A compliment!

Tuesday got her annual shots on Monday. Because of her extensive health problem last year (the pyometra, blood loss, transfusion and hemolytic anemia), she is susceptible to having another episode of hemolytic anemia brought on as a side effect of her vaccinations. It's something we have to look out for every year for the rest of her life. Dr. B said to keep an eye on her mucous membranes, as paleness of her gums would be indicative of a problem.

Last night Tuesday and Map got to snuggle in the bed with me. Though after an night of battling Perpendicular Dogs, that may not continue! When we got up, Tuesday yawned and her tongue was very pale. Last year, when she had hemolytic anemia, her tongue was white. That scared me to death and I couldn't get the 20 miles to the vet fast enough!

Seeing her pale tongue made me think that a trip to Franklin for a packed cell volume test was in order. Just to be on the safe side. I'd rather err and be wrong than wait and have her get really sick. I called and talked to Rebecca, one of the gals on staff. She said to just drop her off and they'd squeeze her in.

The file they have for my crew has my name as Mary on it, but I go by Denise. (thanks for making this an eternal pain in my butt, Mom and Dad!) When we went in, Rebecca did a double take and said, "Oh, I almost didn't realize it was you!" I assumed she didn't put the face with the folder name or something. Then she went on to say, "because you've lost so much weight!"

Wow! I thought she was confused about my first and middle names. Instead, she almost didn't recognize me because I look different after losing 50-odd pounds! How cool is that?

At first I thought Tuesday faked early morning paleness so she could get some more loving from her friends at Caring Hands. Instead, she found an unexpected compliment for me! I love Missus Tuesday!!! She's my special lady!

COOLEST THING EVER!!!

I had my first Lap-Band fill under fluoroscopy today and it was the most super cool thing I have ever seen.  I love my RNY friends, but their surgery does not provide this level of entertainment for the easily amused.  OMG!!!

Today was a pox on my ass until I got into the fluoro suite.  I actually made a list while I was sitting in the maniacal atmosphere of the diabetes clinic.  Perhaps I'll share that on my other blog.  But the day kept on being a pain, as I went from the main hospital, to the allergy clinic (my arms are killing me from the shots!!!), to the mall where the bariatric clinic is.  I hoped to squeeze in a mammogram (get it?  Squeeze?  Mammogram?!) while waiting for my 3:10 pm fill appointment, but I ran out of time.  And by the time I was finished with the fill, the breast clinic was closed.

But that's okay, because I wanted to hurry home and upload my video!

First, they had me lie down and spent lots of time jabbing me.  My pork was not being helpful and Dr. Carpenter had a hard time getting in there.  Finally, Dr. Williams came in and helped get things going.  I don't have any images of the port shots because I had to lie down and behave.

For fluoro-fills, they use a long length of tubing attached to the needle instead of the syringe directly attached.  This makes standing up and walking around the room MUCH easier.  They got me positioned in front of the x-ray and took a picture to make sure I was standing in the right position.  The squeal you hear when the video starts is me laughing when I realized you can see the hooks of my bra and the lovely underwires!  Baahahahaha!  Oh, also you can see my scoliosis where my spine kinda bends to the left.  Lovely!

So they had me drink a swallow of the barium icky juice.  You can see it (black on the x-ray) go down my esophagus, hit the band and then squirt right through!  I new I didn't have any restriction and I think even the docs were a tad surprised at how quickly that stuff shot through the stoma created by the band.  If you look closely, you can see the band as a dark shadow, kind of canted on a 45 degree angle before the collection of barium in my stomach. Just south east of the bra hooks, if you will.  He added 1.75 ml to my band initially but with that much saline, stuff pretty much came to a screeching halt once it got to the band (about 2:50 in the video) and settled in my esophagus.  

So he pulled out 250 ul and left me with an extra 1.5 ml.  You can see at around 3 min 30 sec in the video that the barium slows down and goes into my stomach instead of chilling in the wrong spot.  But it doesn't zip through the stoma, either.  

I've had 3 ml added to my band in 2 fills.  There was probably about 1.5 ml added at surgery, so I have approximately 4.5 ml in my 10 ml band.  I can't wait to see how things work now, eating wise.  I'm on liquids today and tomorrow, then I'll progress back to mushies on Friday. The real test will begin as I transition back to solid food.

I'm sure it'll still take a few more fills to get to the fabled sweet spot, but having some restriction is better than NO restriction.  And just getting to watch my innards is the coolest thing ever.

TGIF!

It's been a long week and somewhat tedious. I'm kinda glad the weekend is here! Not sure if I'm going to Cincinnati tomorrow . . . if my pal Carra wants to go, I will, but I won't go to the corgi club meeting by myself. That's too long of a drive filled with too many opportunities to hit a drive through! I need to clean house, anyway.

Yesterday was our monthly lap band support group and it was fun. I was a blabber mouthed chatter box the whole time. It was great because there was another post-op there! Though I don't recall her name, she was really nice and was a mere 10 days out from her surgery. Oh, I remember the old days! You know, like 2 months ago!

I did corner my dietician Jessica and had her set up the fancy-schmancy scale for me to weigh in on. I've been going to the gym for two weeks now (like every weekday) and I wanted to check my body composition. Though the scale has not moved much since my last visit (only about 4.5 pounds), my body fat has decreased by 1.6%, I've lost 6 lbs of pure fat and gained about 1.5 lbs of muscle. Oh, yeah! That I like!

I go back for my next fill on Wednesday and I cannot wait! I have been much better focusing on eating right the past few days, but it is a challenge with no restriction. It doesn't even feel like I've had weight loss surgery, truth be told. I'm still in that bandster-hell, between surgery and when you hit that restriction sweet spot where you can't eat tons of food. My 2nd fill will get me that much closer to the sweet spot. And because it's done under the fluroscope, Dr. Williams will be able to do a bit more aggressive of a fill. They'll make me drink barium (eew, gross!) and will be able to see how rapidly it flows from my upper pouch and through my band, into my stomach.

Just 4.5 more days!!! I think I can, I think I can!

And only an hour or so until I can go to the gym. I'm looking forward to that. I am finding it to be a nice, relaxing time of day. Even if 20 minutes on the recumbent bike makes my bum go numb!

A day that worked well

Not to imply that I have a lot of days that don't!  But I'm trying to incorporate regular exercise at the orthopedic center gym AND manage my food at the same time.  It's like trying to rub your belly and pat your head.  There are some times in life I'm not very good at multitasking!

I like how the day went and I wasn't overly hungry between meals, as in gnaw off your own arm.  It was merely nail chewing hunger!

Here's what I did.

• breakfast before work--coffee, one scrambled egg and 1/3 cup 2% cottage cheese
• lunch at noon--3 oz chicken breast, grilled veggies (mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini and red onion) and a carb master yogurt
• dinner at 5--3 oz Boar's Head sliced low sodium turkey and 1.6 oz provolone cheese with 1/2 serving bagel crisps
• dessert at home--water melon chunks

All told, that ends up less than 1100 calories and I believe over 80g of protein.  I haven't done the final totals yet because that would mean getting up and digging my food journal out of my bag!

As I said, I was hungry between meals but I was able to go between meals without snacking.  Usually I eat less at lunch and have my yogurt mid afternoon.  I decided to take turkey and cheese for an early dinner.  It is incredibly low maintenance (no cooking) and super delicious.  I could eat before going to the gym and not have to wait to eat when I get home.  Tonight, after a run to PetSmart to buy dog food, that meant 7:30 pm.  And I had to drive dangerously close to a McDonald's.  But I passed it.  Whew.

One thing about my schedule is that I hate eating dinner so late.  I'd really rather not eat dinner at 8 pm and when I do eat that late, it seems to open the door to make me wanna head hunger eat.  So today's experiment was a nice work-around that went well.  Eat early at work and just have a nice bit of fruit to top off the day when I get home.  

I am scheduled for another fill in a few weeks.  Hopefully once that is done, I'll have better restriction.  Actually right now, I don't really have any.  I had mild restriction in the mornings right after my first fill, but that seems to have abated.  

The goal of the band is to have you eat less than 1 cup of food at a sitting and feel full for at least 4 hours.  Not anywhere near there yet.  I haven't had any stuck episodes to date and have not had problems eating anything.  That's kind of annoying because not having restriction has given me opportunity to eat some things that I shouldn't have.

Just because you could doesn't mean you should.  But on occasion, I did.  This journey is not about maintaining an unrealistic level of perfection.  It's about learning what works and what doesn't.

Of course, adding focused exercise to the mix really helps.  It certainly makes you think twice about eating something not in your best interest when you spent an hour at the gym earlier in the evening.  I have certainly had a challenging evening battling head hunger, but so far so good.  And bedtime is imminent.

I'm going to apply today's format to tomorrow and see how that works.

What is going ON???

Pod people possession continues:  I just ironed a skirt.  

Like pulled out the ironing board, plugged in the iron and used it.  I even used the tape roller prior to ironing said skirt to get all the dog fur off it.

My interest in my appearance is quite entertaining!  My clothes are baggy enough;  I don't want to appear any sloppier.  Hence the ironing action.

Usually I'm like, meh.  Close enough.  Toss it in the dryer with a wet washrag.

Every day has new moments of self entertainment.  It's quite exciting to see what I might do as a result of these changes going on in my life.  Positive change breeds more positive change.

Beats the hell out of a downward spiral any day!