Tag: weight loss surgery

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.

Super Stressed

Between the weight loss stuff and work and the kitchen remodel and Covid and my mother being in the hospital, I am super stressed. I feel like a rubber band that’s stretched out as far as it can go.

I need to punch in to work at 9:00, go to 3-4 meetings until noon, then go sit with my mother. I am going to be balls to the wall all day until they kick me out of the hospital room. Then I’ll come home and see the latest in the kitchen. That will relax me a bit. The contractor could be finished today. The other contractor will be finished tomorrow. Then it’s time to get into the pre-fab stuff. The contractor/Covid/Stranger-in-my-house-during-a-global-pandemic stress will be gone, but the building and hanging kitchen stuff will replace it.

If I seem a little punch drunk over the next week or two, all that combined is why.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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.

Non-Lunch Post

We’re coming to the end of another work day spent in the office. How many more will there be at this desk? I don’t know. A few, probably.

It’s been a hectic and stressed out day. I’m not sure how, but I managed to do everything right as far as the weight loss surgery prep steps are concerned. I’m up to date on my vitamins (still have one more to take with dinner), and I tracked all of my food, and I stopped drinking more than 15 minutes before eating, and I didn’t drink again for over an hour after eating.

My exercise ring is half closed. That’s due to the long walk from the car to my desk, and the long walk from my desk to the kitchenette and back, and the long walk from my desk to the bathroom and back. I think wearing a mask contributes to the increased heart rate as well, but I don’t have proof of that.

The building recently switched from masks required in all common areas to masks optional for vaccinated folks. I think it’s too soon for that, but I have to deal with it. My mask was on in all common areas but I was in the minority. Will peer pressure eventually remove my mask? I don’t think so but I can’t say for sure. The Covid numbers are way down for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I would like to take approximately 1/6,893,000th of the credit for that. At least that much. I kept my mask on and kept those around me safe from the virus that I don’t have. That’s not sarcasm. That’s honesty. Wear your effing mask.

Anyway, I was able to eat lunch today, but I was not really able to take a lunch break. That’s why there’s no lunch post from today, and that’s why I titled this post the way I did.

I might look into a new theme for this page. It might be time. Maybe something black and gloomy. Yeah, that would be cool. Black and gloomy is tight.

Now I need to get my exhausted ass home so I can eat dinner with the love of my life, check out how far the paint job got while I was out, watch the new episode of Star Trek Picard, and then finally get some of that sleep that I didn’t get any of last night.

Almost quittin’ time, babie!

Saturday

I have been on vacation for the past week. A staycation in fact. I spent the entire week off thinking that each day was Saturday. I would look at the Bruins game schedule and be surprised that they weren’t playing Arizona (because they are scheduled to play Arizona on Saturday, get it?). I would spend each day reminding myself to not miss The Walking Dead tomorrow, (because The Walking Dead airs on Sunday and I thought it was Saturday, get it?)

It’s finally Saturday. Well, finally is the wrong word because that implies I was impatient for it to get here and that, by extension, implies that I was impatient for my week off of work to end. I most definitely was not. I just mean that after spending the week thinking it was Saturday, it actually is Saturday. The Walking Dead airs tomorrow. The Bruins play the Coyotes tonight. Also, I woke up 100% convinced it was Sunday. My internal calendar is a dick.

Anyway, no issues with the CPAP machine last night. More circumstantial (is that the right word here?) evidence that when masks start having problems staying sealed it’s time to get a new mask. Duly noted.

I just had my protein shake and my first dose of vitamins. I didn’t miss a dose yesterday, which is good, though I did forget to take them around dinner time and ended up taking the last dose at nearly 9:00pm. I hope that’s not a bad thing. It’s just vitamins, right? It’s not like I am taking a narcotic or something. I’ll check with the dietician the next time I talk to her.

I have two things on my to-do list for today. There are a bunch of boxes in the dining room that need to be chopped up and removed. Also, the Kia needs an oil change. We’re taking my step son Harry back to school tomorrow so the car is going to get around seven hours of road time and I just want it to be in tip top oil shape, you know?

What else? I haven’t played my guitar once during the whole week off. That makes me sad, but I was legitimately wrapped up in other stuff. We really hadn’t planned on any of the things we did this week, but we ended up being seriously busy the whole time. It was good. I am very happy with this particular staycation. I just should have played the guitar some.

I am starting to get back into thinking about bringing my two 1970’s guitars to a tech for some work. They both need their frets checked out and possibly (hopefully not) replaced. I don’t want to do that, but I will if I have to. Those two gitters need to live forever. I want to have the wiring and the pots replaced on both of them as well. I want to go with 50’s style wiring (that has something to do with how the volume and tone pots are wired together. I think it’s the output from the volume connects to the input of the tone? Something like that?) That changes the way the two knobs interact, and it eliminates the drop in high frequency response when you lower the volume knob. I guess it also means it’s possible to increase the volume with the tone knob, which is weird, but I’ll get used to it quick. I also want to put new pickups into the Les Paul Custom (not the ES-335, those pickups will stay in forever). I just don’t know what to get. I want to go boutique and cork sniffy and I want to get as close to late 1950’s Gibson PAFs (patent applied for) pickups as I can. I also don’t know where to go for any of this. I have one shop in mind, in Andover, MA, but I haven’t decided. Someday soon I’ll start this ball rolling. After the kitchen fun is over with.

Okay, gotta go tear up some boxes and get an oil change. Your humble blog narrator will talk to you later, oh my readers and only friends.

CPAP Parts

I put a new mask and a new hose on my CPAP machine this morning. Two nights in a row it just wouldn’t stay stuck to my face. The mask would spring a leak in one place, I’d push it back in and it would spring a leak somewhere else. It woke me up twice.

I don’t have any actual evidence to support the theory that changing the mask improves the seal during use, but it worked the last time I had a problem so fingers crossed that’s a trend. A boy can hope, right?

On the weight loss front, I think my personal facebook ban will be coming to an end. The doctor suggested a join a particular facebook group and I can’t really say no to that. I’ll probably log in and leave most of the groups I follow so that the weight loss group is the only non-person left. We’ll see. I might just say fuck it and go back to how I used to be. I don’t know.