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RavenClaw779

LAP-BAND Patients

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Blog Entries posted by RavenClaw779

  1. Surgery Scheduled

    · RavenClaw779 · 06/13/2013 19:22

    The band will be coming out the first week of July. I am a bit sad(that it failed) and worried(that I'll pack it back on), but I have learned better portioning, and better control over emotional eating, so I'll try to be optimistic. Been following Weight Watchers and cut out all my slider/excuse foods so my weight is back down to ye olde plateau of 223. Still better than the 285 I was. I have a 15 pound cat who likes to be picked up like a baby. Just picking him up is a reminder of how what seems like a small amount of weight is quickly felt. Feel like a need a back support just hoisting him up from the floor! LOL
     
    As I sit here at my desk - dressed; jeans,bra etc., I feel like I have acid reflux, and the last time I ate was over three hours ago. So that old bra + band double restriction with no fill in an 11cc band is reinforcement that it needs to go. I wonder what I'd be dealing with if I had a significant amount of fill in the band. Ah - never mind - too scary to think about!
     
    So now with a BMI of 37.1, I would not qualify for WLS. Not sure how the Type 2 DM would play out - I am one, but my A1C is almost that of a non-diabetic. Wonder what would happen if I decide to proceed with a gastric sleeve?
  2. Despite only gaining 9 pounds during chemo, my weight bounced right back up to where I was at the beginning of last year. My docs tell me the steroids can have delayed and lasting effects - great. Feeling almost like my old self most days but since starting Arimidex, I have days when I'm beat and my lower back aches like I've been digging ditches. Yet another side effect - but whew! only have to take this drug for five years!
    A friend got me to try Weight Watchers with her and though it's only been a few weeks, it seems to be helping. Still able to get all the protein I need - it's just so much simpler to have x amount of points to work with rather than the elaborate charts I seemed to be keeping noting protein, calories, carbs, fat etc. Well - I've tried everything else!!
     
    On a strange note - like most women who've had mastectomies, I was professionally fitted for my special bras and prosthetics. The prosthetics add about 3 pounds of weight and are -to be blunt - HUGE! When not holstered, I tend to leave them laying on my bed where they look like two wrinkle breasts just fell off and landed. When worn - gee, it's just as great as wearing a bra before - still having to pull up my right strap while tugging down on the left. It's the first thing off when I get home - just like before. The really strange thing though is that I can't eat while wearing the bra - ANYTHING - and I'm throwing up.
    I first noticed this when I had to wear a compression bra post-surgery and was throwing up yogurt. Apparently the bra band in combination with the lap band creates some sort of vacuum. This is really great as I now have to either avoid going out to eat, go out wearing a big sweater and no bra, or find a creative way to unhook my bra before eating. Thankfully when I don't eat in public everyone assumes it's because of my band - I just don't admit its the OUTSIDE band...
  3. Unfortunately, I've returned to having discomfort after several bites of greek yogurt so my PA took 1cc out of the band - and ahh...no more pain.
    My labs and counts were all good, but my A1C is still a little over 7%, so I remain on my meds.
    Because of the issues I've been having, I have to have an upper GI series...
    At this point all I can say is at least I'm not gaining!

  4. Checking In

    · RavenClaw779 · 10/29/2010 16:57

    LapBand + bad cold = weight loss!
    Just kidding - but it's too bad no one ever came up with a non-surgical solution to over eating.
     
    Still hate shopping, but made myself go. Found a pair of great chocolate tweed lined slacks - size 18. Figured they wouldn't fit but they did. Needless to say I did a lot more shopping. Am now a L/XL(misses) on top and 18/20- maybe 1X on the bottom.
    Finally got rid of the sweatpants my husband said made me look like I was channelling MC Hammer. Another big step for me - actually wearing colors other than BLACK!
     
    Visiting with my RD the other day. She attended a conference where I group of bariatric docs were talking about the "disappointing" success rate with WLS and how gastric banding can serve as "training wheels" for the new gastric sleeve procedure. Very expensive set of training wheels!

  5. This & That

    · RavenClaw779 · 09/29/2010 16:58

    A friend of the family was visiting last weekend. She hadn't seen me since July and commented that she could tell I've lost weight. Glad someone could - the scale doesn't seem to be moving at all. Maybe she was just being nice? Nevertheless, I am noticing clothes that I've been wearing all along are starting to become noticibly loose; my favorite career pants are suddenly too long and catching on my heels, my favorite casual henley with the pearl trim- falling of my shoulder. Wondered why people were looking at me funny at the grocery store...then I glanced down and HELLO PLAYTEX!
    Maybe I should be glad my journey is taking longer - the family friend I wrote about in a prior blog entry was photographed at a recent wedding. Looked like they were either sick or going through chemo. Gaunt and jaundice in appeareance and according to someone who was at the event, running to the bathroom what seemed like every 15 minutes, not eating, but quaffing the booze like no tomorrow. Apparently extremely happy to tell everyone how people keep saying, "You're getting too thin!" and "You look anorexic!"
    Ended up in the hospital again - this time for dehydration.
     
    My family keeps asking me if this is normal - based on what I've experience and what I read online about everyone else - NO!

  6. Fill#5

    · RavenClaw779 · 09/02/2010 03:22

    In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, "Shazam!" Made you laugh didn't I!:tt2:
    So Fill #5 - I had been scheduling my appts for Friday afternoons think that especially in the summer, things are a little less busy and surely I'll be back before 3pm...but for the last four visits, my surgeon's practice is always running late and I never make it back to the office at a decent time, or have waited so long to eat that I end up with a migraine... SO...this time I took Monday off and scheduled a mid-morning appt.
    What a refreshing surprise..no crowds, no stressed out nurse or PA - I was in and out in 20 minutes.
    The "fill" ended up being an Unfill - saw a different PA this time and she actually listened to what I was telling her...how my incidents of vomiting have increased including throwing up sipped liquid...how I'm not losing but feel like all I can eat is safe(very crunchy or soft and melting) and dangerous(calorie-wise)...how I am always hungry and my stomach is growling so loudly it's embarassing...how at a family dinner the other night I had three pinky tip bites of med-rare filet mignon, two small slices of baked zucchini and a teaspoon of corn and felt uncomfortable with pain in my throat and upper chest. An awful feeling coupled with the fact that my lower stomach was telling me, "Eat - I'm hungry!" while my brain was saying, "God - please don't let me spit up at the table!" Half an hour later, I was able to eat...dessert - which was a texture I could manage, but not an appropriate energy source on it's own. I guess I should've realized something was off when the night before my fill, I was getting ready for bed, took my Crestor(very small pill) with a couple sips of water on an empty stomach, went to brush my teeth, felt nauseous and tossed my cookies - except there were no "cookies" - it was all water.
     
    My hide is still chapped with regard to my surgeon's practice...the PA would not tell me how much was in my band, "A little over 5cc's..." or how much she took out. I live over an hour from my bariatric center. In an emergency I'm going to my local hospital which is less than five minutes from my house. I also travel quite a bit on business. I'd think that in an emergency I should be able to tell the responding docs what I've got in my body in case they need to take it out. If they'd tell me what's in the band, I'd even put it on a sticky flag with the band card in my wallet in case I was incapacitated. Just seems like common sense to me. Couple that with the $485 the practice just billed my insurance carrier for my last fill...billed as "surgery" ?! and I am moving forward with looking for another bariatric practice for my follow up care.
     
    Why the Unfill? Well, I guess even with as little as I had in my 11cc band, it was too much and the vomiting, the pain after a few bites, the slight cough should've been a tip off. That afternoon after my unfill, I felt the best I had since Fill #4 - other than the extreme belching and burping. I'm eating what I should, feeling a bit more in control(thanks in part to my self-directed therapy), and haven't felt sick and fatigued! :thumbup:
     
    I have to go back in two weeks...
  7. My senior year in college I dated a graduate student. It was my first head-over-heels love affair. I was 21; he was 26. Never was the line, "Hindsight is always 20/20!" more true and now more than two decades later I Thank God for the un-answered prayer titled, "Oh please let us get back together...".
     
    Right from the start, my friends could not stand Alex. As one pal put it, "His arrogance is only exceeded by his condescension"...or was it the other way around!?!
    His "friends" had a similar vibe and would ask me what I saw in him. Several weeks into dating me he was let go from his internship at due to a "personality conflict" - of course according to Alex it wasn't his fault; they were against him. I had an uncomfortable feeling then as I would several weeks later when he roughed up a fellow lacrosse player who ribbed him for a missed goal.
     
    Alex played into my insecurities with ruthless skill. Based on my old photos, I would've been considered "cute" maybe even "pretty" and I weighed about 125-130. At that time though, I didn't think I was any of those things and agonized over my weight.
     
    We'd probably been going out less than a month when Alex dropped me off at my dorm after a date. I still remember stepping out of his car as he made a comment along the lines of,"...if you think you're the most beautiful girl in the world, you're sadly mistaken...!". Of course he'd already informed me that he hadn't found me that attractive when he first met me, so this comment while a real kick in the gut wasn't that surprising.
     
    My nieces can't believe I didn't "kick'em to the curb" then and there. Goes to my lack of self-esteem at the time.
     
    As it was, we dated for about six months. I put graduate school on hold because he didn't know where he'd(we - as he implied)get a job. I starved myself because he had no problems advising me at intimate moments that he'd seen me, "looking slimmer in that teddie". I cooked and baked for him only to have him complain that boxed brownie mix was so much better and on one memorable occasion, throw a fit because there were bones in a piece of fish I'd broiled.
     
    Stir into this pot my meddling mother who between trying to live my life for me and engineer our break up was telling me she'd never forgive me I "screwed up" this relationship(she thought Alex was a "catch") and telling him he wasn't good enough for me(well - that was true:w00t:).
     
    Right around graduation time, I found a faux-diamond ring in a Tiffany box on his desk. Since he only bought the best for himself I don't know whether he was going to try to pass it off as the real deal or if it was left there for me to find and either get upset about or give me a clue. I never acknowledged finding it. This was a guy who told me he'd never send me flowers, because then I'd "expect it all the time".
     
    He broke up with me three weeks before graduation. Looking back, I can see how he'd planned the whole thing. There was no concrete "reason" ... he "didn't know what he was going to do with his life", and he "couldn't stand my family"...
     
    Oh he wanted us to stay "friends", but he "too busy" attend my graduation ceremony. Me being the doormat I was back then - went to his. His parents didn't even know he'd dumped me! One of his classmates made the comment to me that "...you don't realize it now, but you dodged a bullet..."
     
    I moved home to Virginia and from the day after I got home he was calling me and sending me job notices from the city he landed in - but never came out and said he wanted us to be together again. Like an idiot, I got a job and moved in with one of my sorority sisters who lived in the area. Quasi-dating lasted three months and we split up again. A month or so later I'd realized I was better off without him and had been accepted to grad school at UVA for the fall term, so I was packing to move back home when he called and wanted me to pick up some things I'd left at his apartment. I should've never gone over.
     
    He'd been drinking and wanted to know why I hadn't called in over a month? Who had I been seeing? You can guess where it went from there - I got to see the same side of Alex that his former lacrosse teammate saw - and a trip to the ER from my roomie-sister - though I had only minor physical injuries.
     
    So jump ahead twenty some odd years. My 21-year-old niece is home from college for the summer and I'm telling her this tale. She wonders if Alex is on FaceBook. I'd prefer not to think of Alex so I never looked - but to amuse her we did. Oh - he's on there and guess who one of his Facebook buddies is - my old roomie-sister..who only knew him because she knew me...and knew what he did and said to me...Two Weasels from the Past!

  8. Name Change

    · RavenClaw779 · 06/07/2010 16:04

    Yes - Changed my screen name. Thought I was being clever "JaxNole88" refering to the last vacation (Jackson Hole, WY) I enjoyed before I was really plus sized (1988). Got too many strange inquires so I decided to go even more obscure.
     
    RavenClaw779 - Was it my "house" at Hogwarts:tongue2:? Or is it a part of a line from a poem(song) by a famous singer? Did I weigh 779 pounds? Things that make you go "hmmm"!
     
    Ponder on dear readers...
  10. Probably because like everyone else I get tired of talking about food, my procedure, how much I have/haven't lost...especially in light of all the other things I have to do. I need a 36 hour day to stay on top of everything else in my life! I still can't figure out the appeal of Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn - although I have accounts with all three, it's a major effort for me to check in, update, post. In some ways it feels very high school and it's all the same attention getting, self-serving brown-nosers as way back when - except now they're the jackasses you either work with or deal with professionally OR the people you hoped never to see or hear from again from high school or college knocking on your virtual door to play the old "look at my fabo life" one-ups-manship game. God - and I thought the sorority sister whose Christmas brag letter was over the top was bad!?!
    Couple that with the need to censor yourself, and the lack of privacy - I'd much rather send a personal email one-on-one than put myself out there.
    I've read a fair number of posts re; who to tell - yet another reason to keep your social network settings as limited and private as possible - I had someone from one of my support group meetings attempt to "friend" me and frankly, there are some people with access to my professional life who don't need to know my personal business and some people from my past I'd rather maintain a casual(at best) relationship with - i.e., not out crowing to the old hometown crowd, "OMG - did ya know Jill had weight loss surgery!?!?" Makes going home for the holidays even more dreadful!:rolleyes2:

  11. It's Working!

    · RavenClaw779 · 05/10/2010 15:48

    Yes! Between my dietary counsel from my NUT and the band, the scale has finally started moving and even with just 4cc in my 11cc band I can sense when I'm full. Was actually able to enjoy a modest meal of Chinese take-out last night.
    What's working for me is not neccessarily the standard "3 meals - no snacks" approach. My NUT has me on a meal plan structured for me which includes real foods(inc veggies and salad), carbs(limited - not zero) and an 8oz glass of moo juice(skim) half an hour after each meal. I use it to take my vitamins.
    My NUT gives me lots of reading material the latest being the Journal of the American Dietetic Association - April 2010 edition (Understanding the Impact of Bariatric Surgery). One over reaching theme of everything I've read is that there is no hard and fast rule on post procedure nutrition/meal planning and the ADA is trying to nail down specific recs to be made.
    That said - this works for me and it feels like it's a good mesh(for now) of proper nutrition, willpower and the band.

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