Gastric Bypass 4 Months Out

I am in my second week of daily swimming and am feeling great, getting a super workout in the pool and today I finally went over 65 to a 66lb weight loss. You touch a loss a few times for a few days before you finally lose that pound and move on. Feb11 was my surgery date and things are super. I did chew gum at a movie yesterday and found out why you are not supposed to, the gas it causes is quite painful and malodorous, yuck. I will stick to sugar free mints now. Right now I am looking for my very detailed binder to see if I have any food changes for month 4. Thank you St. Vincent's for such a wonderful guide, and if you are reading this from any where near Indianapolis, I highly recommend St. Vincent's AND Dr. Inman, the surgeon, very thorough, no non-sense woman who is on a mission.
The Movie
Yesterday afternoon I went to see 'My Life in Ruins" and it is not a must see, it is sweet, predictable, has lovely scenery, some laughs, not big ones, and will be just as enjoyable on the small screen at home. I give it two stars.

short post

I am just a few days over 3 months out from surgery, down 53 1/4 lbs and feeling good. Maybe it is all the protein I am getting, but my hair and nails are actually better right now. Hmmm. mysterious. I have learned to get down the 2 TBL of cher amino a day as well as two scoops of EAS whey protein powder in my morning milk. I am running down through old clothes pretty quickly and some of the baggy ones I wear right now look a little sad. I will have to give them up soon. This is just a tiny report from the world of bariatric surgery.

Surgery Update

I have been to two support meetings, and to my surprise, they are interesting and helpful. I put on a pair of shorts today that button and zip, no elastic, I couldn't fasten them a couple of weeks ago, now they are perfect. I have made it cleanly to a 45lb loss. I am approaching 3 full months since the surgery. I am feeling good, still have all my hair (whew Mom), and I am signing up at the Y tomorrow to get back into my swimming. At the last meeting the leader told us St. Vincents is thinking of making a 25lb limit on lifting for life due to the risk for hernias and the bowel twisting, which is life threatening. My biggest problem is remembering to take all my vitamins, especially the calcium which I find disgusting. Osteoporosis is more disgusting, so I think I'll go get some calcium right now. OK, I just got it ready and I'll eat my squash that contains the calcium as I type. I also haven't taken my B12 or B1 this weekend, so I'll do that, too. Lots of people get the b12 shot once a month. I accept that, at the age of 61, my skin is not going to come close to snapping back, hell it didn't when I was 29 and had twins so what's new? Today also looks like a good day to ride the bike and get into that routine.

Not Necessarily Reading Material

Thought I'd record a weird dream to the best of my memory. I dream in full color. My dream last night seemed to be a continuation of a dream from the night before, but now that I am awake, I am not so sure. Leah and I were on a walking trek through some countryside, quite beautiful with a tiger on a slim rope. The tiger would sleep right next to us at night but did not seem to be threat. Then one night the tiger was leaning on me while we were trying to sleep on the ground and we knew it had become dangerous so Leah cut its throat. We then laid it on a narrow platform and took everything wooden we possibly could out of a nearby and very familiar house and built a funeral pyre for the tiger. It seemed to be a very lengthy process to collect enough wood to cremate the entire tiger which was unusually long. There was a crowd scene that followed that I do not remember very well. This dream was saturated with color and I had not taken anything to help me sleep. I also slept all night, though climbing all over that house in every nook and cranny collecting wood, there were no sticks outside, was exhausting. Much of my view of this dream was aerial.

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.

Another YaYa Day

That means a day with my favorite cousins, kids and grand kids. H got to play wildly all afternoon and eat an awful lot of sweets and drink koolaid--poor mommy! I think the ages were 11 down to 7 weeks, the seven week old and the one year old were pretty much out of the fray. There was egg hunting in the forest, big kids riding a golf cart, Reece getting to "drive" Uncle Matt's new orange tractor, with help from Uncle Matt. There was jumping on the trampoline, and for once, Henry is a little kid and had to get out of the way of the big ones in that situation, but he kept going back. My little Tom Sawyer was shoeless all day no matter how brisk and stinging the breeze was. I foresee much sleeping tonight. Daughter took 314 pictures until her battery died. I can't wait to see them, she has a great camera and a lot of talent. AS there always is, there was a groaning board of food, I took a few little bites of things I know are OK for me--too late I saw the deviled eggs, I could have had one of those. Too bad for me.
There was the newly adopted 7 week old and 3 young -pregnant women having second and third children all within a couple of months of each other. Even my son-in-law came for the first time to one of these get-togethers that didn't involve a big white dress. I hope he will come again.

One Week Out

I am feeling so much stronger today even than yesterday, the dietitian said as long as I take my Flintstones the blood will rebuild just fine. I sit here with a slight awareness of one or two stitches on my abdomen, but that is all. Last night was my first full night's sleep since last week. At home i have awakened at 3 or 4 a.m. for a blood draw! I find timing the prescriptions I am still taking, and getting in all the fluids. I may go to a small grocery store today and do a little shopping, I am going to check out the side of the bottle on naked lunch protein, see what the sugar content is, can't have that above #5 on the ingredient list. As of today my weight has ventured down past all the stuff that was pumped into me in my hospital stay.