Beadingnurse

Congratulations! You are doing great! It is wonderful to see "milestone" weights on scale. I was sleeved the week before you and I can't believe how fortunate I am to have had this surgery!

No nausea at all for me but I also don't vomit easily. I only vomited once during my pregnancy and I just find that very little upsets my stomach. I had a large hiatal hernia repair and that area was sore after surgery but mostly it wasn't bad at all. The first couple of days I felt bloated (probably from the gas) and had trouble getting in a comfortable position to sleep. I took pain meds only for a couple of day s and then switched to Tylenol. It is all SO worth it though! I would do it again in a second! Good luck!!

I was sleeved on April 12 and I feel like I am on track. I might be a bit slow in progressing on my foods as I am mostly still having broths and purees with a little bit of soft food thrown in. I feel really good though and now the challenge is just learning to eat with this new little tummy. I had six incisions (also had a hiatal hernia repair) which have all pretty much healed. I struggle to get in 800 calories a day and have to work to get in the fluids too. I love, love, love this sleeve though and would do it all again in a heartbeat!! Glad you asked how the April Sleevers are doing as I have been wondering the same thing!

Congratulations...You have a lot to be excited about! Let us know when you get your approval!

Hi NC Lady, I am 3 weeks out today and can't eat nearly the solid foods that you are attempting. I agree with other posters that you might try backing down to mushies for a week or so and see if that helps. I am still having a lot of pureed or brothy soups and haven't even tried meat. I had one half of a scrambled egg yesterday and I felt stuffed with that...I am sure it would have come up if I had eaten one more bite. Maybe try decreasing the quantity a bit too?? Good luck!! We will get there!

I am a nurse and I didn't view ANY of the youtube videos before surgery! I knew what was going to happen and didn't want to dwell on it. I too was scared and I think most of us were so you are in good company! I feel SO blessed to have had the surgery and can't believe how fortunate I was to be able to have it. It is the best thing you will ever do for yourself! I am surprised at how "normal" I feel and I am not even 3 weeks out yet! I feel recovered and healthy and it is only when I start to eat that I am reminded that I now have a smaller stomach. It is interesting because before surgery we are so worried about the surgery itself and the decision to do it...immediately after surgery we are just focused on recovery. Now I feel like my real work is to learn to adapt to my new equipment. Every day is a learning process but a good process...even when I mess up and eat too much or too fast. I have seen folks on here post that they hardly ever think of it and I am a long way from that but I love, love, love this sleeve. I am just not hungry any more and that fact alone is worth the cost of admission!! Good luck with your surgery! I will look forward to reading your posts once you are home and up to posting!

My plan says 1-2 weeks for pureed and I am in the second week of that. I try small amounts of soft foods but I am able to accept so little that I am not having a lot of soft foods. For instance, I scrambled 1 egg for myself for Breakfast today and I could only eat about 1/2 of it and then I felt REALLY full...almost uncomfortably so. I had an Atkins shake (liquid) for lunch and followed that about an hour later with about 3 oz of Greek yogurt. I am planning to have some sort of brothy or pureed Soup for dinner. My doc said to judge the diet progression on how you feel and that it is better to stay with a "level" longer than to push yourself to accept foods that don't feel right. Let your body be the judge! My body quickly and profoundly tosses back out anything it isn't ready for!

I know your doctor already told you this but if you are dehydrated you can be light-headed. You may also need to look at how much protein and calories you are getting each day as your body needs the calories for energy. I know I am struggling to get my calories in each day so you might try calculating that if you haven't already. I know that you should NOT be dizzy and/or lightheaded so good luck with this.

That does sound good! What kind of lobster bisque did you use...something you bought from the grocery story? I am theoretically on "soft" foods but I am really only having one meal with soft food a day and varying my diet between purees and soft.

My BMI was just over 33 but I have diabetes and osteoarthritis so that might have influenced my doctor's decision to accept me as a patient. Ask around and I am sure you will find someone to do the surgery. I was self-pay too as my insurance wouldn't pay unless I had a BMI over 40.

Good luck! Will be thinking of you today and send you healing vibes. Hopefully by now they have some "happy drugs" infusing for you and you are in a calm and blissful state!! See you on the loser's bench!

Congratulations! I agree that your posts are some that I always look forward to reading and it is great that you are so successful at 2 years out!! :thumbup:

I SO empathize as I had a long post last week that I won't bore you with here but I did basically the same thing in the comfort of my own home (with cottage cheese) and end up vomiting in the neighbor's yard. :crutch: Aren't you glad you DON'T live near me??? It is a miserable, miserable feeling to be so overfull but the good news is....we can LEARN from our mistakes and I have had a much more careful week since my episode. I even went out and bought the darn toddler utensils that the nutritionist recommended even though I didn't think I needed them. Here is how I rationalize it...I have been eating this way for many, many years and I feel so darn great that my brain does not recall that I have a tiny little tummy now! I still believe that I can and should eat like I always have. :crazy: I am learning to recognize that slight pressure in the chest as my signal that I am full. I am sure that we all have different cues but it is definitely a learning experience! Good luck!

I don't think you have to seriously worry about losing too much weight as you can always game the system by increasing your calories with foods/drinks that slide right on through. If you get to the promised land and are at a happy size 14, all you need to do is add a couple of Starbucks Venti White Chocolate Mocha drinks to your diet daily (620 calories each) and you won't continue to lose!! :wink1: There are lots of "slider" foods that you won't feel a restriction with and you can eat and painlessly gain weight if you want. We all had our fears going into the surgery and losing too much was NOT one of mine! I was self-pay and I was afraid I was going to pay all of this money to lose 20 lbs!! I am less than 3 weeks out from surgery but I can honestly say that I have NO regrets and can't believe how lucky I am to have had this surgery. Good luck with your decision and you will find a lot of support on this board for you as you go along.

Mine was 45 minutes tops. No test, spent much of my time explaining weight loss surgery to the therapist! Then she spent another 15 minutes telling me about her dad's experience with hospice (I've spend a lot of time as a hospice nurse and I think that triggered a lot of memories for her). Not a lot of time was spent exploring how I would do with the surgery. I went through my work employee assistance program though so that I would not have to pay for a therapist so maybe you get what you pay for! I was just happy to get it over with...2 1/2 hours seems like a long time to me.

My doc required a 2 week pre-op diet that was low carb (30 gms a day) and high Protein. I was very surprised to see how my carb craving basically went away after 3 days. I wasn't nearly as hungry as I had been before. Realistically though I don't think I could have maintained that diet for too long without the help of the sleeve. Now I am blessed to not be hungry at all and can stay pretty low carb without any feeling of denial. In fact, in my office at work RIGHT now (where I am goofing off and not working!) are 2 big boxes of donuts because it is Administrative Professionals Day. Yep...we feed our Administrative Assistants CRAP as a thank for their hard work. My office is large with a table so it ends up being the place we set up food when we have little celebrations and normally I would have had one or more of the donuts by now. I was worried about how that would affect me when I came back to work from surgery. But I haven't even looked at the donuts, cared about them or been bothered by them at all. In fact, I brought 48 of the little egg & cheese "bites" mini muffins from "The World According to Eggface" so we would have a least one low carb option and they are almost gone now.

Sherri.... SO sorry that you are going through this right now. Everyone assumes that they have cancer when they find a lump and it turns out to not be the case for many people. I'd be scared too but try to hang on to the knowledge that this may be a false alarm. Worst case scenario...the treatment options for breast cancer have never been better and are improving every day. Please let us know how you are and what you find out. I too will be sending healing vibes your way...

Virginia...it also looks like you lost 35lbs pre-op!! That is a really significant amount of weight and don't discount that!!

Wow. What can one say in response to your heart-felt sharing of soul and pain except thank you. I read somewhere that the biggest crime we do to one another is to pretend to be "normal" and to pretend that everything is okay in our world when the reality is VERY different for some of us. I've said this before but it bears repeating that those of us who are fat might just have incredibly efficient bodies at finding and storing food as our biology and genetics has programed us to do. We evolved in a food scarce world and our bodies (and brain) still function as if we live in that world. The sleeve (bless it!) lets us get around that drive to keep the tank stocked with any food we find. What if being fat is NOT a moral failing, a lack of will power, a sign of weakness but just our bodies efficiently trying to gather and save all of the food resources available to us???

Congratulations....that is amazing!! Being diagnosed with diabetes was 99% of the reason that I had surgery too and I am thrilled with your results. I have not checked my fasting blood sugar since the surgery as I was afraid it was too early to see a result and I am not on insulin. I will be checking it tomorrow morning though since you have had such rapid results! Congratulations again!!

Will be sending you healing vibes and good wishes tomorrow afternoon! By the way...I am one who has needed to lose "just" 60 lbs for 15 + years! I would occasionally lose it by trying every diet known to woman but the fat always came back and bringing friends with it! Good luck with your new sleeve and welcome to the loser's bench!

I am apparently a slow learner as yesterday I guess I ate my 100 calorie cottage cheese dinner too quickly. I headed out for a walk immediately after finishing and within a few minutes I had the hiccups...something I haven't had in YEARS. Then the hiccups stopped (after maybe 5 minutes) but I felt this enormous pressure under my diaphragm like I needed to burp. It was so painful that I turned around and headed back to the house but....vomited before I got a block away. (Sorry neighbors...not a pretty sight to see). :crutch: You'd think that I would have learned my lesson, but NO...I did it again this morning! I got the hiccups immediately after eating, they lasted about five minutes, huge feeling of pressure and then I vomited again. The only improvement over the second time is that I was in MY bathroom and not the neighbors yard! The reason that I am sharing all of this is to get feedback about whether or not anyone thinks this might be more related to acid production versus too fast eating...or maybe a combo? I didn't appear to actually vomit the cottage cheese but more of a stringy, mucus type stuff...is this the dreaded slimes?? :fear: I am not taking anything for acid production as my doc likes to wait and see if it is necessary. I haven't had the feeling of acid reflux like I did before surgery but maybe it won't present itself in the same way? Tomorrow is my 2 week VSG anniversary and I have my follow-up appointment this afternoon so I'll see what the doc say but any other advice is welcomed!

I LOVE this analogy as it is as close as I will ever get to a Ferrari!! I am going to remember this one. I have been much more cautious with my food since the cottage cheese episode and everything is staying down!

Make sure you are getting enough fluids...dehydration can cause a fever! Good luck!

Wonderful news!! Congratulations! I swore I was not going to weigh daily but it is a hard habit to break now that I am seeing decreasing numbers. I didn't have any trouble avoiding the scale before this surgery! LOL