..........All I want for Christmas, is food.

  Hello all, Yes it has been awhile but  this time immediately following surgery has been....busy and involved to say the least.  While on the pain meds you really should not write. ( The things i wrote ,  well wow, English becomes your third language right behind gibberish.) Immediately after you stop the pain meds you have so much to do just making your day go by, that you don't seem to have time to write. 
Before we get too far along I would like to post some videos! Yay here are some videos for your enjoyment. They are taste tests of two different product lines. First is from the about time shake and go series.

 
  The second is from Premier Protein, many people swear this is great, we shall see The premier people were kind enough to send me 4 4-packs of their assorted flavors of ready made products. Now we all remember how bad the ready made stuff was very early on in the blog, but with many people liking these we are giving it a shot. 

  Anyway, Let us focus on the good things, today is 12/30/2014 exactly 14 days since surgery. Two weeks, half a month!  lets look at the positives and do a grand recap of this weight issue as it relates to this surgery. In 2012 I weighed in at 408 pounds, this is while I was in school, unemployed and just focusing on schoolwork, doing a mix of daytime, morning and night classes made or helped me, eat very bad things and eat them sometimes at weird hours, not very conducive to living healthy at all.
    I started my  employment at Peach, where I have had so much support and  help, in February 2014, at that time I happened to go to my doctors and weighed in at 374 pounds.   I started my pre op diet on October 12, 2014 at 362 pounds, which felt good to be down from the 408 two years previous. My surgery date was 12/16/2014 and at that time I weighed 332 pounds. Now back to today. Two weeks post surgery I weighed in this morning at 307 pounds. 25 pounds down in 14 days. Now obviously this is not going to last, this rate of weight loss that is. You cant lose over a pound a day for a sustained period of time without  turning into a malnourished waif.  
    For the first week or so, two pounds a day was the norm, the last few days have slowed to a pound a day and soon , from conversations with others etc, my weight loss will slow to a few pounds a week and stay at that rate off and on. Now this is all well and good, and the next step is going to be more physical. Tomorrow I get cleared , hopefully, by the Nurse practitioner to move from liquids and purees ( which is still liquid only disgusting), to what is known as stage 4 . The stage 4 diet includes soft meats ( like pulled pork, fish, ground beef, shredded chicken etc.) mashed vegetables, ( I pity the fool that keeps me from some mashed potatoes, just once lol) eggs, ( yes scrambled eggs is a joy I will experience.) etc. 
  Now if it seems I am overjoyed at the prospect of eating something with some solidity to it, well yes it is true. After 2 weeks of nothing but liquids, you would go nuts. You cant eat nuts however. 
  There are three things that have kept me sane, my wife taking time off to be home with me has been just a godsend. To be alone and going through this all day would have been just unbearable. The second thing is the weight loss. To get up every day and see the scale drop almost two pounds, is beyond the normal happy feeling, you get from almost anything else, at least for me in this context. 
   It really makes you happy to see this weight literally falling off of you thanks to the surgery and the fact you are taking in about 400 calories per day or 5 times less than a normal weight person is recommended to take in daily. 
   Third on the list is a weird one. Sugar free Jello, and sugar free Cool whip. Yes not Lite Cool Whip, but sugar free. If you look in your grocers freezer its there, it is not the easiest to find, but it is there. The Sugar free Jello, gives you the illusion on solidity , at least for a short time, and it gives you some "mouth feel."  While the Sugar Free Cool Whip actually lets you feel like you are having something decadent. It is a funny product because it has almost zero taste to it. But it has the creaminess that Cool Whip is known for. Tie these three things together and you can make it through the rough period of two weeks of nothing but liquids, well yes Jello counts as a liquid. 
   Thankfully I have only had a few, hiccups along the way in these two weeks. One thing you figure out is that if you drink too fast or too much you will hear about it. I seriously mean that, you will be visited by three ghosts ( sorry Mr. Dickens), The first is the Ghost of the weird noises. Your stomach will make noises they can hear on a listening post in Bora-Bora. It's like whales moved in to your colon and decided to sing the entire works of Beethoven at a high volume. 
   This is a warning song, should you  not listen to it the second ghost will come, the Ghost of Intense Gastric Pains. You will feel like your stomach is eating itself, well what little of it is left that is. It is very painful, it feels like intense hunger only multiplied by a scale of 20. It is not fun. If you have reached this point then ghost number three always follows Ghost number 2. Ghost number 3 is the Ghost of the toilet screaming. WARNING the following paragraph is graphic in nature and may upset the sensibilities of those with a weak constitution.  
   The Ghost of toilet screaming is of course a Euphemism for evacuating all the liquid in your stomach and colon out of your butt at extreme velocity and pressure. If you have to do this in say a public bathroom, you would probably be greeted with sounds of , "oh my god!", Is that a human? and someone call 911! This is all associated with what is known as dumping syndrome, or dumping for short. It can also be associated with rapid heart rate, flushed skin, dizziness and nausea. Thankfully I have learned to  drink slower and not overdo it. 
  Now tomorrow I get to start relearning this all over again with solid food. 
  SO i think that's where we will leave this. I know that literally on the way home from the doctors tomorrow me and the wife are going to stop and get some Indian food, ( soft meats, mushy veg, absolutely perfect) Chicken vindaloo  yay! lol. See you all soon, Thank you for being part of my support team, I love you all!

Here's my ending cartoon. 

.............Gotta get ahead...Ache?

   Welcome all my blog friends to another edition of , well, this blog of course. Not sure where that was meant to go, but it sure stalled. Well, I know you're just giddy with anticipation over how I am doing at this point. So let me say, well, I'm OK.  Not great, and not horrible. It is hard getting in all the liquids that you have to when you realize that that receptacle you're pouring those fluids into is now the size of a large straw. 
   So you try and you fit in the horse pill sized chew-able vitamins twice a day and the icky tasting calcium  tablets the size of half dollars as well, and those you cant have within  like 3 to 4 hours of the vitamins, so figure out that math. Add in the 64 ounces of liquid, and 60 to 70 grams of protein you have to have and its difficult to do without pain or discomfort. 
     I wanted to show you yet another picture of that amazing bed that transforms itself into a chair.
            

    Now thankfully the gas pains and weird hunger like pains which i associate with Gastritis, probably just due to the  removal of a large piece of stomach from the rest of it, have dropped in frequency, they haven't stopped but they aren't 24/7  like they were. Of course when things get better something has to get worse. Well first a few of my incisions aren't looking so wonderful, I've been using an antiseptic wash and using an antibiotic ointment on them recently to help but a few just don't look so good. Now since they are sealed with medical glue its not like i can blame it on sutures or anything those are all inside deep. 
    So I have to contact my surgical team first thing tomorrow. The worst however, was Saturday  morning about 6 AM i was awakened out of a sound sleep by one of the single most devastating headaches I have ever had. I removed myself tot he living room recliner and sat in darkness trying to get my head on straight. Which did not work. Now i knew i could take a Vicodin, but i had already stopped taking them the day before so i did not want to start again due to their propensity for lowering the respiratory function. So I know i cannot take aspirin nor any other NSAID, like naproxen or ibuprofen, they are absolute no-no's to a post surgery bariatric patient. 
   Well this headache literally had me on my knees tearing up like a baby. I literally started to wonder if I was having an aneurysm or a stroke. Thankfully neither was correct. After a series of cold compresses, my wife went to CVS up the street and got some liquid Tylenol.  It does not taste good, but It certainly helped. After an hour i was finally able to function, as of now I dread going to bed for fear that this headache might return. I don't know if it was dehydration? or Sleep-Apnea related or if it was a combination of things, although 
   I am leaning toward the perfect storm of multiple things all driving one powerful headache. I posted on the Bariatric pal forums and several other people mentioned they have had the same and they had been told they were due in part to the not taking in food for a several days and things associated with your body getting used to not having what it is used to having. I will of course mention it to the surgeon as well, if I can get some migraine meds that are allowed, if any, I would be happier just in case. 
  So things are to the point where food just dominates my thoughts. This stage that I am at is called Stage three and therefore I am on the stage three diet.  Basically it consists of liquids, ( you must get as close to 64 ounces per day as possible) mostly water or i like vitamin water. no caffeine no carbonation, no sugar. Which leaves so much to the imagination right? Well when i get clearance to go to stage four diet I will be able to incorporate eggs into my diet, which trust me, scrambled egg will be like the finest french meal ever. Haute cuisine will be nothing compared to this. 
  The other addition will be soft meats. Well what is soft meats, well tuna fish
 ( not whole tuna) mixed with some light mayonnaise is allowable, no bread however. Flaky type white fish, no breading, and I will be able to try some things like chili, and pulled pork, and maybe even ground beef turkey and chicken. I know I have dreams about eating some ground turkey sausage. 
Hopefully my nutritionist will allow me at least the scrambled egg for Christmas. We shall see.  
  Funny thing is my co workers in Hanover are having a Christmas pancake breakfast tomorrow morning and Since I am not taking pain meds anymore i was cleared to drive, so I am thinking about getting up early and showing up to say hello and to say merry Christmas and to thank them for the wonderful flowers and balloons and their support as well.
  Well I think that is enough for now. I hope you enjoyed it , see you all soon and i'll try to get another blog post up on my birthday the 23rd, tomorrow. lol 
P.S. You don't realize how many commercials and tv shows on tv deal with food until you want that food lol. 

Heres my cartoon for today, it explains a lot of what I am doing this for.

....................... Day 1 of the Days of our lives.

So hello all, I am back. Yes back from the hospital. Back from surgery, back from removing an organ I was pretty familiar with. By choice even. The day started out a bit rough, we had to wait in the pre op holding area for two hours, because there were some surgical needs that pushed us back. It is tough to get yourself ready  mentally,  and then have to wait. It is not a good thing. Eventually we got in and after donning thigh high anti-embolism stockings, ( white just isn't my color but they didn't have black fishnets.) Now since i have a history of bad IV's I made it a prime point to tell everyone involved about that. Well it worked they got a special Nurse Practitioner to com down and first she gave me some numbing agent then the IV went in nice and easy. One huge anxiety out of my anxiety list. The surgery was like blinking of course one second your a little tipsy feeling the next you're in recovery. Which is not a bad thing.
     One thing that amazed me, from recovery onward I was in the same bed. No switching around beds here and there. This was a first class over sized air inflatable bed that slowly moves the air around under you to relieve any sore spots. To make it even better this bed..is a transformer! Yes I am serious. This bed actually lifts you up, down, and all over to turn itself and you into a chair. Here are a few pictures to show you what I mean.
     

Here is a pic of One of my nurses. What was great is the bariatric patients are given to nurses with no more than a total of 3 patients. so that you get a lot of extra care. My  nurses were exemplary. From Mary ann in preop, to Chris in recovery, to Annie and Kevin on the floor.  Just the best, they really impressed me. Here is a picture of Annie.
 

So the surgery itself went well, they didn't do a hernia repair as they viewed it and decided it was too small to bother with,

Here is a video to show what they did o. No please do not watch if you are squeamish or weak of heart etc.

Well so I have had some jello here at home and sipping vitamin water. I'm going to take a break and relax in my big comfy chair.  Thanks for coming. 

............................Time for theater!

So welcome back everyone. Needless to say the call came through Friday December 12Th That Tuesday December 16th  will be my surgery. We have approval to get this done.
My emotions went from angry and depressed right to scared and anxious. Now its time to get the final preparations, marking up my water bottle...Wait i never explained that..Oh! well lets take a second and explain this. Since you have to take in so much water post surgery, but you can only take it in in small doses. You are constantly sipping water. Well Someone came up with  great idea, take a water bottle and using a sharpie, mark the times of day on the bottle versus where you should be in water.
  Now I saw this months ago but the folks over at Bariatric pal.com  were able to find the pic for me.  Well this weekend I happened to be at target picking up a few last minute gifts for my wife and looking for some yogurt etc. ( BTW) target is a great place to get the jello cups and jello pudding cups, sugar free of course. While there we came across a really nice bottle by  Nalgene, it is graduated with both ml and ounces.  So i bought it. When I got home and looked at the picture again I realized i bought the exact bottle, sans color, of the one used in the picture. So here is the picture of what was created.

 Smart idea huh.
Mine looks  the same although its more of a light green tint.
SO ive got so many thing done, I bought a pill crusher to take my pain meds and other meds with post op. I have to crush them and take them in a teaspoon of yogurt or juice. I have all my vitamins we found also at target which seems to be the only local store that carries Centrum Chewables plus iron. Tomorrow night we have the first shower using anti bacterial Hibiclens, then again the morning of surgery. We also have to do some picture taking for posterity and the measurements. Yes it has been advised to me to have someone I trust ( hope of course) measure my various body parts. Upper arm shoulders, chest, belly, waist upper thigh, lower leg neck etc then when I do hit a plateau i can fall back on the inches i have lost rather than just the pounds themselves to show the changes my body is undergoing.
  Well that's the blog post for now. I think I will have a special video post tomorrow night before the surgery, and hopefully a post right from the hospital after recovery.
Thanks to everyone who helped get me this far. The next step is the biggest.

In Surance Through the Out Door!

Hello everyone,. it has been a little while.  I apologize for that but there is a lot to tell you about so lets get right down to it. I don't have a taste test for you today as I am waiting on  shipments of new products. 
  Now I had hoped to be on by now telling you when my surgical date was and  getting ready for that date. But the walls fell crumbling down. We had put together all the paperwork and you remember the issue I had with my PCP not wanting to give a clearance letter. Well when I was able to speak with him directly, he of course was okay with it. Fast forward a few days we are waiting for final approval from the insurance company, I am a nervous wreck just waiting to hear those words, "You are approved." They would be wonderful. I was at work, my cell phone rang, and picked it up. My surgeons office was on the line, ( here we go I thought, smiling to myself), "Steve, I am afraid the insurance company denied you", and then the world stopped spinning. 
   I had everything planned down to a T. My diet was working, my wife was on board all my coworkers supported me everything was happening, tests being done, just a flurry of activity and then, BANG!,  someone slapped me and woke me up. At first I had this amazing level of sadness and truly wanted to cry.  That sadness quickly was displaced by an intense a feeling of anger as I had ever felt. How Dare They!  Oh I was outraged, who do I call , who's neck do I have to ring! Well after the initial emotional swings the depression kicks in.  I start thinking I am going to look like an ass to all my friends and people who are supporting me in this.  I am going to be fat and a liar. What the heck do I do now. 
   Thankfully my wife managed to somehow get me to some semblance of normalcy. A lot of surgeries are denied at first so then you go through the appeals process and I felt certain that in that appeals process I would win, but there was a very big problem. The company I was working for was being sold. The new company would e taking over Jan 1st and  my benefits would be changing.  
    So now if i didn't get the surgery approved right away, we couldn't bother any more because the surgical date would be after the new insurance company took over and they would require a whole new set of hoops to jump through, and  they might not cover weight loss surgery or maybe they did but wouldn't have my surgeon and team in their "Network." Also if it goes past the year all the money ive had to pay for testing and appointments that goes toward my deductible and maximum out of pocket, would be reset costing me a lot. 
   I want to give you a little background in case I haven't before. My wife has myself and her on her companies health insurance with united healthcare. Well my wife's company specifically excluded coverage for weight loss surgery, so for years there was no way to get this done. Then when I was lucky enough to be hired at my current job,  I decided to take my own insurance on top of the other as a way to get this surgery done. This insurance is a duet between Tufts and Cigna, called care-link. Its a partnership between the two and as a result  it is almost impossible to figure out who does what. 
   The last time i called i was transferred 6 times , 3 times with Tufts and 3 times with Cigna. This care-link plan's pre-certification for surgery is handled by Cigna. Well it appeared that due to us moving up my nutritionists appointment by a few days from December 1st to the end of November we Didn't show 3 months of consecutive weight loss based care. So I had to hot foot it to my PCP to have them weight me in so we could have this appointment for the month of December.  
    This was to be followed up two days later ( last Friday) by a peer to peer phone call between my surgeon and the doctor at Cigna who denied me. SO last Friday I waited by the phone and I got the call. "Steve, they cancelled the peer to peer, and are escalating the new paperwork to the same doctor again he will get back to us either later today or Monday.
    Friday closed out without a call. So Monday i do get the call and i now need to go see the nutritionist to have 3 months with both my pcp and my surgeon. Of course it is in Brighton and it is Wednesday, after which I am meeting with the anesthesia ad surgical teams just in case. Once I do this we will fax that paper over to the insurance company and wait yet again.  So today "Wednesday," is a big day . There is a little happier bit. The  company I work for will have one more month of benefits before switching so we now have more time to have this done, although I will take a financial hit. Also the benefit packages we have to choose from will be offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. Who does indeed have my surgeon on their network. So it is not quite as bad as it was, I will let you all know how this turns out. Stay Tuned!

 I leave you today with another comic strip.