Filed under: Small Victories, adventure continues, post surgery | Tags: diabetes, insulin, small victory, weight loss
Today was a day of small victories. It’s been over two days since I’ve taken any pain medication. I’m feeling pretty good other than a twinge once in a while where the surgery took place. Also I had my first visit to the Joslin Clinic to meet with my endocrinologist. I was most anxious about this visit, since I had not not seen her since May and this would be my first visit with her after surgery.
The other small victory was that when I left the hospital I gained some weight from fluid and weighed about 323 pounds. As of this morning my scale in the bathroom indicated my weight as 310 pounds a loss of 13 pounds in a little over a week. This in and of itself was a great encouragement for me to continue on what has become a somewhat dull menu of liquids.
When I got to the Joslin, I registered and waited for the nurse to take me in. When the nurse finally called me, she put me on the scale and said my weight was 303 pounds. I knew that was wrong, but I would take it. Actually I went back and re-weighed myself. We then went through my diminished amounts of medication and she took my blood sugar and my AIC, a measure of your blood sugarlevel over three months.
My endocrinologist came into the room and after a short discussion was very pleased to see that I had finally, after years of her encouragement, had finally gone through with bariatric surgery.
She reviewed my blood sugars and actually asked that I reduce the amount of insulin that I take for the 25 units of Lantus to 20 units of Lantus each day. That is a reduction from the 200 units of long-acting insulin I was taking prior to surgery. This is a great victory for me since having the surgery was primarily a way of controlling my diabetes.
The visit ended with an even better surprise when my AIC came in at 5.6 that is normal for people without diabetes. While Jodythinks that my diabetes will go away entirely because of the surgery, I am just encourage by the fact that I am now taking about 1/10 the amount of insulin that I took prior to surgery.
I’ve decided that weight loss surgery is a matter of small successes and small victories as you lose your weight and more importantly as I adjust my medications. Other than a lousy cold, today was a pretty good day.
Filed under: Being Home, post surgery | Tags: Being Home, issues, recovery
It has been a couple of days since I put an entry into this blog. It’s been a very interesting period of time as I adjust to recovery.
Sunday I had a number of very nice folks come over and visit, all of whom, other than my daughter, had not been to the apartment for many years. I’ve also gotten flowers and balloons and a lot of get well greetings from people who have been nice to me over time, but surgery seems to brought out the best in them.
I took a walk yesterday and had to rest the couple of times, but did about three quarters of a mile. I took a walk today, a and needed to rest, but did over half a mile.
The strangeness comes from not feeling very injured from my surgery. I still have some pain in my side where they stqpled my stomach and I’m still very tired, but I don’t feel disabled. My initial reaction was to be more involved in things that are going on at work. It is obvious that everyone at work has decided that I should take a break from work, and I think I’m not going to push the issue anymore.
I added low-fat yogurt to my diet today and that was a nice treat, and it seemed to settle well. I need to keep up my fluids, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem as far as getting them down. I think Jody is a little disappointed that I’m not struggling more to take down the protein and the fluids, since this was a large problem for her when she had her bariatric surgery.
Jody is trying to deal with upsets in her family and on the one hand I think she’s grateful that I have not required a level of care which he was prepared to give, but on the other hand, I think she’s disappointed that I’m not more dependent on her. In fact she went back to work today, and I know she wasn’t happy about that.
A neighbor of ours called today to say that she had had the same surgery two weeks ago and that her doctor had actually nicked her spleen and she was in surgery for the four hours. I had to tell her that I had no such complications and that I was already out walking and feeling relatively okay.
I know disappointment sounds very odd in this context, but I think Jody had certain expectations of what I would be like after surgery. She doesn’t think very highly of my ability to deal with pain or any sort of complicated physical issues. I think disappointment is the word that comes to mind because she feels that she has a place as a caregiver tand that my role is the helpless patient. I’m very glad that is not the case, but it is a strainanyway.
Thank goodness I’m finally starting to lose the few pounds that I gained in the hospital from fluids and have even lost little bit more than that.
My fear is that when I get back to work I won’t have any work to do, since everyone will of taken over everything that I was working on. I’m not sure this is a rational fear or just my usual level of paranoia about work.
I also feel bad for this blog in that I don’t have more dramatic scenarios that have resulted so far from eye surgery. I feel pretty good, I am in a little pain and I am also tired, but I am getting my liquids down and I’m looking forward to transitioning from a liquid diet to a soft food diet. In fact most of the foods of that part of the diet are favorite foods including black beans, kidney beans, no fat refried beings, ground meat and round seafood.
Well I will continue to blog. If you have any questions about the peocess please send your comments.
Filed under: Taking Medication slowly, post surgery | Tags: adding food, surviving the hospital, taking meds
Thursday was stage one of the actual eating program after surgery. My meal plan consisted of thimble sized cups of water, period. I still had the iv until the evening and the delightful foley catheter. The took that out mid day on Thursday.
The thing was I was not hungry at all. The water filled me up, and I really didn’t miss food. I was also still pretty groggy from the pain meds. By the end of the day I was off the pain pump and on percocet. Since I could not swallow a whole pill the percocet and all of my meds had to be cut into small pieces or crushed and mixed with water.
The taste of crushed meds in water is ghastly. I had to chug them and that filled up my pouch immediately.
The other strange question of day two was “have you passed any gas”. The reason is that they want to make sure that what you are taking in is making it to the bowels. Well most of Thursday went by and no gas. That would change big time.
I also tried to walk as much as possible. Most of all I hate being in a hospital bed and the couch in the room was very uncomfortable. There is pain and I was exhausted, but a couple of circuits around the floor were helpful. Jody was a great task master on Thursday and got me moving.
By the end of Thursday I was off my intravenous fluids and on to stage two. Chicken broth and Sugar Free Jello. Fortunately green sugar free Jello is one of my favorite foods and combined with a serving of warm broth it seemed like a gourmet meal.
My Thursday dinner was the first meal on stage two. It was great, but I soon learned that I certainly was passing gas. Also after finishing the broth and Jello, I was finished for the day. No hunger.
My other meds were cut up in fine pieces and served with ice water, and it took some time to get them down. Not much sleep on Thursday night. I had a weird feeling that my bi pap machine was a odds with the machine I was hooked up to for my oxygen level. Also more blood tests, blood draws, blood pressure and just poking and prodding took up a fair amount of the night. When they woke me up from my first deep sleep it was only 11:30am. Also they had me up at 12:30am and were worried about my oxygen level, so I was walking around until 1:30am and was not back in bed until close to 2am.
At 5am I had had it with trying to sleep and I was up for the day. Friday made me miss the poking and prodding of Thursday.
Friday was a day of being ignored. My surgeon had gone on to a conference in Florida and the resident and staff folks were dealing with patients who had more problems after their surgery than I was having.
TV at hospitals is terrible. The screens are small and the remotes make you go through all of the channels if you want a channel you have already passed. Also the selection of channels is not very good. Fortunately Jody came to visit and we did a fair amount of walking. By 3pm on Firday I was peeing on my own and had passed a lot of gas. I was also exhausted and bored and decided to take a nap.
I told Jody to go home and put on my bi pap and tried to take a nap. The biggest difference between Thursday and Friday was my ability to get in and out of the hospital bed without significant pain. On Friday I could swing my legs and pull myself up on the bed. I was exhausted but I could do it.
My wonderful day nurse Kelli allowed me to rest. By 6:30pm it was up for blood sugar, blood pressure, oxygen level. Then a meal of broth and jello. Unfotunately the jello must have been at least a decade old and did not melt in the mouth but oh well. I also had to take a number of pills cut up into small pieces. It was a task.
Friday night was a trip since my blood oxygen level dropped every time I was on my bi pap machine. After about an hour of consultation with the respitory therapist, oxygen was added to to my bi pap and I was off to sleep for about 4 hours. Unfortunately I had terrible nightmares but sleep is sleep.
Adding the oxygen got my oxygen blood level up near 100% for the rest of the night. No percocets were offered all night and when I woke up in the morning I was very very sore and needed to search out Kelli and get some help.
Kelli also informed me that I ws going home Saturday as soon as they could find a doctor to remove my drain. More on that later. I was ready for my release. I missed not seeing the dogs and the hospital certainly is not a good placce to get any rest.
Well more on my release and my very interesting room mate in the next post.
Filed under: post surgery, the adventure begins | Tags: in the hospital, post op
I can’t believe that I had bariatric surgery last Wednesday. I was not able to do any blogging from the hospital as you will see from this blog.
Wednesday morning we were at the hospital about 8:20am and I merrily filled out a lot of forms and met with admission. At about 9am I was in my johnny and was in the surgical waiting room.
After about an hour I was taken in to the pre op room and put on a gurney and promptly ignored for a while. After about half an hour I finally got my iv inserted (thank goodness not a problem) and finally my surgeon came out and said that he has just finished up his first surgery and I would go in in about an hour.
The anathesologist came in and took one look at me and asked me why I had not shaved off my beard that morning. My heart sank and I told him I was not told to shave my beard. He then consulted with another anesthesiologist and a resident on the merits of shaving my beard in order to get a good fit for the oxygen mask.
Of course in the middle of this my anesthesiologist informed me that, among other things, there was always the possibility of death due to my size and the possibility that I might become aware of the operation during the operation. I am not sure what scared me more. He also told me that they would be putting a breathing tube down my mouth and that my throat would be sore (He was certainly right about that).
Finally he and his colleague and a resident came in with an electric razor they use to remove hair before surgery and I got a shave. I did tell them that my wife was going to be angry about my losing the beard, but that should not stop them.
After a shave and the hanging of a drip I was wheeled into the operating room, hopped on the table and that is about all I remember of the actual operation.
The next thing I remember was being in the recovery room and about three hours of my life had disappeared. No dreams, no memories also no heart attack or awareness. I was groggy but thrilled to be in recovery.
After another five or six hours in recovery I was finally wheeled up to a room on the fouth floor of the North Building of Tufts Medical Center, but it might as well have been on the moon,
I was very weak and very groggy and the entire process seemed less real then a fantasy. At this point I had not had anything to eat or drink for almost 24 hours and was being sustained on a drip.
I also had the handy dandy button for the intravenous pain pump that I was told I could use when I needed it.
Actually, I decided before surgery to use as little pain meds aa my body would let me get away with.
Wednesday night was a blurr of people poking and prodding me. People looking at the six incisions on my body and taken my temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar and just plain blood.
They tell me that I slept some on Wednesday night but I could not vouch for that. I actually kept dozing off and wondering when I was going to have my surgery. I could not tell you the name of my nurse or even the time anything happened. Every once in a while the pain would be sufficient for me to click the button for the pain pump, and I would hear a chirp and feel relief. Actually is was not until Thursday that it struck me that my surgery was done.
It is good to be home and I will be posting about the rest of my hospital stay and beginning my adventure soon. Thanks to everyone for their comments and good thoughts.
