How it went down

A quick rundown of how the surgery went…

Monday

• Got a call from the hospital… they had a cancellation so they need to move my procedure 3 hours earlier. D’oh! That means getting-up early.
• Went to my nutrition support class.
• Shaved my beard
• Had no food or drink after 11pm.
• Took a Hibiclens shower. (I guess this is to minimize the chances of getting staph.)
• Went to sleep very late, perhaps 1:30am, because I had other stuff I needed to finish.
• Got-up at 6am. Had my second Hibiclens shower. Got dressed and Matt took me to the hospital.
• Checked-in and was brought to a room. Changed into my gown and waited. Watched TV, and actually surfed the ‘net for a bit, as I’d brought a laptop and the hospital had free WiFi.
• They tried to prep me for the IV. The nurse, who seemed to be new, poked me twice and was unsuccessful, so she told me the anesthesiologist would do it.
• Received word that our operating room needed to be used for an urgent trauma case, which meant we’d have to wait longer. (It ended-up being a 60-to-90 minute delay.) Matt took a nap:
• I occupied myself with my camera, and started playing with the macro feature:
  
  
• They took me in my bed to a pre-op holding room. Hung-out there for awhile. Boring.
• The doctor stopped-in to say hello, and ask if I had any last-minute questions. He said he’d submit doctor orders that would allow me to be discharged early the next morning; he wouldn’t even have to be there.
• Got called-in. They took me to the O/R, which was big and snazzy-looking. And freezing cold. They had me lay-down on the operating table and started to get me ready. I started to shiver a bit. They asked me what my favorite radio station was, they found it and cranked it.
• I observed the camera and the video monitor that they’d be using to do my (laparoscopic) procedure. Somebody had told me that when you’re doing (or observing) the surgery, you basically watch it on the television screen.
• The anesthesiologist came in and had to poke me three more times to get the IV done properly. Ouch! Meeting your anesthesiologist is a bit of a weird experience. Though you may be able to choose your surgeon, and you get to meet him/her beforehand, this is not the case with the anesthesiologist. They’re assigned to you, often at the last minute. So you basically get what you get. They walk into the room and introduce themselves and you basically think “wow, nice to meet you, here’s my life in your hands!”
• Still shivering, too. They put some blankets on me.
• The two assistants were young ladies who were very nice to me, tried to keep me calm and make me laugh a few times. They told me I wouldn’t need a catheter, yay. They attached the little stickers for the heart monitoring. Shaved my belly. Put those plastic leg cuffs on me, which inflate intermittently to prevent clots, neat!
• They turned-on the “drip” in my IV, and I drifted-off into unconsciousness listening to Linkin Park’s Shadow of the Day. (“And the sun… will set for you…”)
• I woke-up in a little bit of pain. They gave me morphine. (Thanks, morphine!) My memory from this part is a little fuzzy. I do remember them wheeling-me up to my room, number 711. I remained there for a time.
• I heard a couple people talking outside the room, then Matt came-in, yay.
• I got my own room. With a nice view, even. Matt and I watched Scrubs on little airline-style TV screens next to the beds. Got a dose of Pepcid and some more morphine.
• As it got later, Matt went home. I never got totally comfortable on the hospital bed, but somehow managed to sleep for a bit. I slept hard, but only for about 3 hours. Wide awake, I attempted to watch TV. Nothing but infomercials. Eventually I got back on my laptop.

Tuesday

• I tried to start arranging to be discharged, but the nurses insisted that I couldn’t leave until the doctor saw me. They couldn’t get a hold of him, but said he’d be making rounds at 9am.
• Around 9am, Matt came back with Rob (aka Roblet) in tow. No doctor. We waited. Over an hour. I called the nurse and asked her to check things out. No news, no doctor, nothing they could do.
• 11am rolls around. A nurse has discovered the doctor’s orders said I could check-out without being seen. *sigh*
• We check-out. I walk to the entrance with Matt, while Rob gets the car. Ride home. Lay-down on the couch. Watch TV. I take a little nap.
• I take vicodin (generic, in elixir/liquid form) for pain. I think it actually worked better than morphine for this particular kind of pain. Another Pepcid AC. (They want to make sure I don’t have much acid for now.) Three Flintstones Kid Complete multi-vitamins. A sugar-free Tums E-X.
• It’s no problem to drink the prescribed water, ice chips and Propel. No pain, no regurgitation, no difficulty or anything. Anxiously awaiting the day I can have more… broth, a (sugar-free) popsicle, etc. (You have to be very careful at first to promote healing.)

The Vicious Cycle of Weight Loss

OK… last chart for awhile. (God I’m such a geek.)

This is the vicious cycle that I was caught-up in. I firmly believe the weight-loss surgery is going to help me escape it.

I made this chart. Maybe it will be useful to someone who’s been caught in the same cycle.

Weight options – in context of a 5 year outlook

When deciding whether to have weight-loss surgery (and if so, which surgery), I sat down and drew-up some “what-if” scenarios:

• What if I did nothing?
• What if I tried to lose the weight myself? (What if it all came back?)
• What if I had gastric bypass? Lap-band?

When I plotted everything out, they looked something like this.

(The black line on the left represents actual numbers. The other colored lines represent some possible paths.)

These are very rough numbers… just estimates. These are not goals, but more like educated guesses, based-on my history and what I think I’m capable of.

You’ll notice the chart kinda “flatlines” towards 2011 and beyond. I don’t think all the options would literally remain unchanged, but the chart gives a general idea of where I might expect to be.

In the end, I opted to go with Lap-band surgery for several reasons. I’ll expand more on that later.

I’m posting stuff like this because I’ve had a number of people ask me questions about weight loss and about the surgeries. Maybe this will be helpful to someone. I just thought the graph was useful in showing the options in a more visual way.

Again… these are just rough numbers and would vary.

My Health Goals

A friend asked me how much weight I hope to lose after having the lap-band surgery. The truth is, I’m really not focusing on that. (I’ll still keep records of it, but my point is that it’s just a number.)

Instead, I have my eye on the goals written-out here. I believe these will give me a much better picture of my health and improvement.

Some of the items listed here may really be the means to accomplishing a goal. But I still list them here as goals because I want to monitor how well I do.

If I reach my goals at the 6-month mark, I’m going to treat myself to something suitably loverly… perhaps a next-generation iPhone or something.

Scars

There are five scars from the surgery. (Obviously they’ll heal much better than this, but some peeps had asked about them.)

I’m up and about a lot already, and even walked 5 blocks outside today.

Right now I’m on liquids only… mostly water, Propel and ice chips. Tomorrow I introduce broth, sugar-free Jello and sugar-free Popsicles. After that, other soft stuff like Cream O’ Wheat and strained soups. And we keep going up from there.

Tonight I sleep with my oximeter to get a reading for my blood oxygen saturation.

Beardless.

I shaved my beard because I was told it would be better for the breathing tube.

They also shaved my whole belly, and part of my wrist (where the IV goes.)

This is only the second time since 1995 that I’ve shaved my whole face.

Learn, manage, share, track your health for free with SparkPeople.com

I’d like to introduce you to a totally rad website called SparkPeople.com. I learned about it from my sister Suzanne awhile back.

SparkPeople helps you live a healthy lifestyle, even if your goal isn’t necessarily to lose weight. You can:

• Set health-related goals and track your progress.
• Use an instant search to get nutrition statistics about thousands of different foods, including fast food.
• Explore tips about nutrition and physical activity.
• Find, contribute, and rate food recipes.

You already know my beliefs about the rebound weight re-gain when you reduce food intake to lose weight. So I really like SparkPeople because the emphasis is placed on healthy living. You don’t need to focus on weight if you don’t want to.

Say for example, you just want to concentrate on your sodium consumption, or fiber, or you want to drink 8 glasses of water per day. Perhaps you want to reduce (or eliminate) alcohol or caffeine. Reduce your triglycerides. Eliminate high-fructose corn syrup. Maybe you want a way to track how much physical activity you’re getting every week. Whatever your goal, SparkPeople will help you track it. Here are some of my goals, for example:

(NOTE: The items listed above are based-on my doctor’s recommendation for lap-band patients. Your actual goals and numbers may be much different.)

What else do I like about SparkPeople?

• It’s totally and completely free.
• No junk mail, no obligations, and NO CATCH. Unsubscribe at any time.
• Well-designed, easy to navigate, useful.

I like receiving the “SparkPeople Food Showdown” e-mail newsletter. Every day they pit two foods against each other, then tell you which one is better for you. What’s great is that they pick foods that you’d probably actually eat… the Whopper vs. Big Mac, for example. Sometimes the results are obvious, and sometimes they’re surprising. And often they’ll throw in useful tidbits… like “hold the mayo and save another 120 calories.”

There are a number of other features, some of which are useful, others not. You might find the community features helpful, and you might even create your own SparkPage or gather friends into a SparkTeam. Or you may just want to join to get the e-mail newsletters and do nothing else. You can pretty much decide what level you want to participate at, then go with it.

No matter how big or small you are. No matter if you’ve had weight surgery or not. SparkPeople has something for everyone, and I highly recommend it.

Home. Resting.

I’m home and doing well. The surgery went fine (without a hitch, as far as I know). The only hiccup was that they had to poke me 5 times before they could get the IV in correctly. And I am having a little abdominal pain… it takes a few minutes to stand-up. But I’m managing OK with some vicodin.

I have five (relatively small) scars. I’m moving around on my own. Matt is taking good care of me. Just relaxing and doing some short walking trips.

Yesterday my buddy Rob (aka “Roblet”) stayed with me while Matt went to work. Last night JP brought over the film Shortbus on DVD, so we caught-up and watched that. After that I was pretty exhausted so I went to sleep. (The night after the surgery I slept perhaps 3 hours. But last night I slept nearly 6 hours, yay…)

Yesterday and today I’ve been having water, Propel, ice chips, and a few chewable supplements. It doesn’t hurt to drink or anything, which is nice.

THANK YOU for all your nice e-mails. I’m so amazed at how supportive y’all have been! It’s a great thing! Thank you!

I’ll probably post a “flashback” from surgery day soon.

Surgery went well

Surgery went great. Relaxing on my hospital bed. Private room, morphine, Matt and I watching “Scrubs” on airline-style LCD TV’s.

Beardless and in hospital gown