Hoping052017

So sorry you're going through this. I'm also having problems again. I eat, but it hurts all the time. I'm now taking protonix twice a day ands sucralfate multiple times a day now. I had another EGD done about a month ago and the office was supposed to call for a follow up (what my mom said, but I think I was supposed to call them). I'm still having issues. Still frequently vomit. Constantly have gas and pain. I'm tired of it. I had to switch to whole Fairlife milk to get my protein in and coat my stomach enough. After the EGD mom said the dr told her the wasn't much change in my ulcer. But I hadn't been taking the sucralfate either. I had a major brain dump in September (18 years of amnesia because of a migraine medicine) and didn't know I was supposed to be taking it. Now I'm waiting for a call back from the doctor to see when I can get back in to see them since things should be getting better and they aren't.

I'm so sorry to hear that. I usually dumbfound my doctors as well. Even since childhood. I hope your doc finds a solution for you!

I've had rally high B12 levels ever since my bypass in 2017. I take Celebrate 45 multivitamin, which has 1,000mcg of B12 in it, so I'm essentially taking 3000mcg of B12 daily. But even when I stopped taking my vitamins for 3 months prior to my 1 year checkup, my B12 levels were still through the roof (over 2000) Has anyone else had this issue and has it been an issue for you if you have? I've read highly elevated B12 levels can lead to depression (I already have major depression clinically diagnosed), dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease. My PCP is worried, but my bariatritions don't seem concerned. All I get is "that's fairly common with gastric bypass" I have no energy at all. My depression is at a peak (and the Prozac isn't helping). And I'm just generally worried. My Grams died with dementia and my mom shows signs of it from time to time. Since it runs in families to begin with, I'm afraid of having something else that could make it progress early or at all.

I had to go in for a small bowel resection after a lot of pain as well. Thankfully, my doctor knows what he's doing. He ended up putting me on I think it's Privolex??? It's a form of Omeprezole, but more potent and the other that was mentioned above that Carafate. They actually had to basically do exploratory surgery on me. I was throwing up everything and had no appetite and it was nuts and I was hurting so bad. Dr. Mourot said that sometimes with an RNY a few people have problems with what he referred to as the "candy cane" part of the surgery. So they have to go in and remove that part and 9 times out of 10 they don't have any more problems. so that's what he did for me and that's when he found the small ulcer that none of the scopes had seen. As for the delayed release of the Omeprezole, that, I was told was what was supposed to be happening. they wanted a continual dosage of the anti acid medicine to ward off excess gas and nausea and ulcers. i've always had excess acid in my stomach anyway, so the ulcer didn't surprise me. But he did stop the Omeprezole (I was supposed to be able to get off of it at a year anyway) but was put on a stronger anti acid med plus the carafate (which I never could figure out how to time with all the other medications i have to take for my mental issues and my back and fiber issues) So, hopefully only 2 more months of the anti acid meds. I've been doing well since the small bowel resection though! Good luck to you!

So, today is 11 days post-op. I'm doing pretty well. My incisions are healing fabulously. I'm walking every day. Now, with this I should put in a disclaimer...I walk every day in bursts. LOL. I still get tired pretty easily. If I can keep my mind occupied, then I can walk for a longer time than when I'm trying to do household chores or something like that. For instance, my mom and I went to Burlington Coat Factory. That store is so much trouble! LOL I kept falling in love with all the clothes that I'll be able to wear once I reach my goal weight. Plus their housewares area is unreal. Such great prices! I was able to walk around the store for about a half hour before I REALLY had to sit down somewhere. And I've noticed, standing still....not a real great idea. It makes me more sore and wears me out so much faster than actually walking around. Even a week and a half out I'm still pretty sore in my tummy. But again, that soreness is usually amplified by sitting in one place too long. Like tonight playing Castle Panic with the family because it's Saturday - Family game night. It's a tradition we instigated several months ago where my kids, me, and my mom all get together for pizza and games and/or movies. It's a time for family bonding and it's almost always awesome. Only time it isn't awesome is when one of us is not feeling good or is in a rotten mood and pretty much kills it for all of us. It's life. It happens. Thankfully, it doesn't happen often. Tonight was hard though. I LOVE pizza. Hot pizza. Cold Pizza. Cold Pizza for breakfast. Cold Pizza for lunch. Hot pizza for supper. Veggie pizza, meat pizza, everything pizza, pineapple and ham/canadian bacon pizza...just no jalepenos please. LOL. I even found out before surgery that BBQ Chicken pizza isn't bad either! After not eating anything solid for 13 straight days, the smell of that pizza everyone was enjoying was so hard to endure even though I was "full" from my protein shakes, broth, and water. Believe me, drinking an once of fluid every 15 minutes with a tummy the size of an egg keeps me pretty full all the time. I have an alarm set on my phone to go off every 15 minutes to remind me to sip some water. I've made it my theme song. It's Rachel Platton's Fight song. I felt it appropriate since I'm fighting to take my life back from my food demons. The other hard part is dealing with the people in my life who are resistant to change. Like my oldest son. He wasn't happy about me getting this surgery. At all. He likes having something to hold on to that's more than the skin and bones that he is built like. He doesn't like change of any kind. He's fought his senior year every step of the way because it means change. He still doesn't understand that change is inevitable. And you can either roll with it, or be rolled over by it. I used to thrive on change. Until 2013 happened and there was so much change in so little time that my mind couldn't deal with it and pretty much ceased to function correctly. I fight every day to get my mind to function as it once did. To thrive on change again would be such a blessing. But my son. He has never dealt with change well. So, instead of supporting me, he teases me. Just like his father used to do every time I tried a diet or tried to lose weight. He'd purposely get something that I could not eat. That he knew I couldn't eat. And he'd bring it to me and say "Here hon, look what I got you. A chocolate glazed donut with bavarian cream filling. Your favorite. Oh...that's right. You can't have these can you? I'm so sorry. I guess I'm just going to have to eat it myself." And then he'd proceed to eat one of my favorite donuts in front of me, pretending to savor every last morsel. My son hasn't been quite as cruel as his father was, but he'd get a kiwi and slice and eat it and slurp the sweet juice from it and say things like "Gee, mom, don't you just wish you could have one of these right now?" Then he'd laugh and finish eating his kiwi and walk away. Or, hey mom, don't you just wish you could have a slice of this delicious pizza. I'm so sorry you can't. It's SOOOO good!" So, that's been really hard the last week or so. I really didn't care the first week because I really just wasn't hungry for anything at all. I had no appetite. Nothing sounded good, nothing tasted good. Not particularly. And after 4 days of chocolate shakes I was ready to scream. Now, after 2 solid weeks of nothing solid and only sweet protein shakes...I've already got supper for next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday planned out! Salmon, bunless Turkey burgers, and pizza!!!! with sauteed zucchini and mushrooms....mashed cauliflower......stewed tomatoes.....asparugus, spinach, tilapia, cottage cheese!!!!! Yogurt! OMG, I'm making myself so hungry...I really need to stop. See, I don't see my surgeon again until May 4. The last time I ate anything solid was April 16. 17.5 days without anything solid to eat. I'm about to go mad. But it will be okay. I know I can do this. I have to do this. I saw my primary care person yesterday. (She's a nurse practitioner, so technically not Dr, but might as well be.) My weight there was 258. Actually one pound less than what I was the morning of my surgery! She took me completely off my diabetes medicine. And I see her again in 6 weeks. Then, she's sure she's going to be taking me off my blood pressure medicine and my thyroid medicine. So, I'll be down to only the medicines for my back pain and my acid reducer, so 3 medications! Quite a change from the 7 or 8 I've been taking the past few years. I'm really excited. Well, that's all the updates I can think of right now guys. Oh! But let me tell you something about those 4 in 1 protein shakes (you know, the ones that have all the vitamins already in them so you don't have to swallow a handful of vitamins quite yet or chew those nasty tasting chewable).... If you get the vanilla flavor (I imagine it could work with chocolate too, but not with as much variety) you can add things like the Sugar Free Orange Crush water flavoring to the mix and if you drink it cold, it tastes just like an orange creamcicle! Raspberry Ice is really good too. Cherry is okay, but not one of my favorites. You can add unsweetened cocoa powder to the mix to make a chocolate. Add Unsweetened cocoa powder along with the Raspberry Ice to make a chocolate raspberry shake. There's so many possibilities. The only problem I've found is that you get really tired of the sweet stuff all day every day. I look forward to supper when I have my cup of Bone Broth (the beef is my favorite) It's by Great Value if you have a walmart in your area. It's the only broth that I found in the entire store that has 7 grams of protein per serving. All the other broths only had a whopping 2 grams of protein per serving!!!! Anyway, nature is now calling again (one of the drawbacks to constantly drinking...lol) Praying for healthy, happy, love filled days for you and yours!

Well folks, I'm four days out of surgery. This is my 3rd day home. Things haven't been too bad. The gas was horrendous this go round though. This is the 9th laporoscopic surgery I have had in 19 years. The gas this time felt so much like the first time. It kept going into my left shoulder. At one point I thought I was having a heart attack it hurt so bad. However, with a lot of walking the halls and a lot of morphine, the pain subsided. The morphine didn't help the gas pain a whole lot, but did help the incision pain. I was actually doing really well up until about 4:30 this morning when one of my fur babies decided to use my tummy as a springboard. Jumped and landed square in the middle of my tummy that little fur ball did and leapt right back off. I ended up waking two of my kids I was in so much pain and haven't really been able to snap back out of it so far. All I really want to do is sleep. My mom did take me and 2 of my kids to get one of our adopted strays his vaccines and microchipped this morning though. I really have to remember not to take a pain pill and an anti nausea pill and my propranolol together though. I was so loopy you would have sworn I was drunk. Good thing mom was driving! I also figured out why my clinician head nurse said not to check my weight until my two week checkup on the 4th. When I checked into the hospital I was lower than I've been in in at least a decade. I weighed 259.2. I was literally doing a happy dance! Before I left the hospital the clinic's nurse said they stopped weighing people when they leave the hospital because 99% of the time your weight will be higher during the two weeks post op than it was going in. Boy! was she right! You know when someone tells you you should't do something but the curiosity to find out if they're right totally supersedes common sense? Yeah, that's what happened to me. See, she said not to weigh until the 2 week checkup if I had a scale at home. That the water retention, bloating, gas, and swelling from the surgery would make the weight go up significantly but that I'd lose it back off fairly quickly. So, like a deer in the middle of the road that can't move when she sees an oncoming car, I weighed myself yesterday morning. I was 269.5! I was about heartbroken. Today I weighed again and I was 264.3. So I think I'll be fine. I swear I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm really looking forward to my 2 week checkup, though. I want to see how well I've done on my 2 week liquid diet. Things are really weird for me. Commercials that made me drool and want things (like Olive Garden and Pappa John's pizza) I look at and think it looks disgusting. I really hope I don't end up anorexic. Nothing looks or sounds good. My clinic is so awesome though because for two weeks post of I get to have a 4in1 shake. It's Celebrate ENS+Iron 4 in 1 meal replacement with all my vitamins already in it, so I don't have to swallow the vitamins. After the 2 weeks though, I have to start taking the oral vitamins again. Along with biotin and thiamine and omeprazole, and calcium, and , and, and.... I have to set a timer to go off every 15 minutes to remind me to drink. The only reason I feel like drinking is my mouth is so danged dry. And I'm COLD! omg. Nobody warned me about the way the surgery would affect my temperature thingy! During the winter months (it sometimes will drop down into the single digits here) I usually keep the furnace thermostat set between 69 and 72. Mainly for the kids. The cold never bothered me. Until now! It got to 69 in the house today and I swear I'm freezing to death! So, for the first time since the beginning of spring, I have turned on the furnace. Anyway, I'm about ready for a walk and family game night and another nap. I'll keep you all updated as I progress. Heavens bless and protect you in your journey through this thing we call life!

I can't believe it's the day before surgery! Six months has flown by. As of this morning (according to my scale) I am at 262. Today is clear liquid only and if I thought the past week of two protein shakes and one meal was hard and I was hungry all day...I woke up hungry and can't eat anything for the next two weeks or more depending on when my followup appointment is. Ugh. At least after tomorrow morning it shouldn't be too bad from what I've heard since my tummy will be so much smaller. I hope everyone's right. LOL! I'm just looking forward to more energy. That is the biggest thing because for the last week I have had zero energy. Anyway, short entry for now. Talk to you laters!

I can't believe it's the day before surgery! Six months has flown by. As of this morning (according to my scale) I am at 262. Today is clear liquid only and if I thought the past week of two protein shakes and one meal was hard and I was hungry all day...I woke up hungry and can't eat anything for the next two weeks or more depending on when my followup appointment is. Ugh. At least after tomorrow morning it shouldn't be too bad from what I've heard since my tummy will be so much smaller. I hope everyone's right. LOL! I'm just looking forward to more energy. That is the biggest thing because for the last week I have had zero energy. Anyway, short entry for now. Talk to you laters!

I can't believe it's the day before surgery! Six months has flown by. As of this morning (according to my scale) I am at 262. Today is clear liquid only and if I thought the past week of two protein shakes and one meal was hard and I was hungry all day...I woke up hungry and can't eat anything for the next two weeks or more depending on when my followup appointment is. Ugh. At least after tomorrow morning it shouldn't be too bad from what I've heard since my tummy will be so much smaller. I hope everyone's right. LOL! I'm just looking forward to more energy. That is the biggest thing because for the last week I have had zero energy. Anyway, short entry for now. Talk to you laters!

So, I just went for my final diet and exercise appointment April 3. I had gained 5 pounds in a month! I nearly died right there on the spot. The nurse practitioner I saw was not a happy camper and told me to be mindful and prepare in advance for trips and such. How do you prepare in advance for eating on a 4 hour one way trip?! 1.) I can't afford that much jerky!!! and 2.) The trip itself is very limited on the kinds of eating establishments along the particular route I had to take. My Nutritionist and Exercise guru on the other hand was actually not too upset. He said I was still under my starting weight and that I was actually doing pretty darned good despite the weight gain. He also noted that the weight gain could be the fact that I began bicycling again after several years and that I have probably developed some good thigh muscles, which would add weight in the short term and then help lose the weight in the long term. The fact that I've bicycled every weekend since I got my bike is awesome. The first two weekends pretty much did me in though! The first Saturday that my and my family bicycled was a killer! We bicycled I don't know how far. I know it was over 5 miles...it had to be! By the time we got back to the car my legs no longer wanted to function and I literally collapsed in the grass next to the driveway because my leg literally could not hold my weight. So, naturally for me, I had an anxiety/panic attack wondering if I'd be able to get back up so I could drive us home. The next weekend it was just my youngest son and me. We rode 4 miles and took a rest halfway at subway for lunch. Then finished riding home. I had to walk up two hills that ride compared to the several the weekend before. Last weekend we (my boys and I) rode 7 miles! I was so proud! Now, back to my appointment....I talked to my patient care coordinator before I left my final diet and excersise appointment to double check and make sure everything was ready to submit to Medicaid for approval. She said it should be about a week or two before we would hear anything back. Mind you this was Monday, April 3, 2017. On Friday, mind you this was only 4 days later, I got a call from my PCC. She asked if I was ready to schedule my surgery! I could not believe it! Already? They approved it that fast?! Others that I had talked to dealing with medicaid said that they had to wait a month to a month and a half! I felt so blessed! I still feel blessed. She asked if I'd have the money together by pre-op day. I asked her when that was. It's this Wednesday! It doesn't seem possible! THIS WEDNESDAY! I told her no problem. When can we get the surgery scheduled? Do you think we can have it done by the end of the month or the first week in May? She asked me "How does April 18 sound?" April 18? APRIL 18!!! That's like less than 2 weeks away! I started crying and she was laughing cause i was so happy i was crying. Well, she thought it was happy tears, but in reality it was happy mixed with terrified tears. OMG I was sitting here thinking I had at least another month to wrap my head around this (like 6 months hasn't been enough) Now, I am so thoroughly excited! I start my mostly liquid diet tomorrow to begin shrinking my liver. 2 shakes a day and a regular meal. Gee, just like slim fast, but better! LOL! And next Monday it's all clear liquid. The only major bad part right now is no pain meds at all until after surgery because the pain management doctor hasn't been able to get a hold of my PCP to get my meds changed off the NSAIDs and the Wellbutrin I take (and doesn't help) for my depression. Since I have fibromyalgia (Yay! finally got a confirmed diagnosis a month ago! after 4 years of trying) So, I'm dealing with a lot of back nerve pain right now and will be until my doctors can get together on stuff. Joy. The waiting of the doctors that have everything to do with everything NOT pertaining to my weight loss. LOL I'm still excited though. And I'll trudge through the rest. Oh, and by the way, for all you non believers in the Heavens above...be careful what you ask/pray for because you just might get it. See, 4 years ago on April 18 I got a call that would change my life forever and lead me on a downward spiral that I'm actually still trying to crawl out of. I think I'm reaching the top most days, but it's still difficult on a lot of days. Anyway, April 23, 2013 my husband of 14 years committed suicide. This was actually one of the best things that could have happened. I know that's horrible to say, but to say that he was very sick at the time would be an understatement. So, I prayed a couple months ago that I could have my surgery on April 23 of this year. It would be a new birthday of sorts to borrow someone's phrase I saw today. It would be a reset day. The day that my life begins anew. New health. New happiness. New chances. New me. Well, I realized soon after that prayer was made that that would not be possible. April 23 is a Sunday. No surgeries that day. So I blew it off. No big deal. No matter what day my surgery ends up being, it will be a new beginning. Instead He answered my prayer by my surgery being scheduled on the anniversary of the day I got a fateful call that turned my world upside down. So, you see, He did grant my prayer. He just knew that the 18th would be a better "reset" day than the 23rd.

So, it's been a while since I've written anything. I totally needed to get on here and do that. I actually have a whopping 22 days until my final nutrition (Diet and Exercise) appointment before the clinic sends my paperwork into Medicaid for approval and schedules my surgery!!!!! 22 days and about a week later I'll be scheduled. It's getting so much closer so much more quickly than I could possibly imagine! Got the family's bikes ordered and they should be ready by next weekend, just in time for St Patty's Day. Being of Irish decent, this is a big deal for me. Can't wait to get my brisket and cabbage and carrots. I'm going to have my mashed cauliflower "potatoes" to go with. We're still shooting for the end of April, the beginnign of May for the surgery. I'm hoping that with the surgery along with the therapy I'm doing now, I'll be successful and be down to 175 by Christmas. That is my goal right now. Be no more than 190 by Christmas, but if I can make 175 by then, I'm going to be ecstatic! It's getting closer every day. So I think it's possible.

Embarking on this journey of weighing less means a lot of things to me. It means, essentially, becoming a different person yet staying the same. It means starting a new lifestyle. It means getting healthy. It means letting go of things that are weighing me down mentally while getting rid of what's weighing me down physically. It means letting go of unrealistic ideas regarding relationships and accepting some relationships are only meant to be friendships and nothing more. It's realizing that people that I thought were ancient history, that I only think about once in a blue moon, have actually been thinking about me too. An uncommon relationship that spans the miles that was long gone remarkably resurfaced tonight. How strange that this person crossed my mind for the first time in months just a week or two ago. I haven't thought about him in a long time. And he messages me tonight. I wonder where this will lead. Will he be willing to do what he wasn't willing to all those years ago? Here's to new beginnings.

Today was a big step for me in facing my anxieties around people. I haven't enjoyed going to the mall in years. My daughter needed some new jeans and so my mom and I went to JCP because that's where her favorite jeans are sold. I had every intention of only going into JCP and getting a pair of jeans and leaving again. Well, it turned out that they were having a hum dinger of a sale. There was a $72 dress that was marked down to $1.97. No, that isn't a typo. It really was only two dollars! (I ended up getting it for my daughter because it was adorable and happened to be her size. My mom has needed new clothes forever and refuses to buy herself any based on the premise that she doesn't want to buy anything until she loses some weight or has a little bit more money or any other excuse she can come up with. I do not like to go out by myself unless it's to the nature trail over by the lake where I can hike down to the water and hide and write or read by myself without anyone tripping over me or anything like that. Or riding my bike without too many other people around. I just do not like being around people unless they are people I know well. Before I took little girl back to school after her shots, I had to stop by the house to get my oldest some clothes since he really wasn't prepared for the temperature to be half of what it was yesterday. I ran in and told mom to get her arse in gear cause she was coming with me to run errands. She didn't want to be alone any more than I did today. For a totally different reason, but same feeling all the same. So, she got dressed and we got the clothes to the oldest and dropped off middle child. We then proceeded to run errands, eventually running to JCP. Since there were so many really cute tops for between $2 and $5, I had mom pick out a couple and I got those for her for Valentine's Day. She loved them, but said she needed a "nude" bra to wear with them because hers would show through the materials. I did the only thing I could...took her to Victoria Secret to get her a "nude" bra like her favorite. This meant traversing the dreaded mall. I hate the mall. There are way too many people at the mall. Poor mom though. I don't like the mall, so I walk kind of fast to get from one place to the next whenever I have to traverse the mall. Mom doesn't have as long of a stride as I do, so she ends up putting in 1.5-2 steps more than me whenever we're out together. When we got to Victoria's Secret I (as always) fell in love with the majority of the bras and panties they have throughout the store. The problem with oooing and aaahing over those sexy undergarments is that it's embarrassing to get caught by one of their personnel that are the size of toothpicks when I'm the size of two of them put together. But while mom's trying on her bras what am I supposed to do? I wander around doing laps around the store muttering to myself "okay mom...hurry up. I'm ready to get out of here now". I can't wait until I am small enough to actually fit into some of these gorgeous underwear. I don't know when I'd be able to afford it again, but omg, I can't wait. I just wish that in the interim I didn't feel like people were laughing at me for even stepping foot in there. I wish I didn't feel like they were talking about me behind my back to their coworkers. I just wish I didn't feel like they were about to ask me what I was thinking by contaminating their store with my oversized presence. I kind of doubt anyone was actually thinking that, but that was how I was feeling. It's how I always feel when I go into one of those shops. I wonder if I'm going to feel the same once all the weight is gone. If I'll feel like an imposter when I go looking for things to wear from there. Since I start therapy in two days, I really hope not. Time will only tell.

When I started these entries I asked the question "Am I Ready For This?" At the time, I actually didn't know. I hoped I was. I thought I was. I think I finally know I am. Exercise is a daily thing now instead of just thinking about it. I may not be doing a lot right now (I managed to walk a mile and a half today and yesterday), but I'm getting there. It depends on where I walk and what my back is feeling like, but I'm getting there. Today my two boys and I walked an upper neighborhood near our house selling chocolates for a fundraiser to fund his very last school trip in June after he graduates. Sold the whole box! I'm really proud of him. It took a lot for him to face his anxiety about talking to people. Some of the people were very funny, buying out all of one kind of chocolate bar. One family even knew my son's band director from when their daughters were in band. It was so awesome being able to walk the neighborhood with my boys and I kept thinking how much easier it's going to be once I lose the weight I want to lose. I'm getting a bike (I hope) this week and will be able to start riding again and hopefully be able to work up to 30 miles. Except I'm figuring it will actually be 60 miles if I go the whole trail and back! Maybe mom's going to have to meet me up there with the bike rack! LOL!