Ok. I finally made it. My surgery was July 20th and I'm feeling pretty good. Glad that's over with. But I wasn't worried because I had a great surgeon (Dr. Hormuz Irani) and was cared for by a fabulous hospital staff (San Joaquin Hospital).

Here's my perspective:

Surgery Experience:

The worst of it was eliminating the air. Because they fill your new stomach pouch with air to check for leaks, the air still lingers in your system until you release it. So, when I got to my hospital room I started burping as much as I could.

The pain wasn't too bad. I didn't use my pain pump that much. But at least it was easily accessible if I needed it, so that was nice.

As far as activity, I started moving as soon as I felt well enough (about 1-2 hours after arriving in my hospital room). My biggest exercise mainly occurred when I went to the bathroom 20 billion times. Also, around my 5th-6th hour in the room, I said I wanted to get up and walk, so the Nurse's Assistant took me for a walk down the hallway. No kidding about moving around. You feel so much better if you start moving around as soon as possible. That's probably why I'm feeling so well now.

My 2nd day in the hospital, I had my swallow test around 9am. No problems there. So, I was able to progress to ice chips, 30 cc's of water/liquid. Everything went down with no problems. I was discharged at 4pm the same day.

Home:

I must admit, my first day home was weird. That air residue was a stinker. I know this sounds gross, but releasing gas and burping was a huge help. I also had a little bit of pain on my left side. I wasn't worried because I knew my body was healing.

On day 2 and 3, I went for a 10 minute walk. That felt really good. Please remember to only do what you can tolerate.

It's day 6 at home and I'm feeling really good. I've lost 6 pounds since the day of my surgery. I'm so glad I made this decision to get the gastric sleeve surgery.

That's just a summary of my first week of gastric sleeve surgery.

Good luck to the rest of you who are embarking upon that gastric sleeve journey.

Great job and that's awesome ????I also had my surgery on July 20.

I hope I can say the same by the end of next week. You're exactly who I want to grow up to be, lol.