It’s now been six weeks since my surgery!  It’s a bit crazy.  It feels like it was years ago.  I can hardly remember what it feels like to actually enjoy food.  And yet it has only been a month and a half.  What a baby!

My latest development is terrible heartburn.  I’ve never had heartburn before, and I actually didn’t know what it was at first.  I told my mom it feels like someone is standing on my chest and choking me anytime I swallow food. She explained this is what most other people go through every day.  How awful!  Who knew?  I’ve been taking Prevacid, which doesn’t seem to be working.  So I’ve been supplementing that with Rolaids and Zantac.  I think I need to call my doctor and be given another prescription.

I’m now eating relatively normal foods.  Since my stomach has in effect healed at this point, I have a lot more options.  Fruits, vegetables, white and light meats.  Nothing too heavy, nothing fried in any way, no bread or rice or pasta.  Nothing that can swell in my tummy.  But I can have cheese!  Yay!  Cheese and fruit now makes up at least half of my diet.  I can still only eat about 5 or 6 small bites before I’m stuffed and everything starts heading back up the way it went in.

My acne is breaking out, which is disappointing.  But I had to go off birth control for the surgery, so hopefully if I go back on it my skin will clear up a bit.

I’m now down to 257 pounds.  355 was my heaviest ever, so I’m a mere 2 pounds away from 100 pounds down from that benchmark.  I weighed 301 one week before my surgery, and 290 or so the day of the surgery, so I put my weight loss at around 30 pounds.  My weight loss is not steady at all.  I will lose 5 pounds in a few days, and then not move an inch for a week or more.  I get a little scared that at some point I’m just going to stop losing, but hopefully I’ll be another 30 pounds down before that happens!

I’ve now officially been back at work for one full week. It’s been tough! I get very tired and sweaty, which I find a bit embarassing.

I solved my diarrhea by finally bumping up from broth to yogurt. I still seem to be intolerant to lactose (something that happened after the surgery), but soy-milk is a nice fit. I’m also eating eggs and grits, which are practically heavenly.

I’ve lost around 20 pounds now, at one month in.

My doctor has encouraged me to drink coffee to get some caffeine. So soy lattes for me! That’s a pretty lovely treat.

6:30 already? Exhausted. Time for bed.

Still at 13 pounds lost.  My best friend and I are finally getting around to opening the boutique we’ve been threatening to do for years.  We’ve both been working on prototypes so we can hopefully open our store in late September/early October.  Here I am showing off one of mine.  I’m not sure if I should hand draw them all to keep that aesthetic, or screen them on for a tighter look. But either way, it’s so nice to be doing SOMETHING.  It only took me two weeks to lose my mind to cabin fever.  This shirt, as well as some drawings I’ve done lately, have been about the representation of the female figure in art.  But no nudes.  No actual body to be seen.  I imagine it is related to what I’m going through.

I’ve been put on Imodium to try to combat the poo. Work starts in exactly one week. Eek. I have an appointment on Thursday in case the Imodium doesn’t stop it.  I didn’t lose any weight in the past six days.  My doctor warned me it could be slow at first.

I’ve had a very low couple of days.  My digestion is still a big mess to the point of keeping me in the house, and I’m worried I won’t be ready to start school in a week’s time.  I’m having a bit of buyer’s remorse, which I hear is normal but which nonetheless isn’t too fun.

And all the movies on my Netflix are sad movies.  I just watched The Painted Veil and Atonement back to back.  How can one be expected to survive that?

As of today I am officially off all pain medication.  At only 9 days in, color me shocked!

My doctor has asked me to extend my clear liquid diet by three weeks, for optimal healing.  This means the funny poops will be sticking around for a month or so.  Color me devastated.

It’s been one week since surgery and I’m weighing in at 276.6. About a 13 pound weight loss. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything, but it seems the scale disagrees!

There’s so much to talk about this first week (which seems like it has been months). All sorts of things I wasn’t expecting happened. For instance, no one told me my bowel movements would stop. I guess I could have assumed, but I didn’t. So for a week I’ve had liquid bowel movements, which when combined with the absurd gas I have, has resulted in me needing a few extra showers. Luckily these couple of gaffes occurred in the privacy of my own home. And it made for fun phone conversation:

Dad - Hi, just calling to see how you’re doing today.

Me - I just pooped my pants.

Dad - Well, glad to hear it’s going well.

This morning I made my first sort of solid poo. So the kids are back! I hope.

I mentioned the gas earlier - it has been astronomical. I had no idea going into the surgery that gas pain would be the worst of my pain. Nor did I know I’d have gas pain. It wouldn’t have changed my mind about the surgery, and it wouldn’t have changed the way I did anything, but it still would have been nice to know. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the pain, which I’m happy to say has really started to subside. I found peppermint tea was the most effective against calming both my gas and heartburn (which I also developed post-surgery). It worked ten times better than gas-x, even. A nice accidental find on part of my boyfriend, who decided to make me some because he thought it might soothe my nerves.

I’ve moved up to sugar-free Jello and pudding, which is like Christmas. I’ve been so tickled rediscovering my taste buds. I drank some beef broth last week that I thought was the most succulent thing I’d ever tasted, better than the best prime rib. I handed it to Kris, who proclaimed it miserably bland. My cherry Jello was cherries jubilee! It has become a bit of a game, the first time I try anything new. Even yogurt was fun! We have to find our funny somewhere, and this week in between farting and burping, it was the way everything tasted to my stunted taste buds.

I’ve been running errands since Friday. It’s been good to get up and walk around and get some sunshine. I look awful, so I continually hope I don’t run into anyone I know, but I figure if I do, telling them I *just* had surgery would probably get me off the look hook.

My body is covered in itchy rashes from my pain medicine, which is a pretty big downer. I need the stuff to manage my pain, but I’m just scratching sores on myself while I sleep. It’s even on my face. I called my doctor and was told my only other option was Tylenol. So I’m suffering through it, and hoping I can make the switch in a few days. I don’t care to go back to teach covered in rashes. And classes start in two weeks, so it’s time to start preparing! Goal one: no farting and pooping on myself in front of my students. A tall order, I know. But I’m gonna give it my all.

I woke up this morning with shooting pains on my left side when I breathed in, which was on my list of symptoms to call in about, and which got me a one way ticket to a cat scan.  I spent the day at the hospital having tests run.  Word is there’s no sign of blood clots and my stomach is not leaking.  So I’m to take more pain medication and check in on Monday.

One of the tests they did was to check to see if my stomach was leaking - I drank a liquid that showed up on an x-ray and they tracked it as it moved through my system.  I could see the video in a reflection in a window, while Kris was watching it in another room.  It was amazing!  Everything was so small and delicate and floating.  It was so ethereal and dreamy.  Like ballet.  I asked the nurse if she could print an extra copy of the stills for me, which much to my surprise she happily agreed to, so now I have a copy.  I’m going to build a light box to mount them on and have a gorgeous anatomy lamp.

When my doctor saw me he asked if I knew how much weight I’d lost so far, because he could already see it in my face.  Two days after surgery, and I’ve already lost some of my chin gobble!

My friend Colleen sent me some lovely trinkets today, while my friends Julie and Kit sent me a lovely bouquet of flowers.  I am so blessed to have such a support system.

Tonight my friend Shelby is coming over to watch  the Olympic Opening Ceremony with me, and as a stark contrast to the games, I’m going to show her just how spectacularly lazy and drugged I can be!  I encouraged her and Kris to order pizza, and there was no moment of “Oh no, I can’t have any!”  So I’m pretty proud of that!  I’m just not hungry.  So I’ll sip my water and have a bite of pizza in a few months.

Pain has worsened so I’m on my way for a cat scan - concern is that I may have a blood clot.  Just making sure.

Holy cow, it hurts.  That was my biggest fear - not knowing how the pain was going to be because I’ve never had major surgery like this.  It is painful.  The hospital uses a 1-10 pain scale, and when they brought me int the room, Kris tells me they asked what I was and I said an 8.  Which I have no memory of.  I was down to 7 by that evening, 6 and 5 the next day, and I’m holding steady at a 4 now.

Apparently I was a rock star patient, because I got sent home about 12 hours earlier than was planned as my early release.  But I made myself get up and walk every few hours and I really think that did it.  By day two I was strolling down those hallways at an almost brisk pace!

I’m surprised that most of my pain isn’t my stomach itself, but is incision site pain and tons of bloating.  They fill my abdominal cavity full of air to do the surgery, and afterwards physically pushed as much as they could back out (which I suspect account for much of my chest pain).  So there’s still lots of air floating around inside of me, in my tummy and even shoulders.  It should take three or four days for that to dissipate into my bloodstream.

I have super duper heart burn.  I am at all time sipping a protein drink, trying to get what nutrients I can at this point so my body can heal.

The nurses at my facility were wonderful.  One in particular was just like having a second mom there (she was Indian, and just doted of Kris and I as if we were her own children).

I see the doctor again on Tuesday.  Until then I’m just choking down protein drink, choking down medicine, and trying to get as much walking around my bedroom in as I can stand.

Weight today is 283.2 - down 7 pounds from yesterday.  I hope this means some of my swelling is working its way out.