Post-Op Essentials

This last weekend I went shopping for some things I'll need after my surgery. Granted, not all of these are REQUIRED, but I've heard from various lap-banders that these really help.

A travel pillow: these are perfect size (for me anyway) to hold over my stomach to protect my post-op wounds from my seat belt in the car. For most people, the lap strap of their seat belt hits 2 of the incisions, so I was told this is a must for any car rides for at least a week after surgery.


A heating pad: In surgery, they pump your body full of gas to separate your internal organs making it easier to access your stomach. After surgery, that gas is trapped in your body and most people say it ends up in your upper left shoulder. Heating pads are #1 recommended to ease that discomfort.

Chewable Gas-X: Mostly for the same reason as above...they pump your body full of gas, it has to go somewhere.

A Pedometer: Walking is a HUGE part of recovery. A mere 4 hours after surgery the nurses will be pulling me out of bed every 2 hours until midnight making me walk for a while. While it's not expected immediately after surgery, the goal is to get to 10,000 steps per day. I would never be able to keep track myself.

Child size plates: This is more of a mental assist than anything. It can be really depressing looking at a normal sized dinner plate with a little blob of food on it. But looking at a small plate that is filled with food isn't so bad. I also got the kind that have compartments so that I can separate my proteins, veggies, fruits, etc into their correct portions. Protein goes in the biggest compartment.

Child size utensils: Well if I have the plates I may as well have the set. No, just kidding. This is to help with bite sizes. It's easy to take way too big of a bite of food on a normal size fork or spoon. This could cause problems if that food bite is too big that it can't fit through the opening of my stomach pouch. So naturally, the smaller the fork or spoon, the smaller the bite will be. Lap-band patients are only supposed to take bites the size of a dime.

Burt's Bees Res-Q ointment: For the incisions it is recommended to use vitamin E to help heal and sooth the wounds. I couldn't find any vitamin E oil so I found this. It's vitamin E and lavender. I'll post a follow up after surgery to let you know if/how well this works on the wounds.

Disney Princess Tattoo Band-aids: Because every girl wants to feel like a princess when she has owies. Enough said.

Magnesium Citrate: Ok well this one is required. The day before surgery I have to drink this to "clean out" my system. Eww...not looking forward to this at all.

Calcium Chews: Calcium is needed to prevent osteoporosis. It's also needed for nerve transmission and regulation of the heart muscle function. If you can't tell...that's copied from my surgeon's book, lol.

Chewable multi-vitamin: Due to the fact that lap-band patients eat less than the normal serving sizes, we also consume less of the important vitamins and minerals from our food. Multi-vitamins will be a life long addition to my diet. They also have to be chewable because most multi-vitamins are large and could easily get stuck in the pouch opening. They'd dissolve eventually, but I'd rather chew and be done than be in total agony for the hour it will take to dissolve. A key note when you're looking for your chewable multi-vitamin, it HAS to have at least 22 different vitamins and minerals. You can't get the gummy bear vitamins for kids because they only have like 15...trust me, I checked. Even the adult gummy vitamins only have 17 or 18. You need at least 22.

Snow Cone/Slushy maker: Yay! This is not at all required, this is just for my own personal enjoyment :) One thing I'll be allowed to have immediately post-op is sugar free Popsicles, but I don't really love those. So I figured I'd make my own sugar free snow cones! I bought some sugar free torani syrup flavors (am waiting on strawberry, grr!) to keep them sugar free. I will post a follow up blog to let you know how well this works and if I think it was worth the $30 I spent on it :)

Everything I bought was from Target, so it's not hard to find it all in one stop. I know a lot of other pre-op patients are confused at what all to get and where to find it. Let me know if you have any questions, I'll help :)

T minus 10 days and counting...

Wow...it's coming up! Tomorrow is my pre-op consultation with the surgeon. This will be the first time I actually meet her. So far I've only met with nurses and other assistants. At the pre-op consultation she'll go over all of the labs and tests I've had done recently. She'll basically just be making sure that my body will be able to handle surgery. She'll also see how I'm doing w/my 10% weight loss goal. I was pretty sick yesterday and spent most of the day in the bathroom with my head in the toilet so I was able to drop a good 10 lbs! I'm sure I'll gain that back in no time, but hey...it's nice to see it on the scale.

Yummy Food Finds

When I was at Costco last weekend, they had a demo for these Turkey Burgers. I'd always wanted to try them, but have always been hesitant because I'm a devoted beef girl. It's a lifestyle choice. But I decided I may as well try one from the demo without committing to an entire pack.

YUM! I was really surprised how good it was (and check out the protein!!). And the sweet little old demo lady was just pan frying them and serving them w/o anything on them. So I got a pack.
My first attempt was a turkey burger with melted mozzarella cheese on top on a whole wheat bun. DO NOT TRY THAT. Mozzarella and turkey are not a good flavor combination at all. That was gross.

So I decided to stick with the classics and just pretend it was a beef patty and try my luck that way. SCORE.

My first experiment was just a good ol' fashioned hamburger. I had already overloaded on carbs for the day, so I wanted to try something less carby and found these:

They're Flatout brand flat breads. These specific kind are the Fold its, they're two smaller circles connected in the middle, great for making sandwich style foods instead of the typical wrap. And they just happened to be prefect size to fit the very generous turkey burger patty on.

A tad high on the sodium side, but the fiber and protein are pretty great. And the low carbs are even better!

So I pan fried my turkey patty, put some light mayo, low sugar ketchup, and a bit of yellow mustard on my flat bread, and then I melted a low fat cheddar cheese stick on top of the patty. Viola!! A healthy cheese burger!!

I am still training my taste buds to like that healthy grain-y taste that comes w/all stone ground healthy carb type foods. But with the cheese and mustard and ketchup, you really don't taste the grain-y taste. And coming from a devoted beef eater, I could not really tell that I was eating a healthy turkey burger over a fatty beef burger.



My entire lunch was so good! I had my turkey cheese burger, a cup of cooked spinach w/a tiny bit of light butter, a 1/2 cup of unsweetened apple sauce w/cinnamon sprinkled on top, and a bag of cheddar bunnies (organic wheat crackers equivalent to gold fish crackers). I did not eat the almonds because I ran out of time. Only 20 minutes to eat...NO LONGER! :)

Now keep in mind the portions shown above are PRE-BAND and will NOT be typical once I have had surgery. I'd say maybe 1/3 of that.

Enjoy! :)

Pre-Op Class

As I struggled to drag my butt out of bed at 5 am today, I decided I really didn't need to go to the pre-op class. But, as I would not be allowed to have my surgery if I did not go...I went against my will.

About 30 minutes into the class, I realized that I could teach this class better than any of the speakers. Since I am in the behavior modification therapy I've been learning these things in serious depth and I know it all like the back of my hand. The different speakers were just going over the bare minimum and were setting a lot of RULES but not explaining the logic behind the rules or WHY you have to follow them. If I had been hearing those things for the very first time I'd have no motivation to follow them either.

If anyone has any questions about ANYTHING, like WHY you should only eat every 5 hours, and WHY you shouldn't drink 30 minutes before, during, or 30 minutes after you eat. And these are all great nutritional values for anyone trying to lose weight, not just surgery patients. If anyone reading this is pre-surgery and was told that they may need to do the behavior modification, I know that sounds sucky at first, but it really is the BEST thing I could have done, really!

Anyway, so I spent 6 hours and 15 minutes listening to things I already knew, but I still sort of had fun. The best part was the GOODY BAGS!!!


We got big totes from Realize (that's a brand of band):


And a REALLY NICE binder full of all our paperwork and things we'll need to know. I love stuff like this :)



This is called an incentive spirometer...you take a deep breath and then exhale all the air out of your lungs, and then you put that hose thingy in your mouth and inhale until the big blue disk goes up as high as it can. I got it all the way to the top!! The nurse called me an over achiever :)


This pic shows some vitamin pack samples at the top (hard to see), then a certificate for their health shop for a discount on vitamins, supplements, etc., then I got a purple Scottsdale Bariatric pen, and the BEST part of the goody bag is a gift certificate to the SPA for a FREE one hour treatment, my choice!

And I got this really nice water bottle :)

Not a bad haul for one day's work :) I love getting "stuff" for free.

Now I'm all set until next week on Tuesday for my pre-op appointment with the surgeon herself :)

14 DAYS AND COUNTING....

Weight Tracker:

Oh, I forgot to add this to the last post. This is just a ticker that allows you to see how much weight I've lost in comparison to what I'm trying to lose :) Looks pretty pathetic now, but give it a couple months and watch that shoe go!!

Last Meal

From the day I decided to have lap band surgery, I was already thinking about my "last meal." In the weight loss community, a last meal is the BIG meal you have before surgery where you can eat ANYTHING you want, and AS MUCH of it as you want. Usually people pick their absolute favorite foods and just gorge the entire day (so mealS...not meal).

I had been thinking about mine from day 1. I was going to start the day out with breakfast at IHOP and get endless pancakes, sausages, bacon, hash browns, waffles, etc. Then I would snack on ice cream and movie theater pop corn. Then for lunch I wanted Chili's baby back ribs...a full rack! With LOTS of french fries, and potato skins. I was also going to drink about 20 Shirley temples. Then I would snack on other various types of things...milkshakes, cream cheese stuffed pretzels, and the like. For dinner I wanted my FAVORITE prime rib dip sandwich from Charleston's w/a bowl of the potato soup, croissants, and french fries. For dessert I wanted Cheesecake Factory cheesecake...not sure what flavor yet. Then later on a large blizzard from dairy queen.
Yeah...that's IF I could have eaten all that. And you know, I really would have tried. But now that I'm getting so close, the desire to have a last meal has faded.

For one, by eating all of that, I will have un-done all the hard work I've put in to lose my pre-op weight. If I don't lose an acceptable amount of weight before surgery, they can cancel the whole thing on me and make me start over from scratch and I'd have to pay for all the pre-stuff again! One days worth of eating however I want is not worth all the time, effort, and money I've put into this. Not to mention I'm sure my bosses would kill me if I told them I'm not having surgery after all the schedule re-arranging they did to make this work for me!

For two, by having a last meal, I'm telling myself that I can NEVER eat those foods again, so this is my last chance. And that's not true. I will most likely still be able to eat most of those foods. Some foods may physically not work just because they would get stuck in my stomach opening and not go down, so I would give those up willingly. But for the most part, I can still have everything I want, I just have to be more sensible. I can't have them frequently, in fact most I should hardly ever have. But that doesn't mean I can NEVER have them. And I may only be able to have like 3 or 4 ribs and not an entire rack, but the point is that I can have them on occasion.

So while I was really looking forward to eating myself silly with all of my favorite foods, I realize now that I'm MORE looking forward to being healthy and being proud of myself when I look in a mirror. Like the saying goes...nothing tastes as good as thin (or healthy) feels.

Testing...

Well this morning I woke up bright and early to go have all my tests done. Thankfully I was able to have them all done at the Casa Grande hospital (15 min away) instead of the Scottsdale Shea hospital (1 1/2 hours away).

I was worried because when we got there, there was a 30 minute wait JUST TO REGISTER. So after sitting in a waiting room for 30 minutes, I was taken to a separate room to fill out paperwork and sign stuff and have a lady put everything into her computer. It just seemed like un-necessary process. That took an additional 15 minutes. Then I finally got to go do the testing I was there for. That didn't take long.

I had a chest x-ray. That was odd. I had to press my chest up against a lighted box. I just felt kind of stupid, lol.

Then I went and had blood taken. My veins weren't cooperating so they had to take it from my hand (OUCH!!!!!!) and I have poke holes in my arms from where they were trying to find the blood. It hurts :(

I had to give a urine sample, which was annoying because I hadn't had anything to drink all day so it was a bit of a waiting game.

Lastly I had to do an EKG. They put the stickers all over my body then hooked me up to a million cords and wires and plugged me in. That only lasted a second. That's to make sure that my heart is strong enough to undergo surgery.

So now all I have to do is wait for them to fax all the information over to the surgeon! I'll call tomorrow to check up on that, make sure they're on top of things.

And the happy ending is that I made it home before work! YAY!!

Checklist:
*Make sure ob-gyn records are faxed --CHECK
*Have tests done--CHECK
*Call S. B. to confirm all faxes received--will do tomorrow