Category: health

Bribes

Remember when bribery was illegal? That was before the nazi in chief of the fascist states of america declared that it was a smart move to let a foreign government give you an airplane as a present. Our new air force one, which will stop being air force one and become trump’s personal plane once he leaves office, assuming he leaves office before he dies.

Yeah, this country fucking sucks. Can you imagine if Barack Obama told the public he was taking a passenger jet as a gift from an Islamic nation? Fucking fascists.

Change of subject. Two things to look forward to this week. First, I have my three year post-gastric bypass surgery check in at the weight loss clinic. I expect them to tell me that I am the greatest patient they have ever had, and that no patient they’ve dealt with has ever had such overwhelming success with their post-op program. I am hoping for a plaque or something to honor me.

Of infinitely greater importance, my step son Harry is going to graduate from the University of Vermont this weekend. I am so proud I am so proud I am so proud I am so proud. Did I mention how proud I am? We’ll be heading up there after work on Friday. I am really looking forward to it. I don’t know if you can tell by the context of this paragraph, but I am really proud of Harry.

Okay, Robert. Back to work with you.

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Three Year Anniversary Weigh In

Happy anniversary! Three years ago today I went under the knife and had my insides rewired. Gastric Bypass. Weight loss surgery. Most of my stomach was tied off and a big chunk of my intestine was skipped. It was a brutal experience that required all sorts of lifestyle and diet changes and had all sorts of icky side effects but it was oh so worth it. Health care wise it is the single best move I’ve ever made. Overall it doesn’t quite measure up to marrying Jen and being a step father, but it tops just about everything else.

I weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see I was down a little since the last time I stepped on a scale. That’s nice, huh? My first appointment at the weight loss clinic was January 19, 2022 and I weighed 452 pounds. Yup. The day of the surgery I did not weigh myself. The most recent number I had was from April 29, 2022 when I weighed 431.4 pounds. On the one year anniversary, May 4, 2023, I weighed 204.8 pounds. Suck it, morbid obesity! The lowest weight I ever recorded was the magical day of September 22, 2023 when I weighed in at 198.4 pounds. Sub-200! Glorious! We were told to expect our post-surgery weight to bottom out at some crazy number and then start climbing up again to a more reasonable, sustainable value. That’s been the case for the last year and a half or so. At my two year anniversary I was 211.2. The last time I weighed myself was the three year anniversary of the first check in, January 19, 2025, and I was 222.6. This morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the scale. I was expecting something between 220 and 230 and I got 218.6! Down four pounds since January and back in the teens, babie! Currently I am down 212.8 since the surgery and 233.4 since the start of the process.

I still have problems with food getting stuck on the way into my new digestive system but not nearly as often as before. I can have trouble if I don’t chew enough, or eat too fast, or eat too much in one bite, but these days I can go faster and more per bite than I could have two years ago. Eating is easier now than it was before. When it goes bad it still goes bad. If a bite of food can’t get into my stomach (it’s actually technically called a pouch now) then it has to go somewhere. Either it just hangs out and blocks the path so that nothing else can get in (until it breaks down enough to enter) or it comes back up to say hello again. That’s life these days, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to.

In closing, here’s my selfie a day video from the first year. Enjoy watching me melt away.

Purple and Yellow and Gross

I mentioned a few times last week that I had a medical thing last Tuesday. It involved anesthesia through an IV. Today I noticed that the area around the IV point is now a giant yellow bruise. Like… how did I not see that yesterday or the day before or whenever? Did the bruise form four days after the fact? Not likely.

I mentioned in a post yesterday that I stubbed my toe on the end of the bed while I was getting ready for work. It hurt like a mutha. It continued to hurt a little for the entire rest of the day and my foot felt a little swollen. It wasn’t bad enough to have a negative effect on me or anything like that, it was just there. Last night when I went to bed I took off my shoes and socks and found that my forth toe on my left foot is a dark purple, almost black, bruise of epic awful ugliness. It is definitely not broken but it is swollen and ugly and gross.

So those are two things I have going for me on this gloomy Saturday morning.

The sun was out this morning for the first time on a Saturday in something like 35 years. Did my camera and I make it outside to take advantage? Nope. I way over slept. Is it too late? The thunderstorms are rolling in so yes, it is too late. I am enjoying a nice breeze as Miss Robin Sparkles the cat and I are sitting next to an open window in the bedroom. That’s something at least, right?

This Blows

It is 3:20am. I have been up for an hour now. I had to take a pre-medical appointment dose of awful meds last night after work, and I had to take a second dose in the middle of the night. It took me a long time to get through it and now I have to be sick for a couple of hours. Are any of my current problems gastric bypass related, or is it just the prep-meds? I don’t know. Hooray. This sucks.

My appointment is at 7:30 so I still have four hours to go until the actual start of this garbage. Hopefully a few hours later I will be back home and able to eat food and able to sleep the last of this thing off.

Hooray.

This sucks.

Seven Hours Later

My last post was published seven hours ago. I’m hanging in there but really can’t wait for this crap to be over. I’m fasting ahead of a medical test and I am hungry. I barely have a stomach left after gastric bypass surgery, but what I have is really jonzin’ for a snack, know what I mean? No hunger pains yet, which is odd given that I get hunger pains all the time. Maybe my brain is trying to protect my stomach? Who knows.

I can’t eat today, but the birds can.

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That is today’s photo a day challenge pic. Blurry backgrounds are fun. Bokeh.

The cats are in a state of hyper vigilance right now. There is a mouse in the house. It was in my home office earlier but it got away. In was later seen in our bedroom but I think it got away again. Both cats are on the hunt so it’s days are numbered. I will catch it and bring it outside if I can, but the feline avengers might not give me the opportunity.

Here’s a picture of Robin from before the mouse presented itself.

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Here’s one of Lily. Robin was already stalking the rodent invader at this point, but Lily wasn’t in on it yet. She was blissfully unaware.

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Today is Going to Absolutely Suck

I have something scheduled for tomorrow. It’s a medical thing. A test. It requires some heavy duty prep-work over the 24 hour period before the test.

The side effect of the preparations is going to be me having one seriously awful day today. Like, grade A suck. Its the sort of thing that would suck for a normal human, but the stomach is involved so people like me who have had gastric bypass surgery (three years ago this coming weekend)… I wonder if it will be worse for me. Probably not, but maybe? We’ll have to wait and see.

Clearly I am not going to share what’s going on until it’s over, if then. 24 hours from now (it is 7:15am) I will be at the clinic, hopefully getting ready to get it over with. I just have to deal with some awful today and a small chunk of tomorrow.

Shit.

Another Day

Up and at ’em. Back at it. Repetition and all that. Deja-Vu. As Iron Maiden once said, “feel like I’ve been here before.” Probably because I was here before. Yesterday, in fact. Today is another day in the office. Celebrate with a cat pic:

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Roar.

I’m tired. I went to bed earlier than usual last night but it doesn’t seem to have been enough. Maybe it’s just mental fatigue induced by driving for an hour to get to work. Who knows. Maybe it’s just mental fatigue induced by the collapse of american society. What used to be our country sucks a little more with each passing day and maybe it’s just wearing me out. Could be.

We’ve reached the point in the week where I start looking longingly toward the weekend. I can’t do a band practice on Sunday so I threw out the idea of doing Saturday instead. It’s still up in the air. I want to do some sunrise/ocean photos too but the weather forecast calls for shitty with a chance of shitty on Saturday. Sunday looks okay. Will it be okay at sunrise? Too soon to speculate.

Shit. I feel like I need a new hobby. I don’t want a new hobby, I just feel like I need one. Man, simple things get confusing when you reach old age (see yesterday’s post for more. Yes, I know I have not reached old age yet) and your country flushes itself down the crapper. All I really want to do is curl up in a ball on the couch and wait for it all to finish crushing me. You know how it is, right?

Sunday is out for band practice because I have to go to a wake. My cousin’s husband passed suddenly last week. I think that might be part of the reason for the funk I’m in right now. I also have a medical procedure on the books for Tuesday and I think I have to start prepping for it a couple of days in advance. I won’t say what it is. It’s not a procedure really, it’s just a test. Let’s say it’s one of those tests that people in their 50’s need to have and it involves completely clearing out your digestive system. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Are you digging where I’m coming from? Are you picking up what I am putting down? Ouch town, population me, bro. Maybe that’s another source of funk-feeling. Not funk in a good sense. Not funk in a George Clinton sense. Funk in a… blahhhhh sense. You get it.

Okay. Time to get cracking on the work day. Two meetings on the books. Both require some prep work. Get to it, Red Head!

Tired Afternoon

I stayed up too late last night and now I am tired. That’s how it works for all of us, but it seems to be a bigger issue for folks who are old like me. I am going to have a birthday in a couple of weeks and I’m going to be 54. Wait… really? How is that possible? I know in the grand scheme of things that 54 isn’t that bad, I mean it’s not 80 or anything, but damn… I was 27 a few days ago. Wasn’t I?

What was I writing about?

Oh yeah, I am tired. It seems somehow worse than that though as I didn’t have time to follow any news yesterday and today I got caught up on the collapse of civilization. So RFK wants to create a autism database or some shit? Hmmm… didn’t the nazis do that with mental illnesses? Yeah, something like that. No surprise that we’re resurrecting that particular evil, but there you go. That on top of prison time without due process and willfully collapsing the economy in order to scam a couple of bucks off the rubes. Yeah. Are we great again? Maybe I’ll open up a new Signal chat and ask about it.

Ugh. Here’s a cat:

If the cat didn’t temporarily straighten out your soul, maybe a song will help:

I Don’t Care

I was just looking at the match ups for the first round of the NHL playoffs and I really don’t care about any of them. I actually hate seven of the eight teams in the East. Really. Ottawa is the only Eastern Conference team that I don’t loathe, and I really don’t like them very much either. It will be nice to see them beat Toronto (and the will because losing in the playoffs in humiliating fashion is what Toronto is best at) but beyond that? I could not care less.

Last night my wife asked me if I wanted to watch all of the Harry Potter movies in order with her. I said yes. Secretly I am hoping that I can learn how to cast the patronus charm to keep the maga cult the hell away from me. That would be cool.

I have a headache. Again. Every day for over a week has seen at least one headache. It is usually the worst right after lunch and that is the case right now. I think it’s a combination of my glasses doing something wrong while reading on my computer and the general level of stress I’m going through as a result of the maga cult putting an end to my country. Those two things are messing up my head. I’m tired of it.

Time jump. I wrote the three paragraphs above about an hour and a half ago. I took some Tylenol and feel about 10% better. Oh well. I’m super tired. Not sure what’s going on here in the office today, but it seems super loud. Lots of people working on issues together and lots of other people on conference calls at their desks. That is not contributing to the headache though. I can guarantee that.

I thought maybe I’d have more to say but I don’t so let’s click publish on this one.

Four Days in a Row

It has happened four days in a row. I break for lunch at around 1:00 pm. Shortly after my break ends I get hit with a headache. Some days have been worse than others (Tuesday was the worst) but every day this week it has happened.

Usually when something like this comes up, my glasses are the culprit. Tomorrow I am going to zoom my browser in a little. If I make the text bigger it should be easier on my eyes and that will probably solve the problem. We’ll see.

After gastric bypass surgery my first instinct is to blame anything going weird health-wise on my stomach. I think in this case I can rule that out though. It does happen shortly after I eat (which could be a red flag) but it’s only lunch. It doesn’t happen any other time. I often read the news during lunch break, so I’m guessing that is stressing my eyes out a bit. Pretty sure that’s going to be the root cause. We’ll see.

Headaches suck. You heard it here first.