Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Mushies!

I am officially one week into the two week pureed stage and I cant tell you how freakin' awesome it is. I have never ever appreciated flavours and texture the way I do now. After being on liquids a month to be able to eat (most of ) a scrambled egg is so fantastic. My diet's been very simple it's mostly an egg for breakfast, tuna for lunch, meat for dinner or something along those lines. My idea of portion size has changed already, I eat out of ramekins and look at a slice of meat and think "thats quite a lot of food."

Also! In big news I'm proud to say I'm only 1kg away from having lost 20kg - thats 40 pounds! in three weeks! It took me about 6 months to lose that much weight on jenny craig. It's amazing how easy it is when I'm not hungry. I can eat until I'm satisfied and then just stop, instead of eating until I'm so full its uncomfortable.

Honestly? I'm kind of scared how easy it is. Losing weight has been the hardest thing in my life for as long as I can remember, and to see it just falling off - well I wake up most mornings expecting to see the scales show that all the weight has come back on. I guess I still have to work on that.

In non weight loss related news, all the boys have gone from the flat so it's just the three girls left and we've been redecorating! We bought a bunch of cushions and pretty girlie things and made the flat all sparkly and clean, it's basically magical.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Live from hospital

I survived!

I'm not going to lie... surgery was a whole other experience than I was expecting. We woke up at 6am to get me to the hospital where I checked in in a big rush as I was the first to have surgery that day, got hurridly changed into the hospital gown (which for anyone whose wondering... gap at the back. There is no classy way to wear one of those suckers.) and then got wheeled down to the operating room. There's something a little disquieting about getting onto your own operating table, a bit like carrying your own cross to an execution... but they gave me a lovely little pill which made me not care about such technicalities. The anasthetic itself hurt... don't be fooled if they say it wont. Last thing I remember is the anesthetic man saying "now this might sting a bit" followed by my loud exclamation of "OW FUCK" and then... blankess.

I'd later find out that they'd accidently tissued my iv which means it'd popped out of the vein and all the liquids and painkillers were just flowing directly into my hand which is why it puffed up to roughly the size of a baby horse and why I'm only just getting use of it back two days later. 

I sort of fluttered in and out of conciousness in the recovery room, apparently I was in there was longer than anticipated, a couple of hours total, and then the next thing I remember is being wheeled back into my room and my mum coming in with a huge bunch of flowers. I slept most of that day, only waking up when they stuck something in my iv (and then only because of the horrible horrible pain of it all) and to go to the bathroom. I finally woke up at about seven or eight when a couple of my friends came in to visit me and entertained me by waltzing around my hospital room. Let no one say I don't have the best friends in the world.

The next day a nurse blessedly noticed how giant my hand was and took my iv out. Unfortunately I couldn't drink enough fluids because I was horribly sick all day, so she had to put a new one in - but at least this time it hit the vein and so didn't hurt when she started putting things into it. I felt really really crap most of the day, if I wasn't nauseous I was sore, if I wasn't sore I had gas pains, if I didn't have gas pains then my back was hurting from the hospital bed. I tried to mostly sleep through it, and ended up hitting the hay at about 5 until 7am this morning.

Today I feel HEAPS better, I've been walking around all morning and was allowed some optifast and got off my drip for good if I promised to keep drinking water. I think walking around is possibly the key to surgery, it gets rid of your gas pains so fast, its actually kind of amazing. I get out tomorrow if all things go as planned.. they all looked good on the leak test (ugh which the less said about the better) and my surgeon seems pretty pleased with things. I cant wait to get home into a comfy bed and not get woken up at 1am every morning by the nurses coming to take my blood pressure etc.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

One week till surgery

Hasn't that snuck up? I've been counting down to it for so long that it had sort of assumed this mythical status in my mind, and I'd fogotten it was a real thing that was really happening. But yup.. I'm happy to say that one week into my pre-op diet and I'm feeling so much better. I'm about eight kilos down in a week which is... just insanity. I've started using bio-oil to rub on my skin, its supposed to reduce stretch marks and loose skin, my mum swears by it and if nothing else it's making me smell really good.

I've also been getting ready for the hospital, buying pajamas and that kind of thing. Is it weird that I don't have pajamas? I just dont like my legs to be covered when I sleep.. makes me feel trapped. But yay! I went to Peter Alexander (this fancy pajama store we have in NZ) and tried on a bathrobe and some pajama pants, and both were too big. That's never happened to me. It was awesome to be able to ask the woman if they had a smaller size in something.

I'm sort of suspicious about it all to be honest... it just feels like its too easy. Admittedly the first few days I was going crazy but now it's all just a breeze. I actually have to remind myself to eat the protein shakes because I'm just not getting hungry. The only way I really notice is when I start getting light headed and shaky. I think that's probably not actually a good thing, but its still pretty exciting to someone whose always been hungry and pretty much never missed a meal. I haven't cheated really, I will admit that I stuck my finger in some pasta sauce my mum had made, but I'm telling myself it doesn't count because it was basically tomato sauce and veges, both of which I'm allowed. The thing bothering me most might actually be the no milk thing. I hadn't noticed how much coffee/tea sucks without milk.

If anyone has any helpful hints about things I should take to the hospital by the way, I'd LOVE to hear theml.