Two months done and dusted. The Mega update!!
When I started this blog this date seemed so far away. To think that I have managed to get to two month AFTER surgery seems crazy when only yesterday it felt like it was two months until surgery.
The more I’ve been thrown back into the craziness that is my life at the moment that more I’m realizing that life post surgery now just seems so normal.
It doesn’t seem to matter that I can only eat very small meals, it doesn’t seem to matter that certain things completely disagree with my body, it doesn’t seem to matter that the state of my bowel movements became a normal acceptable topic of everyday conversation.
None of it really seems to matter.
That being said, the past two months haven’t been all sunshine and roses. At the time the downsides felt pretty bloody down, but now it’s all very ‘meh’ so it gives me some better perspective when looking back at it. So please, when I talk now about the ‘lows’ remember it’s all relative. When the lows were happening, it felt at the time to be a real low that I wish I had been warned about, so that’s why I still want to talk about them. The truth must be out there people and I’m here to deliver! Ya girl gonna spill the tea on all the things no one talks about when you have gastric sleeve surgery.
First things first, let’s get the stuff everyone wants to know most of all out the way…NUMBERS.
When it comes to the scales I think the first thing people are a bit shocked to discover is that I hardly ever weigh myself. I only do this right now when I go to the doctor or dietitian (they are in the same office so it’s the same set of scales). What I do know is that as of the 27th of Feb I was 18.7kgs down off my starting weight a month before surgery. My first doctors appointment 2 weeks after surgery showed I was 4.8kgs down. That was just over 2 kgs a week.
When I first heard this for a moment I was a bit sad. I thought given that all I was eating was a couple of tablespoons of pureed meat 3 times a day surely the numbers would be more. It was basically the same level of weight loss as when I was on Optifast. With those results I could have just maybe stayed on Optifast and saved myself 20 grand.
Once I got over that first initial feeling of ‘aww shit, that’s a bit average’ I stopped to properly think about it more.
When I was on Optifast I was working out everyday, sometimes even twice a day and I went hell for leather hauling ass. I also was bloody hungry because 3 little shakes and a mouthful of rabbit food wasn’t sustainable. Also as anyone that had to spent more than a few hours with me can attest to; I was an effin nightmare. I hovered awkwardly over my friends, family and coworkers smelling their food, demanding they describe it to me in great detail, and just looking really, really , reeeeeeaallyy creepily at them as they ate.
The two weeks following surgery, however, I didn’t feel hungry at all, I had to rest and have midday naps a lot and walking to the end of the driveway and back in my pjs two times a day was considered an epic bloody achievement. When I compared the two states of being, that post surgery number suddenly looked bloody incredible. It actually made me worry it was too fast and that I would soon resemble a floppy frame of loose skin and sadness.
The dietitian follow up was on the 27th Feb and that recorded in another 4kgs lost.
That was a month ago now and all I know is that since I started on this journey at the pre surgery Optifast I will have hit the 20kgs lost stage (I know it will be a bit more than that, but until I go back to the doctors next month I won’t know.)
What I do know with a lot more certainty is the measurement changes. THAT I look at a bit more. It’s not just the fact that I know a lot of my clothes are already getting looser, but that tape measure has been making me pretty happy of late.
I first kicked off this journey in the Optifast stage a month out from surgery so on the same day I had my first Optifast shake I took all my key measurements. On the 24th March, so my two month post surgery date, I took another set of measurements.
Are you guys ready for this-
Bicep - a loss of 5cm between the two measurements
Bust - a loss of 7cm between the two measurements (Whilst all of the other measurements make me happy, this one just feels like a personal attack. How DARE you boobs!! I was good to you. I feel seriously victimised.)
Underbust - a loss of 14cm!!!!!
Waist - a 10cm loss between the two dates.
Hips - 12.5cm loss. These hips right now sure as shit don’t lie!
Thigh - 8cm. Crazy crackers!!
Calf - I had to laugh at this one when Rob suggested we do this one too. I’ve always had HUGE calf muscles and didn’t think this would change. Even still, 3cm loss there too.
I’m like for reals shook right now.
Already I’m noticing a lot of changes happening in the clothes I’m wearing. Two pairs of jeans I wore all the time are now completely too large and in need of being thrown away. Another pair that were my ‘snug but just bearable’ ones sit quite loose on me and look a bit scruffy because of it. I’m now into the pair that were my ‘dear god I ordered the wrong size, these are trying to rip my body in two and I can only work at a stand up desk in the office cause sitting down ain’t happening’ and now they fit really comfortably, in fact even these feel like they sit a bit loose.
Already a lot of my underwear feels like it sits very loosely on me. Since I know I still have so much change to come I’ll be frequenting Kmart a lot for the easily disposable fast fashion options to see me through in the undies department.
Heck, I’ve even had to change up bras.
Because of my Fibromyalgia I started to find that most of my bras with underwire caused huge amounts of pain. I switched for a while to bralettes that, sure, don’t do much for support but eased a lot of my pain. The old girls were sitting pretty fine for the most part so it worked. Now though, dear god I don’t know what I did to my boobs to make them hate me so much. Here I am having supported them for so much of my life and they are the first to get softer, drop, and start to fade away with the rest of the fat. I wouldn’t be surprised if this time next year I have to tuck them into my waistband, or roll them up to slip into a bra cup.
Let me just say, I’m already considering buying myself a new set of boobs for an upcoming birthday if things continue in this direction.
The person on the Left is 20 kgs lighter and 3 months older than the one on the Right. #ithinkicanseeitnow
Continuing on my theme of the highs (aside from my inner turmoil at the current and future state of my boobs) there are two things that leave me really positive for the future.
One is that I am in a state of eating pretty much any type of food now. No purees, no forcing myself to only eat soft foods, anything goes as long as I stick to what my body can actually handle. I am pleased to report that all cheeses and eggs sit perfectly fine with me so biggest food fear I had has now been calmed.
The first day I tried solid food and got to have one of the gorgeous gourmet sausages Rob had started picking up from Farro when I was eating Optifast I actually cried because it tasted so good. In terms of how much I could eat…3/4 of a single sausage and a tablespoon of cottage cheese. Believe me when I say, I was sooooo full.
It’s been interesting slowly evolving and managing my food. I have to plan to set aside an hour for eating at lunch now since I need to stop drinking my liquids a full half hour before I start eating and then spend another half hour on the eating. This is the one I’m a bit forgetful about but I’m trying. Trust me, you notice when you haven’t left it long enough. That feeling of being full hits so so much quicker.
The other thing that leaves me positive is my health. Already I have stopped taking Metformin that I was taking for my PCOS. In 3 months time I’ll go to have an ultrasound so we can see what the state of my ovaries look like, but there is every possibility that a lot of the follicle cysts will have gone. It’s super promising, not that we want children or anything, but the pain that I tend to find myself in and downsides because of the PCOS are slowly starting to disappear.
Whilst I’m still taking pills for my Fibromyalgia, I’m even now finding the level of pain my body had been in 24/7 has gone down dramatically. In only 2 months. That constant aching in my joints is all but gone. I do still get quite sore at times, and it’s the type of pain that lingers (like if I’ve done a killer workout at the gym) but even that I can feel is becoming more normal. It blows my mind since this is only 2 months. I can hardly imagine what it will be like when I hit the 1 year mark.
So in terms of goods, there is so so much of it but…these past 2 months…well, there have been some trials.
On the Left - A standard dinner on a small side plate. 1 scrambled egg, 1 tablespoon of cottage cheese, 3 slices of finely shaved ham. On the Right - the aftermath of a full half hour spent eating slowly and I was so bloody full!
Today I’m going to talk about the lows that I think a lot of blogs, and doctors and friends have covered off about post surgery. Next blog though, well gurl I’m gonna seriously spill the tea on the true downsides.
Lets start with the obvious…food.
This has been one hell of an adjustment.
When I went to the doctor I had no serious negative stories to tell him. The purred food stage went down a treat. The pots from the Pure Food Co were amazing. They were well portioned, they tasted great and my stomach didn’t have any issues at all in keeping them down.
By the time I was back to work in the office I was on to soft foods so I started bringing in things like cruskets, cottage cheese, eggs, thin sliced ham, a bit of hard cheese and porridge. Again, no issues what so ever. It was amazing. The closest I had to a “trouble” was when I worked super late at work and when having my hard boiled egg for dinner I swallowed a bit too quickly on a bit of egg that hadn’t been chewed enough and all I felt was pain in my chest. I thought I might throw up, but luckily didn’t, it was just a long long wait for that pain to finally pass.
For weeks it was fine. I then, two days before I was due to see the dietitian I had had a tiny dinner of prawns, avocado and a bit of seafood sauce to pull it all together. It tasted amazing…until 10 minutes later I knew it would all be coming back out in a very fast way. What I didn’t know was what end it would come out from.
Its something known as dumping and I thought I had avoided it but apparently no one does. It’s that horrible cold sweat, shakes, stomach cramps and your bodies sudden need to remove all of the contents of your stomach very fast, violently, by any means necessary. That night I can safely say, hand on heart, my butt felt like it was in a violent, firey rage. Even worse was the fact that I had to run to the bathroom with bucket in hand in case I actually vomited because it was so bad I had no real idea which end it was going to come out leaving me to gamble. Luckily, I gambled right.
Even by the next morning I felt horrific so I opted to work from home. Cut to 5 minutes into my first video conference with part of my team. I literally felt the colour drain from my face, was asked if I was ok, in which I replied “nope, no I’m not” cut off from the call super fast and was throwing up 2 seconds later. Thank god I was home and not in the office because that would not have been a pretty sight. Weirdly though, less than a few minutes later I felt amazing and was hungry so go figure.
Since then I’ve only had two other things that have set me off.
There was trying a chai latte.
There will be no more trying of chai lattes…especially at work when one is in a meeting.
The other, and this I was not expecting, was the multi vitamins I needed to start four weeks after surgery.
Because of the limited amount of food that I am eating, and the fact that I’m mostly focusing on protein I run the risk of becoming very nutrient deprived. To combat that I have to take a multi vitamin everyday for the rest of my life. (but sure snarky people that exist out there in the interweb worlds, gastric surgery is just a quick, simple, easy fix solutions * eye roll *). Based on the notes given to me by the doctors I first tried Centrum. This was not a good idea. I tried several times to take Centrum and several times I was met with a nasty case of ‘massive throwupitis’.
After speaking with the dietitian I was given some other options to try. One was a capsule, that also resulted in a very very unhappy reaction, just like Centrum. I found success with the chewable versions of the multi vitamins in the sense that they stayed down. Tastes like crap, like chewing on an old, orange, chalky Berocca. Still, if I had the choice between eating nasty chalk or throwing up everyday, I think it’s pretty obvious which one I’d be going with.
So, even now, looking back at things the highs most definitely out weigh the lows…even with the rest of the lows I still have to talk about, but that I think is a story for next time.
