Happy Monday!

First, a couple of NSVs.

1. I wore a pair of jeans in public. I've not been able to wear these jeans since my major weightloss in 2007, so woot! The best part about them is that they are a size that does not have a W in it. They're still 22s but they're NOT 22Ws. :-)

2. I did an hour on my pedaler yesterday. The pedaler is kind of like a stationary bike, but you can use it either on the floor or on a tabletop. My legs feel like I worked them, so I guess I had it on the right tension. :-)

Now the SV: If I was in a stall, it was short-lived because I banished almost 3.5 pounds this week. Woot! As of this morning, I'm down 60# since my high and 31# since surgery. That means I'm still averaging about 3#/week. While I would, of course, love it to be faster, I'm thrilled to be banishing 3#/week. If I continue at that rate, I'll be at goal by October or so. Since my birthday is October, that would be a GREAT birthday prezzie to myself, don't you think?

I'm going to go get a couple of dumbbells today (or, more accurately, DH is going to pick them up for me) and I'll start the resistance workout that my superawesomesexy sister sent me. I know I'll probably still have some skin issues to deal with when I get to goal, but I want to minimize them as much as I possibly can, and that's going to require resistance work on a regular basis while I'm still in banish mode. I'll eventually want to get my boobs fixed, but the same superawesomesexy sister and I figured we might make it a sisters' vacation and get ours done at the same time in a year or so. I guess we'll just have to see. I didn't have a lot of excess skin when I lost 50# a few years ago, so I'm hoping that, since I'm not going down in huge jumps, I may be able to have my skin catch up. We'll see.

Have a great week everyone!

First Post-Op Visit with the Internist

I had my first visit with my Internist since surgery yesterday. It was so exciting for his scale to NOT be the instrument of torture it normally is. :-) In fact, the nurse had to move the "big block". If your weight has never fluctuated more than 50 pounds, you may not have experienced this. But, most doctors' scales (unless they are digital) weigh with two blocks. One that measures in finer amounts of about a pound, and one that measures in 50-pound increments. Before surgery, she looked at my chart, saw what my weight was last time, and set it up accordingly. It's been consistently above 250 for several years, so that's where we'd always start. This time, she had to set the big block on 200!!!!! Being under 250 on his scale (with which I have a hate-hate relationship because it usually weighs me about 3 pounds+ higher than mine at home does) was my goal for my first post-op visit, and I made it! I weighed 244 on his scale, which is just slightly over what my scale said before I left, but I weighed without shoes at home, so that probably accounts for it. Being at 244 means I'm down 40 pounds!!! since my last visit with him in November, before I started my liquid diet. Needless to say, we are both very happy with that!

I brought him a copy of the lab work I'd had done in January for my surgeon so he could see how I was doing. He ordered lab work yesterday just to see what another month had done to my cholesterol. Based on last month's lab work, however, he's OK for me to stay off the Metformin! We're waiting on the results from this month's lab work to see if I get to stay off the Pravastatin (a cholesterol drug). My LDL went up a smidge between November and January, so he wants to see if it's gone back down. It's not in the danger zone, so he's considering taking a wait-and-see on that, too, unless it's gone way up. He also said that my potassium is fine, so he's OK with my staying on both diuretics for now and that more weight loss will probably take care of the swelling issue, and he checked my thyroid again to see if I'm on the correct dosage. He said that, if I felt like I didn't need the Wellbutrin anymore, to come talk to him and we'd start trying to get me off of it. So, for the moment, I'm still on the vitamin regimine set up by my surgeon's office, Wellbutrin (depression), Levoxyl (thyroid), Spironolactone (a diuretic, but used to treat symptoms of PCOS) and Lasix (a diuretic for the swelling in my ankles and calves). My BP was up a little and I'm not sure why. I've not been going overboard on caffiene and I hadn't had any prior to the appointment. I am still retaining some fluid, so that may be why. I'll keep checking it and we'll discuss it at my next appointment as necessary.

I also talked with him about the issues I'm having with my hands/wrists. Yes, they've been puffy from fluid retention. But I'm also having pain in both wrists that's NOT carpal tunnel (I have that, too, so I know what it feels like) and I have two joints that have been swelling/red/tender/hot. He poked around on them to see if he felt any joint changes. Since he was ordering lab work anyway, he decided to check my arthritis markers (ANA, sed rate, &c). I'm hoping that, if it -is- arthritis, it's osteo rather than rheumatoid. Rheumatoid is progressive; osteo, mostly just annoying. I told him my right knee is bugging me again, but we both agreed that my losing weight was just about the best thing I could be doing for it. I also said that I was going to be getting new running/walking shoes soon, which couldn't hurt. :-)

My next appointment with my surgeon (for my 3-month follow-up) is on March 17th. Which is about three weeks. I was at 254.5 at my 1-month. Is a 20-25# loss too much to ask? I'm already down 10-ish. Heck, at this point, I'll take what I can get - especially if it means that my stall has broken/hasn't gotten well-rooted. I'm getting that PMS-y kind of feeling so I expect I'll be getting a visit from TOM relatively soon. I'm having to kind of play that by ear because, without being on the Pill, I've no idea when to expect it. *shrug* I'm much happier off the Pill, so I'll put up with a little irregularity. :-)

Have a great weekend, gang!

Hmmmm....

Well, for the first time since surgery, I'm UP on a weigh-in. I guess I'm in the holding pattern of "is it a stall? is it NOT a stall?". *le sigh* I'm drinking, drinking, drinking in case it's a fluid retention thing because I was without my diuretics for a few days. I know that it'll all come out fine in the end because I'm not eating enough to have actually gained fat. Mostly just trying not to beat myself up about it.

On a somewhat related note, I don't know if it's the fact that I've banished nearly 60 pounds total or if it's because I'm not taking hormonal birth contorl or if my surgeon just flipped a switch when he was in removing 85% of my stomach, but my libido has gone into overdrive. I'm not complaining, and neither is my DH. ;-) It's just a little weird considering how low my libido has been over the years. YKWIM?

Right now, I'm just praying that the rain comes soon so my head will quit hurting. Then, stay gone until after I do a long-ish walk this afternoon. I really don't want to have to do the treadmill. :-/

Have a great week, gang.

Having a Rough Coupla Weeks

So, okay. I was running late about two weeks ago & I just shoved my meds into my bookbag so I'd have them with me. I remembered to take them that day & somehow one bottle got back to its usual spot, but the others didn't. So I spent almost a week trying to find them which means I also spent nearly a week without my thyroid meds or my anti-depressant. That fed into the flare that the cold started, leaving me in a not-good place. The flare was swiss-cheesing my brain, making it hard for me to remember -anything-, including where I'd left my pills. Thanks be to all that is good, decent & holy that I was looking for something in my bookbag & I found them. I'm now back on all my meds but not being on my anti-depressant left me with a craving for sugar that I'm not proud to admit I indulged a couple of times. The only problem is that, like everything else I've tried since surgery, I tolerated the sugar just fine. :-( so now I'm detoxing from that so I can get back on track. I'm pondering doing a week (or even three days) of liquids to get me back into the proper mind-set. I dunno. All I know is that the scale is going in the wrong direction & I need that to stop.

I guess it just goes to show that my surgeon operated on my stomach, not my mind. I'm the only one who can do that. I did brush off my pen-and-paper journal yesterday and had a little talk with myself. I also made an appointment with my Internist since he's not seen me since about a month before surgery. At my last weigh-in on Monday, I was at 243.6. My appointment is a week from today. I'm setting myself a goal to be under 240 by then. I have my work cut out for me, but I'm counting on a difficult goal being the jumpstart I need to get my a$$ back in gear. Wish me luck!

And now, a school update...

I realized it had been a while since I blathered about school. I figured I'd give us all a break from my blathering about my VSG journey, mostly because it'll all start to run together after a while. :-) Things are going well on that end except for the fact that I currently have a cold so I'm not able to exercise as much. But I'm taking care of myself so that I can start back at the gym, hopefully this coming week. *crosses fingers*

So, school...

I'll preface this by saying that I didn't really have much of a life -before- I started grad school. I don't have a lot of friends, and those I do have are on different schedules than I am, so I don't see much of them except on the weekend. I still make time for them because I need some sort of contact with people. That being said, if I had known when I signed up to take the GRE to get into school and if I had known when I sat down to write my application essay and if I had known when I accepted the scholarship that working full-time and taking 6 hours/semester of graduate work would leave me this bereft of a life, this tired, and this stressed (too much to do, too little time) I might not have even bothered. So it's probably a good thing that I -didn't- know. Heck, I'm lying. On some level I knew. I don't believe the being bereft of a life will change a whole lot, and like I said, I didn't really have one to begin with. But I think I can do something about the tired and stressed.

It all comes down to time-management. I started grad school in a summer semester. If you can avoid this, do. :-) But the thing is, I wasn't nearly as stressed or tired during that semester, which you'd think would not be the case seeing as it's a truncated semester. The reason? Because I spent time EVERY DAY on school. Whether it was reading, researching or writing, I spent a couple hours daily on it. I got everything done that I needed to, and ended up with two As to show for it. Last semester, I didn't do what I needed to and ended up with an A and a B+ to show for it. The A was in a class I could've completed blindfolded but the B+ was in a class that I should've gotten an A in. Thankfully, it's not too late in the semester to rectify the situation. Luckily, my gym and the downtown branch of our public library are about a block away from one another. So I'm thinking of going to the gym Monday & Tuesday, then going to the library until it closes at 8PM. That'll give me about 2 hours at the library those two nights. Wednesday & Friday, I have class but I can do a little after class both nights, and more on Friday. Thursday is my evening shift, so I can do school stuff in the morning. That's scheduled time every weekday. If that's not enough time, I'll do some on the weekends, as well, but I would really like to leave a day free where I don't have to think about school or work. :-) I know that might not be possible, but I can dream, right?

Wellness is all about taking care of one's mind, body and spirit. I'll get right on that. ;-)

As a side note, in May I will have completed my first year in the Program. :-) I'll finish with my coursework in August 2012. I can survive four more semesters. Right?