A Daring Adventure

You guys. 6 hours. I have 6 hours until I need to be at the hospital. They're going to cut me like sushi and sew me back together and WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING?! 

This surgery is going to change my life, and I'm willing to put in the work for it. However, it's crazy that I'm doing this elective surgery where they're going to rearrange my perfectly good insides. I can hardly believe that I'm letting them do this to me. I mean, I'm only 31, and despite my weight, I'm in pretty good health, right? I feel more or less fine every day. 

On the other hand, there are things happening to my body silently that will have a serious negative impact on my life in the future. For example, remember me talking about my fatty liver? I don't have any symptoms from that, but it's there, and it's a problem. What else is going on in my body that I don't know about, these silent diseases sneaking up on me? (Silent But Deadly, lol.) 

I have to keep perspective. I've already written about the complications and risks for both morbid obesity and gastric bypass surgery. In my head it makes sense that I need to put myself at risk for certain terrifying things in order to prevent the other slightly more terrifying things. 

It doesn't quite feel real that it's going to happen tomorrow. Today was a normal day, and tomorrow everything is going to be different. It mostly just feels like a dream to me. There's nothing else I can do to prepare; I've done everything that the doctor and nurses have told me to do. Maybe it won't feel real until I wake up from surgery, or maybe not until the reality of my food restrictions has settled in. I don't know.

There are a few things that I'm actually really scared of. I'm scared that this is a bad choice; that I could have, and should have, tried harder to lose weight on my own. I'm scared that I'll have depression (a possible complication of the surgery for lots of reasons); I've been super lucky in my life not to suffer from clinical depression, and the thought of it is worse than the surgery itself. And I'm obviously scared of the surgery itself.

I've posted some pictures on my Facebook to go along with this post, because for some reason both my phone and my computer are having issues right now. When I get the chance, I'll update this post to include those pictures. The pictures are my "before pictures" and some inspirational quotes that I've put up around my room so I remember to get out of my comfort zone every once in a while. 

All fears aside, I'm excited for the future. Helen Keller said, "Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." Bring on the adventure!

Forbidden Love: I'm Empty Inside Without You

I've gotten a few questions about my liquid diet, so here's the next post about weight loss surgery.

1. What can I have as part of the diet?

For the first week, the only thing that I had was the Walmart brand of Slim Fast shakes. When I bought them, I was SO not looking forward to them. But after I tried the 3 flavors that are available, it wasn't so bad. Especially the strawberry. They taste kind of medicinal, but they're still good.

The number of shakes that I could have a day depended on the brand of shake I bought. It's a low-calorie, high-protein diet, and every brand has its own mix of nutrients. I could have 6 shakes a day of the brand that I bought.

After that first week, I bought some meals from my surgeon's office that for some reason they say are still okay to have. They're all like beef stews and chicken pasta, stuff that's soft and easily digestible. They add extra protein (I think it's whey protein) so I get my 70 grams a day that I'm supposed to have. So now instead of 6 shakes a day, I get 3 shakes a day and 2 meals.

They also have a protein-packed oatmeal that I can have if I want to replace one of the shakes a day. That oatmeal is okay. It's not-very-flavorful mush. Which I guess that's what all oatmeal is, basically, so I don't know why I'm trying to describe it further.

I can also have zero calorie, non carbonated drinks (yipee!). For example, Zero Water; however, when I tried to drink that, my tongue got offended and tried to leave. I begged it to stay and I promised I would never drink it again. My tongue was miffed with me, but begrudgingly forgave me. So there's that.

2. How long do you have to do it?

There are different stages of the diet pre- and post- operatively. This stage, or as I fondly refer to it, the “I hate everyone who even thinks about food, but no, really I'm fine” stage, is the one I described above. I'm on this for 3 weeks. As of right now I'm 6/7ths of the way through this phase, thank heaven.

I may or may not describe the other phases of the diet that I'm supposed to be on when I get there. I know you're all holding your breath for that.

3. Why do you have to do a liquid diet?

I have my liver to thank for that. Stupid, fat liver.

No really. It's because of my fatty liver. Normal size people have firm, small-ish livers. Morbidly obese people have large, soft livers. Compare:

If someone has a fatty liver, it's kind of floppy, and drapes over the top of the stomach. This makes it difficult to do the surgery laproscopically, since the point of it is to work with the stomach. So the liquid diet makes the liver smaller and more firm in order to make laproscopic surgery possible. That means better, easier, and faster recovery.

4. Is it hard?

Well, yes and no.

Once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you're not going to be eating good food for the rest of your life (don't argue with me, you're not the ones who are facing a tiramisu-and-french-fry-less life), it's not too hard. At my food funeral, I was getting really stressed because I doubted whether or not I could stick to such a strict diet. But honestly, I don't know why it hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe because I've told almost everyone I know about the diet and the surgery, so all eyes are on me? Maybe because my family is helping me pay for the surgery, and I don't want to mess it up? Maybe losing weight hasn't been hard all along but I never gave it a fair go? Maybe I'm stronger than I thought? I don't know. Probably all of the above.

Okay, so I started writing this post a couple of days ago, so here's an update within an update: It has its moments of being freaking hard. I haven't been as good at making sure I eat when I'm hungry; sometimes I go 5 or 6 hours without eating, usually because I'm working or out doing other stuff and I haven't planned my meals. I realize I need to be better at eating something before I'm starving. But you know what sucks? Chugging a Slim Fast when everyone else is eating Cafe Rio. Or ordering an herb tea without milk or cream or sugar from a cafe when everyone else is eating pumpkin spice rolls and Oreo brownies and quiche and ham and cheese sandwiches on croissants!!!!! (Those are separate things; sorry about my lack of commas.) All I want is a grilled cheese sandwich. A whole plate of sandwiches! No, make that a bed of them; I want to wrap myself in a blanket of bacon while falling asleep eating my bed of grilled cheese sandwiches in my cheesecake house, dang it! Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

[Eyes come back into focus]

Me: What? You guys are still here?

[Wipes drool from chin]

Me: Uh, yeah, I'm doing fine, thanks for asking.

[Stabs someone and runs away with their bagel]

[Marries the bagel]