orchid
4/2006
I have decided to discuss WLS with my doctor. I have thought about many, many times but just kept telling myself "I am gonna try one more thing first, then I make the jump if it doesn't work". I can not tell you how many times I said that to myself. My husband thinks I should just be happy with me because he is. While I am glad that he is, I just can not be. So I have made the appt. to see my doctor.
4/2006
Saw my doctor and he supports WLS. I really thought this would be difficult, that I would have to beg, cry, what ever to get a Navy doctor to go along, but he was knowledgeable on the surgery and had a surgeon from the area in mind. He will send the referral and make other necessary appts. to get things in motion.
5/5/2006
It took me some time to come to the decision that I wanted to do this. I know some who have done and been successful and some that have not, and even someone that has died. But I have done so many things on my own and no luck. The only thing that ever worked was pills and that was just til I came off of them. So here it is, I decided to go with the surgery. My pcp felt it was a good idea and had no issues with the surgery. He sent me to a surgeon in town. I went to his seminar and then met him in office, I like him. His reputation is great, and his office is great. My husband went with me to meet with Dr. Lord, he did not get to go to the seminar due to a program that one of the children had. He wanted to go and get some more information on the surgery and I guess get a feel for Dr. Lord himself. I am glad that I chose this time to go forward with the surgery, while we were here and got the surgeon that I have.
5/2006
I have had all of my labs done, the x-rays, and ekg. I have to have an upper endoscopy, but we have to submit to Tricare for that. My next appts. are nutritional orientation, nutritional eval, and the psych eval. One is in June but the others are in July. Kinda spaced out, didn't think it would have to be such a stretch in between each step. Onward...
6/22/2006
The nutritional orientation was informative. Tracey is funny and likes to explain everything. My upper endoscopy was not bad. I slept through it, I could feel my self gagging in my sleep though. I was so groggy when I went home, I slept the remainder of the day. I was still pretty tired at work the next day. But in all it was not bad.
7/5/2006
I had my last to appts. today. My nutritional eval and psych eval. Nutrition was what I expected, but I really had no idea what the psych eval would be like. It was pretty ok, Maggie was down to earth (she has had the surgery also) she asked questions about my child hood, family relationships, marriage, children, etc. She talked about changes after the surgery both physical and emotional. It only took about 45mins to an hour. She will send me a copy of her "findings".
7/7/2006
I got my psych eval letter. I am a suitable candidate for the surgery. Whew, now we can get moving. Everything was sent up for final approval from the insurance company.
7/12/2006
Ok, no pending auth showing up in the Tricare system so I made some calls to see what was going on. As it turns out my surgeons office could not request final approval due to the way the original paper work was sent so it has to go back through the navy hospital. Another week of waiting I am sure.
7/22/2006
After still no pending or otherwise auth in the system and a call from the surgeons office about not being to get a response from the pcp office, I started calling the pcp myself. I left several messages stating that the surgeon needed to know if they had received all of the paper work etc. Well no one called me or them, so I started calling daily. I finally spoke with my pcp nurse (she is rude) and she stated that she got "all" of my messages and "all 15 pages" that the surgeon sent over and that my paper work had been sent to Tricare. Everything was taken care of. NOW maybe we can get moving........But no, that was the way it should have been. After checking again to see if I at least had something pending and finding nothing, I decided to stop by the Tricare office after my daughters doctor appt. As it turns out the nurse did not do anything with my paper work until the day I actually spoke with her, nothing!!! So Tricare will not even get it before Monday. &*&^%$#$&&&*!!!!
7/28/2006
Another week and what was once pending now has a big question mark next to it. So, I call Tricare to see what is up. And what, but they requested from my pcp beginning of week for the clinicals that were never sent with the auth request. Well they never got a response from them, needless to say at this point pissed is not even the word. I called my surgeons office and spoke with my angel nurse and she will check it out and see what she can do. Thank goodness for Ruth.
8/9/2006
I finally got my approval!!!!!!! Ruth sent all the paper work and with in a couple of days it was approved. I got my surgery date this week. My preop will be August 22nd and my surgery will be September 5th. I feel like I can exhale now. I filed a complaint on that nurse, no excuse for her attitude or her lack of attention to a patient. She could have just said "sorry but I still have it and I will get it out today" , I do not know why she needed to say she had already done it. But it is done, done, done!!!! And I am scheduled!!!
8/21/2006
Well I have my preop appt. tomorrow. I am glad to be getting the last of it done. I will fill out my preadmission forms and everything will be ready. Not much longer now, I have to say I did think I would begin to get nerves at this point, but no. Maybe the day of- when they put the iv in, maybe then. I am ready to be at the end of the waiting and the beginning of loosing this weight!
8/23/2006
Preop was ok,nothing eventful, I gained "0" pounds while waiting. I guess that is a good sign. I have everything ready,I have picked up everything that I need, and that is a lot of stuff. I will be the first surgery of the morning so..........as I said at the office, Dr. Lord should get plenty of rest!!! LOL I think I am more worried about the pain afterward than anything else, I do not like pain.
8/25/2006
Ok, I have about one more week before surgery. My husband is really starting to get nervous, more so than me. He has put his leave in so that he can stay home with me the first week. My parents will be here on the week end and will leave after surgery. Plenty of people to be nervous. My daughter wants to skip school and stay at the hospital, so I guess we will let her. The little one can go to school, he will just get bored anyway. That pretty much covers everyone that will be here. I begin the liquid diet on Thursday, can we say cranky?
I have a closet full of clothes from before, and I can not wait to get back in them. I will pull them out and once I can fit them I will get rid of them and start getting some more. My husband said he will probably have to get a second job just to keep up with my shopping. All I can say is, don't forget where you left that credit card, it might be full when you find it.
8/27/2006
My surgery is a week from Tuesday and I can not beleive that we are having a hurricane threat now!!!! They were predicting mexico but now the path is all up in Florida. We just can't seem to get a break in this area. If we have large power outages I can hang up my surgery date. This is so not good. I am going to keep my fingers crossed that it strays in some other direction. Now don't get me wrong I do not wish ill on anyone else, but I want to have my surgery and the gulf has been pounded in the last two years. We need some peace this year. Just a couple more weeks was all I needed, and then I could handle the weather kicking up, just a couple more weeks. I am sooooo close. They say it is not suppose to get strong but we all know how that goes once it hits the gulf waters. Come on, can we have this go another way, please?
9/2/2006
Well I only have two days to go. I am very hungry and a little cranky. I tried to go shopping with my mom today to have something to do, besides be hungry, and we could not stay long. I just did not feel so good. I am drinking, drinking, drinking. I will be glad to get the next two days over with. Two more days..................I can't wait to start doing all the things I will be able to do without the weight. I am ready to report my first how ever many pounds lost. I am ready to go shopping, and acutally walk out with something.
9/13/2006
Well it has been a little minute. I had my surgery on the 5th, and all went well. I have been recouping and resting. I had a couple of bad days, I had this pain that started in my left side and I could not seem to get rid of it. After the pain I had about two days where I felt so bloated that I just felt bad all day. I had a lot of trouble getting in my fluids like that, the more I drank the more bloated I felt. It seemed to start working itself out yesterday afternoon. I have not really been eating, to hard to get in liquids much less food. But when I have eaten, I have only been able to eat about a half ounce. I have been walking hoping that would help with the bloating, it does help with getting rid of any stiffness. Some things are returning, I can sit up in a chair longer, I sat up for some time yesterday working on a wreath until I started feeling sore. I am having very little pain at this point most of which is tollerable. I do still have soreness in the left side of my stomach and one incision burns sometimes when I move. But today is my first follow up appt with Dr. Lord, so we shall see how it all is going. Another lady was saying how she felt she had lost nothing going into her first appt. and now I understand what she was feeling. I don't feel like I have lost anything either. But we will find out today......
9/2006
So far, so good. I eat so little I have to wonder how I have not lost all of the weight! Getting all the protein and liquids in is really hard. I feel so full from just a fourth of a protein drink.
10/2006
I had a pain in my stomach so bad I had to leave work (in tears). I called Dr. Lord and he said it was normal. I had to take childrens motrin for several days just to take the edge off of the pain.
11/2006
Am I the only one that feels like the weight is coming off sooooooo slow??? I keep wondering when I am going to see a change.
11/2006
Ok, now I can start to tell that I am loosing something! Now, let us see how we make it through the holidays.
12/2006
Well, I have lost more than 50lbs at this point and I no longer have to shop in the womens plus section!! I have been picking up little things here and there. We are only two weeks away from our Disney trip and I do believe that I will be in a misses 14 by the time we go!!!!!! I will enjoy being in Onederland again while I am in wonderland! I got to cut my hair off again and went platinum. I have not at this time experienced any hair loss, and I hope I get to continue on that path. My little puppies are 7 weeks old and will go to their new homes in two weeks, I will miss them. They have been such a joy to watch grow. 50 some odd pounds lighter has made it easier to keep up with them.
1/2007
I have not been updating as much as I should, but sometimes I am just so busy. So, where am I now. I am about 5 months out and with another 30 lbs will no longer be obese, according to the BMI chart. My BMI has dropped more than 13 points. I am in a 12/14 depending on the make and style. That feels good again, and to think I am still getting smaller. My trouble spots.....hhhmmmm, can we say chocolate?? I love chocolate, I can do without sugar, it makes me so sick, but I love chocolate. I am learning my limits, my body will only allow me to take it a certain amount of sugar at one time and that is it. I can drink a glass of milk with no problem. I have found that I can do a little piece of chocolate (dark, less sugar: or sugar free) and that kills the craving I have for chocolate without hurting my process or making me sick. I still can't eat very much at one time, more than the first month or so. Now when I watch people around me eating large amounts of food it just makes my stomach hurt, I cant even figure where they put it all. I try to stay on a workout schedule but it is hard, there always seems to be things that need to be done. But I do have dvd's for those days and an ab lounge. I can say at this point I have no regrets about this, it is not "easy" (I know how some people like to call this the easy way out), it is work and a lot to adjust to, but still no regrets. I can only imagine the next few months. By one year out I will be smaller than I can probably remember being. Now, if I can just do something about these boobs!!!!!!!
2/2007
I have been spending my time working out and shopping!!! It feels great to shop again. So many cute spring things coming out, and the shoes!!!!!!!!!!! I think I will need my husband to move out of the closet. I need more space. But I am loving it. I have so much more energy and I just feel much better. I can not wait for the weather to start warming up so that I can get out.
