Surgery--Again

down the road money is hard.

but it beats no money, I agree heartily...

(((B)))

Oh, that's good news - hope it's lucrative work and solves a few of your problems!

This is good news. I hope the companies prove to be much faster in their payments than they have in the past.

Surgery/recovery update:

Still a little painful, but not more than I can handle. Still end up taking some of the hydrocodone about once a day, sometimes to ease the pain so I can sleep, other times when I've done too much.

Still losing weight at the rate of about a pound a day so that's good. Incisions are still very very tender and I'm anxious to be able to sleep on my side and not my back, even just for one night. My body feels like it is having a tough time getting used to the foreign object attached under the skin on my abdomen now, a plastic portal about the size of a bottle cap. That's where the fluids will be injected to inflate or deflate the band around my stomach as needed.

Here's an image of the apparatus so you get an idea of what I'm describing:



Have progressed to thin purees which means I can eat almost anything within reason as long as I puree it. Made the mistake of pushing the limits of that a couple days ago. More about that in next paragraph.

I have another follow up dr appt tomorrow and then another one in 3 weeks. At that time, I'll be back on solid foods again and will have to really watch how much I eat, how fast I eat it and how well I chew the food. When I've not done that, it feels like Thanksgiving Day when you've stuffed yourself so full it hurts to breathe. Have experienced that once already with too much soup puree, which I ate too fast. It isn't something I am eager to experience again.

Am trying to keep up with the daily 64 ounces of water, 80 grams of protein and super duper chewable vitamin and calcium supplements between meals. For the most part, I feel stuffed to the gills most of the time, even if it is just water waiting to pass through the small stomach opening. It is all in the timing, small sips, small bites and lots of chewing. I spend most of my day eating or drinking, yet don't consume nearly the volume that I used to consume.

The weight loss is supposed to taper off to about 3 pounds a week once I am on solid food and get it all in balance again.

Listening a lot.

I understand the movement restrictions. I want you out of that soon, very soon.
Very strongly. Very strongly. Very strongly.

Roberta, given your asthma does the lung/allergy doc condone milk (not to mention pepsi)?

No one has ever said anything to me about restrictions to my diet. I'll ask the asthma doc the next time I see him.

Could be some link-up with asthma/milk- the following article was in Natural News.

"In all respiratory conditions, mucous-forming dairy foods, such as milk and cheese, can exacerbate clogging of the lungs and should be avoided," writes Professor Gary Null in his Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. Very simply, when more mucus accumulates in the lungs than can be expelled, asthma attacks develop. This belief has long been held in practiced medicine, and many medical doctors still stand behind this theory.

At the same time, many other doctors and researchers are now beginning to feel that undiagnosed milk allergies may be the underlying problem behind the link between milk and asthma. As Dr. Robert M. Giller writes in Natural Prescriptions, eliminating dairy products from the diets of many adult and child asthma patients helps "not because dairy products stimulate mucus production but because they're very common causes of allergy, upper-respiratory allergies and asthma (which may be an allergy in itself)."

now that I can't do milk, my sinus and mucous troubles are waaaaay less than they were.

you might try avoiding milk when you are struggling, B.

and ask the doc next time.

I went a long time before I discovered my body did not like cows...

I have given some serious reflection to the possibility of giving up milk. Here's where I stand:

Moses could come down from the mountain top with an eleventh commandment--Roberta, Thou shalt not drink milk.

And I would tell Mo what he could do with numero 11 and the tablet it was written on.

That milk equals too much mucous has been said by natural health people for ever.

Last time I saw proper research on it, that thesis was not upheld.

Can't vouch for whether further proper research has said anything different.....

Be interesting to see whether cutting it out for a few days made a difference, though....if Moses descends and all.

Deb, When I say serious reflection, I mean serious reflection. One of the things I reflected upon was that I was without milk when my refrigerator was on the fritz. Several days without cow juice. No noticeable difference.

Ive seen that RAW milk has an otherwise beneficial effect upon the imbiber. It contravenes many of the negative reactions with which processed milks can be associated .

Good to know!

Hi Roberta, giving you my status report here rather than PM so I only have to write it once.... Thank you for your continuing support. It has meant a lot to me.



As you know, I have had a rough week. Last week, I started transitioning from soft foods to semi-soft foods and have been doing a lot of vomiting. So much so, that it felt like the band had slipped and I was in trouble. I couldn't even get clear soups, yogurt or cottage cheese to go down and just vomited it back up. Called my surgeon last Friday and she asked me to come in so she could look at what was going on. After a week of mostly just water, frozen fruit bars and protein drinks, I saw my surgeon today for the fluoroscope. We were both greatly relieved to see that the band has not slipped. My band has no fluid in it at all, but there is still a lot of swelling around that area that is compressing the band area, most likely from the hiatal hernia repair. She's going to give me a steroid injection on Friday to help speed up the reduction in swelling.

She says my band is extremely tight, I got to see it on the fluoroscope after drinking barium. The passage the food has to get through is about the diameter of one of those plastic coffee stir sticks. She was able to extract some air from the band via the port and that opened up the passage slightly, enough that for the first time in about 10 days I was again able to eat yogurt and cottage cheese this evening without vomiting it all up.

She's also postponed my first fill for another month. At this point, if it got any tighter, I'd not get anything through it.

It was a huge relief to know that I will not need another surgery to fix the band. I thought for sure something was drastically wrong and it would take another surgery to fix.

She's concerned about how rapidly I am losing weight and wants to slow it down a bit. I told her how I had been struggling to get anything down me and if the steroids reduced the swelling enough for me to eat again, that would more than likely slow down the weight loss.

The good news is I'm also healed up enough to start my swimming again anytime I feel strong enough for it. I'm already feeling a kick of energy return after being able to eat the yogurt and cottage cheese tonight. I think I'll be ready to start swimming again on Monday after the steroid has had to weekend to work on reducing the swelling. By then, I should have a lot of my strength and energy back.


Hope you are doing much better Roberta. I know you are extremely busy with editing work, but also know you are happiest when you have lots of work to do.

What an experience. I'm glad there's such a clear solution.

It all sounds very frightening. You are brave to have gone through with it at all! I hope your energy levels pick up soon, and enable you to start swimming again next week. It will all be worth it in the end. Good luck.

Indeed.....


So how's our Boida?

Butrfly, Glad you don't have to be opened up again. Hope the steroids help. That's powerful stuff. Don't know what kind you'll be on, but when I was on steroids, I got very hungry. VERY hungry.

deb, Your Boida is not so good. I was supposed to go to Bellevue today for a breathing test and my annual follow-up to my endometrial cancer. Can't go. Stomach too upset. This has become a chronic problem. I've been trying to get an appointment with my doc. No appointments. I keep trying.

Working like crazy. Getting eyestrain headaches. Ouch.

Throwing in a feh and phooey on general principle.

Feh x10