My surgery, the unabridged version

I just sat down to write a post for the message boards about my surgery and it turned into a very long journal-type entry. I thought I'd include it here for you guys to get more info. There is some repeated stuff, I'm very aware. Enjoy!

Hi Everyone!

I'm home and feeling better after being banded.

The day before surgery my dh and baby (11 months old) and I drove 3 hours to Denver and stayed overnight with some friends. All the pre-op stuff went well. (Except me being blindsided by a 9K quote from the surgery center! Thank goodness I'm insured and only have 10% of that to pay.)

I had some anxiety beforehand and apologized to my husband if anything went wrong that I'm truly sorry. I just wanted him to know that if I died in surgery, or as a result, that I really didn't mean to and that I was going to be really disappointed on the other side if that's how it turned out. I shed some good tears and then moved on. He has been amazing and very supportive.

I had to wait what seemed like forever. I was the third of three LapBand surgeries that my doc was doing that day. Before I was taken in, the first patient came by to say hi. She was doing fabulously and was planning on heading home in 30 minutes. That eased my mind a bit. I had a book with me and it’s a good thing because if I had nothing to concentrate on, it would have been rough.

As I was drifting off, I remember them having me swallow a yellow or orange tube of some sort. Next thing I know, we're done. I didn't come out of the anesthesia very well. Instead of feeling like I was waking from a nice nap, it was chaotic and loud with people giving me instructions right and left and I was in so much pain. Don't they give patients pain meds before they bring them out of anesthesia? I didn't like that at all. I think I slept in the recovery room for at least an hour before they did the barium swallow and checked that my band was okay to go.

I also had a lot of pressure built up in the middle of my chest. The flouroscopy showed a large air bubble in my pouch. I expected to burp it up and have it go away. I never did get a good burp in, I guess it absorbed into my body within a couple of days.

As far as nursing my baby, Adam, I tried pumping about 3 hours after surgery and was only able to get about 1/4 ounce out. I made the choice to go ahead and nurse him then because Brad was getting ready to leave for the evening. I knew he’d probably get some of the residual anesthesia in my milk. It was a blessing for Brad because Adam slept 10 hours straight that night. (Not something he had done yet.)

I stayed the rest of the day and overnight in the surgery center and only got up to pee and walk 3 or 4 times. I was worried that I wasn’t doing enough walking, (bloodclots in the legs) but it worked out. I had slept what I thought was all night and when I asked if it was morning, the nurses chuckled and said it was 10 p.m. There were two of the LapBand patients there and two nurses and that was it.

I was surprised at checkout that I didn’t have a prescription for pain meds. Someone somewhere messed up and I wasn’t given one. The nurse did give me two percoset which didn’t seem to do anything at all. The drive home was uneventful , we stopped every hour so I could walk, but basically I slept the whole time.

I think I slept most of the next couple of days, they’re kind of a blur. I did vomit my first night home. I woke up about 2 a.m. and was already having the increase of saliva that comes right before. I tried to will myself not to vomit, but it didn’t work. I ended up heaving about four times. I don’t think anything even came up, and it wasn’t a violent heaving, so I’m not worried that my band was compromised. I’ll spare the details, but I’ve also had diarrhea up until yesterday, (3 days of this).

The first couple of days I couldn’t get much down. I couldn’t stomach the protein powders I had been using before surgery. The Isopure Clear especially made me nauseated. I think I was basically nauseated for the first couple of days.

Each day has gotten progressively better. I’m five days out, down 17 pounds (that’s in a week’s time) and feel great about my band so far. I moved to a full liquid diet on my 2nd day post-op. It was all I could do to survive at that point and I’ve tolerated it well. It was within the nutritionists’ guidelines, so I’m okay there.

I do already have some restriction. I’m finding that I can only get in about half the volume of liquid that I was getting in before surgery. I can have about ½ to 1 cup before realizing I’m full.

I have a hard time with Splenda. I’ve never been a fan of artificial sweeteners. I find I can tolerate it if I use a little (1 t or less) of sugar and ½ pack of Splenda for my sweetening. I’ll knock that off if I find that I need to tweak my diet.

My surgeon told me on the day before surgery that he wants me to stop using milk. I was surprised, hadn’t heard that before. His reason was that milk has too much sugar in it. He said that skim, 1%, it didn’t matter. All had too much sugar. Interestingly enough, his nutritionist’s info includes milk, so for now, I’m using milk in the things I’m drinking. I couldn’t stomach the protein drinks any other way. Again, something to look at if my diet needs tweaking.

My incisions are healing nicely. I did develop a rash underneath the plastic waterproof patches that he put over the steri-strips, so today we took as much of that plastic off as we could without removing the steri-strips. I’m prone to rashes with medical tape, so I wasn’t surprised. I’m treating it with a steroid cream and I think that will work well. Adam keeps lifting up my shirt to see my tummy. He knows the incisions are something significant and has taken notice.

My feet are less swollen than they have been for the last 6 years or so. They still have a bit of fluid in them, but look more normal sized.

I am at peace and feeling good about this decision. I’m sure hard times will come, but for now it’s sure fun to step on the scale and see that I lost 4 pounds from the day before. My girls are getting into it, asking me each day how much I’ve lost. I’m fully aware that it will slow down at some point, but enjoying it for all it’s worth right now.