james2021

What are your go-to alcoholic drinks when out at bars after surgery? How do you tolerate them?

3 hours ago, SAH_Dog_Mom said:

My surgery was May 10th. Gastric sleeve and hiatal hernia repair. I’m one week post op today. I’ve been able to drink 48oz of propel and at least an additional 50oz of Water. It’s been an absolute miserable chore, but I keep telling myself it’s better than ending up dehydrated and back in the hospital. Over the weekend I had a total of 3 SF popsicles and 9oz (4.5/day SF jello). Today I had horrible diarrhea, so I may just go back to Water, propel and chicken broth like I did the first five days. I’ve been very down. The soreness pain I felt getting up and sitting or laying down has significantly improved but internally I feel like my organs are churning all the time and my incisions will sting and hurt often. This has been far harder mentally and physically than any other surgery I’ve been through. I’ve had an appendectomy for acute appendicitis that burst on the operating table. I’ve had bunionectomy surgeries on both feet and multiple bone spurs removed from one foot. This is obviously a far more extensive surgery, but man, I keep having to fight off regret and depression. My weight right before surgery was 207 and today I’m 199. The loss feels great, but honestly, I’m so miserable right now that getting out of the 200s doesn’t even feel that joyful.

Hang in there! It will get better!

Not being able to buckle my seatbelt in the backseat of most cars.

Not sure if you've watched this before but found it to be a really helpful video about stalls right after surgery!

I would guess it has to do with the fluids you were given in the hospital. I was told to expect to regain about half the weight that's come off in the liver-shrink diet after the fact bc of hospital fluids. It'll come off!!

i’m on day 16 of 21 of the pre-op diet. today’s the first day i really thought about cheating. UGH. i’m down 15 pounds from the pre-op appointment like the doctor wanted but i don’t know how the liver works!!! maybe eating one thing will ruin the whole thing idk sigh

3 hours ago, C_K said:

But I'm dreading people commenting on my weight loss. I'm still teleworking fulltime due to COVID, and I'm hoping I can drop a bunch of weight before I have to go back to the office so people (who I haven't seen in 18 months at this point) will think it was something that happened over a longer period.

SAME

I think I remember that when I've gotten tattoos, the consent form says "I certify i haven't had surgery in the last x weeks." I'd call the tattoo place and ask what their cutoff is.

14 hours ago, VSGJen said:

Oh, and if you watch Shrill, I found a lot of Aidy Bryant's character dealing with her mom about food and weight a really good example of trying to have these tough conversations.

Congratulations on all you have accomplished. ❤️ And thanks for the idea -- Shrill is one of those shows I started but never finished! Will move it up higher on the list.

My hangup with telling people about surgery proactively is that I worry it would cause harm to others. If someone with obesity approached me and asked me "how I did it," I would be 100% honest. But I don't want me being open about it proactively to be taken as a message that I think this is what an obese person "should do." I want to be respectful of my friends who are working really hard to feel good in their large bodies.

I've told about 9 people, all friends, no family. One of the people I disclosed it to, who is thin, had a very strained reaction, and essentially told me she couldn't engage in the conversation because of her background with eating disorders, which I wasn't aware of. She was maybe the 3rd or 4th person I told, and moving forward with the next few, I was very very tentative with how I told people, and made clear that I would answer questions, but that we didn't need to discuss it further since it's a sensitive topic.

food and weight are very complicated things for people and I want to be very careful with suddenly opening intimate conversations about them with unsuspecting friends.

1 hour ago, BigSue said:

My mom bought them all kinds of Cookies, crackers, candy, soda, etc., but she didn't want me to have any, so she had them hide their Snacks in their rooms. I think this is one of the biggest things leading to my food issues because it made me feel so deprived. It felt so unfair that my brothers were being rewarded and I was being punished, basically for no reason other than my natural body type. So every chance I got, I snuck food. I spent all of my allowance money on candy and junk food. I hid food in my room because I wasn't allowed to eat it openly. It blew my mind when I went to friends' houses and they just had chips and Cookies in the kitchen that they were allowed to eat in front of their parents. When I was old enough to babysit, I always looked for junk food to eat after the kids were in bed. I'm so embarrassed now to think about what the parents must have thought of me pigging out on their junk food!

I'm so sorry that this happened to you. I can relate to so much of this, especially with hiding food and seeing what my friends' houses were like. I'm glad you decided not to tell your parents to help you do this for you; I'm not telling mine either.

50 minutes ago, blackcatsandbaddecisions said:

The other week we stopped wearing masks because we were all fully vaccinated. My dad commented my face looked different, and that it looked good now. I joked with him that you’re not supposed to say that, you’re supposed to say that I looked good then and I look good now. He looked shocked and said “you didn’t look good then!” I know part of it is because the dementia is causing him to just say whatever he is thinking, but it still kind of hurt. I know I look better now, but I kind of wish he thought I still had value and looked good when I was 130 lbs heavier.

I'm so sorry you are having to deal with this on top of the baseline layer of stress that caring for parents with dementia must bring. ❤️ I can't imagine the things my dad would say with less of a filter, and don't want to.

57 minutes ago, njlimmer said:

My husband, who is 6'7" so 300 lbs for him is way different than 300lbs for me, was an athlete and is of the mindset that we tell her she needs to lose weight - and no... I stopped that cold - but he has that athlete mentality that if a coach said he was bad at free-throws, he would have practiced them until he was better. <eyeroll> I told him that she's not an athlete and she's a girl so telling she's overweight is NOT the route we're going. If we tell her she's fat then this will be her mental talk

Obviously I'm just speaking from my own experience here, but I'm very glad you stopped that. I know in my case, any comments on my body, then or now, just gave/gives me shame and resentment toward my parents. I love that you are letting her come to you. I never had a chance to go to my parents because they always got to me first, so I don't know how that would've made me feel. But I do think there is a lot of power in empowering her to make decisions about her body, instead of sending the message that it's out of her hands.

As I've been grappling with this over the last couple of years, I've seen that there have been recent studies on parents encouraging dieting in kids and teens, and the fact that this not only can cause 'traditional eating disorders' but obesity as well. This was affirming to read because it made me feel like I wasn't alone. I don't know if your husband would find this compelling, but here's a link: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/parents-encouraging-teens-diet-higher-risk-obesity-adult-53537394

I also appreciate the therapy comment. I do work with a therapist. I love therapy. Everyone should do therapy! Lol.

Warning -- I imagine this topic is triggering to a lot of people. It would be triggering to me outside of this community. But I want to create a space for people to talk about how their weights and bodies were treated when they were young and the impact that still has on them. I apologize if this already exists somewhere -- tried to do a search beforehand. Anyway.

One of the primary brain things I am working through leading up to weight loss surgery is my relationships with my parents and their relationships with my body when I was young. My parents were pretty restrictive with food. There were certain designated "no dessert days" and when I was a little older, "no carb" days. There was a lock on the pantry, not in a way like I never got enough to eat, but it sent a message. We always had a lot of diet-oriented foods at home. During the summer, my brother and I would each spend a week with my grandparents, where we could eat pretty much whatever we wanted. When we got home, my dad liked to weigh us, and laugh about how much we gained.

Both of my parents were always on a diet. There was a period of time before I was born that my dad was obese, and a period of time when I was in elementary/middle school when my mom was obese, but other than that, they've always been a 'healthy' weight. But -- always on a diet. Never thin enough. When I hit 10 or 11, my mom started wanting me to diet with her. When I was that age, I was not overweight, and did not become overweight until I was about 15 or 16. On my most generous of days, I think that she probably just was looking for a way to bond with me as I was getting older. That was the trauma of her generation, I guess; women bonded by talking about their bodies and dieting.

I started going to Weight Watchers with her when I was 12 years old. A doctor had to sign off, and despite my 'normal' BMI, he did, and I will never, ever forgive him or understand why he did that. I guess the early 2000s were another time. Between the ages of 11-14 I did eDiets, Weight Watchers, the Zone diet, the Master Cleanse, normal calorie counting -- etc. Not for health; all because my mom told me that if I lost 5 pounds, or maybe 10, or maybe 15, I "could be a model." Or because, as she told me one day, "No one wants to be that fat girl in high school who can't get a date to the prom."

On top of that, both of my parents, but particularly my dad, were always talking about other people's bodies. They were obsessed. They talked disdainfully about other relatives, especially my dad's sister, who were "yo-yo" dieters, whose weights kept going up and down. I helped out at my dad's small business one summer and went to lunch with him and two of his friends when I was maybe 13 years old, and they took turns guessing how much a table of women with obesity weighed, combined. My dad made it clear, over the course of many years, that he hated fat people, and I have no doubt this is still true -- he just doesn't say those things in front of me anymore, because I've become what he hates.

There are probably a dozen reasons why I gained so much weight in my late teens and through my 20s, but the connection I feel between eating whatever I want and freedom from my parents is intertwined in a way that is painfully clear. It is all about control, and watching what I eat still feels like they are controlling me. Eating whatever I want, until I got so overweight that it was taking a real toll on me, was how I felt in control of my own life. Now I feel like I have control over almost every area except food.

All of this is working together to form a really big anti-motivator for surgery for me, which is that the idea of making my parents happy (and grandma -- don't even get me started there) in the process of losing weight is absolutely repulsive to me. I am desperately looking forward to a smaller body so that I can so things that everyone else talks about here -- fit in an airplane seat, have more stamina, have an easier time exercising, reducing risk of weight-related health problems, finding clothes that fit that actually reflect who I am, etc. But I feel sick whenever I think about turning up at home in a couple of months, looking noticeably smaller, and them saying something about it. I feel like I'm not going to be able to handle it. I don't want them to say a gd thing about it. And I don't want to get into unpacking years of hurt with them. I'm already thinking of ways I can minimize my weight loss when I'm home; baggy clothes, etc. It is such a mind mangle to want the result of surgery so bad and simultaneously be dreading them.

I don't want them to ever think I did this because of them. I don't want them to ever feel that they won.

If you have stuff related to this you want to get off your chest, I hope you feel welcome to share those things here.

Mine is tomorrow and I'm all of a sudden very stressed out about it. My brain likes to create problems.

11 hours ago, mandya84 said:

Same! How are you doing with it? Are you all liquid or are you able to eat some things? I’m all liquid and struggling. Hoping that I get over the hump to where it gets easier.

Able to eat some things. All liquid sounds so hard!! I had been reading it gets better after day 3 and maybe it's in my head but it feels true in my case! Good luck to you ❤️

Congratulations!!

I've read on here about people chewing and chewing until it was puree consistency...and being okay... I wouldn't risk it personally. Can you puree them?

Woohoo congrats! I'm on the 20th.

It's hard to describe, but knowing that you are in the final stretch until surgery kicks in a new level of motivation. I could've never done this before. But knowing that I have to shrink my liver or they could potentially not operate, or it would be unsafe -- after all of these months of effort -- has made eating 800-1000 calories a day for the last 5 days almost easy.

I also had read on these forums that the first 3 days are the hardest and I'm finding that to be true in my case, too. Yesterday and today were easy. You've got this!

I would call ASAP to rule out an infection. They probably will want you to go in.

5 days of pre-op diet down, 16 to go!!

Not necessarily 6 months! But, yes, it sounds like they will make you start your attempts now. The thing you will have to get to the bottom of is how many months or attempts they need to approve you. My insurance policy, for example, required documentation of either 2 3-month long attempts in the last year, or 1 6-month long attempt.

Does your program give you an insurance coordinator of some kind to help you through this process?

With the disclaimer that I am not a doctor, I did a quick search of both and medullary sponge kidney / medullary nephrocalcinosis don't appear to be kidney disease or anything life threatening. It's good that the ultrasound did not see any kidney stones! I can see them wanting you to do more testing just to be safe, but try not to panic (easier said than done, I know; I've been there).

Medical tests of all kinds pick up on weird stuff that doesn't even exist all the time. I had to take a drug test before my surgery approval and came back 'presumptive positive' for fentanyl which the doctor had never seen before (and I don't take fentanyl, lol), but then they retested the same sample and nothing came back.

Unfortunately, most people have this requirement for insurance and most of us have to start at square one even though we've been attempting diets all our lives. I started the process in October and also started my once/month visits with a dietician then. It seemed like it would be forever but the 6 months of medically-supervised dieting passed so quickly.