Things they are a changing.....

Hello everyone! Wow what a wild ride it has been. The hospital was OK, but I definitely would not like to do it again anytime soon! I got the lap Band and while they were in there they fixed a hernia (which we did not know I had) and took a liver biopsy. Needless to say I feel if I did not have the hernia operation I would be doing a lot better. That thing hurts!

Because of the hernia I am fully aware of anything that tries to go down or up my esophagus, including air. Did I already say it hurts! Moving on, I know it is just a short time until it feels better!

So right now I am living on liquids. Pretty much water, SF Boost or Carnation instant breakfast and LF, low sodium cream of mushroom or chicken soup. Now let me tell you, of those things I eat very little in quantity. I have probably had since Wednesday night around 10pm 15oz of juice, 10oz of soup and 20oz of shakes. CRAZY! Today around lunch I ate/drank about 5 oz of shake, then about 40 minutes later I tried to eat 4 oz of soup and almost threw up from too much food. It will definitely take time to work up to the levels needed to sustain a person. Oh and yes I am not hungry, again crazy! I woke up after sleeping today slightly hungry, but it is cured quickly with like 2oz of something. I also have to drink everything out of a medicine cup (like the one above). It is to make you learn how to sip the right amount and learn portion control, again CRAZY!
So far my only freak out was Friday morning at the hospital. They wanted me to take a percocet tablet instead of morphine through the IV. No problem except I was terrified to swallow the pill. Even chopped into 4 piece it took me 45 minutes to get it down. I was so scared it would get stuck! It didn't but man was I scared. It is starting to hurt when I take them where the hernia was repaired so tonight Pete is going to crush them for me. I also miss chewing food, but I get to chew again on Friday. So no worries.

Funny stuff: The anaesthesia nurse had the nerve to tell me about his Haggen Daz addiction and his love of popcorn as he was prepping me for surgery! I mean the nerve! Then he started talking about Micheal Jackson! OK dude MJ died from anaesthesia! I mean I know he used it wrong, but still you are wheeling me into an operating room and getting ready to put me under! I made sure to tell him I did not want any MJ milk! Thanks for all the love and support! I really love all my friends and family and could NOT do this with them!

So like tomorrow it's kinda a big deal.......

OK tomorrow is the day. I am a bit on edge, not really over the surgery, but because Finn seems to be coming down with something. I too also feel like I might have a mild cold. With that said, prayers that we all wake up OK in the morning and that I am able to get the surgery. I do not want to have to postpone this! I am bringing a laptop, so yep I will be on-line afterwards! I can not wait to blog about my pedicure tonight, oh the comedy!

Vanilla Ice Ice baby

The scale. A tiny little thing in the grand scheme of things. But this tiny little thing is capable of pulling so many emotions from us! If you step on it and the numbers go down then it shear jubilation! Let those numbers go up or even stay the same, then despair.

Earlier in the the week when I stepped on the scale I literally would do a little dance, step off and feel instantly lighter and better about myself. I felt like a 3 Musketeers bar floating around in one of their commercials. Heaven!

The last two days, well I'm ain't dancing a jig, I ain't dancing at all. The scale will not budge! I hate this! I know it is not scientifically possible for the damn thing to not move. I weigh a lot, I eat about 800 calories a day. I should lose some weight! I just checked out www.caloriecontrol.org and found that a person my age, height and body weight needs 2727.4 a day to maintain their current weight.
OK, well it takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat. So lets do the math here 2727-800=1927. So if my math is right (and if you know me it probably is not) then I should lose at least a pound every two days. Anyways, what I am getting at is I need to CHILL THE &(#$ OUT! I know I suck up water like a sponge and more than likely this is all water and I will wake up in the next few days and BOOM 4lbs will be gone. But man it is hard to not see the scale move. The other reason it is weighing on me, (ha! no pun intended), is the Nurse Practitioner told me she expected me to lose 10lbs. I am almost to 9lbs, with 2 days left. So I am crossing my fingers that I make it. I might try and walk on the treadmill tonight, because food wise there is no more I can do. I am watching sodium, calories, fat, sugar and carbs, so there is really no more to watch food wise.

So for now I will just chill!

Like Whitney, sometimes I too, get emotional...

It hit me, on Thursday I will leave my kiddos and husband behind and give everything over to the skilled hands of my surgeon. After he does his part it is entirely up to me. Whoa that is scary.

I think the the hardest part of this whole thing is more emotional than learning to eat or drink differently. I mean I have to look at all aspects of my life and figure out besides genetics why I am what I am. So let's slowly and gently lift the lid of that box a little bit today.

I sit here writing this while Sophie is napping and Finn is at school. Tears stream down my face as I think of my brother. How did he sneak in here? Well, he is very, very good at it! He sneaks in my head everyday, all day, all the time. I am a member of this weird club. I did not ask for membership, sign up or say a pledge. The club is for the unlucky people who lose someone so very close to them.

I miss him! I miss the way he smells, his humor, his ability to talk me through every situation and give me lots of tough love, most of all I just miss having a brother. He was so damn cool. I mean who gets to say their brother lived in Hawaii, parachutes, is an Iron Man, can own a room with his looks and charm, wears turquoise pants and looks good in them (and was straight to boot).

Losing someone very close to you hurts! It hurts worse than anything you have ever felt in your life and it keeps on hurting for quite a long time. After a while it sort of lets up, but still lets you know its there. I feel it probably will forever. When JR died I had lost 60lbs doing a low carb diet. After he died and for the two weeks we were here in VA and TX, Peter can tell you I did little eating. I cared for mom and dad, handled JR's affairs and funeral arrangements and went back to the hotel every night and cried. I cried like I have never cried before. If I ate I got sick, so I lost even more weight. JR was buried with a letter from me in his breast pocket of his dress blues. In this letter I promised him I would take care of myself. I would get healthy, I would finish losing the weight I had started to lose then. As I write this I weigh 70lbs more than I did the day I wrote that letter. It is time I make good on that promise. I have stumbled down the road, slipped up, fallen down, banged my knee, etc. It is now time to jog down this road. With a good stride, taking in all the scenery, enjoying all the views and looking behind me every now and then for some encouragement.

I have to realize that just like when I quit smoking, no one else can do this for me. I did this to myself I have to fix it myself. I very well may kick and scream along the way. I may try to justify why I *can* eat something or how it won't be that big of a deal. But just remember, the same as at the Zoo......Don't Feed The Animals!

Hot night in little Tokyo

It was 104 steamy disgusting degrees today. Not fit for man nor beast. The gates of Hades literally opened up and swallowed the whole East Coast. I hate summer. Well hate is strong, so I strongly dislike summer. Unless you were near a large body of water today then life kinda probably sucked! Enter stage left, our air conditioner. The wonderful device that makes summer in the South livable. Our often, by our maintenance man, referred to as the worst type you can own and in a few words a piece of shit AC unit. The little engine that just keeps on chugging, the unit that not two weeks ago got a clean bill of health. Well that AC unit as Finn and Pete would put it, is hosed. As I sit here and type this it is 86 degrees in my house at two minutes passed midnight. I am literally using a baby washcloth to swab the sweat off my brow. I tell you all of this so that I can explain the sushi. I love sushi, I love sushi the best that comes from Kona Grill. Tonight after the AC debacle I still had not eaten dinner and I was starving, hot, emotional and done dealing with home problems (in the last month our kitchen has been destroyed and our washing machine has died). I had been thinking of sushi all day, so much so that I googled the nutrition stats of sushi and decided that it really is not bad for you. I even went so far as to justify in my head that since after Thursday I will no longer be able to eat rice, I should be able to eat sushi just one more time. So I did it, I asked the one person in my life who pretty much never tells me no, to get me sushi. And he did (Peter needs a class for enablers). I asked Peter to go to Kona Grill and get me sushi and I ate every last bite! Not a huge amount, much smaller than my previous meals before my unfortunate incarceration into former fatdom. But none the less an item I should not be eating. So here I sit sweating my ass off and holding true to honesty telling my computer and anyone whom cares to read my mistake. I once again used food to sooth an uncomfortable situation. I took control of a situation I had no control over, by controlling what went in my mouth. Next time I should take control by not putting a damn thing in my mouth. Enough Dr. Phil, you get the point. I screwed up, I know I screwed up. So if there was one thing I learned from watching all those G.I. Joe cartoons with my brother, it was "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle". I can now go read my book and go to bed, conscience clear and ready to start a new day.

* Note to self, "Eat, Pray, Love" is a bad choice of books to read when you are getting ready to have WLS.

7/23/10 ~~ 8 days into the liver shrinking diet....

So I am kinda starting this whole blog thing a little late into the game. Let me give you all a little background info into me, the reason I choose Lap Band surgery and where I am in the process.

My name is Liz and I am a food addict. Actually I am very good at doing anything in excess. I can drink like a fish, smoke like a chimney and eat better than Adam Richmond (google him, great show). These 3 things lead me to where I am now, quite frankly a fat ass. I mean lets call a spade a spade, I am a big girl. I was kinda all right with this, until the birth of my second child and thus my second c-section. After that, I was done! I am sick of being a skinny girl stuck in a fat body, or as defined on Urban Dictionary a Stealth Fox. I am sick of being cumbersome.

So back in November I went to my PCP for some ailment and asked about weight loss surgery (from here on referred to as WLS). She gave me the number to a local surgeon. From there I attended a seminar about the different types of surgery available. I learned that I would have to go through 6 consecutive months of counseling with my PCP, a psych eval. (and yes I passed),nutrition counseling and the biggie QUIT SMOKING.

Fast forward to now. I have completed all the above steps, and yes I even quit smoking! That is huge. I love cigarettes, I think there is nothing more appealing than cracking open a fresh box of Marlboro menthol's and lighting up! Add to that drinking while smoking and even better, but wait! Add an awesome meal, suburbly mixed alcoholic beverages and then stepping outside for a Marlboro and HOT DAMN you got something good. I am smiling as I write that! How sick! that was Heaven on a stick for me! Anyways I digress, we should move on.

I am now in the LIVER SHRINKING DIET phase. Guys this sucks! I am like Tommy Lasorta without all the money. I drink 2 shakes (Carnation instant breakfast, sugar free) a day and a 3 oz portion of low fat chicken with a cup of steamed non-starchy veggies. I can have a Dannon Light and Fit yogurt and a 4oz container of 2% Cottage Cheese. That is about it. It equals less than 800 calories a day. The good part is I have lost 8lbs in 8 days, the bad part is I have on several occasions considered eating one of my children. I mean they are cute and usually sweet too. I have to do this diet until 7/29/10, the day of my Lap Band surgery. This diet is necessary to shrink the liver, since the liver lays over the stomach and esophagus. I am hoping to shrink my liver by 40% and give the surgeons more room to move the laproscopic tools around.

I will say this, I feel like if you have not done this 2 week bootcamp of hell then you should not get the surgery. That might be harsh but, so far it has taught me what REAL HUNGER feels like. Not just being bored so I will eat kinda of thing, I mean true hunger. I often think of the people on the show "Survivor" during this. I have no clue how they do the physical challenges. By the end of the day, before I eat dinner I seriously have trouble going to the Grocery store. It has also got me feeling like food is fuel. I kinda of look at my body as a fuel tank now and food as gas. When the tank is empty I stop and give it a little just to make it to the next filling station (a meal). It really is starting to change the way I feel about food. I am reading every label now and in a strange way enjoying searching for good foods that are good for you in the grocery store. I am also eating A LOT more fresh veggies! This is helpful to because I find the chopping of vegetables cathartic, I love the whole process of washing and chopping.

So from here out I am going to keep this blog. It will hopefully help me stay on track. Eventually I will get up the courage to tell you my starting weight and post some pics. I plan on making lots of short term goals instead of saying "I want to lose xyz amount of weight". I know my first goal, and once I reach it I will tell you, because wow, saying it or writing it for the world to hear is just a little overwhelming. But I do want to be honest, so I will do it once I reach it (I am not too far from reaching it now!).