby every time I have had to put a dog to sleep. Heck, I do that for cats too. I am a big softy. I feel for your loss.

Our middle daughter is the executive director of a non profit medical facility which is Christian based. One day she was having a discussion with one of her board members who was trying to remember if one of the priests on the board was was Roman Catholic or Orthodox. She said it was all she could do to keep from blurting out, "It's tattooed on the back of his neck!" Then she said to me, "Thanks a lot, Daddy."

It's only going to get worse. I'm what one might call a merry wag.

@@AvaFern - Great post! I think the best line of the whole thing though, is this one: "Despite their belief to the contrary, surgeons are not actually God,"

Well I am working real hard at getting my V shape back, only with muscles showing again.