Category: weight loss surgery

Sleepy Monday

It’s Monday. Back to work today. I’ll punch in about 30 minutes from now. How will the new work week feel? Last week was weird. It simultaneously felt like I never left and like I was completely out of touch and clueless.

Will I feel more like myself and less like an imposter this week? I don’t know. I assume whatever weirdness was happening last week will cease eventually, but when?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am trying to have a little chicken for breakfast and I think I went too fast or didn’t chew a bite thoroughly enough because my stomach is acting unhappily. It feels like a little pressure in my digestive track. Almost like there’s a bite of food sitting outside of the stomach, waiting for the bouncer to let him in. I may have used that analogy before. Have I? I can’t recall for sure. I think I’ll wait five minutes or so before the next bite. How exciting is this?

Speaking of post-op recovery. One of the restrictions they put on me was not lifting anything heavy for six weeks. 25 pounds was the limit. I’ve been wanting to swap the amp out of my music nook, but both amps are over 40 pounds. Fortunately my six weeks are up on Wednesday. Vox out/Fender in, the day after tomorrow.

Last night was the first night since before the surgery that I failed to get six hours of sleep. Five hours and 40 minutes. I’m feeling sleepy right now. My sleeping hart rate dip was 21%, and my restful sleep time was four hours and five minutes. Those numbers are pretty good. The total though… early to bed tonight?

Okay. I think I will punch in now.

Equivalence

I don’t usually do things like this, but I saw this in a bariatric surgery Facebook group (the only reason I even went back to Facebook) and wanted to save it.

A table of weight loss equivalence….

I am definitely better off without the extra 200 sticks of butter.

Did I mention I’m wearing a t-shirt today that didn’t fit six weeks ago? Yeah. I am.

Friday Thoughts

I am going to dash out of work today as soon as my shift is over and run over to the hospital to visit with my mother. Yesterday was a banner bad day. Word is that today is a little better. Here’s hoping. I will be going back tomorrow morning and Sunday afternoon. I’m back to reality now so it’s time to pitch in. Gladly. Even though it’s going to be awful, I am ready to help.

That probably means a delay in getting the band back together. That’s tough, but necessary. I have a doctors appointment on June 30th, which means I will be 2/3 of the way to the Guitar Center in Nashua. I’m thinking that might be Stratocaster Trade In Day. What comes next depends on the book value of my Strat. I guarantee it won’t be enough for anything new. What if they have a used Deluxe Reverb in stock? What if they have a used Les Paul Junior in stock? Who knows.

I spent my lunch break exercising. Every day this week so far I have done a full 30 minutes of exercise in one shot. It’s all walking in place, but it’s something. I was most definitely not able to do that at any time over the last few years. It’s only since the surgery and recovery. I think I have actually done a single 30 minute workout for 10 days in a row. I am shocked.

Now, having said that, they are not exactly killer exercises. My heart rate is going up but it’s not going up as much as it should. Wednesday will be the six week mark, which means the restrictions on how much weight I can lift will start relaxing. The first thing I will do is change the cat litter. The second is to start thinking about maybe lifting some small weights? I might wait an extra couple of weeks before anything like that, but the thought is out there. I need to exercise to make up for lost muscle mass, or something like that. I need to do right by my new physical condition.

Television. I still haven’t finished Breaking Bad and I am so close. Something like five or six episodes left. I need to wrap that up. Season Three of The Boys has started. I think there are four episodes out. I’ve watched the first few minutes of episode one (so worth the herpes) and that’s it. Why have I not dug into it yet? I still haven’t watched yesterday’s episode of Strange New Worlds. Why? What the hell, Robert? I haven’t even thought about starting the new seasons of The Orville or Stranger Things. What is wrong with me?

I have a lot of recording I want to get to as well. One song ready to mix. Two ready for vocals and one ready for guitar leads. Come on, man. Get it done!

Okay. Work time.

Clothing Issues and Lunchtime Musings

I mentioned yesterday that I have lost 50 pounds in the last five weeks and that my clothes don’t fit. That may have been a slight exaggeration. They are definitely too big, but I can still wear them. It’s not an emergency yet.

Last night I was in my closet looking for something to wear today. There are some old collared shirts that were too small for me prior to the surgery. I pulled one out. I’m wearing it right now. It fits fine.

Part of me feels like nothing has changed. Another part of me feels like everything has changed. I have so far to go though. I’ve barely scratched the surface. Here’s hoping I can continue to ride it out with old clothes for a while. In a way, that might sort of connect me to… me.

No new info on my mother yet today. My sister is at the hospital with her. It’s brutal. I need to do more.

The 2022 50/90 Challenge is less than a month away. I am not going to do it in an official way. I will not be signing up on their website or anything like that. One user ruined the whole thing for me last year and I don’t want to deal with that again. I didn’t sign up for FAWM back in February either. FAWM and 50/90 are different log ins, but it’s run by the same people and has many of the same users. I just don’t wanna.

Having said that, I will probably still try to write 50 songs between July 4th and October 1st. I’ll still do the challenge, I just won’t do it in any official capacity. Ain’t I a stinker? No, I am not. I just like doing goofy music challenges. What can you do?

Did I mention that the Red Sox are three games above .500 and are sitting in the last playoff spot? There are three wild card slots this year and all three AL slots are held by teams in the AL East. Sucks to be the rest of the league.

The Bruins fired their coach. Patrice Bergeron is likely to retire (please, no!). Half of the team is in the middle of off season surgery. Now we’re hearing that Pasternak might be wanting out. He has a year left on his contract and the rumors are that he won’t sign an extension. Shit.

Okay. I need to finish my 3.1 ounces of canned chicken lunch and get back to work.

Until later, friends.

Five Weeks

Today marks five weeks since the surgery. That makes it weigh in day.

I have lost 52 pounds. 52 pounds in five weeks.

I can’t believe it. It hardly seems real.

It is real though… I’ve reached the point where my clothes don’t fit anymore.

On Hold (and Other Stuff)

If you thought waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles was agony, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

We gave Bellana a vacation as a High School graduation present. She chose to go to Disney World. We stayed at a resort. It was freakin’ magical, just like the Disney marketing said.

We wanted to do the same thing for Harry but he graduated in the middle of Covid so we had to delay it. He wants to go on almost exactly the same trip. The only difference will be the actual resort we stay in. We stayed at the Polynesian last time. This time the Poly is on the backup list.

Disney opened reservations for 2023 today. Jen got ready for work and then hunkered down in her office and gave The Mouse a call. That was about 7:30am. Maybe a smidge later than that. They put her on hold. They also gave an estimated wait time before she could talk to a human. Two hours. Two. Hours. Yikes!

Good luck, my love.

I need to track all of my food and drink. I need to make sure I’m getting about 60 ounces of liquid and 60 grams of protein. I assume at some point they are going to have me tracking calories too.

I have an app on my phone that can handle this. Two of them, actually. When I try to use the app I always seem to forget to log things. It annoys the hell out of me. While I was in the hospital they gave me a form to use to track what little I ate. At the stage one diet class they also gave a similar form. All through my time off of work I used the forms. I scanned one of them and kept printing out copies. I had a clipboard that I carried around with me everywhere I went and I logged everything.

Now that I am back to work and able to do stuff again, I don’t really want to track on paper anymore. I also don’t want to use the apps and get back into old habits. So what do I do? I created a spreadsheet in Google Sheets that mimics the paper forms. I am on my forth day using it. So far so… kinda good. I keep a notebook at my desk and next to my bed to keep tally marks for each ounce of liquid. I’ve been updating the sheet in a browser whenever possible, but I can update it from my iPhone or my iPad. It works, but the interface blows.

I’m also keeping a sheet with my daily liquid and protein totals, and I started another sheet with protein per ounce values for foods I eat regularly. That should come in handy. I might go back and add the totals for each day that I kept on paper too, just so I’ll have it all in one place. That’ll be a bit of a pain, but I might do it.

I finally got to see my mother last night. She’s been in the hospital for a long time. They’re trying to move her to a new facility but it’s a difficult process. I am not giving details, but it was difficult. She’s having a really hard time. I will go back to see her again in a couple of days.

Okay. Time for work. Talk to you later.

Better Than Expected

I was afraid that today was going to be a bad day, but so far it’s been okay. Whatever was up with my head this morning cleared up around the time I punched in to work. Jen is okay too. She doesn’t feel all better, but she is okay. That’s good.

The bad news so far was the exterminator. He’s pretty sure we’re going to have some damage behind the shower wall in our master bathroom. Now that we’ve spent all of that money fixing the cellar and the kitchen and the dining room… now we’re going to have to fix the bathroom too. We may end up ripping out the shower and not replacing it. We’ll have to see.

I am punching out of work in about 20 minutes and then going over to the hospital to sit with my mother for a while. That could turn out to be a rough situation, but I am ready for it. I am eating a little dinner right now (three ounces of chicken) so that I don’t have to worry about it later. I’ll be taking a big water bottle with me. I should be able to hit both my protein and liquid goals for the day. I am pretty confident.

Tough Day Ahead?

I’m a little nervous that I might be in for a tough day today.

Not long ago I wrote something about how I very rarely get migraine headaches and how they always start with a vision issue. It’s a really weird sensation, but I can only see with my peripheral vision. I can’t see things that are dead ahead of me.

When I woke up this morning I thought it was happening again. I sat up and put my glasses on but my vision was still pretty blurry. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to take my morning pills, thinking my eyes were about to do that thing again. They didn’t. After 15 minutes or so my vision cleared up. I don’t know if that means I am going to have a mild case of whatever migraine thing happens, or if it’s something different, of if I was just still really tired and my eyes didn’t want to wake up.

I don’t really feel bad, but I don’t really feel right either. I’m trying to eat some eggs for breakfast but I’m not feeling great about it. Everything is just off. I seriously hope this passes soon. I don’t want to be sick on my second day back to work.

We have an exterminator coming this morning. The window is supposed to be 8am-10am. It’s 8:31 and I haven’t heard a peep out of them yet. We have some carpenter ants in the master bathroom and I want the exterminator to rain hell fire down upon their interloping asses before they damage our house. I also want them to be done before my work day starts but that is less and less likely by the second. Sigh.

Jen went to her office today for the first time so that she wouldn’t be around while they are here. She just told me that she’s not feeling well either. Is today just going to be one of those days? I’m also going to see my mother in the hospital after work tonight. I definitely want to see her, but she’s having a rough time right now and it’s going to be painful to see her that way. I’m afraid of what I might see. It’ll be okay. I haven’t seen her since before the surgery so I need to go tonight not just for her but for me too. It’ll be fine.

Fingers crossed I don’t get hit with a crushing headache this morning. Also fingers crossed that my beloved Jen feels better. Also also fingers crossed that my mother has a good day today. That’s a lot of crossed fingers.

First Day Recap

From a post-surgical standpoint, my first day back to work was not easy. It wasn’t bad, it just threw off my food/drink/exercise routine that I’ve been getting by with for the past month.

I had breakfast before work, and a protein shake as I was starting the day so that went well. Lunch started late and ended early. I wasn’t able to finish my 2.5 ounces of food until almost 3:00pm. It wasn’t bad, really it just threw me off. I hit my protein goal at dinner so everything worked out.

Liquids was more of a challenge. I was in meetings from 10:30 until 1:15 and I was talking for much of that time. I was really dehydrated by the end and my voice was getting scratchy and hoarse. I still haven’t hit my fluid goal, but I will before I turn in.

As for exercise, I didn’t get to it until about 7:30. For the sixth day straight I did the full 30 minute goal in one go. I have no issues other than I prefer to get it done earlier in the day which is going to mean either before work of during lunch. I need to figure out a new routine.

On the whole it was okay. I just need to establish a new food routine. Tomorrow should be better for most of the day, but I need to go somewhere directly after work so I’m going to have to eat some dinner before I punch out. That’s going to be weird.

We will see how it goes.