Tag: weight loss surgery

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.

Half Way There

My lunch break is coming to an end. I am halfway through the work day. Halfway through my first day back in the office.

I had planned to bring my AirPods Max with me. I forgot to pack them. I’ve been using air buds like some kind of caveman. I also forgot that they centralized the trash barrels. Instead of having a barrel at every desk they have one in the middle of the room. My lunch trash is just sitting on my desk. I’ll chuck it out the next time I get up, but when will that be?

It’s sunny and 50 degrees out. Practically Spring, right? I made sure to open the blinds in the bedroom so the plant clipping can get good light today. I’m hoping there will be a new leaf opening up when I get home. Fingers crossed.

There are more people here now than there were the last time I posted. Still no one close enough to make me nervous, but still. I’m Covid safe, but not as Covid safe as I’d be if I were working from home. Sigh in frustration.

I got a phone call from the weight loss clinic. They confirmed my appointment for Monday. Yet another teeny tiny hurdle crossed. Monday should be a huge hurdle crossed. I’m nervous, but I am okay with it for now. That’ll probably change once I see a doctor holding a knife above my guts. Crap.

Okay. Back to work.

Banned Things

Over the last 5-6 months or so I have banned some things from my life. Well, banned or boycott. Whichever is more appropriate. How am I doing on these things?

The most recent ban started six days ago when I started working to remove carbonated beverages and caffeine from my diet. If I am going to go through with the weight loss surgery process, then these two items will be permanently removed from my diet forever and ever. Apparently they are both stomach irritants and when you surgically mangle the stomach the way I plan to, then irritants are really bad.

I first learned of this development on Thursday 2/3 and my first day without either of them was Friday 2/4. I’ve made it six days. So far so good, I guess, but it’s definitely not a second nature sort of thing yet. Not even close. My quarantine routine over the last 23-24 months has involved filling up a bottle of water before I go to bed (with grape flavoring, always). If I don’t finish the bottle then I finish it the next day, but not until sometime in the afternoon. I’d have soda, diet pepsi, in the morning and early afternoon. Caffeine and soda. Now I am just drinking water all the time so the night time water bottle carries into the morning. That probably sounds more complicated than it is, but the point here is that every morning I continue to leave the water bottle next to my bed as if I was going to have a morning soda. No. You’re not. Six days on and I still forget that I am not drinking soda anymore pretty much every morning. That needs to end.

So the dietary bans are still going well, though not quite a routine yet. What was the other ban? Facebook. August 27, 2021 was the day I sort of spur of the moment banned Facebook from my life. That was a little more then five months ago. It looks like five months is pretty much long enough to get to the point where I don’t even notice it anymore. It hasn’t been 100%, but I think I can count the number of times I’ve visited on one hand. FoMO brought me back to clear off some notifications once, and once I went on to just mention I wasn’t going on anymore. That was probably pointless. The last time was a couple of weeks ago when I found out one of my Aunts wasn’t well and I checked my cousins accounts to see if I could learn anything. I was only on for a few minutes but I’ll fess up and admit I was there.

Other than those few times I’ve been able to stay away. I don’t think about it anymore. In fact, I got a notifications email the other day for the Lizardfish group and I had to look at it twice to remember what it was talking about. Sometimes it needles me, like when a YouTube show or a podcast that I am a regular viewer/listener of makes a mention of their respective Facebook groups, of which I am a member, and I don’t know what’s going on. I feel out of the loop. FoMO starts creeping in, but I forget about it quickly enough.

So my personal cancel culture targets are still going strong. Facebook is a big nothing to me now. Caffeine and carbonated drinks are going to be tougher to deal with. I can do it though. Absolutely.