Week 5 thru 7 - Life as a Post-Op Bariatric Patient.

Week 1;  Week 2;  Week 3;   Week 4  <-- read me first in case you're new here!

Weeks 5 thru 7

My doctor’s appt at the end of the 4 week period did result in a LapBand tightening.  What’s that?  Yeah… that’s the part THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT!  Well, I will.  

They had me lay down on a gurney.  Mind you, it was a regular gurney, like the kind made for skinny people.  I had to laugh at the irony.  Their weighting waiting rooms have these double wide comfy-as-all-hell chairs in them, so to throw my fat ass on a skinny gurney kinda cracked me up. 

Doc comes in to say hi.  Cracks a joke with the administrator.  Tells me to pull up my shirt so he could check my incisions, which have closed up very nicely, but still look a wee bit red on my never-seen-sun stomach.  Then he jams this 4 inch long needle into my stomach.  Wooooooowwww!!! 

No, it didn’t hurt at all, but my eyeballs were telling me I should have been screaming.  Dr. Evil Naim found the port embedded into my abdominal wall and inserts 2 cc’s of fluid into the LapBand, which in effect tightens the band around my stomach, thereby forcing me to take longer to eat, to take much smaller bites, and chew much longer than I might have normally done.  Then he says to stand up.  What?  Stand up?  I have a GIANT NEEDLE sticking out of my stomach, like an arrow hanging out of a target spray painted onto a bale of hay .  And, I need to stand up?  Isn’t that like doing a marathon while trying to deliver a baby?  Yeah, I thought it was the exact same thing, too!

I do the impossible, and stand up.  Dr. Naim Evil then tells me to walk across the room and stand in some weird contraption so they can check out my guts from the inside out.  I walk over to the machine with a sick fascination requiring me to only watch my floppy stainless steel hitchhiker.  I almost tripped.  That would have been awkward, no?  I drank some stuff and it got stuck, so Dr. Evil sucks out a ½ cc of fluid from the band using that floppy needle, and we watch the stuff go through my guts.  OK, so my pipes are all open and I’m good to go.  Needle comes out, itty-bitty bandaid goes on.  They send me on my way… and “oh, by the way, you can’t eat anything for 2 days.  Have a nice day!”

Well, back at our pig out fest in Week 4, Joe tells me “everybody throws up, sometime” and my turn will come.  I assured him that I will know my limits and I won’t throw up.  He said to text him when it happens.  Sure, Joe.  Of course, when my chips floated up into my throat on the drive home that very night, that was my motivation to man up and keep those chips IN my body, because I was NOT going to text him and admit defeat in this lifetime.

So sorry.... but I HAD to!!!

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, after my 2 days of no food diet, I am STARVING.  I made my kids a late lunch of chicken nuggets and baked fries, so I helped myself to 7 of those fries and a half of filet of salmon (my typical meal a few days prior….).  I ate 3 fries right away… I hadn’t had fries for over a month so I was excited.  I chewed those bad boys up really well and swallowed. 

Oh crap.  I knew right away that I was going to be sending a text to Joe, and it was NOT going to be very nice.  I waited another HOUR for that to settle, and I went to go get the fish I set aside for myself and it was GONE!  WTH?  Well, hubby ate it.  He saw I wasn’t doing well and ate it so it wouldn’t be tempting to me.  How sweet.  Aurgh! 

I cooked another filet and took one warm, steamy bite of fish.  So yummy.  Uh oh…. So wrong.  I sent another colorful text to Joe.  Well, it took me another few days to learn that “a bite” really should be “a bit”.  OK, so I needed to train myself how to eat.  Again.  It took me an hour to get a quarter of the fish filet down the hatch.  But it was delicious!

Within a week, I could eat pretty well again.  Which is a good thing … my 7^th wedding anniversary was this week (week 7) so it was nice to go to a restaurant and eat just enough that the waiter doesn’t call psych services on me, but not too much as to finish my plate or get ill because I ate too much.  Note … more Mexican kryptonite.  J

I’m down another 8 pounds for a total of 28 lbs lost.  I’ll probably ASK to be tightened again on my appointment in mid October.  I think I need the added control during the parties, parties, parties… and Halloween! 

I also need to start working out again.  It’s been a little crazy with the kids’ new school schedule.  I’ve messed up the nanny’s schedule something awful and I’ve missed the gym.  A lot.  Hopefully in October, it will get back on track a bit.  Wish me luck.  My goal is to be 35 pounds down by the end of Month 2.  That’s only 7 to go, and I’ve got 2 more weeks to accomplish this.  I am once again, SO GLAD that oBand Center got me back on track, back to health, and back to my life. 

Late Edit:  Don't take this post as a complaint... in fact, I think it's all hysterical, which is why I wrote it.  There's NOTHING that having a LapBand can throw my way that I haven't handled before.  To me, this process is a piece of cake (pun intended, especially since cake doesn't go down well these days...!).  Dr. Evil is my new fav doc.  Looking forward to seeing him again in 2 weeks!