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lvidacovich

Gastric Sleeve Patients
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Everything posted by lvidacovich

  1. lvidacovich

    Helpful Post Gastric Sleeve Apps (Nov 2019)

    Baritastic. Made for WLS patients. Track weight, water, all the macros you need and you can customize it. Easy to use quickly as well.
  2. lvidacovich

    Post op incision

    Yup. I'm 3 weeks out and mine is still sore. Luckily it's the only part left that's sore.
  3. Making this review because I didn't see my doctor listed in the group of surgeons and I don't see a lot of other Oklahoma people around here. I actually started my journey with another medical group, not affiliated with a hospital. I wouldn't call them fly by night but close. Did a lot of self pay type patients. Anyways, I did their seminar to see what I qualified for, if anything, insurance wise. Turns out I qualified for nothing at that time (due to poor coverage, not my weight or co-morbidities). I did their non-surgical weight loss and it was fine, nothing special. I saw my GP (part of the OU system) and he recommended I look into WLS and recommended the group at OU. I took his advice and went to the required seminar in February of 2019. After the seminar I signed up to get more info and have my initial appointment with the WLS group at OU. About a month later I had my first appointment and went over everything that would need to be done before surgery. It was much more extensive than the other place I had visited! PT, Psych, Nut, blood work, chest x-ray, EKG, pre-op scope - made me feel quite confident in their program! I was also required to go to 2 group sessions which were great! So I got in the program in February. I got my weight loss goal that I needed to hit for surgery and they worked on things from the insurance end. I had to meet with them monthly until surgery. Then the problems started. First my work made it very hard (read impossible) to leave for my appointments. I couldn't take early lunches or skip lunch in lieu of an appointment. The WLS group was great about working through that and around things. Then came my trip to Europe. I went wild. I came back 20 pounds above my starting weight and they wouldn't budge on my goal. My final hurtle was that my insurance plan year ran from 11/1/18 to 11/1/19. Meaning I had to hit my goal and get everything done by and surgery scheduled BEFORE 11/1/19! It was June at this point! I went into psycho mode - walking miles each day, eating nothing that wasn't on my list and I made it! They saw my work and that I was getting close to my goal and gave me my surgery date of 10/22 on Aug 22. Surgery was great! I had no complications and they fixed my hiatal hernia when they were in there. I'm just over 3 weeks post-op now and everything has been going swimmingly. I've lost 33 pounds since my surgery date. The surgeon and her group are great. They know everyone by name. I don't have much access to the surgeon but I get it when I need it. I mostly work with the PA. I can see the nut or psych whenever I want, which is nice. If anything the office is TOO busy. My one month post-op has to be 6 weeks after surgery due to her being busy and only having one day for office hours. If anyone has any questions about this group feel free to ask me!
  4. You're 6 weeks out. Personally my surgeons told me that's when fatigue would be at its worst. Plus you're not eating real food. I don't think its anything more than that. In a month or so you'll feel better, especially if you get some real food in you! Personally the fatigue hasn't really hit me past week 1 so I'm blessed and can't relate much.
  5. lvidacovich

    How to tell family??

    I told my parents, knowing my dad was pretty staunchly against it. He's had people he's know that have had the surgery and either failed at the weight loss or had complications. I'm his kid so obviously he was worried about it. I told him to ask more people about it and he did, got some good responses and he wound up being ok with my decision and supporting me, even coming up the week of my surgery to help me recover. Deep down I still think he was just worried about me but I did a good job of articulating why I needed it and ignoring him when he made snarky comments lol.
  6. lvidacovich

    I am legit hungry tonight

    Be glad the shakes are filling you up! Also I call BS on the liver shrinking thing. My pre-op diet? 1 day. Day before surgery. Surgeon told me my liver looked fabulous. MAYBE if you've been drinking or eating tons of fatty food up until your surgery date but most of us went on some sort of diet to get to a goal weight to qualify for surgery and I think that shrinks your liver enough.
  7. At your current weight you're talking about worrying about less than 4% when you want to lose 5 extra pounds. No idea if your body reaches a set point, I think others can comment on that.
  8. lvidacovich

    Carbs, Fat, and Sugar

    Following this. I agree with you, at least for my plan. Following their guidelines and suggested menu sets me up for over 100 g of carbs per day once I graduate to regular food and that just seems WAY off.
  9. lvidacovich

    Protein and Weight Loss (unrelated)

    No, it's good feedback and I have plenty of other snacks I can do!
  10. lvidacovich

    Weight can lift after surgery?

    Mine was 10 pounds for a couple weeks.
  11. lvidacovich

    Protein and Weight Loss (unrelated)

    Yes, I am a guy. The beef sticks are quite soft, think slim jim, and not like jerky at all. Yes, I am still on soft foods for another week. I get what you're saying about sodium but I'm drinking more than enough to offset that. Searching stair stepping weight loss and WLS only brought up lots of exercise articles lol.
  12. lvidacovich

    Protein and Weight Loss (unrelated)

    Great stuff here! My next post-op appointment with my nut and surgeon is SUPPOSED to be next week but they are super busy for Turkey Day so I have to wait 2 more weeks and see them on Dec 5th (ugh!!). That's when I was supposed to get approval for normal foods and exercise. They don't respond well to me just calling, takes forever to get back but I'll be sure to ask these questions when I see them.
  13. lvidacovich

    Pre OP diet

    Y'all need different doctors like mine that don't have a 2 week pre-op diet lol. Just kidding - you can do this! Don't get burned out!
  14. lvidacovich

    Pre Op

    3 weeks post-op - I feel like I was one of the few who didn't get nervous before surgery! It wasn't my first one so that prolly helped as well. You'll do great! Ask questions, tons of people around here to answer and help you!
  15. lvidacovich

    today's NSV...

    Amazing! I've got a pair of 42s I'm trying to get into. Maybe by the end of the month!
  16. lvidacovich

    Food journal apps?

    Baritastic. Food, water, weight, tracks everything you need and is designed for bariatric patients. I know it doesn't connect with your doc but I'd tell them too bad and that you can show them when you have appointments. Baritastic is that good.
  17. I'm 3 weeks sleeve post-op. Juice is bad, watered down or not. Also my doc tells us to never use gummy vitamins. Not sure exactly why. Empty sugar calories that don't fill you up. Personally by week 2 I was on soft foods, we never had a puree stage. So I did eggs, ground beef, mashed beans, chili, tuna, soft whitefist, etc. Still on that for another week from today.
  18. lvidacovich

    Fkn up Already - 1 week post op

    Sorry for the complications but glad you're still here and doing well!
  19. lvidacovich

    Partner/ spouse support

    This is not directed at anyone in particular but I think that WLS exposes bad relationships but makes good ones stronger. At least I hope.
  20. lvidacovich

    Protein coffee

    I never had good luck with any powdered protein, FYI. That's why I did RTD. Good luck! I dropped coffee entirely and I miss it dearly, especially now that its getting colder.
  21. lvidacovich

    Hi I'm new here.

    AJ is that a tespo?
  22. lvidacovich

    Protein coffee

    I did regular drip/keurig coffee, made strong, and used premier vanilla RTD protein as my creamer. I drank two cups of coffee a day and the 11.5 oz of 'creamer' was enough for both. Did it for a couple years at least. I also saw that premier has a new cafe latte flavor protein that has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee.
  23. lvidacovich

    Partner/ spouse support

    Had the same issue with my wife. Luckily she's very logical like I am so I went through most of the process, had her come to a seminar for my surgeon and talked it all through. Finally came to an agreement on it. She still doesn't think I NEED it (along with my parents) BUT she understands why I want it and that it's a tool. She mostly wanted to see me have a real brain shift before surgery and I did! You do you. You can't control anyone else but you!
  24. lvidacovich

    Cigna denial x 2 and Peer Review

    This is great! Congrats! I just got a 'denial' for my $130k bill submitted to insurance even though I got an approval letter. I called them and they said its a byproduct of my insurance being out of state - they requested medical records to show that my surgery and procedures were necessary but they had to request them from my states BCBS. So we'll see how that goes.
  25. lvidacovich

    Pre-op diet prior to liquid diet

    Yes, absolutely. They want to make sure you can stick to something before surgery. Mine was 5% of my weight. I was 335 and needed to hit 318. I went to Europe and came back at 352 and only had 3 months to get down to 318 but I did it.

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