Hello, my name is Ed aka Danger Mouse. I'm originally from Austin, TX but currently live in Upstate NY outside Albany. My surgeon is Dr. Baranov in Saratoga Springs, and I had my RNY Gastric Bypass surgery on August 10th, 2015. This is my story.

IN THE BEGINNING

I posted the meat of this in another thread a week or so ago, but I figured it's a good way to start out a thread on my story and use it as sort of a living diary I guess post op...as long as I can keep it up. So I start at the beginning...

When I see pictures of myself when I was younger (before 9 years of age), I was very skinny.

Before that time my parents would send me to after school daycare. There they would feed us a small snack and then send us outside into the playground until our parents came to pick us up. When I was 9, I started walking the mile home from school. Even with that exercise, being home alone for a couple of hours before the parents got home opened up the entire refrigerator for me, leftovers and all.

I still remember when I turned 13 years old, I had to take a physical to play football. On the paper I turned into the coach I was 5'10" tall and weighed 215 pounds. I never grew another inch as I still stand 5'10".

Strangely enough I was a pretty decent long distance runner. I loved it! I remember clocking in a 6.5 minute mile which seemed pretty impressive for my size and age at the time.

When I got to college, we had to take a couple of PE credits, and I elected to do weightlifting. Our pass/fail grade was based on how much weight we could bench press and leg press divided by our actual weight. That was quite an incentive to hit the weights hard and lose some weight. I started my first freshman semester at 265 pounds and got down to 238 pounds a year later.

I would do the weightlifting class Monday and Wednesday afternoon then head home and run 3 miles.

Then my sophomore year, it all fell apart. I became a delivery driver for Papa John's. Oh, yeah! Free food!! It was all over after that. I never ran again and very rarely lifted any more weights.

Unfortunately I don't have any weight statistics from when I was 19 until I was 31. I never went to the doctor or made any effort to weigh myself. My guess is that I got upwards of 350+ pounds before 2003 when I started exhibiting symptoms of diabetes. I didn't recognize those for what they were though, and I really loved the weight loss that came with being a hardcore diabetic. I remember running into a woman at the time who I had known before the diabetic weight loss, and she mentioned that I looked really good. I felt like I looked good, but oh man, was I feeling crappy in other areas: constantly thirsty, dry mouth, constantly urinating, etc., etc. However, since I had no idea I was diabetic, I was continually downing sodas and just about everything else with tons and tons of sugar.

When I finally saw a doctor in 2006 I was 300 pounds with blood sugars in the 300's. He immediately put me on insulin, and I gradually got up to 390 pounds in a year. I've documented what happened next in other threads, but I stayed at around 390-400 until late 2010. I was put on Victoza and lost about 60 pounds over the course of a year. Then I put it all back on in 2012 and then some.

It was in October 2012 when I went to see my cardiologist at the time that I realized it was probably time to do something. His scale didn't go over 400. They couldn't document my weight at the time, and when the nurse left me in the examination room, I lost it and broke down. That's when my cardiologist recommended WLS. It was something I thought about afterwards, but I really am so commitment-phobic, I just wasn't sure I wanted to put that kind of commitment in myself.

In July of 2013 I lost my job of 15 years due to a reduction in force. That certainly didn't help matters, and I became very depressed. It took me a few months, but I ended up taking a job 1800 miles away from where I lived in Austin, TX to where I now live in Upstate NY north of Albany. That was in February of 2014.

I discovered a new diet! It's called The Wisdom Tooth Extraction Diet!! I've had amazing results in just one week post-extraction. I've lost 6 WHOLE POUNDS in 8 days!

Ugh...all joking aside, the weight loss I've experienced after my wisdom teeth were removed last week has me wondering if I was really in a stall or maybe just eating too much, if that's such a consideration as gastric bypass patient. After the removal, the first day I was told to just eat cold, liquidy foods. I mainly ate yogurt and Protein smoothies mixed with blended frozen fruit. I was told I could switch to smooth foods on the second day, but I was really in too much pain. I also didn't really have much of an appetite. Even now, 8 days later, I really don't want to eat. I have to force myself to eat.

I still feel some discomfort chewing as well especially on the lower right side of my teeth; not really painful, just annoying. I had a couple days where I guess I bit my inner cheek which became swollen and made the whole ordeal even worse. As a result of that chewing discomfort I would end up swallowing my food without chewing it well. This resulted in my feeling fuller way faster than I normally would. Thus I would eat less.

So why question the stall? Well, eating much less with no appetite these last few days did result in a 6 pound weight loss. I had been stuck pretty much in the same weight range for two months before the teeth removal. Would I still have lost 6 pounds had I not had the oral surgery? I doubt it. As I do get my appetite back, and ability to chew without discomfort, I'll see if I end up gaining that six pounds back. In the meantime, I'm left to re-evaluate if even the little food I had been eating during my stall was really too much still.

Edited October 13, 20169 yr by DangerMouse007

Oh, yeah.

Next week is my regular six month endo appointment. I already did my blood work last week (after the oral surgery because I totally forgot it needed to be done). I received the results Monday morning online (thank you, Labcorp for setting that up and for doing it so quickly since it normally takes more than a week!). My A1C was 7.0 which is the lowest it's ever been since I was first officially diagnosed with Diabetes 10 years ago (and probably my lowest A1C since at least 2002/2003). Obviously it's still not ideal...not by a long shot since it highlights that I'm still rather dependent on insulin medication. Everything else on the lab report was normal although it mentioned that I might be a little dehydrated. I'm not sure how it's measured, but I did the blood work two days after my oral surgery, and I can tell you I was in no mood to drink much of anything after my wisdom teeth were removed.

Does everyone go through stalls? Or just some of you ?

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I imagine everybody goes through them in one form or another. I believe it's the body's way of adjusting...scientifically speaking. I think there's some kind of post or article detailing the reasons...scientifically.

I know somebody where I work that lost 310 pounds with the gastric sleeve in 2 years. He told me he refused to deal with stalls so he did whatever he could to break out of them as quickly as possible whether that was increasing physical activity or changing the way he ate, etc. If it works, great, but I'm not too sure about that. Stalls really do suck and are very discouraging...until all of a sudden the weight melts away again...

Just realized I started this thread just a little over a year ago. Nice!

Unfortunately I haven't had much to add. I gained a little bit of the weight I lost from the wisdom tooth extraction nearly 2 months ago, but nothing major. My weight seems to be fluctuating between 249 and 253. I've noticed that when it does get up to 253, then I'll go a few hours of urinating like crazy and end up around 249 or 250. As mentioned before, I'm a little disappointed that this seems to be my "equilibrium" weight for now. I've been around this weight for nearly 4 months now so I imagine now it's a matter of more exercise and maybe stricter control of my diet (which I've said before). While I am happy to be down to a size 44 waist (down from size 64 two years ago), I still have a lot of belly fat. A lot! It would be nice to get rid of as much as possible.

Anyway, Happy Holidays all!