Blog

Haven’t hear from the aesthlogist, but did hear from the surgeon’s office, they wanted to see reports from last summer cardiologist, right at 4:58 the night before surgery, you’re getting a report.  <sigh>

Did hear from the billing office — 100% covered, only have to pay co pays as I’ve met my out of pocket.

Tomorrow is clear liquids.

2 weeks of liquid diet.

2 weeks of mushies.

Bolus rates are going at half when I get upstairs and can attach to the PC.  Will switch to surgery basal rate when I wake up.

Also getting to the end of the school year.  We’ve got 3 days next week of classes, 1 day of finals, then 3 days of finals the next week.  Teachers have one extra day.

Then I go work for Testing — writing district finals.

One week later, Middle School Girls camp — two weeks of that, two different groups of girls.

Should be busy enough not to worry too much about food.

Got an email that the EKG was missing — man this is starting to feel like putting on a wedding or something.

Emailed and left voice message for nurse that it was missing, please send.  She did.  Pretty quickly.  Got an email about an hour later that everything was in and done and ready.

Just got off the phone with a nurse who gave us a time — 7:30 — and took my medical history. 

Said that I’d get a call from the aetheslogist tomorrow, maybe even evening.

That also means that my liquid diet will be over in about 16 days.  I’ve ordered some Unjury and I’m going to see about getting OptiFast Soup at Prestonwood as I am tired of sweet. I’ve also got some Unjury on order to try since they also have a soup.

Just sent off my copy of all the labs to the case manager.  We should be a go now for the surgery — the lab results were holding us up and as I said last night, the nurse got everything off before she left.

On the good news front — my weight is really dropping according my scales.  Tweaking my basal and bolus setting seems to have worked as I stayed below 200 all day yesterday and was in the 150-180 range most of the day.  Notice I don’t really believe my scales.  Once you get to a certain weight, scales are pretty inaccurate unless they are specifically designed for people this size.

Today I started out at 130.  So I’ll bolus with my Slimfast today instead of drinking it, and then correcting two hours later.

My TDD is under 60 — not bad as it was around 150 back in December to March.

And clothing — I’m wearing things that are two sizes smaller than what I had to buy in December. 

Progress all around.

So I left school right as the 6th period bell rang — my kids had to go to a Freshman awards ceremony (only 5 weren’t).

Got to the doctor’s office and they got me right in.  I’ll probably STILL get stuck with the copay, but oh well.

They did the blood draw and test in front of me, put it in the doctor’s computer.  His nurse had the surgery as the practice’s guinea pig — from the same place — so she knows what needs to be done and won’t mess around.  Besides, I just PDFed the lab results and sent them to my case manager.

Everything looks good but I am wondering about a low thryoid reading.

Good news — nurse emailed me that she had faxed all the information into TLC Edge.  Looking good, so far.

Dog agility was a bit weird tonight — especially running Macy — I’m used to being able to pull out a bit more speed from time to time but there was literally no gas in the tank.  I’m sure that’s a side effect from the liquid diet.

Even the people part went well.  One of my classmates is adamently opposed to the lapband.  The part that bothers me the most is from hearing that people knew people who had the surgery and didn’t lose weight.  It would be awful to go through this whole process and that would happen.

I’ve still got to get Rosetta Stone installed, still have to deal with seniors.  We have a plan in place for field testing so I think I’ll make it through the week.  Maybe have to beat a few seniors with a stick though.

ARGH!   I really want to scream at someone really bad.  I have to go back a third time because the lab screwed up a blood test.  At least this time it’s a finger stick and can be done in house. <sigh>

Good news: surgery is scheduled for 8:30 but might change.

More good news: drinking slim fast first then correcting my blood sugar is keeping my blood sugar in the 150 range which is where I like it.

Bad news — we just had to evacuate the building.  We’ve evacuated more times this year than we ever had and for the dumbest reasons.

Woke up at 106 this morning.  Yes, a good blood sugar but a bit scary when you are used to waking up at 150.  Glad I tweaked the pump down as much as I did and I’m seriously considering not bolusing with the morning Slimfast.

Weight continues to go down, I’m losing somewhere around a pound a day AND I can feel that the weight is gone. 

Still haven’t gotten the labs back (or at least they aren’t on the doctor’s website yet).  Sure glad I didn’t listen to the doctor’s receptionist.  Who was new and an idiot.  She wanted me to do the preop after school tomorrow.  I think I would be freaking out now.

So why
am I putting myself through this anyway?

Well, the past few years have been a bit difficult for my physically, but I hit the wall last fall.   I gained 20 pounds from August to October.  When none of my clothing fit, I realized I need to do something.

The first thing I did was find clothing that fit.  It helped a bit.

The second thing I did was to find someone locally who could help me with the weight.  I looked into TLC-Edge because they had both a medical program and a surgical program.  I didn’t even walk into this thinking — oh, I’m going to do to surgery.

In fact, I’ve been violently opposed to gastric surgery for a long time.  I really felt, and I do feel that now, is that surgery is for the last resort.

So I sat down with a nutritionist and came up with a plan.  The good news, I stopped gaining weight, but couldn’t lose.  That went on for several months, we’d come up with a plan and I wouldn’t lose weight. About three months after that, I decided that I needed to go for the lap band.

That’s what I’ve been working towards for the past few months. Sadly, I’d found that the only way I can lose weight now is through liquid diet, and I am hoping that will change with the Lapband.  My biggest problems are portion control and stress eating, and I’m working hard on both.  I’m hoping that Lapband will make the portion control much easier.

And my goal — is to be able to have fun at dog agility trials again. 

Working out is still difficult, stairs are still difficult, but then I’ve only lost a few pounds.

Good news, less than 3 1/2 days to go.

I’ve been running in the 120’s all day, and have been dong really good on the liquid diet all day. I switched the pump to 20% reduced basal instulin about 4 hours ago and am still running pretty low so I went ahead and change my basal rate to 20% low.  I also increased my carb ratio and my correction rate.  Why?  I don’t want to go low!

I actually kept my pump on my weekday rate all weekend and have been having really low blood sugars and I sure don’t have time or energy to deal with crashing tomorrow.  Right now, I’d rather run slightly high than slightly low.

That also meant I dropped my surgery basal rate too.

That should mean some other good things — like I can lose even more weight.  I’m told the more weight I can lose during this stage the better.

Well, slightly less than that, and yes, I might start counting hours soon.  Of course, I don’t have an actual surgery time.  Won’t get that until Wednesday.

Part of it is the liquid diet – very hard to do without having had the surgery.  Hopefully it will be easier next week.

So still frustrated and just wanting to get it done, but am making some other progress – just did 20 minutes on the treadmill and thinking I can do another 10 (I’m doing it in sets of 10 right now since I’m recovering from a bad arthritis day).

I’ve been busy reading Cynthia’s book – have tentatively put Fill scheduling in my outlook tasks.  From her book they are done every 6 six weeks.

And I did get 30 minutes on the treadmill!

I am thinking of going to a support group meeting on Tuesday – even nothing else to give me something to do.