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Hi All! I’m a 58 year old female . My bypass is scheduled this month, and I’m beyond petrified. I’ve cancelled my surgery 3 times in the past 15 years ( mostly because my mom always scared me out of doing it)… I’ve since lost her and I feel I can no longer carry all this weight. I have so much inflammation / pain everywhere in my body ( ie joints) … But my surgeon does not require weight loss beforehand or at least the liver shrinking diet pre-op ( and I planned on starting it this week on my own, but didn’t! ! I don’t trust myself to be able to do what it takes to be successful ! I don’t feel I have the support to go through with it ! I’m afraid of rerouting my digestive system! Of complications! The bariatric center in my area is “ going thru changes” ( doctors words) … there is no support group… But I have back pain and I need to go to work everyday! …. I have this small window of time to recover as I have help to cover for me . But I am SCARED! I change my mind all the time! ( I haven’t told the doctor just in case on that day I feel I can go through with it! I know! I know! It’s crazy and I’m driving MYSELF crazy!

Thank you so much! Funny, I just realized that you are British! In US we call the theatre, surgery room, and we do not have Paracetamol (I remember that medication since I grew up in Europe, my Mom used to give it to me as a child). 😀 I think the US equivalent is Tylenol. Very encouraging information! The fact that you are doing so well with no other pain medication is great! We are going into the weekend and my surgery is on Monday. I hope to do as well as you. Stay strong, keep hydrated. I was told that the first couple of weeks are a bit hazy due to all the hormonal changes. Rest well, we will talk soon, praying for you tonight (it is 12:30 am where I live 😀).

Gall removal is pretty common for bariatric & non bariatric people. Rapid weight loss can be a cause of stones & changes to your liver function which may have added to your enlarged bile duct. (Liver function usually becomes normal once your weight loss slows or stabilises.) High fat diets, menopause, Gilbert’s all can result in stones being formed which in turn can cause bile duct enlargement. Did the say if you had any stones? Or if they thought it occurred because of an infection or any non bariatric surgery/weight loss issues? I had my gall removed 2yrs after my surgery. I had a single stone. (Weight loss, menopause, Gilbert’s increased my risk.) My surgeon used the same incisions as he made for my sleeve so no additional scars. My recovery was okay. Home the next day. No issues. A bit tired. A bit achy. Didn’t need the prescribed opioids by day 3. I had gas pain this time after not having any with my sleeve. Big difference of course was not having to be on a restricted diet after the surgery. I had a bit of diarrhoea for about a month because the gall regulates bile entering your upper intestines to aid the break down & absorption of fats. Life post surgery is much the same as it was before surgery. Some people struggle with eating fatty food - my aunt describes it feeling liverish - nauseous, tired, abdominal discomfort. I don’t have an issue with fatty food but then my diet is pretty low fat anyway. My sister-in-law & I have random bouts of diarrhoea about once a month +/-. We put it down to our digestive system maybe getting a bit too much bile at times & it irritates the intestines. It comes on more quickly but not a sudden unexpected attack.

Ok so I’m now 3 weeks post op and today everything taste like metal. 😑 why does this randomly happen?

it's very common to have a 10-20 lb rebound weight gain after hitting your lowest weight. It's more your body "settling in" to its new set point. Happens to most of us in year 2 or 3. However, beyond that, it's up to you. If you continue to monitor your food intake and keep active, you'll be able to maintain your new weight. If you let old habits slip back in and start eating like you did before surgery, you'll end up gaining most of it back.

not everyone loses hair - and some don't lose enough that others notice (like me). Some do lose more - but it's more like shedding - not big clumps of hair like people on chemo lose. And it grows back. I lost hair from about month 5-9, and again, it was pretty minimal so no one else would have noticed. In the end, it's a small price to pay for what you get from the surgery nausea/foamies - not uncommon in the early weeks out when you're trying to experiment to see what your stomach is going to tolerate (and often things you can't tolerate early on you CAN tolerate later). I really don't deal with that at all anymore would I do this again? HELL YES! In a heart beat. I'd go back and have it done every year if I had to. Totally worth it. One of the best decisions I've every made.

One reason I challenged myself to the C25K was after carrying 500+ extra pounds for a lot of years my knees weren't going to hold up for long. I never intended to do much more than just accomplish the goal (by running 5k 4 times a week for a month) and move on. But I came to really enjoy what I got out of it and next thing I knew I was binge running. It was surprising my knees held up for as long as they did and I may have pushed it a bit far. My knees and other medical issues conspired to end my running right after marathon #5 which was 18 years ago. Good luck, Tek

So I went to see the doc 2 days ago as my cramps weren’t getting better. She prescribed a CT scan to make sure I wasn’t suffering from an intestinal hernia. I did the scan yesterday and the results are in: no hernia, thank Goodness, however, an enlargement of the gallbladder duct, which could cause all my cramping, nausea, vomiting and overall pain. My doc prescribed some buscopan and some meds against nausea and diarrhoea… if nothing gets better in 2 weeks time, I’ll have to do a cholecystectomy to remove my entire gallbladder. I know people live perfectly fine without their gallbladder, but I am so scared of going through yet another procedure of which I won’t know the consequences of… already this enlargement only happens rarely. Has anyone gone through this already? I’ve lost another couple of pounds recently and I can barely walk up the stairs without feeling exhausted 😩

I have already reprogrammed my brain a bit just doing the Optifast for 4 weeks. I detoxed in a sense with all the foods I was addicted to and I don't really crave them now. What I crave is just eating solid foods and not liquids and soft foods. When I do have some of those "bad" foods again, it won't be in the huge amounts that I used to it - because A: I will feel full sooner due to my stomach size now and B: I am learning a whole new way of eating in general. I am never going back to what I used to be.

I saw my doctor today and got weighed just to see if the scale is different there than at home. I am 380, which of course I am happy about - but like I said, much of that was from the Optifast prior to surgery. I am not going to focus on the scale, but like I said before I was expecting a bit more of a woosh of weight loss since having the surgery. As I said before, I lost 20 ponds in two weeks just doing keto and moving a bit more - again I know that is water weight and also that wouldn't continue, but it was a great feeling nonetheless at the time. I agree with your points about nonscale victories and a month from now, I may be singing an entirely different tune on here. I was just thinking outloud and giving my initial thoughts per this thread. Thanks for the support. HM

Thank you. I am on week 2 right now doing purée foods and so far so good. I feel like I am eating and drinking too much. It’s weird since day one I’ve not had trouble eating or drinking liquids other than making sure I go slow, I feel like I’m taking in 4oz of purée at a time. Other than that the incision where the stomach was removed is still sore but I am able to bend and walk. Hope everyone is feeling better this month as well!

You have a tough regime. Most of us have 2 weeks of each phase. The liquid phase is the hardest because we naturally want to chew. You are also getting over really tough surgery. Its a hard learning curve and you will be so sore. Your hormones are doing summersaults just now. Its a full on smack in the face. You have to white knuckle the liquid part that your team has set for you. You need to let your stomach heel. It will all pass very quickly. We all got passed it and we got fed up too. I couldn't do puree but I could do strained soups. Just do your best. It would not do any harm to contact your team and ask if you can have a little leeway with your diet. Try hot cold and frozen clear liquids just for a little variation

Hi, So I’m 10 days post op and in liquid diet phase and it’s dreadful. My plan as per my dietician is 4 weeks of clear liquid 4 weeks of puréed phase and 4 weeks of soft foods before real food.I am fed up with my food now and want to have some real food. How do I overcome this?

I've lost a similar weight to you in roughly the same time span. I did lose more post op than pre op though, 7kgs vs 10kgs. In the infamous 3 week stall now. Plus I'm backed up and working on fixing that issue. Taking a break from the scales. You need to be patient. This isn't the 100 metre sprint, it's an ultra marathon. If you do a bit of googling you'll see that the first 6 weeks isn't a time to expect anything much. You're body is adjusting to its new way of life. Hang in there, I'd anticipate you'll have weeks of great losses given you're starting a bit higher. It will come off nice and steady. Join our May Surgery thread, we're all there for each other.

The only thing I ended up taking out was my tablet and charger. I wore the same clothes home. I slept all day after my surgery, just waking up for small periods. The next day I had a 2 hour nap and went to bed at 7.30pm. I focussed on drinking so I could go home! Good luck next week!

I barely lost in the first two weeks post surgery and promptly stalled at the end of week 2, where I proceeded to stall frequently throughout the entire first year. My rate of weight loss post surgery was the same as my rate of loss doing calorie counting pre-surgery. I never had the big-loss-numbers some others have. But it still worked, I reached goal at around month 13/14. Despite not losing fast, it worked. It's done what I needed it to do, it stopped me self-sabotaging and continues to be the adult in the room when it comes to me and food. Losing slowly and steadily is ok! So long as you stick to the plan, the weight comes off. If you're an emotional eater, get yourself a bariatric therapist who can help because the primary thing this surgery does is help with portion control. Everything else is down to us, the calorie counting, the staying on plan, and getting on top of any mental issues that have contributed to obesity and may cause trouble down the line.

Ok, is painful intercourse a part of the changing hormones from losing weight, or should I talk to my doctor about it being another issue? It's not really dryness, though there is some. It is mostly pain during, not after.. I thought increased estrogen would help. It's only been in the last few weeks that this has been going on.

I've lost 20 since surgery (4 weeks) and 15 lbs during the preop diet for a total of 35 pounds. That's about what you lost, right? I stalled around 2.5 weeks in that lasted well over a week. Hang in there. It will come off. And like someone said, make sure you're tracking everything, and I'll go farther and say, before you ever eat it. What if you focused on some nonscale victories. For me it was a smaller size piece of clothing or getting my shoes on without huffing and puffing. Just today, I put on a shirt that didn't fit prior to surgery. Your body is doing a lot of behind the scenes work that may not be reflected on the scale.< br>This is not an easy process, and you don't have to do it alone.

When I got down to about 100 pounds overweight I challenged myself to run 5k just to prove I could. I did a program similar to Couch to 5 K (C25K). It took about a month. I discovered I enjoyed running. I could use to time to put the day in order and ponder life's challenges. I started adding distance, then worked at improving time. At some point I decided on running a marathon, so got a book (Idiot's guide to Marathons) and followed the program there. The more I ran the more I enjoyed it. I lived in Las Vegas at the time and decided I would run in the Valley of Fire Marathon which was out in the desert near Lake Mead. A couple months before the marathon I had a business trip to Long Beach and as it happened the Long Beach Marathon was that weekend. I decided I would sign up and use it as a training run. I didn't really intend to finish, but as it turned out I did. It was wonderful. So my second marathon was Valley of Fire, which was up and down a hill. Very challenging. My third marathon was Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach. 4th was San Francisco Marathon where I got to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. This was a tough one for me. I tripped at about 1/4 mile from the start, landed hard on my chin. I new there was an aid station about mile 4 on the other side of the bridge, so I said I'd get to there and call it a day. By time I got there I didn't feel bad at all, the bleeding stopped and the aches were subsiding, so I continued knowing I could cut to the half marathon if necessary. The half marathon cut off was about mile 11, and I was doing well so I just stuck with it. At about mile 13 was the first sustained uphill where I finally needed to take some deep breaths and realized I couldn't. I trudged as well as I could to the end, where they diverted me to the hospital tent then the hospital. Turned out I had a broken rib and required stitches in my chin. My 5th and last (as it turned out) was Long Beach Marathon, a year after my first. I was way past goal at this point, and couldn't eat enough to stop losing weight. For the year of marathons I ran about 90 miles a week, went through a pair of shoes every 6 weeks. I'm prouder of my marathons than I am of losing 500+ pounds. To your questions: I never worried about fuel during a run that was less that 15 miles. Over 15 I did a "goo" every 5 miles. Hydration is where I focused. That and breathing. I had to be careful as most "fuel" is heavy on sugar and I dump on sugar. I did dump a few times until I learned my tolerances of different products. I did yogurt before and after. Building stamina is what the C25K and other programs are about. Keep a running log & journal so you can see your improvement, which is extremely motivational. Be patient. Good luck, Tek

My stall hit a couple days before I was 2 weeks post op and lasted a solid 2 weeks. But the scale is finally moving downward again, much slower pace, but it’s going down! I’m a month out today!

I'm pleased to report that my surgery is now scheduled for early next week. I've been following all the pre-op guidelines to the letter- including the diet. I actually feel pretty good- way better than before and the surgery has yet to happen. Today, I did the pre-admission process at the hospital and the folks there --they have a specialized unit-- could not have been nicer. They use some method to reduce pain that does not involve opioids and the fact that I will be on a liquid diet for the first several weeks after the procedure will no doubt lead to some immediate weight loss. But then the real work begins, and I'm looking forward to it-- walking (something that has been more difficult during the last year due to weight) and eventually getting back to the gym. I am eager to get back into good physical condition. Mentally, I'm psyched. As to food and eating, I've found that even apart from the pre-op diet, my taste for a lot of food and my ability to eat large portions has already diminished due to gastric problems so I'm not going to be disappointed that I can't carve into a big honking' slab of steak. We'll see if my attitude changes over time--I never obsessed over food though I was always a good eater. It's just that all the tumult of gastric pain and reflux made it unenjoyable. And I'm really looking forward to fitting into some clothing that I've not been able to wear for a while. I know this is going to take time, but I feel like I'm fortunate to have explored this path and want to take full advantage of it. Will report back post-surgery and may have questions. The surgeon's office has been wonderful and seems to be very well coordinated with the bariatric unit of the local hospital here. I've been very impressed, having had some terrible hospital experiences in NYC when I lived there.

OP we all second guess and over-analyse immediately after our surgery. If you stick to your plan you WILL lose weight. Significant amounts of weight. You cannot not do that. However - you will NOT lose weight in a linear fashion. There will be many weeks (or even the occasional month) where you will lose virtually nothing despite knocking your socks off. What matters is that in the long term (18 months or so) if you do what you are asked to to use your sleeve to the max then you will lose LOADS! Welcome to your journey - it's quite the ride for lots of us!

Yep my surgery was 5/15, I am at a stall. Only 19 lbs so far. So now on soft blended food. I mix up casserole dishes for hubby, family, add everything I can eat , take out a couple cups, blend if necessary and half fill 4 ramekins. I then go forward with fixing the casserole for the family, bake as directed. Freeze 3 of the ramekins for me later. So far everything tastes good. Look up noodless tuna noodle casserole also cauliflower mushroom risotto

Yes I am running 18 months after my sleeve. Many years ago I did much longer distances - lots of half marathon type runs. Then I got properly fat and couldn't run any more but missed it hugely. Since I have got down to a normal BMI I am running again, but much shorter distances, and only with the aim of maintaining weight loss and general fitness - I have nothing to prove to anyone these days distance wise. I can run 3 or 4 miles easily and I do that (or less) a couple of times a week. I could push it and extend that but I have no inclination to. If I can keep this up as part of my maintenance regime I will be a VERY happy bunny.

Just got call from surgeons office! My insurance has approved my surgery and I’m ready to go for June 22! Monday I start 3-4 protein shakes per day plus 1-2 cups raw vegetables. Scared but ready to get going on this! Thinking of all you June people! We got this🥹❤️