Before & During

The hubby put this together for me. I'm going to try and be more consistent in the future with these. I'll wear my hair up since it changes a lot anyways and try to stand in the same place on the floor when I take pics. The best way I can see changes was to look at the squares on the door as a sizer.

I don't see much difference... anyone else?

Click to see it full size.

The long weekend!

This is my sweet girl after being attacked by a chocolate ice cream cone! ;)
A cute self-portrait of the hubby and me. I'm not sure I've posted any pics of him yet but here he is! :)
This is the face I gave Cadence when she walked around our circle and took a picture of each person. I just gotta be a goof. Check out the sunburn on my right shoulder, yup, it hurts.
And this was the picture I took of Cadence after she took her pictures of each person in our group. She's such a sweetie!!

So those are the pictures minus about 100 from the weekend. We were at Brat Fest in these pics and had a great time with a bunch of family. I ate one brat, minus the bun, with kraut and ketchup and followed it up with some super naughty Chocolate Shoppe "Mint Avalanche" ice cream.

I spent all of Monday nursing my sunburns. I must admit, I'm an idiot. I wanted "color" and put sunscreen on my daughter and NONE on me. I know.. idiot. Won't be doing it again, no worries. I'm still nursing my sunburns today.. they're pretty painful. I'm hoping I feel better tomorrow.

I went in for my second fill this afternoon. It was pretty much in and out with one major SHOCKER. Between last Monday and today I managed to lose SEVEN POUNDS on their scales. The nurse was like, "are you sure you don't feel restriction!?" LOL I told her she was free to send me home based on weight loss alone but that I felt NO different from before my first fill. The NP came in and gasped at my seven lbs too but said she didn't blame me for coming back seeing as I have no restriction at all. She decided to double me on fluid in my band today. I am now the proud owner of 6 ccs of fluid in there!!! WOW!!! I'm excited about it :)

Can I also mention that it was SUCH an easy fill too!? Thank GOD! I think I got a little hyper about it for no reason... just based on last time. This time instead of doing a half-crunch, I lifted my feet off the table to tighten my abs and BOY was that the world of difference, according to NP! So awesome. She basically went in and out, maybe 30-45 seconds! So nice!! Can you tell I was pleased?! LOL

I managed to grocery shop STARVING tonight.. that was horrible. I came home and made fish sticks, asparagus (soooo yummy from the farmer's market), and mashed potatoes. Well would you get a load of what I ate?! I had 4 fish sticks, 3 asparagus stalks, and probably 1/8 cup of taters. HOLY HELL! Who shrunk my stomach in an afternoon!?!??! Oh yeah, that'd be the NP, hehehe. I know I'm just on the same day of a fill but it was so nice to go from starving to FULL in that small amount of food. I'm still satisfied and I'm looking forward to my liquids in 35 minutes, lol. I've been separating my liquids from my meals by 90 minutes now and it's sometimes torture with how thirsty I get.

Let's see. Last thing I want to touch base on is possible reasons for all the weight loss last week. I think first of all, I lost next to nothing the week before. I track my weight loss on an excel spread sheet daily so I can see what I've lost quite easily. Also, I walked SO much over the weekend!!! I went to the farmer's market on Saturday and walked the entire square with my preggo buddy. Then on Sunday I walked a TON to and from Brat Fest. So there were two things that are definitely NOT in my normal activity level. Not a ton but a change anyways.

OK I lied.. last thing. I now weigh less than my driver's license says I weigh! The good thing about that is that I was LYING when I first got that puppy!! My license expires this year on my birthday (of course) which is 09/09/09. Fun stuff, I know. ;) I'll wait it out and see where I am then and put the new weight on the new license. I'm excited about that though!!!

OK enough rambling. If you read all the way through you deserve a gold star!

Surgiversary!!

I couldn't let the day go on without mentioning that today is my one-month surgiversary! :) I'm holding steady (well... a half pound up or down each day) at about 20 lbs still but have my second fill next Tuesday so I'm hoping that will help. I'm going to see about getting this show on the road!!!

Anyways, we have The World's Largest Brat Fest all this weekend and we plan to frequent that. It's a lot of fun and for $1.50/brat it's a cheap activity! I'll eat mine sans bun and with ketchup and kraut! I'm excited!!

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend if you are in the states!! I know I plan to!!

I need MORE!!!

Even though my first fill was a wee bit traumatic I'm already itching for another. I have still noticed NO difference and so I called and scheduled another. Our clinic has you "go easy" the day of the fill and then onto solids the very next day. That's what I've done and have had chicken a few times this week and once or twice I swallowed too soon or too fast and noticed something but I had that BEFORE my fill too.

Anyways, long story short... I have my second fill next Tuesday at 3:15. I'll have to leave work mid-day to get it but I'll just take my lunch then or something (I work til 8 on Tuesdays). I'm really looking forward to it, of course. I'm feeling a bit ripped off and really want to feel *something* and since I'm self-pay I also want to get the most out of my year of coverage. I'm going to bring that up and see if they might let me come back every couple of weeks instead of the standard 4-6.

Tonight we had a work baby shower for my co-worker. The bosses treated us to dinner at a restaurant and we had this little back room to ourselves to play games, open gifts, etc. Our high school co-op employee is graduating as well so we gave her her gifts too. It was a good time. I ate rather light compared to what I know I could have in the past.

For now, as my weight holds pretty steady, I'm focusing on NSV's (non-scale victories) and trying to stay positive. My clothes fit better, I don't pee nearly as much as I used to yet I'm drinking more. I don't get up to pee in the middle of the night EVER when it used to be a once a night activity, religiously. People are complimenting me!!! This is a big deal.. I don't necessarily take them well, inwardly, but I probably appear to on the outside. I'm definitely not used to this attention! On Tuesday, a mom at my daughter's Kindermusik class mentioned she could see it in my face. Then at work a co-worker said she could really see it in my face that same day! I had my hair partially pulled back... perhaps I'll wear it back forever now! :D

Alright... enough for now. I'll think of more NSV's for some other posts. :)

First fill!

I went in bright and early for my first fill this morning!! I was excited and not nervous until I got there. My BP was up and my pulse was 101, lol.. gee!? They got me back immediately and I got weighed (down 1 lb since 2 weeks ago) and all that jazz. After the RN was done the NP came in with a resident following her (the NP does the fills but is moving to Boston so the surgeons will do the fills until a new NP gets comfortable with things). She explained everything to the resident (and me) as she went. She cleaned me off, felt me up... err, my port! She let the resident feel my port and they talked about how easy it was to feel but that that doesn't always mean it will be easy to get into... I told her that was an inappropriate time to talk about that. :D She said there was no making me feel better after that, lol.

So she gets started and feels me up some more and explains that in the early stages you want to be sure you've got the port and not scar tissue or swelling. She's got the right spot and sticks me with the needle.. no sweat, no pain. Once she's in it took about 2-2.5 minutes of up and down action before she found my port entrance. Each time she'd try to find the entrance the needle would scrape against the plastic on my port and it felt like she was shaving some bone off in there. I could "hear" it within my body and it felt like a horrible nails on chalkboard type situation within my body. It was just short of awful. I closed my eyes at one point and had to remind myself to open them because I was about to pass out. I was breathing weird and she kept asking me if I was in a lot of discomfort or if I was doing ok. I didn't want to stop so I just kept breathing through it and said I was fine. Finally, she pulled the needle out and breathed a deep breath and said, "we're done!" OMG.. thank you! LOL!! Then I had to sit up on the edge of the bed and relax a minute so I didn't stumble down the hall like a stupid drunk.

She gave me 3 ccs and told me that the surgeon "primed" the port tubing so that all 3 ccs would go directly into my band. That was reassuring since it was one of the things I was confused about. How do you know what's actually IN your band if they don't "prime" it first!?

OK, so the reason it took so long to find my port was that it is apparently "tilted" downwards instead of flat. GREAT... gotta be *something* wrong, right?! LOL. She did say now that we know this it will be easier to fill me up later on so that was a relief. She said that I should mention it to anyone that fills me and you bet your sweet ass I will!!

She said if I feel nothing I can come back soon but otherwise I have to wait 4-6 weeks for another fill. I made an appt but the newbie at the front desk didn't seem to know what she was doing and only found ONE fill appt available and, of course, it was at the 6 weeks mark. I'll be calling soon to talk to the coordinator to see if she can squeeze me in someplace. They managed to get me today's appt two weeks ago so there MUST be more appts available. I know I'm not going to want to wait 6 weeks though so we'll see what I can do.

I should mention... I'm on mushies today but have had NO problems with stuckage or anything to speak of. Does it take a few days to feel a change?! I had meatloaf and asparagus for dinner with not a single issue!! Tomorrow it's on to solids. How long do I give before I call back and say.. "hey, I can't tell I had a fill!"??

Sorry that got so wordy, I just wanted to get this in for my own reference and any newbies that might want to read about a weird fill experience. :)

20 lbs

I'm officially down 20 lbs as of this morning!!!! :) I was 3 weeks post-op yesterday as well. This number is since the beginning of my pre-op diet, btw! WOOHOOO!!!!! Off to work!

ETA: Maybe I should mention... my ticker is from my all-time high. Last time I weighed my high was last year around this time.

Brunch/Mother's Day/Dance Recital, Oh my!

This is me and my bambino after her dance recital! She did fabulously and I was SOOO proud of her! This was her third recital and this was the first time she actually danced. The other times she had too much stage fright and cried or ran off both times. SOO happy!
This is my bub (on the right) and her BFF. They were posing for the BFF's parents so that's why they're not looking at the camera. I just think Cadence looks so happy here!
This is just Cadence all by herself, looking so super adorable! :) Her dance was to a song from A Bug's Life so she is a bug I guess! I had her wings on upside down at this point but I did flip them over before her dance started.

And the grand finale :) This is the new wall grouping as of Friday!! At about 3:30 at work on Friday I see this little head walk by my work window that looked a LOT like my kiddo! Suddenly I realize it IS my kiddo and she's looking ADORABLE! Closely following her is my husband. Oh and the kid was carrying flowers that she had picked from the florist herself, for me!!

Turns out the hubby took C out of school after lunch and took her to a hair appt and got her hair french braided. Then he had an appt at the Picture People and got these pictures taken and framed for me for my gift!!! OMG is she the most adorable thing you've ever seen?! Answer: YES! My sole gripe is that she needed a haircut and I'm taking her this week even... so her bangs are long! I will definitly live. :) What a great gift huh!? I'm going to have to try and top him on that for Father's Day... bring on the ideas now!

This morning we went to brunch with the inlaws and I think I did well. I got one plate of food (not heaped) and ate half of it in the amount of time it took everyone else to eat two heaped plates. I got one scoop of vanilla ice cream and ate about 1/4 of it. I'm happy about that, really!!

Happy Mother's Day to all my fellow Mommies out there!! :)

Tomorrow is one month from when I started my pre-op diet!! :)

Update on the weekend and eating

First of all MARY (of the lap band variety) I can't comment on your blog! :( I click post comment and it just scrolls me to a different part of the page but there's nothing there! ACK!

OK so my weekend. We have a FABULOUS farmer's market in Madison and I have never been to it! I made the decision that today was the day and get this... Chris said he didn't feel like it at the last minute! WTF, dude?! Ugh. We do have a lot of produce at the moment so I guess I'll be pushing to go in a couple weeks (I work next Saturday). UGH again!

Then we picked up and went to a surprise 30th bday party for Chris' cousin. That was my first surprise party that I've ever been to! It was a good time visiting family and there were plenty of kids Cadence's age to play with. We hung out there longer than we would have since Cadence was enjoying herself so much.

Tomorrow morning we're going to a Mother's Day brunch with Chris' sister and her family and his brother. After that we have to go to Cadence's dance recital! :) This will be her third recital and hopefully the first one where she's danced ;) LOL. Let me see if I can put an adorable picture of her in here.....
Not the best picture but this is her at her very first dance recital. This was before she donated 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love - so over a year old now.

I hope she actually dances tomorrow... she's promised she will but that means nothing. ;)

So that'll be my day tomorrow. I always take a picture of me and my girl on M-Day so I will be sure to do that and post tomorrow (or soon after). :)

OH and big news... I'm down 19 lbs since April 11 (when I started the pre-op diet) as of this morning! I have 2 days to make it to one month and I *HOPE* I can make it to 20 lbs by then but I've been a slow, steady loser as of late. Oh and with the aforementioned brunch tomorrow... ugh. Good choices, good choices!

Happy Mother's Day to the Mommies out there!!

Bring on the FOOD!!! (2 week post-op visit)

Went to my appt at 1 pm today, left by 2 pm. I saw the nutritionist first and she basically wanted to know what I was eating for each meal and each snack and she added the protein as she went and it wasn't pretty folks ;) I'm getting about 30 grams of protein in these days. She reminded me that my weight loss is going to stall unless I get more protein in and I assured her that as soon as I could eat more food I'd be getting plenty more protein in and that I'm still on the hunt for that perfect protein drink.

Diane gave me permission to start soft foods today, NOW! Then in 4-5 days I can start on a "regular" diet. Obviously by "regular" I mean eating healthfully and making smart choices. It was a darn good day for me when I heard "go ahead and start on soft foods today!" OMG! I think my stomach growled immediately. ;) She gave me some more papers; things I can read at home basically.

After her I saw the nurse practioner. At our clinic you see this NP for every fill and check up. However, she's moving to Boston in June so while they train the new NP we'll get fills from the surgeons (team of two of them). So she checked out my incisions - I joked that I was going to flash her! All looks well but my port incision is a little red but nothing out of the ordinary from what I've noticed. I told her as much and she calmed down a bit. She told me I can start swallowing all my pills whole and I can stop taking the Prilosec which was apparently given to me in error (grrr). They said they used to routinely prescribe it but do not anymore and she needed to talk to someone about that so that could change. So that means I'm down to three pills from ELEVEN! Damn. Considering one of those is a birth control pill (BCP) that is pretty damn awesome!!! WOW!

I asked her about missing my period the week after surgery. She said my body is probably just in shock from losing weight and the surgery. It will probably be back tomorow. She suggested a pregnancy test just for peace of mind but that isn't my concern. If I'm pregnant I'm pregnant, know what I mean? I'm preventing but if I am I'm not going to terminate or anything. I know I'm not though. Certain things need to happen for that to occur! ;)

I also asked her about activity and exercise. She said I can resume pretty normal activity and if start slow. If it hurts, back off. I'm ok with that! :) I'm excited to get back to the gym and get some more weight off with the help of some movement!!!!!

I feel like I'm rambling now but I'm SO EXCITED!

I know I won't get much from that first fill but I'm excited to get the process rolling and started. My clinic only does fills I believe 4 weeks apart. So there will be no calling the next day if I don't have restriction... phooey! I'll deal! :)

YAY FOOD! :)

UW Bariatric Clinic redeems themselves!

I got a call back today but managed to miss it regarding my insurances woes. I called the person I was supposed to call and left yet another message explaining the situation. We'll see if they straighten it out.

Then I called Dawn, the program coordinator at the clinic. She had been AWESOME through this whole journey. I asked her if she could schedule me for my first fill since I don't have one and want to get it on the books before the end of the month fills up (haha, no pun intended). She was going to make it for 2 weeks AFTER my 2 week post op which is May 11 since I was originally scheduled for surgery on 4/28. Well, I explained I wanted the fill before the holiday because I am HUNGRY and don't trust myself. SO, what's she do? She makes my 2 wk post op visit for TODAY!!! Then she made my fill appt for May 18. OMG SO EXCITED! I quick IM'd the hubby (he's at work) and told him how excited I was "to get a big needle stuck in my gut" and do you know what this sweet man's response was???? "But it's soooo much more than that!" *Sigh* I just love him for GETTING this! He is so wonderfully supportive and awesome. So I'm happy with the clinic again and hopefully they'll get my insurance situation straight and then I'll really love them again!!! Happy day!

Weight loss, Insurance woes, & the weekend

Lots to talk about this fine Monday morning. I'll start with the topic everyone wants to hear about: weight loss!

I step on the scale every morning. I'm still losing a little each day and my digital scale reads to the tenth of a pound so I still see great progress each day even if it's .2 lbs! This morning I dipped below 230 and am 229.8! Do you KNOW how great that felt!? Why, yes.. yes you probably do! I'm in a weight territory that I haven't been EVER as far as I know! I know I passed it up at one point in my life but I have NEVER seen these numbers on the scale. Growing up we didn't have a scale at home, nor did we in college. I didn't weigh myself until I was ohhhh 20, 21? Something like that. I knew from VERY periodic doctors visits that I was 250ish during high school. One summer I visited my grandpa in NC and he made me weigh myself and I was 180 but guess what... that was the summer before SIXTH grade! :(

Insurance woes is referring to the fact that I got my EOBs via email this morning and I looked them over. There were about 5 claims filed for various tests for my WLS! I am a self-pay person and they plan on charging me co-pays and other random fees for these tests because my insurance covered some of them! Nooooo sir, I will not be paying a cent more! I paid $18,888 and that was ALL INCLUSIVE for a year following surgery! BAH. I have a call in to get it straightened out before they start hounding me for money I already paid!!! ACK. I'm irritated by this SO MUCH!

The weekend was good! Friday we went to see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past as I said in a previous post. Saturday Chris decided he needed to escape the girls in his house and he went to the casino to gamble a bit. This is his weakness. We've been to Las Vegas 3 times for vacations. When he came home we hung out for a while and then went out for a walk around the neighborhood. We have pretty huge blocks and by the time we made it around one block my stomach felt tight so I called it good there. Sunday I lazed around for a while in bed. We went to see the movie Earth with Cadence. We thought she'd like the animals in it but she was very bored. Oh well. Came home and ate some dinner, cleaned up the house, did dishes, etc. Boring, typical Sunday.

I emailed my nutritionist a big long message full of questions and she wrote me back with a two sentance answer. *Sigh* I can appreciate that I'm not her only patient and all but at least answer all my questions!? She did however tell me I can start soft foods ON Wednesday! I wasn't sure if I needed to do purees THROUGH Wednesday so I wanted to clarify. YAY food.. I can almost SMELL it!! Sweet lord I'm excited :D

Fast Food

Well, yesterday the thought of eating one more serving of pureed food had me not so hungry so I sent the hubby to Culver's (is that all over? basically a fast food burger joint - a step up from McD's) and he brought me back cheesy cauliflower soup and mashed potatoes with gravy. Something about eating food someone else cooked made things soooo much better! The soup had a few tiny chunks in it but, seriously, when they hit my mouth they melted immediately or I would have whizzed them up. That satisfied me for the rest of the night then! :)

Did I mention my breakfasts? I have a smoothie every day for breakfast. The reason for it is this gigantic pill I have to take for my diabetes. I have to crush it up and I've found that only smoothies mask the flavor AT ALL. So, three ice cubes, one banana, 5 strawberries, one giant pill crushed up and I've got myself some breakfast! :) Love it!

Last night we took Cadence to The Little Gym where they were having Parents' Survival Night. You drop your kid off from 6:15-9:45 and you can go do whatever. We take her almost every time (first and third Friday of each month) so we can have date nights. It's reasonably priced considering we'd pay a babysitter more than that.

Anyways... we dropped her off and went to Target and did some kid-free shopping/browsing. I'm co-throwing a baby shower for my co-worker (and good friend) at the end of the month so I shopped for decorations (no dice) and then just browsed. I got C some new books since I felt like we were reading her the same bedtime stories every night. What kid has too many books anyways?!

From there, we went to the movies! We saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and it was really good! The movie had me laughing a lot BUT the girls behind us (adults) were laughing really loud constantly that it was pretty irritating. There was also a single old man in the seat in front of me. At one part when the main guy is pouring his heart out the old man BURST out laughing and the entire theater LOL'd at him! It was terrific. Totally inappropriate timing by the old man but HILARIOUS for the rest of us. It was almost as if he were staged in the theater to make us laugh or something. Perfect.

Today we're just relaxing. Cadence has this ferocious cough going on today so we're sorta babying that in hopes no one gets that. I'm FINALLY feeling like *I* can cough without it hurting but I'd rather not test my luck and get a cold!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!!!