Ambition and swimsuits

I hate walking on a treadmill or outside. Too little stimulation visually to keep me from thinking about how bored I am and how much I hate walking.

With that in mind, I find it odd that I am considering raising money and walking in AIDS Walk Wisconsin in October of this year. It's a 5 K walk. That's what? Little over three miles? Considering that, by then, I should be down about 100 lbs, I think I'll be fine.

I walked AWW in 1999/2000. It wasn't easy for me, but I finished! This year, I'll be lighter than I was at that time.

I'll walk with team, so it's not like I won't have things to distract me from all that walking around the Wisconsin Summer Fest grounds. Plus, I'll have my nifty little iPod (I found the missing charger!). I'll also have nine months to train myself to walk that far, which for normal people isn't that far really. No need for an NFL training camp or anything, just get my ass moving.

Gosh, this physical ambition stuff is new. Not sure how to handle it. :p


Oh, I bought a new swimsuit today! It's a cheap $15 thing from Wal-Mart, but I'm excited. It's a little smaller than my old one AND both of my breasts will stay in it, as it has a high neck. No more nearly flashing the old dudes who swim the same time I do.

My old suit was flattering and I loved it, but keeping my boobs in it was a problem. It wasn't designed for swimming laps or water walking.

The new one will arrive (bought online) within a day or two of me being able to swim again post-op. The doc restricted my swimming for a month. I love to swim, so I'm very excited to get back at.

The foam returns!

Once again, I'm experiencing what is sort of like heart burn, but with foam. I have foamy saliva/stomach acids working their way up my throat.

I get this often. My surgeon will say it means I am eating too much. I say, then why do I get it when I drink over an hour after I eat?!

I bet, when I tell him, the surgeon will put me back on pureed foods--or at least more of my foods will need to be pureed for a while. I'm obviously not able to process my foods and get them into my intestines as fast as I should, so, then, I unintentionally put water/fluids on top of the unprocessed food in my tiny stomach. <--my theory anyway.

This is not the worst thing I could feel generally (some days, it is awful!), but it can lead to vomiting and being uncomfortable for hours.

Oh, and FYI, I have major menstrual cramps. I'm having a bad day with that and it makes me all kinds of whiny. So, let me just say, "I hate my body today!" *deep breath in* *deep breath out*

So, right now, I'm not as positive as I normally am. Mostly, it's because I am tired of feeling icky, yucky, yacky, and all those other colorful worlds I've used in the last couple weeks to descibe the above symptoms. Plus, I'm tired and I haven't got my anxiety and thyroid meds in as often as required by my body and my doctor. Leaves me with no energy and easily upset.

Parched

I'm having water issues--I'm not getting enough. I sleep funny, random hours, which takes away from my drinking time, and I have to wait an hour after each meal to drink anything.

The Nutritionist recommends a half hour of no fluids after each meal, but that's just not enough time for me. If I drink before a full hour is up, I usually feel overstuffed (it's a nasty feeling that lasts several hours). I must need more time to process my food than her average patient.

I just ate a little while ago and I'm very thirsty. I want to down a bunch of water right now, but I have to wait until my hour is up. When I can drink again, I cannot drink any faster than normal, which is sips, or risk filling up my stomach too quickly. That would give me the same feeling as when I drink too close to a meal.

Dehydration is a real concern. It messes with the body's ability to function on a very basic level and it will cause nausea, making it even harder to get in the necessary protein. It's just so hard to be focused on water, protein, meal planning, calculating wait times between meals/water, do house work, go to my job, etc., etc. all the damn time. I've been picking my battles as they roll around, but that may not be an option. Just have to suck it up and do it all.

Only 15 more minutes until I can drink something. Until then, I will just sit here and smack my lips like an old lady who is missing her dentures.

I'm an oversharer: let's chat about my underwear

I tend to over share. Sorry you weren't warned before...

My underwear are falling off my butt. Guess that's a good thing, but I do kind of like it when they stay up, especially when I am wearing a dress or in my nightshirt.

Food envy

I'm suffering from food envy--I want a cheeseburger, Mountain Dew, chocolate, spaghetti, buttered bread, a salad, and at least twelve other things. I blame my birth control shot that I received today. That seems to be the pattern when I get it. Normally, I can indulge within reason. Not so much now.

I'm also PMSing, so I'm really quite whiny about how I feel physically and emotionally and regarding all of these cravings. My whines are mostly of the "I'm so freakin' tired of tuna and fish for protein!" and I'm missing carbs/bread like nothing else.

So, I'm trying something new. I doubt it's Nutritionist approved for this point in my recovery, but it's either try this or gorge on chocolate. ...

I opted to buy very small tortillas, turkey and chicken lunch meat, and Laughing Cow lite herb and garlic cheese. I can make a small grilled "sandwich" with one tortilla, a serving of lunch meat, and one half of a LC cheese wedge for 10 grms of protein and 3 oz of food.

Even though I made a poor man's panini, the tortilla is still pretty soft. I'm hoping the carbs will be tolerated by my system and I can do this again if need be. Time will tell.

If I don't have a repeat of the driveway incident, I have fat free sour cream and mild taco sauce to change up the flavor.


ETA (5:18 AM): I want a repeat of the driveway incident! <--- Just as I completed writing my previous sentence, I had to run the bathroom to (sorry!) vomit. My wish was granted!

I'm generally anti-vomiting. Years of migraines that gave me motion-sickness-like symptoms has made me a huge baby about this kind of thing, but I was feeling awful. Still am, just not as full/over full/blah.

Absolutely no more tortillas (or laughing cow cheese, but, for now, I'll assume it was the tortilla) for a while. I'm swearing them off!

I'm wearing jeans! / bored with food

Tonight, I'm wearing jeans! It's my first time since my surgery, 22 days ago. Luckily, they're too big now, so the waist won't bother my healing incisions.

Who would have thought that one would have such a need to wear something. I searched and searched for my jeans so I could wear them. Tired of feeling slobbish in my various jogging pants, I guess. I'm no fashionista by any stretch of the imagination, but I can only handle so many days of looking like a stereotypical Walmart customer.

I'm finding I am getting bored with my food already. Decided to find a "real" protein shake, instead of my Carnation Instant Breakfast, so I get more protein through the shake, allowing me more choices in my food. One can only eat so much baked fish, tuna, and turkey. I now hate tuna and baked fish is beginning to make its way up my "please, don't make me eat that again!" food list.

Alrighty, I'm off to play BINGO with my mom and half the geriatric population of my town. Happy Friday!

Did I cheat having surgery?

I've lost 0.7 lbs since yesterday at this time. Whoa. This-THIS-is why I had to delay my wedding. Okay, that wasn't the only reason for the delay, but a valid part of it. How does one get a dress fitted when things change so much from day to day?!

My engagement ring doesn't even fit anymore. It slips right off.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Here's the truth: I feel like I'm cheating. Cheating has never been something I am/was comfortable with, so this is bothering me quite a bit.

People tell me I'm doing a good job or that they can really tell I'm working hard. Problem is, I don't feel that way. It's hard for me to take the compliment when I feel like my surgery is doing all the work and I'm benefiting.

I know, on an intellectual level, that I am working hard too. It would be easy to disregard what the nutritionist and the surgeon have told me and eat all the yummy, but not good for me stuff that I want. I could eat more than recommended, until I'm emotionally sated, because my system is set up to not absorb most of it, allowing me the benefit of weight loss and the ability to eat mostly what I want. I'm not doing any of that though.

I'm being conscious of everything I put in my body and about its benefit--carefully weighing portions and choosing items that are high in protein and low in fat and sugar. All this planning, weighing, food diaries are work; lots of work. Even with all that, the 22 lb weight loss in a couple weeks still seems too easy and I feel like a fraud or a cheat.

Guess that's something to throw at the shrink, huh?

Vitamins don't sit well

My chewable multivitamins still make me feel icky, but I'm trying to be a good girl and add them to my food regimine. Ugh. I also need to add 3 (three!) calciums and a b12. Can't wait until my system is use to this. The first 2o minutes after I have the pills are an unhappy time.

The crazy part is that my nutritionist wants me to have both multivitamins and a calcium with breakfast. Just the sound of that makes me want to hurl. Plus, there will be no room left for the food necessary for my body to process those pills. Crazy lady.

Feed me, Seymore!

Today, I kept feeling hungry. I don't know if that means I've stretched out my stomach so that it feels it needs more than I am suppose to give it at this point or what. I'll just stick with my 3 oz per meal and hope the feeling subsides.

What may help is that I'm going back to work today, so life will really start to have a routine again. I'll be able to say, I have meals at A, B, and C times, with snacks at D and E. Right now, I forget and suddenly it's been 6 or so hours between meals with no snacks, leaving me to have to get quite a bit of protein in my system (which translates into a bunch of food) before bedtime. This is a good part of why I have days where I don't feel good--because I have to rush the food in. Sometimes, I've barely begun to process one meal when I'm filling up my stomach with a shake or another meal.

NYE Dinner/My face is shrinking (with pics)

Happy 2012! Okay, so I'm a bit early. I'm getting old, you know--I am 32!--and will be getting my butt to bed right around midnight.

Tonight, I went out to dinner with my honey, my mom, her honey, and some of his siblings. I enjoyed it, but I was having food envy issues.

Everyone was enjoying the buffet, their prime rib dinners, and the complimentary fresh bread and butter while I had to search the menu for something that I may be able to eat. Turned into a $20 broiled walleye dinner with a plain baked potato.

I didn't know the difference between baked fish and broiled. Broiled apparently has some oil it's cooked in and then poured over the top. Can't have oils...most anyway. Made me nervous about eating any of the fish. I had what I think was about 2 oz without issue (thankfully!). I ate little of the baked potato without anything added. Would rather have had prime rib and bread slathered in whipped butter. [insert whiny whimper]

I may have been able to have some lean steak, but I didn't want to push it. I know my stomach (technically, I have two of them now, but I mean the one that actually gets food in it) can generally handle fish without issue. Steak, even if very tender, would be a new experience and one I wouldn't want to have in public -- see yesterday's entry involving my friend's driveway for a very good reason why I try new things at home only.

It was kind of amusing when the waitstaff came back after we ate and asked me if my meal was okay, because it looked like I barely touched it. Shoot, those fillets will last me for several meals. I'll send up throwing one away after getting at last three more meals out of the other.

ETA:
The other day, at my post-op group therapy meeting, the facilitator kept going on about how much thinner my face is. My honey also commented on it later that night. I didn't see it...until now.

Here's a pic showing how I looked with I started the pre-op program in April and how I looked tonight, when I was getting ready to go out for New Years. I can certainly see a difference in my chin and neck area. Also, my dimples are showing a little more.

Sorry that I just threw up in your driveway!

I went to visit a friend today that I hadn't seen in forever. We had a good time catching up. Less pleasant was my final memory for tonight: having to go back into the house when I was trying to leave to say, "I just thew up in your driveway. Do you have hi-dry you want me to put on it?" Good times.

It was my first experience with vomiting since my surgery. I can't lay the blame anywhere for why it happened--could have been too much/wrong foods when I had lunch at 3:30 PM, a blockage of some sort, or an issue with my protein shake I sipped on while the friend and her family had dinner at 6 pm. I'd like to not repeat it if possible though.

Everyday really does bring new experiences with this. Some good, some bad, and some that are kind of embarrassingly funny.

Walking at the store leads to big purchases

I spent over an hour at the grocery store, using the time as exercise (gotta get my ass in gear somehow). The drawback is that I spent $100 on food via impulse buys. I eat three 3 oz meals a day. There's no way I need $100 worth of food! Most of those groceries I'll have to force on Travis so that they don't go bad. I'm sure he'll be crushed. :P

Plus, since I have all that food, I want to EAT all that food. Case of too many choices.

NYE plans

Mom keeps having these small moments where she offers me food or a drink out of habit. I'm fine with that. It's not like she's waving cookies in front of me saying, "oooh, wouldn't this taste good...!"** I usually just say that I can't have it and she makes this funny oops/flinch face and we move on.

Tonight, my mom's boyfriend was on the phone with her and was double checking their plans for New Year's Eve. They're going to dinner, as is their usual tradition.

I guess he asked if my fiance and I wanted to go and she said that she'd check with me, not wanting to put me on the spot. After she hung up, she asked me and I said I'd talk to my Honey and get back to her tonight.

I then made a comment about how Travis can't complain, because I am a pretty cheap dinner date now. As soon as I said that, mom got this "OMG!" look on her face and said, "I didn't even think of that!" She was all embarassed for asking us out to dinner when I can't eat (much). I laughed.

I'm not sure if that means she wouldn't have asked me to go if she'd remembered or if it's just th idea she forgot again. I hope it's the second one, because I still like to go out and hang with people, even if I'm just going to have part of a plain baked potato. I'll make do and have a good time doing it.

**My Honey has done that and he has been told that each of those instances will keep him from having sex again for an additional day past my surgical recovery time. He's stopped quickly, ending up with three extra days on his celebacy sentance. lol

Two Week Anniversary

Today is my two week anniversary of the surgery. I'm doing well. Still only a little pain, which, when your organs are rearranged and/or cut in half, I figure that's appropriate for a while.

It doesn't see like two weeks, that's for sure. Been too busy swinging like a pendulum between, "oooh, I get to eat again!" and "please, dear God, don't make it time to eat again!" Learning to
prepare and eat foods that my new system requires and will accept seems to have been a full time job.

Today is Day 10 since my parole from the hospital. I still have adhesive all over my abdomen, though the pads that were given to me at my last appointment, which smell like gasoline and feel like baby oil, have helped. Some stuff is too close to Steri strips and incision sites for me to be
comfortable using the pads on them.

Also ten days later, I'm still really bruised on my stomach from all the Heparin shots. It's not even close to as bad as it was, but it's still bad. Does that make sense? The diameter of the bruising, which was half my stomach is lessening, but I still have a large purple area. Ten days and I still have purple bruising rising to the surface. Crazy.

Okay, I have to go. My cat is stalking my breakfast (an egg) and I need to focus to be able to fend off the poofy, gray ninja. She's not above slapping a dirty paw on the food to claim it as her own. If she does that, the rule is that she wins, because I am NOT eating it then.

Another day, another yucky feeling

Going to bed now, without getting two-thirds of my daily protein requirements in, because I feel yucky.

I tried eating less food at my dinner meal, without improvement. I could stay up and try to get in another protein shake, making me 17 grams short instead of 20 grams, but trying to get the thicker liquid into already unhappy stomach just seems foolish.

I'm actually just going to take a nap, not pass out for the night. My plan is to wake up and go grocery shopping, getting plenty of protein-rich foods. I need to find some way to get my protein in and my current food supply, which certainly needs replenishing, is sorely lacking.

Sleeping a couple or a few hours may help me move toward my old sleep schedule, which I really need to get back on. I start work again in less than a week.

I was suppose to do three 12-hour shifts right off the bat when I came back to work, but my awesome boss recognized that would be pretty hard on me. She asked me if it was okay if she tried to get the person who was working my shifts while I was on FMLA to work one of those 12 hour shifts next week. I agreed and so did my replacement. I am very happy to say that he took my Thursday shift.

Now, I'm just stuck with Tuesday and Wednesday, giving me an extra day to recoup after my first week back. Uses up more of my PTO, but I'm okay with that.

Fighting my cat for food

Ever tried defending your food from a food-obsessed feline? I experience this evertime I make a protein drink or when I have a meal.

We don't have a kitchen table--we have kitchen computer desks, because this apartment is so small. Laelah is allowed on the desk, but she's to stay away when we eat, which, of course, she doesn't do.

It's cute for a minute or so, when she's trying to pretend that she's there for affection and not the contents of my spoon. She rubs on my hand and purrs really loud. She also tries this slow move where she tries to cross in front of my laptop to my bowl. The goal, I think, is to move so slow that I don't see it. She's a big, fluffy, gray Maine Coon. She has no hope in a career as a ninja.

She also has huge anime eyes that she bats around when there's something she wants. You seen Puss in Boots from Shrek 2, where he makes all the people around him melt with "awwwwe"? Laelah's the live version. It makes it so hard to say no or be mad.

She get's treats quite often (too often, thanks to Travis) that she adores. She gets them so often that she even knows the difference in sounds between small plates that I use for dinner and the tea plates that Travis puts her treats on. She gets gooshy foods that make her happy and I get vitamins that make me feel yacky. How is this fair?

Not feeling well and running out of food

I still don't feel good, but I need to eat. This girl needs to have enough protein grams, so she can keep her hair as much as possible!

My whiney issue is exacerbated by the fact that I'm running out of food that I can actually consume. I have no freaking clue how I am running low, considering I eat so very little at a time.

Post-op group meeting

Today, I feel a little icky. Just off but not horrible, which could be caused by anything from overeating last night, to sugar crashing, to my body still adjusting to this new way of eating.

Today's my first post-op meeting. Should be interesting. There were several of us from my pre-op meetings having their surgeries within the last month.

Truthfully, since we meet with the pre-op group for 15 minutes to allow them to ask questions, I'd rather not be the newest off the operating table. Hate being put on the spot and they tend to go after the newest with most of the questions.

ETA: Group was good. No too many questions from the pre-op group. They seemed shy. Post-op was just three of us, but that gave more time to talk.

Sugar Crash

Never had a blood sugar crash before. Put me down as never wanting to be a diabetic, not that there are many on the "Pick me!" waiting list for that. I am shaky, hot, and tired. Now, I know what a menopausal, narcoleptic tea-cup Chihuahua feels like.

I slept too long with no fuel in my system. I'm already taking in very few calories because of the surgery and then I slept longer than I intended, so my body was just out of what it needed. I knew what it was because my mom's type 2 and crashes occassionally. What I felt and what she described were the same.

Post Op Appt/Weigh In

Had my first post-op appt with Dr. PeopleSkills.

Had my staples out, which was less painful and scary than I had imagined (aren't most things?!). Still hurt though.

Also, I was weighed. The last time I was weighed was around Dec 10th, when I had my last pre-op appointment. Since then, I've lost 19 lbs (41 lbs since the beginning of April). Yay!

In celebration, since I can't wear anything that doesn't have a stretchy waist, I bought new (and on clearance) jogging pants. Very exciting.