Well, the day finally arrived. I had my band put in at 8am this morning and my wife and I were on our 2.5 hour trek back home by 11am.
There has been some suble pain, but not enough to prompt me to take pain meds. That fact is driving my wife nuts, who is convinced that I'm going to double over in pain any minute. I was told that tomorrow will be a harder day since the meds from surgery will be out of my system by then.
Overall, it's been a great day and with a little fear of potentially regretting this statement tomorrow, it was a lot easier than I thought.
I've been sipping my water all day and I've been on a few walks around the neighborhood. I took my girls over to lake by my house and we hunted for good skipping stones. I love that I took vacation this week and my girls are done with school this week, so we'll have lots of time together.
I'm trying to convince my doctor to give me my fill one week early, so I'm working really hard to be completely healed. I have to fly to Shanghai on week 4, so it's a bad week for a fill. (Yes, I know I wouldn't have that issue with the sleeve, ah well.) So, that means lots of exercise and movement to speed up the recovery process.
As for the fills, for anyone having the band, follow-up care is certainly critical. As a self-pay, I wanted to understand the added cost of this kind of care. What I learned is that a fill/adjustment takes about 15 minutes and I found sites to do this near my home and several other cities that I frequent. The good news about my doc is that he has a set price for the surgery and 2 full years of post-op care that covers all fills. It even covers a second procedure should it be determined anything went wrong. As a self-pay, I negotiated 2 additional years of service for a great price.
Tomorrow, I start the soft foods and I'm looking forward to having some yogurt. I LOVE yogurt and it was hard not having any on my liquid diet.
As for the liquid diet, I decided to go hard core and made sure that I didn't vary from the diet at all. I can't believe how much weight I lost in two week. (Well, you need to know that prior to my liquid diet, I was sort of on a "tour of my favorite foods.") I wasn't a complete pig, but I did enjoy my favorite steak and had a nice evening with buddies, generously sampling some of my favorite small batch bourbons.
I need to start one of those weight loss tickers, so I'll have to read up on how to do that. Here are the stats:
300lbs - Ow. I hit the big 300 as I "prepared" to say goodbye to food. This was 2 weeks prior to surgery
288 - Today, day of surgery
It was nice to drop 12lbs prior to surgery and I also started a better exercise routine 2 weeks ago.
Overall, I'm really excited. I feel great and I finally feel like I have a advocate on my side to ensure that my attempts to loose weight are no longer sobotaged by that constant feeling of hunger.
And now, my new ticker...
Tmac