Sunday, April 12, 2009

Bariatric surgery

I thought I would post more about this surgery. Suffice it to say I had an amazingly fast recovery from the surgery itself and went back to work in one month. It took that month to learn how to get down prescriptions, vitamins, milk drink and 3 small (2 ounce) meals per day. At school I have had to really try to get enough water down, one does get very dry mouthed very quickly and that helps the cause. It is time for me to go back to my exercise programs as my walking isn't nearly good enough. The knees still restrict me. Since February 11, I have lost 35 pounds and more importantly, my blood pressure is coming under control. I take my BP twice daily and if it starts to edge up over 130, I take a pill, then it stays down for 5 or 6 days. I am thinking my heart and kidneys are already thanking me for this improvement. Most of the time my blood pressure is well under 120 over 70. My worst days have been days when the blood pressure dropped too low. My doc cut me down on my meds and I cut myself down further.

One of the hardest things has been taking the calcium, it has to be calcium citrate and mine is powder. You don't want to be taking a pill big enough to stop up your exit hole in your stomach! I have found this powder to be rather hard to take. Two days ago I just put 3 scoops in water, stirred it up, kept stirring it and found that the easiest way to deal with it. Then you have to be sure you take it two hours away from your other vitamins. The B vitamins are easy to take and the multi s are Flintstones. I find it funny that my grandson and I now take the same vitamin.

I am giving up on my two most trusty pairs of jeans and found a pair in a box of clothes that fit me better. I think I bought them without trying them on and Levi sizes don't match with Lane Bryant sizes, even these are somewhat baggy in the seat, but at least they won't fall off.

By the way, if you are having trouble finding chewable or powder calcium citrate, don't even bother looking, just order it from amazon.com, they have it and they have cher amino by twin lab which my cousin's daughter recommended. It should be here tomorrow and at a much better price than store price and no standing on your head looking at labels in stores and vitamin sections. And Thiamine? That's B 1, don't forget it, you may never find thiamine unless you remember it is B 1! Then it is easy to find. I just found it very exhausting standing in vitamin sections right after surgery trying to read labels and running out of steam. That may be more because I lost some blood during the surgery and was very sloggy and slow for a while.

Something I have said to everyone in my real world but not here, is that I had almost no pain after surgery and the staff at the hospital said it was my exercise history. I worked out for 3 years with a tough trainer who really got me into good muscle shape in spite of the weight. If I could give anyone advice, it is make sure your abs are in as good a shape as possible and you will not regret it. My "pain" literally felt like a serious ab workout, not the pain I expected. I'm sorry if I am repeating myself from another post.

No comments: