Thanks for the best wishes everyone!

I should be released this morning (Sunday), hopefully around 9 am.

The surgery was a nightmare - I was under for FIVE hours (I'm not sure if I was acutally in surgery for four or five hours, but I was out of the room for five hours). The doc said I was full

of adhesions, and they all had to be cut and cleaned away. When I woke up from the anesthesia, I was in pain like you can not believe. I was crying, moaning, whimpering. Dr. Lopez said they had to give me THREE times the pain killer to bring my pain under control. Once that initial pain was taken care of, the rest hasn't been so bad. Late afternoon Saturday they took out the drain, and removed the IV bag but left in the hand catheter to give me antibiotics and pain medicine.

Friday when they tried to put in my IV, the girl hunted and poked around in my hand with the needle, then gave up and tried up on my arm by the elbow. She kept fiddling with it - pushing it in, pulling it out, pushing it in. I'm lying down for all of this, but said "I'm going to faint." and did.

Cheryl said it was pretty freaky, because my eyes were still open, but rolled back in my head, and my mouth was open and I was making weird noises. The nurse gave her the smelling salts to hold under my nose and went off to get help. Cheryl said

then my face flushed a brilliant red, and I started thrashing my hands around. Very weird and creepy.

Right now my back hurts more than my stomach from laying on it so long. I begged them to let me send an email - these machines are only for their cancer patients, but for $5.50 the gal gave me the password.

I am feeling much better this morning (Sunday) - can you imagine that at the moment, my shoulder hurts worse than any other part of me? That muscle stiffness really settles in.

The doc finally came by Saturday, and said that he had to use stitches instead of glue for my incisions, because the stomach is full of bacteria, and it wasn't safe to just glue the incisions shut. I'm not sure how that would make a difference - gluing as opposed to sewing, but I have big black ugly stitches across each incision that I'll have to come back in two weeks to have removed.

Dr. Lopez also said that all the adhesions was an indication that my body was trying to get rid of the foreign body from the get go, so it really wasn't anything done on my part that caused the erosion - just my body's way of dealing with a foreign object. Thank God.

I see it's only 6:30 here at the moment, so I will probably trundle back off to bed for another hour or so. Dr. Carmen is supposed to come by around nine and release me. They were three and a half hours late yesterday, so I take nine with a grain of salt. Hopefully she'll take us back to the Mexicoach station, though, when she leaves, as opposed to us having to wait for the hospital's driver.

The night was uneventful, and I don't have much other news for you my wonderful online friends and support network. The

best news so far is that I have absolutely no hunger to speak of - I could not even finish my Jello and tea that they brought for dinner last night, and I worked on it for over an hour. I'm sure that won't last, but maybe by the time I get home I will have seen those last few pounds disappear and put me at one of my two intermediate goals - century club, or onderland. God, after all this, I'm still worried about losing weight. Sigh.

Thanks again to all of you for your prayers and well wishes. I'm sure the rest of my recovery will be uneventul, and I plan on catching up on messages and posts in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, I hope everyone else is happy and well, and that your journeys are bringing you pleasure.

Love to all -

Donali

Hey Donali,

Thanks for responding back to my questions. Dr. Lopez or his staff never gave me a card saying I am a lap band recipient. That office is so inconsistent. I can relate with you about timing issues down there too. NOTHING EVER ran on time when I was down there. My brother had come with me and he has that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He is fanatical at anything with a hint of germs, time issues and the whole nine yards. He went CRAZY down there. He was ready to give Nora and Dr. Carmen the boot. On the other hand he thought they were pretty cute too so he had some mixed emotions about them LOL... Well, thanks again Teresa

Donali,

Glad to hear your healing well...and yes that's a waist! If I keep eating all these Oreo's I'm going to lose mine!

Love ya!

......definitely a waist Don! Looking good (well, in the tummy area, which is all I can see!!) Hope you're feeling better today?

Ps Thanks so much Penni for all your great advice - takin' notes here!