Once again... been a while!

The picture is from October 2008.. a friend from high school took the shots. She is now Heather Kessler Photography if you want to check out more of her work. I'll share more of these in future blogs :)

After my last post I was sorta down and out for a while. Not out out but ... out. I still watched what I ate and tried but I was just down about things. This last Monday was the monthly support group that my clinic puts on. One or both of the surgeons are there, the nutritionist is there, the NP who does all the fills, and one RN who sorta runs the show and passes the "talking stick" (not an actual stick but she designates who talks when). My surgeon has been there every time and it's nice to see him, :) I just feel happy when I see him.. I know he changed my life... *sigh* happy feeling again!

Anyways, we separated into 3 smaller groups after announcements and upcoming events/changes. There was a pre-op group, post-op RNY, and post-op band group. The NP was our ringleader and it was her last meeting.. she is going to Boston with her boyfriend and she'll be in neurosurgery! So her replacement was also there and that was nice to meet her. At the end I hugged the NP goodbye and told her thanks for everything. She did some pre-op workups and then all of my fills so far so she was a pretty big part in my process. I liked her too. :)

ANYWAYS (!!!) - we went around and introduced ourselves and told where we were in the process and all that. Well there was one guy who had his surgery 6 days after me but otherwise I was the baby (age-wise) and this other guy had gone on vacay and not had any fills yet.. and I've had two. So, I told my story about how I had one fill, felt nothing, went back, doubled up, and still feel nothing. Then all the rest of the stories were way out (18 mos or so average) and they all took time to look directly at me and tell me to hang in there and it was seriously like a BIG GROUP HUG! It was perfect.

Then! We got to this one girl... she had a "strange" experience. She had the same experience as I did in the beginning (she didn't want to tell her story in front of me) and kept going back for fills and finally found out, when she was darn near FULL, that her band had slipped. She had no symptoms except that wheat chex and wheat thins would swell in her esophagus and cause some pain. So apparently, two stitches came loose and caused her to slip. She had her band replaced last week from what I understood. She said she feels like she got a second shot at things and she was also self-pay like I am so she's doing everything right (both times - this wasn't her fault!) and it's apparently easier for her the second time. So that's her story...crazy to meet someone in person that had a complication like that.

I felt SO good after this meeting. The other meetings I've been at really haven't made me feel this way. There's too many RNY patients there and our experience is just SO different from theirs! It was nice to have a small group (8 people) of JUST bandsters.

So here's the big news... ;) The next three mornings I LOST WEIGHT! LOL!! First day, down 2.2, second, 1.2, third 0.2! CRAZY! Finally some movement again. I'm down 24.4 now total and I'm happy with that again. It's nice to see the scale moving in the right direction again. I'm also under 220 again finally (wasn't there since 5/25) and I hope to stay under it and get under 200 SOON!