I cannot believe it has been a month since my last post. Time flies when you'rre losing weight! I am officially down 34 pounds since my surgery 6 weeks ago. It might not sound like a lot compared to some people who have had weight loss surgery but it is all relative. My doctor considered me to be a "light weight" before surgery and even called me "skinny" which is laughable. He reminded me that some of his patients after surgery lose "me", meaning 200 or more pounds. My pre-op weight was 227 and I am now 193. I cannot remember the last time I was under 200 pounds, seriously. Maybe middle school, maybe early high school? I may have been just under 200 in the mid 1990's but it would have been only a brief time. Even when I had Pancreatitis (twice) in 2004, spent six weeks in the hospital and had nothing but TPN, which is IV nutrition and nothing by mouth, and lost 50 pounds, I was 220 then. After that weight loss from being ill, I easily got back up to 275 in just a couple of years.
So far, I really can't see a big difference in my looks. My husband says he can tell, but I am sure it is hard for him because he sees my everyday. The exercise physiologists at my gym/surgeons office say they can tell-especially in my face, they say. I can feel my bones a little easier now, especially my clavicles, or collarbones, ribs, and spine. Fortunately, my hands and feet are losing their chubbiness. My wedding and engagement rings are too big to wear now and a lot of my shoes are way too loose on me. But thats all okay, I mean what girl doesn't love an excuse to go shoe shopping? I see some negative differences though. My upper arms have a lot more sagging skin, what many people who have lost an excessive amount of weight affectionately call "bat wings", lovely... and I had them just in time for Halloween! I am surprised at how quickly the arm transformation happened, despite the weight training I have been doing. The fat pockets in my inner thighs are more like sagging skin now-not attractive! I am upset about this because this means I will most likely need some sort of plastic surgery to wear a normal swimsuit again, meaning one without a skirt or swim shorts. Plastic surgery is not in the immediate furture though. Usually they recommend you be at a maintained weight (after the excess is gone) for about a year. Not that I am jumping to get back on the operating table anyway.
I have had a few episodes in the past week of feeling food was getting stuck and pain in my chest that makes me pace the floor hoping for relief. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest combined that feeling you get right before you throw up. My surgeon attributes it to eating too much or too fast, I am not so convinced and I am worried I am developing a stricture. He tells me that strictures usually do not develop so quickly after surgery and are more commonly seen when a patient 3-6 months post-op, not that they are common in the first place. So, on his advice, I am reverting back to a softer diet for a week to see if things improve, if they do not, I may get an endoscopy. An endoscopy is a procedure where they pass a lighted scope with a camera down your esophagus into your stomach (or in my case, pouch) to check things out. I have had a million of them done before, I have a long history of heartburn, acid reflux, ulcers, etc. Gastric bypass surgery gets rid of the reflux for the most part because the pouch does not produce acid and that is why it is so important to chew your food so well after this type of surgery. Hopefully, things will ease up on their own and I can avoid a procedure at the hospital. However, if things do not get better, I want the test to make sure all is okay in there.
My husband and I spent the past several weekends going through the basement and a lot of my clothing. I am a shopper and have/had a lot of clothes. Most of the stuff in our basement has been too big for me for awhile but I was holding onto them "in case" you know, in case I gained a bunch of weight I would have stuff that fit. I ended up donating about 12 large black plastic garbage bags of my clothes plus another 30 or more hanging items. We have an SUV and it filled the whole trunk and the entire back seat too. I would say that half of my clothes in my main closet in our bedroom (my husband has the closet in the spare bedroom) are too big as well so I'm going through them next. I have a good rotation that workout clothes that fit, and other than that have about 6 pairs of pants/jeans and a dozen shirts that fit and thats it. It felt good to get rid of all of those fat clothes. I can't wait for the next round of Goodwill donations, when the stuff I am wearing now is too big!
