Playing catch up...

Many months have gone by and I have been a terrible blogger about this process. At this point I am tentatively scheduled for surgery on Wednesday, Dec. 21st!! I have finished 5 of 6 general appointments with the P.A. at the clinic, and I have my last one in about 2 weeks. Then they wrap up all the paperwork, give it a final blessing, and send it off to insurance to clear me for surgery. If all goes well, then I will be approved and my 12/21/11 date will work!

In the meantime, I am working on losing a little weight on my own, and finding communities of other lap banders that I can look at for inspiration and motivation. I've started a youtube channel called losingwithaBANDon, where I will post weekly videos of my progress, challenges and successes. I will probably start posting those here as well.

Some of the people I've found have done extraordinarily well, and I am hoping to be in their winners circle (or loser's circle, depending on how you look at it! ;)

So much has changed for me lately. I'm ending my marriage, luckily very friendly-like, I'm back in graduate school and set to graduate in June, and I'm having this surgery. I'm back in therapy because my depression symptoms are still lingering and I'm hoping that the exercise that I'll get in the coming months combined with some good medication is going to help me manage those symptoms. Or maybe even get rid of them entirely. It's a lot. But I think I have the things in place that will help me be successful.

Getting More Real!

So I have had my first appointment with the OWLS Clinic now, and I have been poked and prodded.. and have actually had several appointments since. Here is the list of people I have seen:

Nursing Coordinator

Sleep Specialist

Surgeon's Assistant

Nutritionist

Physical Therapist

I've also had full labs done that are specific to weight loss, a metabolic test, and a psychological evaluation.

The outcomes so far:

1. I was shocked to find out I have sleep apnea! I stop breathing 13 times an hour on average! So now I have a fancy sleep therapy machine that blows air up my nose. Now that I'm used to it, I actually love it. Although I was laying in bed this morning wondering if this will make me a lazy breather. What if I can never sleep without the machine again?!

2. The nutritionist has me eating greek yogurt which is completely filling and delicious. I'm also eating all bran cereal which I totally love. I'm never going back.

3. The labs apparently show that I have low vitamin D - like really low - and also I'm low in calcium so I will begin taking specific prescription supplements for those two things at my next appointment on June 16th. 

4. My metabolic testing showed that I have a very slow metabolism - in the 75 percentile. This doesn't affect me until after surgery, and they may factor that into the equation in terms of planning at that time. Nobody has mentioned medication for this yet, so I'm thinking that isn't in my future. They also didn't mention my high cholesterol, which showed on my last labs a few month ago at my regular doctor. I'll have to ask about that on 6/16.

5. Psych Eval - holy cow! Nothing like a 600 question true/false personality inventory to make you feel crazy! My favorite questions included "If you found a story about a crime funny, would you hope the person got away with it?" and "You think about killing and stabbing people". WOW. 

Upcoming appointments:

6/1 Psych Eval Consultation with Psychiatrist (I can save her an hour or two - I'm crazy!)

6/6 Nutritionist

6/15 Physicians Assistant - OWLS check-in #2!! (YAY! 2 down, 4 to go!)

7/5 6-wk check-in with Sleep Specialist to verify compliance with therapy. For realz. The machine is smart and it tells them if I've been using it.

In the meantime, one of my friends has rejoined the gym so we're figuring out a schedule together, and I promised the PA at the clinic that I would try for 3 times a week. (that was 2 wks ago and I haven't gone yet.. I know, I know). I'm also supposed to be logging my food which I haven't been doing. BUT I have been eating what I'm supposed to. I would say that I am doing BETTER than I was - but I'm not perfect yet. I am making small progress though, and I'm happy about that.

I guess that's all for now - you got about 2 weeks worth of excitement in one post so I hope this satisfies you news hungry beasts! I'll blog tomorrow if anything hilarious comes out of my psych eval!

The First Step

I have decided to start a blog to document this journey I am beginning. This coming up Friday I have my very first appointment at the Oregon Weight Loss Surgery (OWLS) Clinic. I've been approved as a new patient, and my insurance covers me to have bariatric surgery. I need to learn how to spell that since I will likely write it in this blog a bunch of times.

The only thing I really know so far is that my new team of medical people has been really warm and supportive so far, their office is only 15 mins from my house at a hospital, and that I have to do a 6 month supervised diet thing. At first that really disappointed me, but now I've made my peace with it and I'm just ready to jump in and get it over with.

Because of the 6-month diet supervision, I won't get my surgery until October at the earliest, probably more likely it will be December or January. So this blog will be a little slow until we get closer, but I will try to keep up on the news!

If you are just meeting me for the first time, it might be good to know a little about my history and I will for sure get to that in the next blog. I'm sure my story isn't unique and I hope to meet others who have been through this, and share our stories with each other.

Soon I'll be "losing with aBANDon!"
-Sarah