A Smaller Target

Being Good

Weight 177

Preparations for the party are going on downstairs.  Me, I'm upstairs listening.  I can't help.  If I do I won't be able to come to the party itself -- I'll have used all my energy.  This is so frustrating.  Of course, with this cold, no one wants me near the food anyway.  Sitting on the sofa with the buzz of activity around me makes me feel like a slug.

Other thoughts?  Two years ago, on December 24 I wrote the following in an entry:

Have you ever felt like you put your life on hold waiting for X or Y? I do. Everything good I try and deny myself because of my weight.

This was brought home for me very clearly earlier this week when my partner of close to eight years and I talked about eloping. I wanted to, but my first thought was "maybe we should wait until after I lose the weight." Part of me didn't feel I deserved to be a bride at the size I am.

We did marry, of course, two years ago today, despite some amazing drama about my wedding dress.   A courthouse wedding in Santa Barbara.  No one was there but the two of us and the JoP who did our vows.  Our witnesses were courthouse docents. This marriage was the best decision I've ever made in my life about anything.   Paul's a lot of the reason the last 10 years of my life have been so amazing and that I've been so happy.  He puts up with a lot and is always looking for ways to make things easier and better.  I lead such a fortunate life, really.

I really haven't being lolling around all day.  Paul and I did go out earlier today to get me an Rx refill from Costco and also pick up a cake (chocolate with chocolate mousse filling mmmm!), some Pam and more bandages and paper tape from Target.   The walk was good for me, but by the time we left Target I was running out of gas.  When we got home I promised I'd rest.  And so I'm resting, really.

In fact, now I'm going to try a nap. 

Three Weeks Out: Good, Bad, Ugly

Reading the stunningly beautiful (my dad's comment on her reunion picture) Kim's account of her plastics recovery --Kim had a lower body lift (that's a tummy tuck and backside lift at the same time) and breast lift on December 12-- reminded me that I hadn't really updated about the plastics this week at three weeks out.   In case you need a refresher, here's my first week entry.

So here goes.

The Good:

• the swelling is going down -- I'm wearing size 14 today rather than the 16/18s I was wearing last week.  My weight has dropped more than 10 pounds (190 to 178) almost back to where it was pre-op so a lot of the water must be gone.  This still doesn't take into account the 6 pounds of skin that was removed.  Maybe by next week.
• the drains are ALL out.  Thank you God.
• places on my body are visible now that I can only remember seeing in mirrors.
• pain pills are spaced out 6 - 12 hours rather than me staring at the clock waiting for it to be 4 hours. 
• the lipo-in-a-box is WAY more comfortable than the hospital binder. 
• the incision is healing nicely as are all the drain holes.  There is (currently anyway) no drainage or leakage.
• belly button is looking pretty good and healing very nicely.
• vertical incision is already a skinny pink line. 
• having to sit in a comfy chair so much has allowed lots of time for blogging.  Can't speak to the quality, but there's plenty of quantity.  I still can't focus enough to read any thing but novels by Terry Pratchett.  And that's only because I've read them about 10 each already.
• as time goes on, I can see that I really do have something that looks like a waist now.  Wow!

The Bad:

• there is still a good deal of muscle pain, especially when I've gone more than 8 hours without the pain meds.
• feh!  I have a cold.  Lovely.
• asking for help is still every bit as annoying.  I feel like I'm being lazy, especially as I see things that need to be done around my parents' house.
• this has NOT helped my constipation issues.  Even with all the extra coffee and tea.
• My hips and thighs look huge.  Probably because they are, but still.  Wow.  Especially when the binder has my breasts completely flat.
• still sleeping in a chair.  Do keep in mind too that I slept in our bed as soon as I got out of the hospital after my DS.  That's how much worse this has been.

The Ugly:

• panic attacks.  These are so not fun.  The ambien that my surgeon's given me has helped, but they're still happening at night and I'm scared that they're going to become a more common feature of my post-op life.  And, also annoying and probably related, I've become something of an emotional basket case.  Poor Paul!
• the curved spine thing is getting annoying.  I can't believe I have another week of it to go before I'm supposed to even try straightening.  Ack!
• after sneezing and coughing, a lump appeared just above where my old hernia was.  I'm terrified that the hernia somehow came back, though it might just be muscle swelling. 

All in all I know I'm really lucky to have gotten such great care.  And I'm recovering very well.  But man o man, this has been a lot harder physically then the recovery from the DS was.  It's made me feel miserable at the thought of the 3 - 4 additional surgeries I'm supposed to be planning for.  Aside from everything else, I really resent losing months of my life to this.  It's been three weeks and I'd say I'm still only at about 60% of full power. 

Scare

It seems I've caught a bit of a cold.  Runny nose, watery eyes and a cough.  The cough was what did me in.

Last night as I was sitting and watching Father Ted I started coughing.  There wasn't a pillow but I grabbed my chest.  But when I finished there was a small sore little bulge on the upper part of my incision line, just below my sternum.  Just exactly where my hernia was.  I can't even believe I might have done this to myself. 

I freaked out.  At first I didn't want to tell anyone, but then told my mom and Paul.  Paul calmed me down, pointing out that if it's a hernia, there's nothing more I can do anyway.  I've spent the day being very quiet with a pillow next to me in case I need to cough or sneeze.  The lump is smaller today, but still sore and swollen.  I'm going to be super careful from now on. If I haven't hurt myself yet, I'm going to make sure that I don't. 

Yes, I have been pushing too hard, trying to do too much too fast.  From here on out, I'm going to take it easier.  Much, much easier. 

But damn, I'm still really freaked out. 

It Finally Came!

Weight 180 (yay!)

So much for "priority mail express shipping." 

What with the Christmas rush and everything, the post office only today got around to delivering the high waisted capri support garment I ordered from Lipo in a Box back on the 14th.  Fortunately I haven't been stuck wearing my binder (ugh) the entire time.  My mom loaned me the pair she'd ordered from them. Still, it was good to finally get my own as hers wasn't one of the high waisted sort.

They're really quite comfortable.  Putting them on feels a lot like getting into pantyhose.  But once they're on they seem to support without the terrible hard pressure points that my binder gives.   And I love the way my legs look when I'm wearing it.  My thighs are actually smooth and firm. 

The swelling is definitely going down now at my waist and thighs (whew!).  And size 16s are loose again.  :)

More herbal tea say I!

Healing

Weight: 184

Yeah, despite the fact I've had enough herbal tea to float a boat in, I seem to be getting heavier.

Thanks Melody and Alison.  I can't tell you how much better your comments made me feel.  Logically I know that this is all swelling and water bloat, but post wls its so hard to see my weight and size go up like this.  Especially when I'm feeling terrible.

That's right.  Today I feel terrible. 

It's my own fault.  I overdid yesterday when I should have rested after having traveled and all that on Tuesday.  I spent all afternoon making cookies (sugar and gingerbread cut-outs) with my mom.  They came out wonderfully -- she did the rolling and cutting and I did the frosting and piping.  Then we made some platters for some friends of my parents.  Then Paul and I went shopping.  Just to Fred Meyers (grocery store) and then a quick roam around TJ Maxx; it felt like nothing.  But by the time I got home I felt tender and sore.  Taking a shower was the final straw -- it used up the last of my energy.   And, even though I had it a week before surgery, my body has decided that I should have my period  now  too.  Bah!

Today I went out with my mom in the morning to her day spa.  The owner, Jade, had given me a facial and pedicure before my DS surgery.  She was just stunned by my weight loss.  Sometimes it's hard to remember how dramatic it's been. She's planning on getting a tummy tuck of her own in a couple months so wanted to know what it was like.  I felt bad, but said that, right now, it mostly seemed painful.  While Jade waxed my mom in another room,  I just sat and had a warm aromatherapy treatment on my neck and read Vogue and In Style.  It was great.   Jade gave me a bunch of facial treatment products that she thinks will help with the eczema on my face.  I'm going to try them this week and get back to her.  It would be cool, but I've tried so much so many times I can't get my hopes up too much.

Other than that outing, I've spent most of the day sitting with my feet up watching TiVo.  I've got a scary sharp pain in my abs that feels like I'm trying to tighten them even though I'm not.   It's gotten better throughout the day, but has scared me enough that I'm  definitely taking it easier.

What I'm Wearing Post-Op

When I woke up in the hospital, I was wearing one of the stylish and a layer of thick padding under an elastic binder.  The binder was 18 inches wide by 48 inches long (unstretched).  It had a couple of supportive stays and was held together by a wide strip of velcro. 

Obviously I'm not wearing any of that right now.  Any of that EXCEPT the binder.  At the suggestion of Dr. Regina Kim, I cut the binder down to fit me better.  It's now about 12 inches wide by 34 inches long.  It's not comfortable or anything, but at least fits me a little.  I hate it.  It causes two constant problems.  One is that while it's supportive, it's also firm enough to make my skin feel sore just from the pressure of its edges and it's rough enough that I need to keep it from touching my skin.  So I'm wearing a lot of layers.  Here they are in order...

Day: 

1. soft cotton panties that are large enough that their elastic lays above my incision line
2. Norm Thompson cotton cami with built-in underwire bra
3. binder
4. slacks or jeans
5. long sleeved tee shirt and / or sweater

The cotton cami's have been life-savers.  They're soft and keep the binder away from my skin and cut down a layer (otherwise I'd need to wear a bra and tank top). 

Night:

1. soft cotton panties that are large enough that their elastic lays above my incision line
2. long sleeved silk undershirt
3. binder
4. pajama pants (mostly drawstring flannel)
5. long sleeved thermal undershirt

I've ordered a high waisted capri length support garment from Lipo In A Box.  Once it comes, I won't need to wear the binder anymore during the day.  I haven't purchased anything from them before, but my mom, sister and cousin (okay, cousin-in-law) have all bought different things and rave about them, especially the bottoms.  What seems pretty extraordinary about that is that they're all very different sizes and wear them for different reasons. 

My cousin-in-law is petite and small, probably a size 4-6.  She's had 3 kids and wears their high waisted stuff to hold in her "cupcake".  My mom wears the capris under pants to smooth and lift and also has bought a body suit which she says is amazingly comfortable.  Eloise (my sister, an RnY post-op) wears the capri length support garment for exercising.  She says it holds her legs well enough to allow her to run / jog, something excess skin wouldn't allow her to do otherwise. 

All say that the garments are light, cool and comfortable.  None of which can be said about my binder!

Hope mine arrives today!

Water, Water Everywhere

Weight: 182

Post plastic surgery, I left the hospital with a lot of water / swelling.  How much?  I'm not sure.  But....

• enough that I went into the hospital wearing a size 10-12  in jeans; even now I can barely get on my size 16 jeans.  The 18s fit comfortably.
• my thighs were so swollen they were rock hard with no jiggling or hanging skin. This was not the case pre-op, trust me.  My legs also measured 2 inches larger around at the knees and thighs.
• Pre-op, my weight was ~178.  Dr. Soo removed almost 6 pounds.  I didn't have a scale when I got home, but three days ago I stepped on a scale and weighed 187.  That's almost 10 pounds heavier then I was before plastics.

I know this isn't real weight gain.  Aside from anything else, I haven't been able to eat very much since surgery and have eaten very little sugar.  I also know nothing but time and healing will reduce the swelling.  But I want to get all this excess water off me.  Being at my parents' house with a scale gives me a good chance to keep track of how

For the past 4 days I've been drinking a lot of herbal tea (I'm too cold to drink much water) and trying to walk as much as possible to get the water out of my legs.  Given the amount of time I've spent in the bathroom, I think it's working.  This morning I weigh 182 on my mom's scale. 

If you've had this sort of post-op water retention, how long did it take to leave your body?  And what did you do to get it out? 

Another Day

Another post-op day spent "recovering" --something which largely consists of napping on a comfy chair, trying to remember to eat (did I mention that my desire for food has been quite low since surgery?) and counting the hours between doses of pain medication.   If I haven't been blogging much, it's basically because I'm rather bored with my life and so feel guilty writing about it it here and thus spreading the boring around.

Someone did save me, however by writing and asking a few questions.  I can't really call them "frequently asked" but hey, any port in a storm. 

So here's the first of a few questions and their answers:

I used to read your comments and things on some of wls forums.  How come you don't post there anymore?

When I was pre-op and in the early days post-op, I was a very active poster on both the forum on the duodenal switch website (highly recommend this community) and also on the DS part of the Obesity Help site (reservation there).  I've disappeared from both over the last several months for different reasons. 

Since I can be frank here --my blog, my thoughts, my rules and no I won't delete your comments either...  There are wonderful people who participate on the DS board on the Obesity Help site.  I miss them.  However, the way OH runs their forums represents (to me) the worst in Internet forum management.  They tend to censor / delete that which they don't want to read / hear, are arbitrary in the enforcement of rules and allow a vocal (and overly-"Christian"* oriented) minority have sway over everyone else.  Basically they create a world that encourages adults to act like children.  The DS board tends to be relatively free of this, but in my experience, it does spill over from the main forum every few months.  I'm very attached to my words, be they clever or not, and I don't like the idea of anyone but me having the right to delete them.  So when Obesity Help started censoring a regular poster on the DS forum, I stopped reading and posting there.

The exact opposite management style can be found, btw, on the Duodenal Switch website.  The manager there (Melanie) generally only deletes post / entries at the request of their authors and goes out of her way to be fair and allow conflicts to work themselves out.  I stopped posting and reading regularly there when life got so complicated this summer.  It's always been my intention to come back there, though I felt kind of bad doing it right before my tummy tuck, I guess because I thought it would seem like I was fishing for sympathy.

A final point is a structure thing.  I like the way that topics stay current (that is on the first page) of the Duodenal Switch site so long as they are actively being discussed.  It was always annoying to have to page back to discussions on the OH site forums even if the discussions were still actively engaged.

--
*I put "Christian" in quotation marks because my experience of them wasn't of Christianity as I know it, but rather of the worst sort of mean-spirited hypocrisy cloaking itself under the name "Christian"

Two Drains Down

Sorry this is going up so late.  I've spent most of the afternoon / evening recovering from actually getting out of the apartment for a little while today.

This morning Paul drove me to my appointment at USC to see Dr. Soo.  She examined me and the output records of the drains (Paul's been keeping them for me) and decided that two of them could come out.  This was good news -- I want them all out -- but I was suddenly very afraid.  You see, I didn't have any drains for my DS so I had no idea what pulling them out would entail.  I was also afraid of being grossed out, something that happens all too easily to me.

As it turned out, there was nothing to fear.  I barely felt anything when she removed them.  The holes were bandaged (eww!) and she told us how to take care of them.  She left the other two drains.  I'm hoping they can come out Monday afternoon so we can fly up to Portland on Tuesday as planned.  She was supportive of me / us traveling, but not with the drains in.  Funniest moment?  Her joking about the drains being in violation of the airlines' liquids rules.  Anyway, I'm to call Monday with their weekend output and then the decision will be made.

According to Dr. Soo, my incision lines look great and are healing very well.  And my bellybutton is (her words) "out of the woods."  I can't tell you how happy I was to hear that.  She even held up a mirror so I could look at it.  Not too bad looking, given what was done.

After that, we drove to a friend's office to pick up some work for Paul (he's loading an iPod for our Famous Philosopher friend) and (surprise!) some hand-me-down clothes (black wool dress and a jacket).  I could only kind of try them on, given the drain situation, but they seemed very cool.  If I can get my flaking skin under control, the dress will be really cute.

Then we went to grab lunch at In'N'Out where I had a cheese burger done protein style (lettuce wrapped, no bread), a few fries and a sip of Paul's strawberry shake.  A walk across the parking lot to Costco to pick up synthroid and more magic pain meds for me (note: how bad is my insurance coverage? So bad that Costco is basically cheaper even though I don't have any coverage there).  They had my Rx ready and waiting for me, a welcome change from Rite-Aid.

I still had energy so we walked around the store a bit.  I got some of the Mrs. May's crunchy nut packs (see here for review) and we lucked into finding Christmas gifts for our nieces and nephews.  This was a huge relief as three out of four need to be shipped to England ASAP and the other needs to go to Ohio.  I feel the Good Aunt responsibility quite keenly.  Presents for adults don't matter in my family, but what's the good of being a child-less/free aunt and uncle if you can't send cool Christmas gifts.  Oh and chocolate.  We're sending the See's snowman pack, of course. 

Anyway, by the time we got home I'd used all my energy and then some of tomorrow's and felt so tired even sitting under my quilts and resting had me near tears.  But it still was great to be out for the day and also to realize that I am getting better and, with the help of pain meds, can walked a good distance.

Something I noticed today that isn't so cool is that I'm basically swollen from the waist down.  My thighs / knees are two inches bigger around then they were before surgery.  My surgeon didn't seem worried -- just recommended I drink more coffee / tea and lots of water.  But it goes a long way to explaining why I'm suddenly a size 18 again.  Grrrr!

Thanks everyone for being so kind about both my recovery and my problems with anxiety.  Some of you may remember that anxiety and feeling vulnerable were issues for me last time I was post-op.  I suspect that's part of what's happening here.  Last night seemed very uneventful to me, but Paul told me I ended up calling out to him in my sleep.  He apparently calmed me down without ever even waking me up. 

Panic!

Last night Early this morning at about 4AM, I woke to crushing pain in my chest.  I couldn't breath, my heart rate was way up and my body hurt all over. 

No, it wasn't a heart attack -- even then I knew what I was experiencing was a panic attack.  I've had them before, though the circumstances of this were different.   They're always pretty scary and terrible.  This one was made even moreso because I was sitting in a recliner and had on a binder, making it already harder to breath.  Plus I was kind of in pain and disoriented and, because of having quilts tucked around me, couldn't get up without help.  Fortunately Paul heard me gasping his name, got me up and sitting on the edge of the bed, took my binder off and rubbed my back until I felt calmer.  He can make me feel safe and secure even in scary moments when he's been woken out of a sound sleep.  For this I'm really thankful.

What caused this panic attack?  I have no real idea.  It could be the feeling of sleeping sitting up when I'm used to sleeping on my stomach.  It could be a side effect of the drugs (though I've just gone back ON the anti-anxiety drugs I was taken off of before surgery) and various pain meds.  It could be the pain itself.  I just don't know. 

What I do know is that it underlined how vulnerable I feel.  And made me even more eager to heal up quick and get back to the gym.  Bench pressing leaves me feeling strong.