CrankyMagpie

I'm mad at your family on your behalf ? I'm also still pretty tired (10/3). I have always needed more sleep than most people (9 hours a night, give or take), but I need even more than that, right now. I'm really paranoid about blood clots, so I'm setting an alarm to get up and drink a few sips and walk a few laps of my room ~5 hours after bedtime, if I haven't been up to use the restroom yet. That probably? isn't? helping? Nor is the Benadryl my surgeon has me on, probably--I'm getting a lower quality of sleep, I think. I'm very tired.

There's also an entire sub-forum: https://www.bariatricpal.com/forum/1101-vegetarian-or-vegan-eating/

It makes me sad to think there are people avoiding fruit and beans for the rest of their lives. I won't do that. (Heck, I'm two weeks post-op, and fat-free refried beans are the next puree/soft food on my list to try!) Both are a major part of the diets of some of the healthiest groups of people in the world. We know processed foods with simple carbohydrates are what make us (society as a whole) fat and unhealthy. Fruits come with fiber and vitamins packaged in, so they're pretty great. They're a lower priority than protein-containing foods (like beans), while we're severely restricted in what we can eat, but after that, they're great! I'm still treating 60 grams of protein as a minimum, and I'm still going to get some animal protein most days, but his "veggie first" approach seems like a good way to live, long-term.

Those of you whose families are being awful: you might consider having them read this article ("Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong," by Michael Hobbes, published in the Huffington Post)

Hey, just checking in (I read back through the thread to see how folks are doing. Thank you all for the well-wishes and condolences. ❤️ I just successfully ate my first cottage cheese since surgery (10/3), and I've done fine with Greek yogurt and ricotta (with just a little Italian seasoning and low-fat Trader Joe's pizza sauce, because that's what I have on hand). Balancing my nutritionists' "try to eat three meals per day" with "get more than 60 grams of protein" and "don't drink within half an hour of eating" and "get more than 64 ounces of liquid" is ... a lot, especially with going back to school and dealing with family stuff. I'm not getting all that much protein from my food, because I'm only eating a couple of tablespoons, maybe, per "meal." I know it gets easier, and if I'm only at 55 grams of protein one day (or, like ... three?) it won't kill me or make all of my hair fall out. I'm not freaked out about it, just sharing the struggle, I guess. My vitamins make me a little sick, though as the amount of food I can eat increases, so does my tolerance for them. It'll work itself out. Also, I joked to my spouse, before surgery: "I'm ready for all kinds of complications, so the one I end up with will be one I didn't think of." Yeah. Uh. I was allergic to something they used during the surgery. About a week afterward, I broke out in hives all over my torso and the tops of my thighs. My surgeon isn't very helpful: "try taking Benadryl, and if that doesn't work I'll order a steroid block for you, but I don't want to do that." (Steroids wreak havoc on post-surgical healing.) I've looked for information online, and most people get over them on their own, so I'm making due with hydrocortisone cream (it's a steroid, but only a low amount of it, and on my skin instead of being taken as a pill), Aveeno eczema-strength lotion (has a lot of oats in it, which are good for this kind of thing), and Benadryl at night. So... that's been awful. (They are very itchy hives. It's terrible.) I can drink pretty normally again, now. I don't have to have these itty-bitty sips. I think gulping would hurt, and I make sure not to do that, but normal-size mouthfuls feel good. So... that's what just under two weeks out looks like, for me.

This is the last time I'm posting this list, but if someone else wants to take over updating it, please feel free. I just lost a family member (my father's husband, after losing my father last year), and I've kind of got other things to focus on right now. Don't look for me on the boards for a while. Thanks for understanding. Oct 1: aapb79Gmail.com chicagogirl74 chuckwalsh clara1900 cw19147 irishgal21 JennieJuniper momofmjbm Red Alicia Vwlover0611 Yare_2018 Oct 2: bmatt418 cindy t Deanayeah jgirlnyc Lizzieming Marla522 nikoleroze Oct517 Oct 3: boringtessa CrankyMagpie Leahandthesleeve LosingLbs18 mamadownsizing sandebch sekud02 Oct 4: AriesMary25 btrfly kerbear1980 mspink702 rnchaveri1 salsalawyer sleevemebaby7781 swisskath Oct 5: greener pastures mommytina rafc100 Suesloosinit Oct 8: Crystalmartin82 jhojho90 Oct 9: Anglkrys2 bigcurt mailchickie76 SheilahMc Oct 10: busyforever fandangle MeeAhhh oct102018 spatch2813 Oct 11: aussie Ange healthygirl05 kathy060464 UncleBeezy willowfinely Oct 12: Tabularasa2018 zpratt Oct 14: katiemarie22 Oct 15: allyb15 annaisbananas April1965 JessLess llrn90 MegsNiko (or maybe the 17th?) recreating_courtney redaj954 Tina6769 Oct 16: 2shea beccaconaty87 br3n Georgetown Thisismytime ummyasmin Wincy Oct 17: Chello219 crystalml Fawksy Grapefruit Jlh2350 JustKeepSwimming OpsMatt Oct 18: shazz73 Snaver Oct 19: afer0841 Oct 20: Lucybear22 Oct 22: clb164 GizzlyKitten Kathy10/22 kimberlymi laceco marciamae3474 Oct 23: bgarner47 emccomis kdiddle31 llhill mimi tahoegirl96118 Oct 24: Beachladee3 GirlShrinking Lovingmyselfforever Susiern56 tuttlemomma Oct 25: AndreaK. kiwiangel23 teenyshell Oct 26: amanda-xo carebear38 shany1567 TropicalBeachDoll Oct 29: 1BigHeart JadineC jflower88 Kai91 kjallen nedawson1908 notmyname Rgiannos Oct 30: sleevegirl88 wishful.shrinking Oct 31: relaxrelaterelease Skodes

I have to inject myself with blood thinners once a day for a month. I'm only mad about it because the injections have to be in my stomach, which is very hard for me to do. (That's where my organs live! I don't want to!) It does get very bruised. But whatever, the bruises heal eventually. And everything else heals, too, with or without the blood thinner. My incisions are itching so much that I know they're mostly healed. The risk of deep vein thrombosis leading to pulmonary embolism is scary enough to keep me giving myself the shots and moving around every hour when I'm awake. I actually might be taking it further than necessary, because I set an alarm 5 hours after I go to bed, and I get up and walk around then, too. (It isn't helping me be less tired, but I'm one of those people who need 9+ hours of sleep a night, and I don't want to risk developing a clot because I sleep longer than the average person.)

YES!! Sort of. I don't think I have steri-strips. I have some kind of purple glue over the incisions. But it is itching (or the incisions themselves are?) so much. I know wounds itch at a certain point in the healing process, and I'm hoping that point is very short-lived, because it's driving me batty.

OK, maybe I phrased my question wrong. I know that Netflix still comes to my house, and I know that I can (eventually, at some point in the future, when I can eat food again) order healthier foods or make my own pizza-like thing and have a very similar experience. And I also know that the pizza wasn't the point; it was the tradition, the having-something-to-look-forward-to, the let's-treat-ourselves-to-something-we-like, and besides the pizza itself, nothing about that has to change, strictly speaking. It's really nice of you all to point that out, but that wasn't supposed to be the point of my question, sorry. Instead, I wonder: What if we took this opportunity and made a new, better tradition? What might that look like? I feel like lots of people have probably (re)discovered things they like to do with their significant other, or their friends, or whoever, that they didn't do before, and I'd love to steal those ideas. A night of Netflix now and then is cool, and we will definitely do that. But those sedentary habits are part of what I'm trying to break up, here, you know? @Bhageerah says "Please go enjoy the time with your husband, no matter what it is! Take a walk, go play bingo, lazer tag, or start working out together! I don't care just as long as the two of you are doing it together and enjoying each others company!!" - It's true, just choosing to do anything at all and make it a special occasion is pretty great! And those were some good ideas. Give me more ideas, friends! (Please and thanks!)

Off-topic, but every time this thread shows up, I think to myself "that is a LOT of throwing up, I hope she's OK."

or her

It's not even the carbs, though. I read a study, a while back (I can dig it up if anyone cares), that looked at liver sizes of people after low-carb very low calorie diets, versus standard very low calorie diets, and they were the same. That said, once you make the transition into ketosis, you have a lot less hunger to deal with. So I see the "no carbs" thing as a kindness, rather than a medical necessity.

I asked my surgeon's PA if they used catheters, and she said no. That's a perfectly reasonable question to ask your team, and it would put your mind at ease.

That would be a very true statement: I am no rambo.

I'm interested to hear from people who have changed up their date nights/get-togethers with pals/whatever away from food-based socializing: what do you do to hang out, now? I'm a boring person, and so is my spouse--or, to be kinder to both of us, he's a homebody, and I've been in enough pain, the past few years, that I've leaned that way, too. We used to enjoy ordering pizza (or sometimes healthier things) and watching Netflix to wind down from the week on Friday nights. I really looked forward to it! Obviously, that tradition has got to change. It's a silly thing for me to latch on to, but I find myself really, really sad about letting it go.* So I really want to have something different that I can look forward to, instead of just mourning that tradition. And just generally... I know that meeting friends in restaurants will be a thing I can do again, but I really want food to take a back seat in my life. Most of my friends are perfectly happy to meet up at a tea or coffee shop, anyway, so I'm not as stressed about that. Several of them enjoy board games or crafts, and I'm planning both kinds of get-togethers. I could probably drag some of them out to walk in local parks with me, too. But I'm open to more ideas! What non-food things do you all do for date nights, or for nights with friends? *This seems soon for the mood swings, but folks, I think the mood swings are upon me. Letting go of this one little tradition--that I definitely didn't participate in the week before surgery, either--is bringing tears to my eyes.

Friend, this is the first and most important weight you need to lose. This guy isn't your responsibility, and you've already said you think he isn't going to be helpful to you after your surgery. Can you be sure he won't be a liability--sulking where you can see him or whatever, to try to make you feel bad? Can you trust him not to order pizza/cook bacon/whatever would be a food trigger to make you miserable while you recover? You're exes. Not friends. Let him rely on the kindness of friends, instead of relying on you.

Wait until 1 month, or maybe even 6 weeks, after surgery. Every day someone new makes a post freaking out about a "stall" in their first month, and "oh no the surgery isn't working," but it's just their body reconfiguring and getting used to its new normal. It happens to everyone. I don't know about you, but I have an appointment ~10 days after surgery and another ~1 month after surgery, and those seem like fine times to get official weights recorded. (I do own a scale now. I had it before surgery. But if I didn't have one, I wouldn't buy one now.)

Aspirin and ibuprofen (and naproxen and basically every pain medicine except Tylenol/acetaminophen) are super dangerous within a week of surgery, both because it interacts with blood thinners and because it impacts your stomach lining. My team wanted me off them for 10 days before, but 1 week is the minimum. If your surgery is on the 17th, you can't have any more of them. If you do, you need to delay the surgery. My team did allow Tylenol the week of surgery, so if you have pain, try that. The cheats and the alcohol have to stop, too, immediately. More than a week before, eh, we're human. But within a week of surgery, no, you have to follow your team's rules. You've got one week to make your liver as small as possible. A large, slippery liver makes the surgery more risky, because it gets in the surgeon's way. It's a week. (And then another week or more after surgery.) You can do it!

They're making you drink 4 ounces in an hour, the day after surgery? Monsters. It took me DAYS to get to 4 oz/hour. Be strong.

No, it was also a first phase of the RNY. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1381%2F096089203322618669 You are right that I should have included that it was a precursor to DS, though. This article refers to both: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2444866416300186#bib0365

Yep, a week tomorrow! I'm good, mostly! Better than I had expected to be, honestly. My arthritis has retreated. I think my immune system is just busy healing up the surgery damage for now, but it would be pretty amazing if it just stayed away. The biggest incision hurts some, but it's manageable enough that I haven't had even the Tylenol in days, let alone the harder stuff. There's a lot of gurgling in there, just like a pre-op empty stomach, which leaves me feeling like I'm hungry, even though I know I can't force liquids in much faster. I know it'll eventually go away. My sternum hurts with some things I try to drink and, very rarely, when I haven't had anything. I'm on Prilosec, so I am assuming the random times are because I've been doing my breathing exercises wrong or something. I dunno. I'm over 64 ounces of liquid per day without having to work super hard anymore, which is nice: I can take big enough sips now that I felt safe pulling out my favorite coffee mug (which is pretty big), if not the coffee itself yet. Decaf black tea has been the main source of hydration for me, outside of protein shakes, jello, and popsicles. I am, mentally, enough of a small child that the chicken noodle soup broth makes me feel better, when I have it, too. I'm in the high 50s on grams of protein every day (plus whatever's in the broth, who knows?), and I've broken 60 once. I've been doing short walks every day, in addition to the standard hourly pacing around the house; tonight's walk was over half a mile, and I feel good. (I don't want to push too far, too fast.) And it looks like you're about a week from your surgery! How are you holding up?

I'm drinking the broth from a can of low sodium Cambpbell's chicken noodle soup. My spouse got the solid bits and enough broth that he feels like he has a thick soup. I think we're both happy with the compromise. Anyway, it's interesting to watch people's plans diverge. I just today worked up to not-premade shakes (Quest powder in Fairlife milk), and it was ... more of a challenge than the thinner premades. I managed it, with some gurgles and the occasional sternum squeeze when I took too big a sip. (My team didn't tell me to wait on them, but they're thicker, so I did.) But I'm on "no yogurt, and soups only if they've been strained" until probably Friday, when I have my post-op. I can't complain about that--I feel like anything but the thinnest puree would be problematic for me right now--but it's a constant source of amazement for me, how much plans differ.

My team allows caffeine both pre- and post-op, but I'll be real: I haven't had any since my surgery (a week ago tomorrow). I've had a lot of decaf black tea. I haven't been brave enough to try decaf coffee, yet, but I drank a LOT of that in the week leading up to surgery. As drinking gets easier (as in, I don't always have to do those "just barely wet your lips" sips, but can do real swallows some of the time now) I can foresee being able to get enough liquids in that I am willing to add a caffeinated beverage per day, but for now, it's enough of a struggle getting to my liquid and protein goals. I'm not going to waste the time it'd take me to drink something that won't count toward the goal ?

RNY-to-sleeve revisions happen, but it's apparently mostly because of severe reactive hypoglycemia and other really weirdly specific complications. Sleeve-to-RNY is more common in part because the sleeve was eventually conceived as a safer surgery to give people with much higher BMIs, with the intention of converting them to RNY once they lost enough weight that that was a safe option for them. They started doing it as a standalone procedure when many of those patients opted not to come in for the second surgery, being successful with just the sleeve. But sleeve-to-RNY absolutely does happen, still, especially for people who have uncontrolled GERD or who can't lose enough weight with the sleeve alone. In my pre-op testing they found some small lesions in my esophagus, which might have been esophagitis or might have been a small amount of GERD. I went with the sleeve despite that, because I also have arthritis and might need to take ibuprofen and other NSAIDs again, ever, in my life. (Also, I had been taking large amounts of NSAIDs over a long period of time, and they may have been responsible for some of the damage they found.) I can't tell you how that turned out for me, since I'm only a week post-op, but I will say my doctor didn't try to sway me toward RNY at all, and given that I also had a hernia repaired, I'm pretty hopeful that it'll all turn out OK.

Just an additional perspective: when you buy yourself the liquid Tylenol, go ahead and get yourself some caplets or capsules, too, just in case. The liquid made me so sick. I couldn't swallow even half a dose. I did fine with the extra strength caplets (the ones shaped like pills were easier to swallow than the round ones, for me) while I needed them.