Category: weight loss surgery

Last Appointments Booked

Here’s another irrational fear post.

There are three doctors appointments I need to have before my surgery date. One is to meet with my surgeon. Another is to meet with the anesthesiologist. As you may have guessed, I totally misspelled “anesthesiologist” on my first attempt. The third is a class that goes over what I will need to do post-surgery.

The surgeon appointment was already booked. We scheduled that on the same phone call that scheduled the surgery. The other two appointments were still up in the air.

Until now…

They just called to book them. It’s all set. Sure it’s a teeny tiny, seemingly insignificant step in the process, but when it comes to gutting my innards, every step is huge… even when it isn’t.

Getting closer. We are definitely getting closer.

Less Than One to Go

On February 3rd, two months and one day ago, I was told to lose 5% of my weight in preparation for the weight loss surgery. I weighed myself this morning. I have 0.4 pounds to go. I would do the math to figure out what percentage I am at with 0.4 pounds to go but then you could use that to figure out exactly how much I weighed on that first day and I don’t want to let you do that.

I just drank my morning protein shake and had my morning vitamins and supplemented it all with a fist full of Tylenol because holy shit my back is killing me. I don’t know that my back has ever hurt as much as it does at this moment. Oh my shit, my back hurts.

Today’s plan involves going to my parents and picking up my mother and taking her to a doctors appointment. We’re going to get the results of her last blood test and see how her cancer numbers look. They’ve been pretty much perfect for the last year-plus and I am very optimistic that those results will continue.

After that I will come home and find some demo happening in the cellar. First on the list is the grid that until recently held the drop ceiling. After that it’s the rest of the ugly paneling on the walls. Most of the paneling came down during the flood clean up last year. You might recall me bitching about the paneling in the dining room recently. Suffice to say that the paneling in the cellar is 100 times uglier. Tomorrow the electrician is coming to replace the existing fluorescent lights that don’t really work anymore. There used to be six banks of lights with two tubes each. Only two of them still work, (it’s not the bulbs, I replaced the bulbs and the lights stayed dead) and one of those two only works some times. It’s been good the last week because it knows its end is coming and it wants to stay alive, but more often than not it doesn’t work when I flip the switch. Replace ’em all!

On top of that there is something going on at work that I am not going to be around for and I am feeling pretty shitty about that. I feel like I am dropping the ball. I don’t think anyone else feels that I’m dropping the ball, but I do so that’s that. Hopefully it will be quiet today. Fingers crossed.

Did I mention my back was hurting?

0.4 pounds to go. Oh yeah, and the surgery happens one month from today. Yikes!

Star Wars Day

So what are you doing on Star Wars Day this year? You know Star Wars Day, right? May the 4th? As in May the 4th be with you? Ha Ha, get it?

I know what I’m doing.

I am checking into a hospital to have my insides rewired.

I really did not expect to be getting a surgery date this soon, nor did I expect the date to be so close. They offered me April 18th too but that was way to close for my mental health to handle. I may have actually shit a brick when I heard that date. May 4 seems much more reasonable, not to mention destined, from a Star Wars fanatic’s point of view.

Holy shit! May 4th! That’s 35 days away! Insert the sound of panicked screams of terror here.

Shit is About to Get Real

I just had my Zoom call with the dietician. Woah boy, here it comes.

Insurance requires me to have sign off from a psychologist, a cardiologist, and a dietician. I already had psych and cardiology. The psychologist* told me that I would know things are close when they scheduled a second meeting with the surgeon.

The call I had today said the next step is a second meeting with the surgeon.

I have the dietician’s sign off.

Holy shit. This thing could actually be happening. Still zero clue on a timeline, but the thing I was told would be the sign that surgery is imminent is the next thing I have to do.

In the immortal words of the guy from Quantum Leap:

Woah boy.

*Should I be capitalizing the names of the departments? Should I be capitalizing psychologist when I am referring to a specific psychologist without using his/her/their name? Grammar is a bitch, you know?

Here Comes the Irrational Fear Again

It’s time again. Time to feel afraid of a doctors appointment that I am choosing to go to rather than being asked to go to. Time to feel afraid of myself more than anything else. I have another weight loss surgery appointment. The second meeting with a dietician. Not the same dietician, she had to call out of the office today, but my second dietician appointment over all.

I am choosing to do this even though I am scared shitless. I’m much less afraid of things now than I was two months ago, but I’m still scared. I am also still more afraid of not doing it than doing it, hence I’m still doing it. Get it?

Today was supposed to be a mid-morning Zoom call, now it’s an early morning phone call. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I want to do this… I need to do this… I cannot not do this… yet I am still afraid. I guess the difference now compared to two months ago is that then I was afraid of the surgery. Now I am strangely afraid of the surgery and equally afraid of being told I don’t qualify for the surgery. How screwed up is that, emotionally speaking?

Wish me luck.

Oh yeah, and the title of this post is totally going to be the title of my next album.

Getting Close

It seems contrary to everything else, but during this period of preparing myself for weight loss surgery I have avoided weighing myself too often. At my first consultation appointment they gave me a goal weight. They wanted me to drop 5% of my tonnage in order to make the surgery a little easier to perform. I have my second appointment with the dietician tomorrow so I figured today would be a good day to step on the scale.

If the rudimentary math skills I acquired during my days earning my Bachelors Degree are correct, I have lost about 4.2% of my initial bulk. I don’t feel any different, but my jeans do feel a smidge looser. I haven’t been doing a very good job with all of the things the dietician asked me to do during our first meeting. I have been trying to implement new things one at a time so that I don’t drive myself nuts and lash out against it by eating the whole town. Unfortunately, one of the things I started working on was really difficult and took me a while to get used to. Then we spent two weeks without a kitchen. I’m trying to track my meals but I’ve failed the last few days.

I don’t expect that tomorrow’s meeting with the dietician will clear me for surgical take off, but I am hoping it won’t be too long before I get the okay. I am thinking another month, but not being a dietician and never having been through this before, how the hell would I know? It doesn’t really matter though. The point is I am getting closer. I feel pretty good about that.

I Do In Fact Have a Heart

Cardiology has given the go ahead for the weight loss surgery. The doctor and the nurse were actually both very encouraging. Thanks!

I had an EKG and the doctor listened to my heart and my lungs. I was very surprised to learn that there is in fact a heart inside of me. Who knew?

What’s next? My second Dietician appointment is next week. Wednesday, to be exact. Oh boy.

Cardiology in Two

Two hours until my cardiology appointment.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m starting to feel really nervous. Like, full on scared.

This is good. This is worthwhile. This is a positive endeavor. Why the hell can’t I just calm down about it?

Ugh. Think I’ll change the cat litter to distract myself for 10 minutes.

Two hours to go.

Admitted for the Night

My mother is still in the hospital. She’ll be there overnight. She has a UTI but she’s in a lot of pain. They are admitting her. That’s a good thing, I think, but she’s not happy about it.

Work has been stressful AF today, as the kids these days like to say. That combined with my mother’s situation has been enough to keep me from stressing over my own doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I am going to see the Cardiologist. I need Psych, Cardiology, and Dietary to sign off on my weight loss surgery. Psych is all set. Cardiology is next. Dietary will be on going for a while longer. I don’t know how much longer, I just know it’s on going.

I don’t know what they are going to do to me tomorrow. I’m assuming an EKG or something. I have my fingers crossed that it won’t involve a stress test. I need this to go well. I’m not feeling the terror I usually feel leading up to an appointment, but it’ll probably come soon enough.

The contractor is coming back this afternoon. There’s another one coming tomorrow. After that? I don’t know. My in-the-office day will be Wednesday this week instead of Thursday. That’s probably going to mess up my internal calendar in a big way. I’ll live.

Okay. Lunch break over. Back to work.

PS: It’s NHL trade deadline day today and the Bruins just picked up another defenseman. Also, I heard they extended DeBrusk? The guy who’s been asking for a trade all year. Interesting. I’m cool with that.

Okay, now back to work.