Tag: weight loss surgery

Time for the Next Step

I will be heading over to the hospital for the next step in the weight loss surgery process. Today it’s just blood work, an abdomen ultrasound and an upper GI x-ray. It’s times like this that my job and my home life sort of high five each other. The application I work on covers hospital imaging departments. I haven’t a clue what the machines are called or how they work or anything like that, but when the technologists enter the information into the computer, I know what everything looks like under the covers. Of course the hospital I am working with is not one of our customers so I like to watch staff enter data to see if they get as frustrated as I’ve heard my software’s users get. (*)

I’ll be leaving in five minutes. I have the order sheet. I have a mask. I haven’t had any food or drink since last night at 9:30. I have nothing to be nervous about with this step, and yet I am nervous. I need to grow a pair.

(*) #sarcasm

Now What

Now that the RPM Challenge is over I can start worrying about other things.

Specifically, tomorrow’s doctors appointment. Not that there is anything logical to stress about. I’m having some blood work, an ultrasound, and an x-ray. All prep for the real thing.

But… what if the imaging shows that there’s something screwy going on in my inner works? What if they see something that makes me ineligible for the weight loss surgery?

See? I can freak out about anything these days.

Dietician

I just leaped over another hurdle. I had my first meeting with the Dietician. It was a Zoom call. We talked about how I eat and how much I eat and how I’ve made some changes already. So much more to do. She’s going to send me a meal plan. I really think that will help tremendously. I need someone to tell me what to eat because when I choose for myself I end up eating everything there is.

One thing she wants me to do now, because I will have to do it post-surgery so why not get used to it ahead of time, is no drinking while eating. I never even imagined that would be required. I also never imagined how ridiculously difficult it would be.

I am always drinking something. It used to be soda, now it’s water. The new rule is to stop drinking 15 minutes before eating, and then to not start again for 60 minutes after eating. That’s going to be tough for me, but I’ll figure it out. The timer on my Apple Watch gets used pretty much constantly already. Once I have to time when I can have a glass of water it’s going to be used so much it might catch fire.

I also have to start keeping a food journal. Oh Google Sheets, I’m coming for you!

Not Double Booked

Turns out I was not double booked. The doctors appointment is in fact tomorrow and not today. The electricians are here and for the first time in ages the lights in the kitchen and the dining room are going to work correctly. If they are done by 10:30, or even if they just don’t turn off the internets, then I may be able to attend that work meeting. I’m on vacation though, so I’ll be all incognito like. Hi everyone, I’m not actually here. Ha! I’m so professionally funny.

The best part of all of this is that I have 24 hours left before I have to lose my head being afraid of another doctors appointment. Hooray and all that happy crappy*.

*That’s a Stephen King reference, from too many books to count. I think. Maybe he only used it in one book and I just read that book more than once. Who knows.

Still Quiet

Lunch time post. There are a few more people here than there were the last time I posted. One other member of my group is here too but we don’t sit anywhere near each other. If we yell we can talk to each other, but we’re not being rude like that. I feel a lot more Covid-safe than I did the last two times I was here, and by no means did I feel Covid-unsafe before. Whatevs.

I have vacation time booked for the next two days. There are things going on that I want to take care of, but right now I am so looking forward to what amounts to a mid-week weekend. I have a doctors appointment but I don’t know when. They sent me Zoom meeting invites for both days. They are closed today for the holiday (Presidents Day) so I have to figure it out first thing tomorrow. We also have an electrician coming for another kitchen/dining room fix quote. I am really nervous that the doctors appointment was actually moved to tomorrow (I booked it for Wednesday and no one asked me to change it) and it’s going to happen while our power is off and internet is down. That would suck. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

The Bruins are celebrating Presidents day with an afternoon match up with the overpowering Colorado Avalanche. It’s halfway through the second period and the Bruins are up 2-0. The next couple of games are on the West coast. A win today could be a nice little treat considering I won’t be able to listen to the West games.

Okay, back at it. Three hours and three minutes to go.

Surgery: Chosen

I’m home from meeting the doctor who will hopefully be chopping up my innards. The meeting went well as far as I can tell (rhyme!). She talked over the two bariatric surgery options including the pros and cons and I decided which one I want to have. I’ll probably tell ya’ll which one at some point. More likely there will be some future post where I mention it as if you all know what it is already. As if all of you millions of readers hang on every word, right? I’m totally not talking to myself here… crickets… well, talking to myself and a slew of spam accounts… crickets…

Next week I have a Zoom call with the Dietician. I am dreading that one because that’s when I expect to be told all of the delicious and wonderful things I will never be able to eat again. We all know it’s coming. Caffeine and carbonation were just the tip of the banned iceberg. I’m ready for it though. I won’t like it, but it will absolutely be worth it in the end. Don’t forget, in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. So there. Suck on that, diet pepsi.

Now what do you say I go cook some dinner for my Valentine? Let’s do that.

Absent Minded Putz

I have a notebook I’m using for jotting down everything that comes up at these weight loss appointments.

I’m at the appointment, patiently waiting to meet the doctor.

Where is my notebook? Why it’s sitting on my desk at home. Where else would it be?

I’m such a putz.

Appointment Day

I am meeting with the surgeon who will (please please please) eventually carve up my stomach today. The appointment is about two hours from now.

I am starting to freak out.

Why?

I don’t know. It’s not like I am going to get sliced up today, it’s just a meeting. We will hopefully discuss the two surgery options and decide which one to go with. I can’t imagine she’s going to look at me and decide I’m not worthy and just tell me to go fuck myself up a tree or something.

The future of the human race is not in the balance here. I need to calm my idiotic self down.

One hour and 56 minutes to go.

Stop freaking out.

Superb Owl

So there’s a game or something tonight? I saw that the Buffalo Sabers were playing the Montreal Canadiens in what must have been the lamest match up of the century so far, but that was earlier. What game is everyone talking about?

Har har har.

Clearly I am not watching the Super Bowl, though my bass player let it drop yesterday that he’s in one of the two cities represented in the game. I wonder what the volume level in public spaces is like there. Hopefully they don’t go through what Boston used to go through with riots near Northeastern. Those were bad ends to great experiences.

It dawned on me today that by taking tomorrow off, my co-workers are going to assume I was planning for a Sunday full of drunken revelry. Dudes couldn’t be further off if they tried.

I worked on music quite a bit today, but not as much as I would have liked. I snuck some singing in when no one was looking and at the moment I have three songs with vocals complete and six more ready to go for a (weather permitting) car music in the morning. I seriously considered doing some car music during the super bowl but knowing my luck I would get t-boned by some drunk football fan trying to find his way to the next super bowl party. You know how it is.

Tomorrow I am meeting with the surgeon who, hopefully, will someday perform my weight loss surgery. I am pretty nervous but far from panicked. A little part of me is expecting her to tell me that I am not qualified and I should just go home and hurry up that inevitable heart attack. I guess that counts as nerves. You know how it is.

Okay. My exercise bike is calling me. I just wasted 61 minutes watching a cool YouTube video about Les Pauls. Time to go get some exercise minutes in.

Wish me luck.

Cheap Soda

My company has soda machines all over the place. The cans of soda are nearly free for staff. We have to pay the $0.05 state deposit and that’s it. Picture it; me, a lifelong dedicated fanatical soda drinker working in a building where cans of soda cost a nickel. Basically heaven.

Except that I can’t drink soda anymore. Shit.

I am in a new building now. Did I mention that? Probably. We were in Waltham, which was closer to home for me than any other company building, but they sold the Waltham building during the pandemic. We were moved to Westwood, which is further away than Waltham but was the next closest building to home. When we had our brief return to office experiment over the summer we had to setup our new desks and get used to the new place. Now it’s just where we go. No big whoop, right?

There was a point in time during our Waltham stay where I was trying to eliminate caffeine in the afternoon. I started bringing a water bottle and filling it up from the water cooler in the kitchenette. It tasted really bad. If I added a ton of ice it would get cold enough that the bad taste was sort of masked, but even if I put my go-to grape flavoring stuff in it, the taste was still crappy.

Now I am under doctor’s orders to no longer drink soda (Robert wipes away a single tear) so I’m back to the water bottle. There’s a little cooler in the kitchenette here too. I just filled up… nervous that this water would be bad too…

It isn’t. It sure ain’t the Poland Springs wonder that is our cooler at home, but it’s okay. I can live with it.

That sound you heard all over the surface of the Earth was my emphatic sigh of relief.