I wanted to start blogging again, but...as I thought about what my future holds, and what I may be blogging about, there wasn't any other blog title that really resonated with me as much as this one.
See, I started this blog because my body had gone rogue - deciding it would have periods when and where it wanted (and for long, long stretches of time.) My hormones had betrayed me.
Well, as of Monday this week, they are going to start doing so again. I know it's going to happen, and I am hoping, much like the pain I was told would be so intolerable, that it will be a whole lot of stuff and nonsense.
Let me back track and try to add some logic to my preceding thought dump.
On Monday, I had Roux-en-y gastric bypass surgery. It is the most radical bariatric surgery my surgeon's office performs, because, realistically, I have 200 lbs to lose. That ain't a typo.
I am 5'4". When I went to the hospital the day of my surgery, I weighed 338 lbs. My BMI was 59. That means there is far more of me that is fat than lean mass and bone. I am trying to get comfortable with sharing those numbers, because I won't ever weigh that again. For me, those now become some shorthand terms to post on the obesity forum boards. My HW (highest weight) was 364 - just before I started my second trimester of pregnancy with my youngest child. Just after that, I went on a gestational diabetes diet and lost, by the time I was one month post-partum, 70 lbs. But...as always seems to happen, that weight (mostly) came back.
This is a radical move. It is me saying 'I can't control this...I need help.' It is me acknowledging that if I don't do this, I very likely won't be alive in 20 years to enjoy my children's weddings, my grandchildren, or my 30th anniversary with my husband. I want to be here for all those things. And - it affects my family too. The only member of my household not considered overweight is my 5-year-old. If we don't change something, it affects us all.
But back to the hormones...see...your fat cells are one of the places you store estrogen. So, if you rapidly lose weight, as I hopefully will with this, it totally jacks with your hormones, and you get a little cray-cray. As one of the people I know who had the surgery put it..."You FEEL everything. Without food to turn to for comfort, you have to fully feel and deal with everything you are going through."
I will admit, that makes me a little bit terrified. I am honestly considering going back to therapy. No - I actually really WANT to go back to therapy - so I will have a place to put all those emotions.
"I'll schedule my emotional dump for Tuesday at 7pm, please."
My husband tells me I just need to trust him to tell me if something is off with me. To a certain extent, I do. But...fairly or not...sometimes those feelings are justified, and I have a right to feel them, and I don't want him telling me I'm being crazy just because he doesn't want to have to change something HE should be doing differently.
And where does my faith fall in all this? Shouldn't I have been able to just believe what God says about me and love me for who I was? Or shouldn't I just have trusted in God to lose the weight? Well...I did talk to God about it. I did ask, in prayer, for some sign if this wasn't what God wanted me to do.
The next morning, I got a call that my surgery had been moved up 2 hours earlier. So, I took that as my sign to go ahead.
In the end, it wasn't nearly as painful as I had worried. I had been told it would be worse than my c-section. I had also been told it was nothing compared to my c-section. I will say, I was in more pain, for a longer time, from my c-section. For this surgery, I was really in pain the first day. The second day it hurt only when I had to get up out of bed, and then somewhat around the site of the drain that was left in. The third day, I had very little pain, beyond muscle soreness. I did have a headache that started the second day and didn't let up until I had been home for 24 hours, but that could be related to not sleeping. The hospital is a TERRIBLE place to try to sleep.
Before I left, they did remove the drain, and I have very little pain right now. I am spiking a fever every afternoon/evening, and I do take my pain meds then, because it does have liquid tylenol in it, and I don't have any tylenol liquid.
I'm still on the liquid diet until I see the surgeon on Tuesday. At that point he may advance me to purees (babyfood!), for 2-4 weeks, and then I'll advance to a 'normal' diet, where I can start adding things back one by one to see how I tolerate them. I look forward to that!
So far, the scale shows that I have lost 4 lbs. It is probably more, but I am still holding on to a lot of the fluids from the hospital. After my c-section it was a full 2 weeks before they were all out of my system, so I know it may be a bit.
On a super happy note, I am getting new garage doors today, so I will be able to get in and out of my garage without heaving up the garage door (which is really heavy, and NOT something I am allowed to lift right now.)
Also - I am dreaming of cheating of on what I am supposed to eat!! LOL. I really am not having a hard time with what I am allowed to eat, but it IS hard to watch commercials for food, or cooking shows. It's an entirely emotional thing, because I am NOT AT ALL hungry. I don't WANT anything in particular. I just know how it would taste, and I know the satisfaction of stuffing yourself with yummy food, and I can't do either of those things...so I think my subconscious is acting out a little! I actually was really disappointed in myself after the dream last night, and it took me awhile to realize, after I woke up, that it was just a dream.
Anyway - so that's where I am! Post-op day 4, RNY, on my way to a better me!
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