Loving Lydia

LAP Bands and Liver

Today marks the 1 month anniversary of my surgery, so I figure it's time to have an update. So far I've lost 20 lbs . The week after surgery I couldn't eat or drink and had to be hospitalized. The week after I gained two pounds and the week after that I lost it again. This week, because of the snow, I don't know where my weight is at. Maybe I've lost, maybe I haven't. I'll get to go to the gym tomorrow...so I'll know then.

The LAP band thing has been quite the physical and emotional journey. Eating hurts. (So how I gained I have no idea...cause trust me, I avoid food!) I've talked to my doctor about the pain and he said he's done all the tests and I have no problems other than extreme (like uber extreme) swelling. He's keeping a close eye on me and is concerned, but the 1cc of liquid that he had in the band as a primer is gone and I'm wearing the largest band they make so there isn't much he can do to make me more comfortable. There hasn't been any discussion about removing the band yet because I am getting food down. It's just painful.

I can eat some foods without pain...cottage cheese is one. I eat a lot of that. I have it at least once a day. A typical day's food intake for me is: Breakfast--Coffee, 1/2 a cup of juice, 1/2 a cup of cottage cheese. Lunch--a V8 and 1/2 cup of meat. Dinner--varies from night to night. This evening I had white lasagna with brocolli. I have 2 protien drinks a day. Isopure. (EXPENSIVE stuff, but the only protien drink I can stomach.) The tastes of some foods have changed for me. I cannot stand tomato soup anymore. Strange but true. My sense of smell has intensified. I smell everything so clearly and from far away. I have diarrhea often, belch almost constantly and get the hiccups frequently. The worst istrying new foods. Some stuff goes down. Some stuff comes back up. Tuna, Avacados and Salmon are three foods I (at least right now) cannot eat...doesn't matter how thoroughly chopped it is or how long I chew...it gets stuck. If food gets stuck the pain is horrible. HORRIBLE. I'll walk around and drink--but if the water doesn't help it, it just aggravates the pain all the more. I begin to slime and then eventually vomit. By the time I'm done I'm exhausted. I've vomitted those three food and my medicines. That's the other thing I hate...the pills. I have to have 2 protien drinks (again EXPENSIVE and extremely hard to get in this hick town. I have to drive an hour to get them--thus adding to the expense.) That's not a huge deal other than the expense and inconvienence. What is annoying is the 2-3 calcium pills, the multivitamin, the super vitamin B, and the vitamin D I have to take. I hate them...especially the calcium. (Imagine taking 2-3 servings of grape flavoured chalk a day.) I'm learning to deal with the extra drugs and the discomfort of taking my regularly scheduled drugs.

Now the good stuff. The blood sugar is a lot better. Not perfect...but better. Already only 20 lbs lighter. My blood pressure is awesome!

Now why does my title say liver?? Betcha were wondering that huh? Well when I had the surgery the doctor noticed an above average amount of "lumpiness" to my liver. Concerned he took a biopsy and sent the sample away for testing. He suspected the prolonged obesity had caused some cirrohsis. (Not uncommon for someone who has been obese most of their life like me.) On the 15th he got the results back and I have hepatitis and the onset of cirrohsis. Cause unknown. I've since been tested a few times. We know it's not liver autoimmune 1 or 2 and the lab (after doing the wrong tests) are redoing my viral panel to check for Hep A,B,C &D. I fall into none of the risk catagories for Viral Hep though so I have an appointment on the 11th of February with a Gastroenterologist to help figure out what may be causing my hep symptoms so we can treat it. I don't know what all he'll be checking me for...Lupus and Wilson's are 2 canidates...but I know there will be other tests as well. So...I've been to the doctor a lot here recently. I'm tired of people taking my blood. (I seem to get poked or pricked at least twice a week.) And I'm tired of vomitting and I'm tired of what used to be a pleasant experience (eating) being a painful one. It is getting better...but thusfar I can honestly say--I hate this band. HATE IT. I'm being told once the swelling gets better and once I see more results I love it...but that day isn't here yet. So right now I live with it. I deal. I focus on those things I love. My hubby, my daughter, my friends, my doggy, my film class, my games, they all keep me going. I laugh more than I cry...but I do cry. And I hope. I hope for the day when this is behind me and the pain goes away and drugs are gone. I hope. And as long as I hope it's still good.

Snow much fun!

Snowball fights, snowmen and snow angels! Pink noses and toeses. Hot chocolate and dripping wet mittens. It was a good weekend!!

Snow Ice Cream

About 2-3 days before our snow Lydia came home from preschool extremely excited talking of nothing but snow ice cream. "When we gonna make the ice cream Momma?" It took me a minute or two to figure out she meant snow ice cream, but once I did, I knew I'd better find a recipe for it and pray for a ton of snow because our girl had set her cap for ice cream made of snow. (And once that cap is on, it's hard to get it back off again!) Fortunately it snowed plenty (6 inches of white fluffy goodness--a lot for Kentucky to be sure!) After a full day of fun and frolic...it was time to get to some serious snow business. Mommy got out the pot and measured the ingredients...but otherwise all the work was done by our future food network star. I didn't have much (LAP band afterall) but what I had was NUMMY! 

Snow day

Lydia's daycare was cancelled today due to the impending snow, so I ended up not going to work because I had no childcare. Unfortunately the snow was late...so Lydia didn't get to play in it as soon as she would have liked, but round about noon it began to fall. Lydia was anxious to go outside to try and catch snowflakes on her tongue. Judging by this photo though, it looks like more snowflakes caught her than she caught of them!

I've not been writing much about my LAP band here recently. I promise to do a post about that soon. I have good days with it--yesterday--and bad days with it--today--so it's definately been a yoyo kinda experience thusfar. But more about that later. Right now I just wanna kick back and enjoy the snow.  

Dance classes have restarted

and someone is glad about that.  

Mushy Phase

Hey it may not look great but it's a step up from the clear liquid phase, that's for sure.

The green is peas and the white is chicken fettuccine. Only about 1/3 got eaten. My band is still too tight for me to tolerate this whole plate .

MMM MMM good!

Ice! 2009 (A Charlie Brown Christmas)

I LOOOOOOOOOOVE me some Charlie Brown!! Seriously! I have a thing for Woodstock and Snoopy. To me The Peanuts Gang epitomizes the whole Christmas spirit. So while we normally go to Nashville's Opryland Hotel to partake in their yearly holiday festivities, this year was particularly exciting for me. All bundled up we braved the cold and slid down the stories high slides to amaze at the retelling of this Christmas classic. It was great fun (even though Woodstock was nowhere to be found.)  

Weight loss tickers (The second one is updated after my afternoon weigh in)

I'm waaaaaaaay behind on posting Christmas pics!!

Hopefully I'll get our ICE! pictures up soon too---but I'm really waaaay behind. Sorry.

This was Lydia's Preschool party. We got to attend and watch, which was great fun. Lydia got an art set and they sang songs and got to see Santa.

Lydia is sitting with Geoffrey, "her boyfriend". This is the boy she says she's going to marry someday. I approve. He's a good kid.

On wanting food.

I've had quite a few people ask me if I'm hungry. The answer is surprisingly no. I was hungry for the first few days of the liver shrinking diet...but mostly that was what they call "head hunger".  Not really hunger, but wanting to eat because it's something you are used to doing. All I could think about (surprisingly) was ground beef. Why ground beef? I have no idea...especially since I'm not against GB, but I wouldn't call it a favourite by any stretch of the imagination. Since the surgery. I've felt sick, so food isn't really something I desire.Long tall glasses of ice water is all I want all the time. I'm able to drink now...but still not really up to big drinks. A cup at a time is about all I can handle. I'm nervous about moving up to creams since I've had such a hard time with clear fluids so I'm actually really okay with where I am right now.

BTW, the needle in the stomach didn't hurt. Someone asked me that too. The swab tickled...but the needle was practically a non issue. When Dr. Swain removed the primer fluid, it felt like something I've never felt before. Not bad...just "weird".  Right now I'm not feeling too well...but I think that's a reaction to the barium. I had an adverse reaction the last time too. If it continues past tomorrow I'll call Dr. Swain...but right now I'm just happy to drink my apple juice and ice water.

I'm back from the hospital

After my first visit to the emergency room, things were just not getting better. I was vomitting on a pretty regular basis and feeling miserable. I was regretting having the surgery and praying I could get the band removed RIGHT NOW!! So, unable to get into contact with my doctor I made a second trip to the emergency room. After several hours of waiting to be admitted (there was a huge fire in town and there is a horrible case of stomach flu that was crowding the hospital) I finally saw the ER doctor. After doing more bloodwork and pumping yet more fluids into my ever dehydrating body Dr. Swain was finally contacted and I was admitted into the hospital. My very dear friend Cindy took care of Lydia while Russ stayed with me to help me during my stay. Feeling a false sense of security from the protonics and anti-nausea drugs I tried a popcicle and after an hour of hellish pain I vomitted the whole thing up. So I swore, no more anything until I saw Dr. Swain. At noon he had me wheeled down to X-ray where he had pictures done on me and he asked me why I hadn't come in sooner. I explained how I'd tried to get a hold of him and how I'd visited the ER the first time and how they told me they had contacted him to which he snuffed..."NO THEY DIDN"T!" Now angry at them and extremly concerned about me he told me there was no band slippage and that I now needed to go have a barium swallow. (GROSS---but trust me, the pain was so horrible I was more than happy to drink elephant vomit if they asked me to.) Up on the table he poked a 4 inch needle into the center of my stomach and removed fluid from the band. Then he had me drink water. I'll be honest, I was scared. Scared to drink water! But trust me, even water was painful to the point of my wanting to die. I drank, not one, but two full glasses...so he was hopeful. Up on the table I swallowed barium so he could track the flow of the liquid and while it moved slowly...it did move. He sent me to my room where I waited for him to call to let me know his decision about my release. Once I got to the room I had lunch waiting for me. (A cup of broth, a cup of grapejuice, a cup of tea, a cup of water and a popcicle--you know the thing that sent me through an hour of hellish pain just the night before.) The grapejuice burned but I got everything else down. It was great to be able to intake fluids orally. 5 days of everything going in causing incredible pain, burning and vomitting took it's toll on me both physically and emotionally. So while I can drink now, I'm still extremely cautious. Nervous that the next swallow will be the one that sets me into an hour of pain. But sofar so good and so I was released. I'm on clear liquids only for a few days to give my new stomach and my esophogas time to heal. But it's great to be home and great not to be in pain. This is hopefully the end of my complications...and as for weight loss? So far I've lost 18lbs since December 22, 2009.

P.S. I now have Dr. Swain's private number...so if anything adverse happens again I was told to go straight to him!

Introducing Deuce

Congratulations Lew! He's a sweetie. Auntie Lissy will be there to spoil you as soon as possible!

Emergency Room

I just got back from the emergency room. The vomitting never stopped and so Russell took me in. I was severely dehydrated, so I spent a lot of time this evening hooked up to an IV while they fed me insulin and anti-nausea drugs. I feel pretty good right now, but the blue vomit bag provided to me by the hospital has become my new  "security blanket" and I don't let it get too far away from me. They prescribed me an anti-nausea drug that melts in your mouth as the other pill form they'd given me was always being thrown right back up---along with all my other meds. My blood work came back fine, other than highish sugar (which makes sense since I've had no meds for 2 days for that) so that's why they gave me insulin. David and Becky (my boss/oldest friend and his wife) took care of Lydia for us while we were at the emergency room and I'm extremely greatful to them. I'm slowly trying to drink and hoping I'll be able to keep stuff down. If not I'll need to see Dr. Swain (my surgeon) to see if he can adjust the band for me so I can better keep things down. So stay tuned for more LAP band updates!