2 1/2 Weeks Post-Op - Struggles & Updates

My two weeks off from work to recover flew by honestly. My recovery went really well, thankfully. I did much better than I expected too. I've been able to drink fairly easily without any nausea or vomiting, which is awesome. Overall I have felt really good physically.

Mentally, this has been rough. It's been especially rough the last few days. It all came to a head yesterday. It's been a combination of things. Diet, lack of progress, and my hormones being out of whack have all contributed to it. I'll get into the rough stuff below, then into the better stuff from today.

I'm almost 5 weeks into my liquid diet. I am so over it. Beyond over it. I want to actually chew something. For those who know me, I have a massive sweet tooth. I can't stand anything sweet at the moment. Also, my tastes are changing. Protein shakes and water enhancers I loved before surgery I can't stand now. It's not just that though. It started Wednesday and got really bad yesterday, but I don't like the taste of anything at the moment. Plain water, water with flavor, any of my protein shakes, the protein soup mix, jello, none of it. It all tastes bad. I can't describe the flavor and I really don't want to. I have to drink 3 shakes and get 50-60 ounces of liquids in a day, and I don't want any of it. So I'm literally choking down stuff to make sure I don't get dehydrated. To top it all off, I found out my lactose intolerance is back. Lucky me.

All of the food issues would be bearable if I was seeing some sort of progress, but I'm not. The scale hasn't moved the last week. It's basically a nice flat line on a graph within a 1lb. range. I'm also looking at my clothes and not seeing any changes there. This is beyond frustrating given all the work and pain I've gone through these last months.

One of the other fun side effects of surgery is it plays havoc with your hormones. First off, by removing 80% of the stomach, you are removing a lot of the area that produces and secretes the hunger hormone ghrelin. The stress of surgery puts all of your other hormones out of whack, including all of the lady hormones. It can cause your period to start early and make the mood swings worse. So this week has been a bit of hell for me. It hasn't been all that fun for my husband either.

Yes, I know I'm only 2 1/2 weeks out. Yes, I know it takes time. These are logical thoughts and great ones. I was telling them to myself last night in an effort to get out of my funk. My emotions did a big old "Screw you!" and ignored all scientific fact and logic.

All of this built up in my head over the last couple days and the dam broke last night. I was absolutely regretting the surgery last night. I know most everyone has seen this picture:



I didn't feel like I was carving my way out of this body. I felt more trapped than ever. I felt like I was trapped in this horrid cage of a body and clawing madly with no way out. It was not a good night.

I woke up feeling a little better today thankfully. I also had follow-ups with my surgeon and dietitian since I start solid foods next week.

I talked to Dr. Greene about everything. It's all normal. Because of my starting weight and how long I've been on the liquid diet, stalls at 2-3 weeks out are exceptionally common in his patients. He was expecting it. Since I'm starting on solid foods next week, I should start seeing the scale move soon.

It's also normal for tastes to change. I knew from research and talking to Dr. Greene that my tastes would change. I thought it was just what I would and wouldn't like, but it's not. It's even how food tastes in general. They aren't sure what causes the tastes to change. The current theory is that between removing a lot of the hunger hormones and the changes in the bacterial biome in your gut, your tastes change. He apologized for it being so rough, but it happens to almost everyone.

Overall he is very happy with my recovery. I have no hernias at my incision sites. I'm almost done with my blood thinner shots. Thank heaven. They cause the worst bruising. If anyone needs some ideas for a color palette for zombie makeup, I can send pictures for your Pinterest board. I'm calling my belly a zombie dalmatian.

The dietitian is pleased with my progress too. We went over what I can and can't have the next couple of weeks. I'll get into that in another post.

So yeah. I'm doing better than I thought I would be. In some ways, this is harder than I thought, and I knew it would be a struggle going in. Thankfully no one has told me I took the easy way out by doing this. The way I feel at the moment I would bitch them out until kingdom come if they did. There is nothing easy about this. Worth it (from all I've been told), but far from easy.

On the road to recovery

Right about a year ago I started struggling more and more with the scale. It seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to budge. Eat more, eat less, lift more, lift less, number of reps, how much cardio, all of it. Talking with Dr. Hendrick we were both at a loss of what to do next. The other solutions he uses are ways to jumpstart the weight loss, not for long term use. So I decided to look into bariatric surgery.

This is not something I have ever wanted or considered doing before. It was not up for discussion. So for me to finally start researching it says a lot for those who know me best. By the end of 2018, I decided to start talking with surgeons. To find a doctor I liked I had to go to Denver.

My insurance at the time wouldn't cover it so I was looking at around $13000 out of pocket. The upside to paying for it myself is that I didn't have as many hoops to jump through. So by the end of March, I was ready to schedule the surgery.

Then it got postponed, but for the best reason. I have been job hunting hard for several years, but I've been picky. Very picky. For the first time, I had the luxury of looking for a job I wanted, and not just working for an organization for a paycheck. The time, frustration, and patience paid off in spades. I pretty much got my dream job at a company I have wanted to work at for a very long time. I moved out to Maryland at the end of May to start my job. Then I went back to Colorado in mid-June to get Marshall, pack our stuff, and hit the road.

While I was out in Maryland by myself I started researching surgeons out here and found an office I liked the looks of. I went to a class sponsored by one of the surgeons and set up an appointment with her. Things seemed to go well, and she said she could use my visits from Dr. Hendrick and the surgeon in Colorado to submit to insurance. I just had a laundry list of paperwork to bring in. The day before my next appointment, when I got the reminder call I was told she had left the practice and they had moved me to Dr. Joseph Greene. I decided to see if I liked this new surgeon and go from there. Luckily I did, and I think it turned out to be the better choice in the long run.

I turned up with all of my papers and was told that I was the most prepared patient he's ever had. I just wanted everything to go smoothly. After some running around with phone calls and signing waivers, all the paperwork got sent to Dr. Greene. Well, everything except my psych evaluation. We found that out the morning of surgery. Luckily we were able to get the right people on the phone and get it faxed over. Before Dr. Greene could start talking to me about surgery though, I had to sign the waiver from the psychiatrist. I was in pre-op when all of this happened.

The surgery went really well. It took longer than planned because of some surprise scar tissue, but I'm glad he took the time to make sure he worked around it. They have a really good pain management plan and I've been doing really well. I took some of "the good stuff" to sleep last night, but I've only had Tylenol today. I'm up and moving around pretty good. The only thing that really hurts is my throat from the breathing tube.

So there's what I had surgery for. I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy. They sliced off about 80% of my stomach. Because of where hormone receptors are I won't feel hunger anymore, or not as much. Considering I've been on a liquid diet the last 3 weeks, it has been a godsend. I still have 3 more weeks of liquids before I move back to solid foods.

I kept this very quiet because I had enough doubts in my head. I had all the thoughts of "if only I had more willpower" or "If I just tried one last time". But after all these years of trying, if I could have done it on my own, I would have.

Feel free to ask me anything.