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.
I just read that The Onion bought Infowars in a bankruptcy auction. I wonder how we’re supposed to tell one service’s stories from the other. They are nearly identical. I guess The Onion is slightly more realistic? Something like that.
I have a half day scheduled today. My work day ends at 1:00pm, which is 14 minutes from now. I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon that is an hour away from my current location, but the check in time is two hours away. Should I go there and just wait? Should I go there and then drive around aimlessly while listening to an audiobook? I finished Black Crouch’s Dark Matter on the drive to work and started something called The Running Man by some guy named Richard Bachman, or something like that.
Following the nightmare that was the election last week, there has been a debate on the social medias. Everyone is leaving twitter because elon musk is slime. Some are going to threads, but mark zuckerberg is also slime. Others are going to bluesky but the guy who owns bluesky is the guy who sold twitter to musk so at best he’s slime adjacent? I am on both. From the user perspective they are not terribly different from each other. Threads has more people I know, and I seem to be able to get into discussions more easily there. Bluesky just seems smarter over all and less scummy. I am not sure which horse I want to back.
Okay. Time to wrap up a couple of work things and head out for my half day. Here’s hoping there isn’t any lunch time traffic to worry about on my hour drive to the doctor’s appointment.
I’m done with my doctors appointment. My two year post gastric bypass surgery followup is complete.
To quote my surgeon, “I can’t believe it.”
What did I learn today? From a sugar avoidance standpoint, eating fruits that contain a lot of natural sugars (looking at you, apples) should be okay because it’s a complex sugar that breaks down differently than your more junk food sugars. Also, staying on the topic of sugar, if you’re having a low blood sugar episode it’s okay to have some sugar to fix it, even though the amount of sugar my diabetic step son was told to take in that situation is exactly the same as the amount I’ve been told will trigger dumping syndrome. Somehow my body will process that sugar in a different way when it’s combating an over abundance of insulin in my blood than when the insulin levels are okay. How? I don’t know. I’ll probably still avoid more than the tiniest amount of sugar. Finally, when I ask the question, “is this stomach pain because something is wrong or is it because I am hungry” I am apparently asking a question that all of us ask. It’s normal and common to not be able to tell the difference. You just have to get used to it and hope that someday you’ll figure it out.
My next follow up is one year from today. In closing, as I was leaving I overheard my surgeon talking to another staff member. They were both looking at me and the words “I can’t believe it” were uttered for a second time. I also heard one of them say, “he doesn’t even look like he needs to be here” or something like that. Yeah. Good work, Doc. I couldn’t have done this without you, but if you want to make a red head feel like a million bucks weight-loss-wise, then saying you can’t believe it is a really good way to do it.
Photos!
This was waiting for me as I was about to walk out the door to go to the appointment. Good morning, bird!
259/365
The clinic is in this building. Let’s do this!
In closing, you bet your ass I am doing some sugar free celebrating tonight.
I am about to leave the house and go to my two year post-op followup appointment with my gastric bypass surgeon. The actual two year anniversary was 12 days ago. I stepped on the scale to celebrate and I weighed 211.2 pounds, down from 431 on the surgery date.
As I was getting ready today, our bathroom scale was out of its hiding place. Sure, it hasn’t even been two weeks since I weighed myself, and sure I have pledged to not worry about the scale anymore. No more regular weekly or monthly weigh ins. So I should not have stepped on the scale. I should have just passed it by.
Nope, I hopped on. How’d it look?
I was under 210. 209.4, to be exact. I actually weighed myself twice to make sure the number was right. It was. I checked my weight tracking spreadsheet (of course the stats geek has a weight tracking spreadsheet) and the last time I was under 210 was October 4, 2023. Seven months ago.
I’ll take it.
When I weigh in at the clinic today I will be much higher than 209. I’ll also be wearing clothes and a watch and glasses and shoes and stuff so… yeah. Too much information, I am sure.
Happy follow up appointment day and happy sub 210 day!
Tomorrow is a half day of work. Here is what I hope to accomplish…
Wake up early. Exercise. Eat breakfast. Play some guitar. Go to my doctors appointment for my two year post-surgery follow up. (Maybe) hit the sugar free bakery on the way home. Play a little more guitar. Punch into work and work a half day. Go to a wake. Cook dinner and eat it with the love of my life. Go to sleep.
This post is a reminder to my dumb self. I have a doctors appointment on Thursday morning. It’s the two year post-surgery check in with my surgeon. I am supposed to have blood work done ahead of the appointment.
I completely forgot. I even e-checked in to the appointment already and didn’t see anything regarding having blood drawn. I checked my Google calendar though and the entry I made when I booked the appointment says I have to have blood drawn.
Crap!
I am in the office today and I will be in the office again Wednesday, so tomorrow is the only day I can get this done (assuming the walk in orders for the blood tests have actually been placed. I am going to assume they have been). Fortunately they open for business at 5:30am. There is more than enough time to get it all done ahead of work tomorrow. I’m just annoyed that I forgot.
Nothing Earth shattering. A plan of action that is more or less the same plan of action we already had, just with mini-tweaks in place. No actual changes in the care plan. We have a follow up mid-April though, so we’ll see.
He’s not in trouble or anything, just a nagging thing that doesn’t seem to want to go away but will if he’s a good patient. I’m not sharing anything beyond that.
No details will be forthcoming, but we have an appointment with my father’s doctor today. It will be Dad, the doctor, my brother, my sister, and me. There is a potential for some difficult conversation about my father’s care going forward. There isn’t anything wrong right now, but it’s just day to day stuff that might need to be adjusted, and those adjustments might lead to some tough talk.
The appointment is about 2.5 hours from now. I have some errands to run (I might share the source of those later because it’s a “funny” story) and then I have to go and pick up my dad.
Inside the Red Head's Head 