me me me

I was just in the shower listening to music (Shut up. Yes, apparently this working-from-home thing means I'm in my pj's until 3 p.m. So what. It's comfortable.) Anyway, I had it on shuffle and the last two songs were Seasons of Love, from Rent, and F*** Me on the Dance Floor by Princess Superstar. Oh, iPod, how I love you and your wacky choices.

So, who watched Grey's Anatomy last week? I finally did, and BWAHAHAHAHA! Col. Caldwell gets a candiru! Hee. In other t.v. news, yes, I'm watching Dancing with the Stars, and no, I am not ashamed to say, YES, I have a giant crush on Joey Fatone. He incorporated a light saber into the tango. I have no defense against that.

As far as how I'm feeling, I feel great. For the most part, better than before the surgery, even. I think I've lost at least 25 pounds now, and can really tell when I walk the flight of stairs from the parking garage to the lobby to get the mail. WAY easier already. The incisions are all healing up great, you can hardly even tell some of them are there anymore, and the neck business is barely noticeable now. Still a bit of pain on the left side but it's totally not bad. I have a follow-up with Dr. Snyder tomorrow, so I'll get weighed. Also, I'm hoping to get the all clear for nookie again. Keep your fingers crossed.

Also, note to self: Do not chew gum. Tiny Tummy does NOT like it. Blecch. Barfing up mint-flavored foam is not as pleasant as it sounds.

Getting back to work; getting better

Spoke to my boss today and we've decided to start me on half-days from home this week. It's still hard to sit for long periods, but he totally doesn't care when or really how much I work, as long as I keep up with the e-mail. So, getting back to the real world for me!

Put up a few more pictures of my neck and surgical sites. The neck is a million times better. I was finally able to shower and I loofahed the heck out of it and got all the dead skin off. Way less itchy and looks better. Belly looks better too, although I'm having some trouble with the incision where the drain came out. It feels like it's not closing up and hurts. Mr. Fantastic cleaned it up and put a butterfly bandage on it, and I'm going to pop in to the Doc's office tomorrow and ask him to look at it. It feels a lot better with the bandage, so maybe it needs to be glued shut like the others.

Trying to stay hydrated is a pain - literally - I can't gulp water like I used to, and when I forget and take too big a mouthful, Tiny Tummy protests ouchily. That's taking some getting used to. The good news is I'm not craving any foods or wishing I could eat. So far the cottage cheese, protein pudding and yougurt are doing me just fine, even if it is only an ounce at a time. Takes me half hour to eat it anyway!

Bored bored bored but feeling good.

Le sigh. I am bored. I'm tired of books, magazines, t.v., music, and walking.

In other news, I am feeling pretty good, and seem to be healing up quite nicely. The mark on my neck appears to be getting better, although now giant chunks of flesh are flaking off disgustingly. I want to loofah it or something but it still hurts too much. I'll put up a new picture when I can get Mr. F to take one.

Speaking of Mr. Fantastic...wow, has he impressed me through this whole thing. I mean aside from in general being supportive and hanging with me at the hospital every night and fetching and carrying for me without complaint, he's just been so...I don't even know how to explain it. He's been helping me with all the gross stuff, like changing my dressings and stuff and he's so gentle and caring. He makes me lay down so he can take everything off and clean up and he's so careful pulling the tape off and makes sure there's no leftover adhesive. Watching him so focused, gently dabbing at me with a cotton ball...well, I've just never really had occasion to see him like this before. It's amazing. I'm so self-sufficient, always the one taking care of things, including myself, and it makes me realize I ought to give him more opportunity to do things for me.

What else...oh, I'm now allowed to eat certain solid foods! 1 oz every two hours of cottage cheese, refried beans, pudding or yougurt. I still have to keep up with my protein drinks and water, but this is supposed to help Tiny Tummy slowly adjust to digesting things. It's like starting me on baby food. The good news is, I love all those foods and am very happy to have my 1 oz, although, it took me an hour to eat an ounce of cottage cheese yesterday. Anyway, hooray solids!

I'm back! And doing well.

Hey! I'm back! And mostly doing great, with the exception of a very sore belly. But they gave me some Oxycontin which has helped thus far, although I'm seriously considering not taking any more of it and seeing how much I could sell it for. :)

Surgery went well, but I had a very minor complication which required me to stay an extra night. Was on a morphine pump the first day and a half, then they switched me to liquid Vicodin.

While in hospital, I was surprinsingly uninterested in anything not involving myself and had no desire to even read a magazine, let alone ask Mr. Fantastic to bring Skippy in so I could get online. I had really expected to be bored out of my skull, but it turned out I was much more interested in sleeping than anything else. Plus I had nine thousand visitors, which, while I appreciated very much, completely wiped me out. So, sorry I didn't check in sooner to let you all know how I was doing.

Got home yesterday (instead of Friday as expected) and slept mostly. Today my dad and brother came over to visit and this is the first chance I've had to check e-mail. I've missed you all so much! ♥♥♥♥♥ Many, many graces and thanks to all of you who've posted your support and sent good karma my way. ♥♥♥♥♥ Keep it up, I've still got a lot of healing to do! In the mean time, here's an update on the state of me.

My new belly: Basically, they cut apart my stomach laparoscopically, separated a small pouch from the rest and rerouted some plumbing. The pouch is my new stomach, and for the next few weeks, holds only 1 oz. For comparison, most people's stomachs are about the size of a football and hold anywhere from 40-60 oz. Provided I treat it right, mine will stretch somewhat over time, ending up about 6-10 oz in about a year. For the next three weeks, I'm still on a clear liquid diet and must be vigilant about getting enough water and protein. Luckily, the protein drinks I've got (Isopure) are actually pretty good. It's $2-3 a bottle for 20 oz at my local GNC, but the cool thing is that since I'm basically drinking about an ounce of it every twenty minutes, one bottle lasts me all day. In a few weeks, I'll get to add solids in, like cottage cheese and refried beans and stuff.

The minor complication: was really very minor. Due to the fact that I bruise incredibly easily, there was some extra swelling around important bits of my innards that made it really hard for things to leave the bottom end of my new tiny tummy, which in turn made it really hard for me to put things in the top end of the new tiny tummy. Once the swelling went down enough it was smooth sailing and I was able to stay hydrated and "fed" and off the IV.

Surgical stuff: I've got six incisions, some longer than others - one's over an inch, which I didn't expect! Two of them are drain sites, the rest for the surgical tools. The drains I had are what's called a Penrose drain on the left, which is basically just an open-ended tube sticking out into the world, with the end covered by gauze. The other, which I still have, is a JP drain that is totally gross and includes a tube leading to a collection bulb that I get the pleasure of emptying and measuring and recording the output twice a day. Ick. Plus it hurts. Luckily, that gets taken out on Wednesday.

Pictures: Ugh, I had Mr. Fantastic take some full-length pics of me the night before surgery in a black tank top and boyshorts. He handed me the camera so I could look at them and I was mortifed by what I saw, exclaiming, "OMG, my ass!" He leaned over to look at them and I snatched the camera away and he laughed, saying, "Pooky, I think I already know what your ass looks like." Har har. Anyway, seeing those pictures, I was really, really horrified and gladder than ever I had made the decision for surgery. And I decided I wasn't going to put them up on the internets for all to see, because, seriously, they're gross. But you know what? I did this surgery mostly for my health, not my looks. You all know I'm a pretty self-confident girl, so I decided that if I put up those awful pictures of myself and some other overweight girl with no self-confidence sees them, maybe it'll help her in some way to see that it's not just about how you look, that people can and do look past your weight and see the cool chick inside. Maybe it'll help somebody in some way to see what another fat girl looks like in her skivvies. Because, seriously, how often does one fat girl get to see what another fat girl looks like underneath her clothes? Not often.

Plus, there'll be bonus pics of the surgery sites and the nasty brutalization of the right side of my neck where they put a PICC line in my jugular. Hooray! ;)

I have dutifully hidden my scale as instructed, so I have no idea what I weigh right now, but I'll find out at my follow-up on Wednesday and let you all know. I do know I lost 4 pounds from the 23rd to the 3rd, so the clear liquid diet I was on prolly had a big hand in that. I am thrilled to be home and especially to sleep in my own bed again. I sure did miss the bulk of Mr. Fantastic sleeping next to me.

Will post more soon. Again, thanks to all of you for your kind words and support. I can't tell you how much it's meant to me. ♥

Tomorrow's the big day!

And I am getting slightly anxious. But not much. Yet. 

Ugh. Not helping is that I had to start a clear liquid diet yesterday morning. Jell-o, broth, popsicles, apple juice...basically, if you can see through it, you can have it. I'm hungry. I'll "eat" and then half an hour later, I'll be hungry again. And I'm peeing like crazy. It's fun! Not. It will all be worth it in the end, though.

I took the day off work today to do some laundry and pack a bag for the hospital stay. Also working on getting Skippy (the new laptop) up and running. We haven't got our wireless router hooked up yet, but I noticed there's about three different unsecured wireless networks that I'm picking up from my dining room table. So, if I were to glom on to one of those, what would that mean? I'm using up their bandwidth? Please explain why I shouldn't do that so I can tell myself not to. I know I shouldn't but I don't know why.

For your viewing pleasure, a hilarious video: The iRack

Surgery!

So. A week from tomorrow, I'm having gastric bypass surgery.

I feel weird about making this grand announcement type of thing here. Attention whore that I am, there are still some things I get skeeved by talking about. Sex is not one of those things, but my weight is.

I wasn't going to say anything about the surgery at all, actually. But I figure there's prolly people out there who, like me, are seriously overweight and considering this surgery as an option. Or maybe there are people who are just interested and would like to know more about it. Or maybe there're some people who want to talk about weight issues. Whatevs. I'm cool with that.

I'm going to make this a public record of my progress and just the general process – for myself mostly, but also in case the first-hand information might be useful for someone else. Feel free to ask questions if you have them. Weight is a sensitive issue for many people, including myself, but I will try to be as open and honest as I can, as long as you are friendly. That said…

One caveat: If you have opinions along the lines of either A) Don't have the surgery or B) Stop being a lazy slob and lose weight the old-fashioned way or C) Any variation thereof; keep 'em to yourself. That kind of thing is neither useful nor constructive. I don't want to hear it, and neither does anybody else who has had weight issues their entire life and tried literally everything to lose it. This is a last-resort for me, and a decision I did not make lightly. I've got the full support of my family and close friends and a year's worth of research behind me.

And in the end, this is my playground and I get to make the rules. Rule number one? Play Nice.

So, if you're interested and you're down with playing nice, read on for more.

Vital stats: I'm 5'1" and as of Friday, weigh 265. That's considered "morbidly obese" on the BMI scale. At my height, anywhere from 98 to 132 pounds is considered normal. The goal my surgeon set for me is 135, which is what I weighed in high school. I was never thin; I've always been curvy or voluptuous, I've always been packin' the T&A and that's never going to change. I have no unrealistic expectations of looking like Mary Kate Olsen or Nicole Richie, who are both roughly my height. (blecch, not that I'd want to! Also, not that either of those girls actually comes anywhere close to weighing 98 pounds soaking wet.)

All I really want is to make sure I'm healthy and can have children soon. Not hating movie theater seats and being able to cross my legs are just bonuses.

Health: Now, I'm not anywhere near death, as the title "morbidly obese" would seem to imply – actually I'm in very good health considering my weight. I don't have most of the problems typically associated with someone so significantly overweight, such as sleep apnea, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and joint pain.

I do get upper backaches from hauling around these enormous tits. And I've got PCOS, the cause of which is often weight-related, but, in a nifty little Catch-22, it also makes it difficult to lose weight. It also causes infertility. With weight loss, the PCOS should resolve itself and Mr. Fantastic and I will be able to have kids before I stop being a late-spring chicken.

And of course, you all know I've been pretty depressed over the last while, although that's vastly improved since Mr. Fantastic started his job. (Personally, I don't think the depression is weight-related. I'm pretty self-confident and I don't go around bemoaning being fat all the time. I'm active, social, have lots of friends and in general haven't found that my weight has limited me. But I digress.)

The combination of my weight and PCOS puts me at extra huge risk for diabetes and high blood pressure & cholesterol, but amazingly, I am not currently having nor have I ever had those problems. But the older I get, the longer I go being overweight like this poses an ever-increasing threat to my overall health.

The upside of all this (if you could really say there's an upside) is that according to my doctor and my insurance company (which just happens to be the company I work for), my health is at risk enough that they will pay for the surgery. So instead of being out ~$20k, I have to pay my coinsurance and my health insurance pays for the rest.

Surgery: The surgery is Tuesday, April 3 at 9:30 a.m. Mr. Fantastic and I have to be there at 6:30 (oy vey!) for all the prep and junk they hafta do ahead of time, like IVs and such. The surgery lasts 1 ½ - 2 hours and is done laparoscopically with six ¼ to ½ inch incisions. Afterwards, I'll be in recovery for another hour or so before they take me to my room.

They'll keep me in the hospital a few days to make sure I'm getting enough nutrition and that everything's okay, and I'll likely be released on Friday the 6th. After that, I've been instructed to stay away from the office for two to three weeks, but I am allowed to work from home for short periods as long as I get up and walk around at least once an hour.

In Conclusion: I thought about the surgery, researched it, talked to people who had it, talked to Mr. Fantastic about it, talked to my dad and brother about it, talked to my friends and other loved ones about it, talked to my PCP about it, attended a seminar about it.

Then I had a consult with the surgeon and he sent me for a bunch of tests, including the sleep study I mentioned, a psychological evaluation, a pulmonary study, a bunch of blood work with my PCP, chest x-ray, EKG, and more blood work, a nutrition class and more consultations with the surgeon.

I've got all sorts literature and instructions provided by the nurse (who does the nutrition) and the surgeon and am really, really excited and looking forward to this life-changing procedure.

Of course, all this means I'll be bored out of my mind while in the hospital and at home during my enforced captivity recovery period. So, anyone who wants to write me or something to keep me entertained during that time will have my utmost graces and thanks, be adored and petted from afar, and surely will earn many positive karmic points.